Feb. 12, 2026
Lucy Rocca: Soberistas and Grey Area Drinking - The Spectrum of Alcohol Use Disorder
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Lucy Rocca joins Believe in People to share her candid story of alcohol misuse, trauma, and recovery, and the creation of Soberistas, one of the earliest online sobriety communities for women.
Lucy takes us back to the 1990s, the rave scene, early drug use, and the beginnings of binge drinking that quickly became unsafe. She explains how alcohol escalated in adulthood, how motherhood and “outward stability” can hide the reality of harmful drinking, and why shame keeps so many people silent.
A key part of this conversation is trauma. Lucy describes living with post-traumatic stress disorder for years without recognising it, and how therapy, including eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, helped her process what happened and rebuild her life.
We also talk about “grey area drinking”, the gap between “social drinking” and physical dependence, and why so many people feel they are “not bad enough” to seek support until crisis hits. Lucy explains how Soberistas became a confidential, judgement-free space for women who want to change their relationship with alcohol, and why real connection matters more than ever in a world that is increasingly digital.
In this episode, we discuss
- Binge drinking, alcohol culture, and having “no off switch”
- The rave era, early drug use, and how alcohol became normalised
- Motherhood, emotional impact, and the hidden harms of drinking
- Crisis, hospitalisation, and the moment denial ended
- Trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, and why it can go unrecognised
- Therapy, including eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing
- “Grey area drinking” and why people feel “not bad enough” for help
- Building Soberistas and why community reduces shame
- How sobriety changes relationships, identity, and self-respect
- The importance of real human connection alongside online support
Links and resources
- Soberistas: https://soberistas.com/
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...
Chapters
00:00 - Welcome And Lucy’s Story
01:16 - Teenage Rave Culture And Early Drinking
04:58 - Marriage, Motherhood, And “Nice Wine”
06:30 - Denial, Alarms, And A Failing Marriage
08:23 - Parenting Through The Fog Of Alcohol
11:38 - Where She Sat On The Spectrum
14:18 - The Night That Changed Everything
18:10 - Unseen PTSD And Self‑Medication
21:27 - EMDR And Processing Trauma
25:30 - Founding Soberistas And Its Ethos
29:05 - Culture, Marketing, And The Grey Area
33:14 - Community Kindness And Real Connections
36:07 - Life After Alcohol And Identity
39:12 - Building Belonging Online And Offline
42:29 - A Message To Quiet Questioners
48:41 - Quick‑Fire Closers And CTA
Transcript
WEBVTT
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This is a renewed original recording.
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Hello and welcome to Believe in People, a two-time Radio Academy Award nominated and British podcast award-winning series about all things addiction, recovery, and stigma.
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My name is Matthew Butler and I am your host, or as I like to say, your facilitator.
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In this episode, I'm joined by Lucy, founder of Soberistas, who shared her candid story of alcohol misuse, trauma, and recovery.
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From early days in the 1990s racing to motherhood and marriage, Lucy's relationship with alcohol grew increasingly destructive, potentially fuelled by PTSD following a violent assault at the age of 20.
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Despite outward appearances of stability, her drinking led to deep emotional struggles and eventually a hospitalisation that became a wake-up call.
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Sobriety brought clarity, healing, and a renewed sense of self.
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Through therapy and self-reflection, Lucy began to rebuild her life and eventually lost her boosters, an online anonymous community designed to support women with problematic drinking habits who might not identify with traditional recovery spaces.
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It now connects tens of thousands of people globally.
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Lucy shares how sobriety transformed her parenting, relationships and identity, and why she believes community and honesty are vital to changing how we talk about alcohol and recovery.
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I start my conversation today with Lucy by diving straight in at the deep end and exploring where did Lucy's addiction start.
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I mean I always kind of start in the 1990s, seems sort of where I guess when you think about your own story narrative, that's kind of where my self-destructive behaviours first kind of started to emerge, I guess, around kind of 1990.
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I was about 15, very much into the rave scene, lots of illegal drugs.
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Did start drinking around 13, never had an off-switch, big binge drinker, like immediately.
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Never, never sort of thought when I was little.
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I sort of realised now when I look back, I never thought I wouldn't be a drinker.
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So it was like always in my mind, as soon as you get to a certain age, you start drinking.
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As soon as I got to that age and started drinking, I just drank like had no off switch.
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It definitely wasn't a progressive thing.
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I just like as I was always the one at parties who people would be like put into somebody's bed, like passed out, hiding alcohol from me, because I was like on the lookout for more because I'd run out or whatever.
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And then I sort of calmed down on the drinking a bit when I was about 15, got into the racing.
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Wasn't really the thing to do in 1990 to 93, like drinking, nobody kind of did, just took lots of ecstasy and amphetamines and cocaine.
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What do you think influenced that?
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I mean, all my friends were doing it.
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So I was from a nice you know, a nice middle class background, there was no trauma, there was no sort of awful stuff that went on in my life before then.
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It was really normalised.
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I mean, I went to a very nice well a school in a nice area of town.
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Yeah.
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Everybody in my year virtually smoked.
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Most I'd say about half were doing recreational drugs.
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I mean, it was just rife in 1990, 91.
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And the music, you know, sort of going to the music.
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Yeah, I was gonna say it was the cultural influences for all like the radio and stuff like that.
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I remember watching Happy Mondays video on the chart show, which used to be on on a Saturday morning.
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Hassian, not Hassian, Hallelujah.
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And I remember watching the video to that and I was about 14, and it was like a pivotal moment, you know, and you just kind of think I've found my thing here.
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This is like me, I found my tribe.
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And then I just was like gone for years taking lots and lots of drugs, and then I got I had a baby when I was 23, calmed down on the drugs, very, very sort of intermittent after that, but it alcohol just came in, like really came in, and I just felt like that was okay because it was alcohol and it was acceptable and normal and yeah.
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Yeah.
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Do you think I suppose was was there peer pressure growing up as a teenager?
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And then you talked about a lot of people in your year group doing it, you know, or was it just wanting to fit in, do you think?
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Or I think I mean I never felt pressured to do it.
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I think I was probably more of a ringleader.
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Okay, yeah.
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I mean, I I just wanted to get off my head, I think.
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I was very rebellious.
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I mean, you don't know yourself at that age, do you?
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You don't kind of understand what the drivers are, but when I look back at it now, I would say I was probably lacking in confidence, lacking in self-esteem, but I had a very extrovert of an ear.
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Yeah.
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And it kind of I felt like I'd found that was my identity.
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I just it it just all kind of felt good, uh or so I thought.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So how did that go after you've had your baby at 23 moving into alcohol?
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Yeah, I mean I was sort of it was very much nice bottles of wine.
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So expensive bottles of wine, bottle of wine, a couple of beers every night, put the baby to bed, just husband me, and it felt like a sophisticated adult thing to do.
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We just got married.
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I felt like I was really grown up.
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I was 23, I'd been partying for like 10 years, felt like I'd put all that to bed, and now I was, you know, this kind of grown-up married person with a baby.
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So I was doing what grown-ups do, which is cook nice meals and drink nice bottles of wine, and and then very fancy.
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Yeah, it was, and I was always buying nice bottles of wine, you know, expensive bottles of wine, and and so I none of this cherry blossom stuff.
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No, but so I never questioned it.
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I never like thought, you know, I never felt like worried about it, except every so often, every few weeks, I would get hammered.
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And then there were so there were several sort of intermittently, I don't know, maybe once every few months I would I would have a complete panic and think, Am I an alcoholic?
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There's something wrong with me, I'm drinking differently to other people.
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Like everybody else seems to get drunk, but they know when to stop.
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Like they get drunk and they have a nice time.
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I get drunk and I throw up or I pass out and everybody has to, you know, bundle me into a taxi, or I end up being put to bed in somebody's spare bedroom because of or waking up in a house that I couldn't remember getting to.
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And so there were alarm bells, let's say.
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I kind of always had this awareness that I drank differently and inverted commas to other people, which you know, as you've as you get older you realise there's loads of people who drink like that.
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It's just nobody really talks about it.
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How did that affect your relationship?
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And you talked about obviously being married at quite a young age.
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How did the your relationship with alcohol affect your your marriage?
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Well, I mean, Kel Saprize, we got divorced when I was 27.
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So a very short marriage.
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Um I was married for four years, we were together for six.
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I was very much in denial when we got divorced about my alcohol and and mental health issues, I'm I'm gonna say now, which I would not have described them as then.
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I hated him, blamed him, it was all his fault, he did leave me for somebody else, and it was brutal kind of him, the way he left me, it was very it was very brutal.
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But looking back now, twenty two years later, I totally see that the way I drank uh meant that I was very emotionally mature, I had no I didn't I had very little compassion for myself, and so you can't really have true compassion for somebody else until I think you've found that compassion for yourself.
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So I was selfish, I was quite reckless, and I and I got drunk regularly.
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So clearly, you know, you look at that, it's not a great recipe for a good marriage.
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No, absolutely not, and and and obviously being being a mother whilst going through all this as well.
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Talk me through, I guess, how that affected your ability to be a parent as well.
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I mean, I I again I think I was in denial because I was surrounded by a very close-knit group of friends who were all big drinkers and we'd all gone through the rave scene together, so we were all quite hedonistic.
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So we were going to festivals together, getting really drunk, we'd all go around to each other's houses, put the kids to bed, and then we'd get really drunk, or we'd like sometimes take recreational drugs.
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So I was immersed in this scene that cushioned me really from the reality of what was going on.
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But I think, you know, in terms of again looking back with hindsight, how it affected my ability to be a parent, it wasn't it wasn't neglect, it wasn't overt, and it wasn't, you know, I don't think Isabel, my oldest daughter, she's now 26.
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I it wasn't really something on her radar in terms of her knowing it was related to alcohol, like she wouldn't have known mummy is like this because she's because of alcohol.
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But when I look back, the effect it had was uh really insidious and really damaging, actually.
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And I didn't realise or appreciate at all how damaging that was, and it's something I feel really passionate about now, and it was moodiness, snappiness, you know, being tired, rushing through a bedtime story because I wanted to get downstairs and crack the wine open, bad relationships, really low self-esteem, you know, all of those emotional, traumatic uh consequences of alcohol that can be quite subtle, yeah, have a huge impact on your ability to be a good parent.
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And I've got another daughter who I had when I had stopped drinking and it's been completely different.
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You know, my parenting has been completely different.
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Of course.
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And I know like all all children are are are different, but do you think there is any noticeable, I suppose, knock-on effects from your eldest daughter to your youngest daughter that you can maybe see as I suppose maybe they are that way because of how I was when they was younger?
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It's difficult to say because Isabel Isabel's dad had she's had a difficult relationship with a dad, and I know that's been hard for her, so it's it's difficult to say with with certainty it was because of that.
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And I stopped drinking when Isabel was twelve, which was a fantastic thing to do in terms of our relationship, as well as lots of other reasons.
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Yeah, well it was, and it saved our relationship, and we're best friends, you know, we're s we're really, really close, and she's got two children, so I'm a grandma, and I'm really close to them, and we have a fantastic relationship.
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So I feel enormously grateful that I had that I came to my senses with alcohol when she was twelve.
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I wished I'd done it when she was a bit younger or not at all drunk, you know, when she was after she was born, but I think I managed to rescue it and we've talked very openly about where I was at.
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I think she understands completely it didn't come from a place of malice, you know, it came from a place of of trauma and loneliness and very low self-worth.
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Of course, yeah.
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And um do you know one of the things that there's all different levels of drinking but dependency, recreationally, you know, binge drinking, where did you sort of fit in on that spectrum?
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I mean, I think I s you know, you look at that the DSM five scale of you know, alcohol sort of use disorder and on a scale of one to ten, I mean I think at my worst I would say probably about an eight or a nine.
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I certainly wasn't physically addicted to alcohol, yeah, but I regularly drank in a way that was incredibly destructive and harmful in terms of my safety, my mental health.
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I was drinking about I don't know, 150 units a week when I was at my worst, so a couple of bottles of wine.
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And that's incredible.
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That didn't cause a dependency as well.
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Never found yourself waking up in the morning feeling like you need a drink to no.
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No.
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It's interesting how it can affect people in so you know so differently.
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And I remember I do remember saying once to my sister, which we do sort of chuckle about a bit now, that the the sort of naivety of it, that I remember saying to her when I was about twenty five, I really hope I'm never an alcoholic, because then you'd have to stop drinking forever.
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What's she what's your daughter's relationships like with alcohol after seeing your problems that you had?
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I know you said you she was 12, but has has that impacted her relationship with alcohol at all?
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She's definitely got a lot more awareness.
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So she drinks, she does drink, but she's a lot I mean, a totally moderate, you know, like she'll have one glass or maybe two glasses once a week and that or once every couple of weeks, and she's just she would never get drunk, you know.
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And her circle of friends is completely different.
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The social group at school was totally different.
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It kind of goes back to, I guess, for yourself growing up, those peer influences, as you said, you was kind of the ringleader of it, I suppose, but even still, I think being in those environments and all bouncing off each other and encouraging each other, and and I think that's you know one of the things that I've talked about so much before is with children, you only really have that influence over them for a a short number of years before you put them in those educational environments, and then the their influences become that of the friends.
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Yeah.
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And you don't really have that parental influence as much as as you'd like.
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Yeah.
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No, it was a different world that she grew up in.
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None of her friends smoked, hardly any of them did drugs, some of them drank to excess, but it it wasn't it was almost frowned upon as something that was a bit not really very cool.
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Whereas when I was it's at school, it was the opposite.
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If you were if you worked hard at school and you had any kind of aspirations beyond getting hammered, you then you were a square and you got bullied.
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I I found it funny how things change so much.
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I had this conversation with uh my nephew before, and for me at school it was always cool just to have your bag on one shoulder.
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Whereas now it's cool to have them on both shoulder.
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If you have it on one shoulder, you're just a loser.
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And it's like, what?
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You know, the the sort of differences in terms of how things change.
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But yeah, it's crazy.
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And I suppose going back to yourself and your own childhood, then I know you said there were no no traumas there, but you talked about the the cultural influences, you know, and and pop culture onto your substance misuse.
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But what was your parents' relationship like with alcohol?
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Was that was that normal for lack of a better word?
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Yeah, I mean I I think for the for the era, I think it was entirely normal.
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Neither of them you would ever have said were alcoholics or had a a dependency on alcohol, but they were both teachers, secondary school teachers in stressful jobs.
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They definitely used alcohol to unwind.
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I would see a massive difference in them in the some holidays, for instance.
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So they'd be stressed, working, you know, just really, really pulled out all term time.
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And then as soon as the holidays hit, it'd be friends round, loads of beers, sit in the garden.
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So I very subconsciously came to associate alcohol with letting your hair down, having a good time.
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That's how adults relax.
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Yeah, and it was always there, you know.
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Although when I was little, I remember it was kind of you know, the way that wine crept into our culture as a as a sort of nightly thing, that that was was very much the case in my family.
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Like when I was really little, it was a Sunday dinner treat.
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Like they'd get a bottle of wine with Sunday dinner.
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By the time I was kind of ten, it was it was like a regular purchase from the supermarket, you know, there's several bottles of wine going in the trolley, which never happened when I was like one or two, three, you know, little.
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They just didn't drink like that.
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What happened in my house uh during the pandemic, and um obviously we'd maybe have a bottle of wine at the weekend or something, but because he wasn't halved to come into work, it was I found myself every time I walked the dogs going past the corner shop, I thought, I'll just grab a bottle of wine to share with the wife tonight, you know, and that's how we did it.
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Yeah, it just changed, and that's just because the circumstances have changed around us as well.
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So it just kind of shows that that is and it's addictive.
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You know, nobody thinks of alcohol or that kind of drinking as an addictive thing, but it is, and so if you're drinking a bottle of wine every night, you're gonna start wanting a bottle of wine every night.
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And and wine, especially, do you know?
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I think there's something in there about the way alcohol is marketed, do you know, especially towards women, you know, things like your pink gins and mum's happy hour, do you know that our local pub has like a you know two for one on cocktails, you know, at a certain time, do you know, for mum's after school, and it's like how much it's just normalized to be marketing that way, and as you said, wine as well.
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I'm you know, still working in this service even then, but for some reason in my head wine felt a little bit classier.
00:17:19.279 --> 00:17:19.359
Yeah.
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It's like, well, I'm not on the lagers, I'm not on the vodkas, I'm just having a glass of wine with my meal tonight.
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And then gin obviously got pushed in the same way, it's very craft gin, you know, you call it a craft gin, and it's suddenly got that like air of sophistication, it's something a bit cultured, it's a bit classy, and it appeals to it.
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It's the glass as well, it's the way it's presented, isn't it, with the fruit in it.
00:17:40.960 --> 00:17:43.440
What would you say that your worst moment was then?
00:17:43.519 --> 00:17:47.680
What was the uh thing that really turned the tide for you with your drinking?
00:17:48.480 --> 00:18:04.000
Well, I mean, when in the sort of maybe five years leading up to me stopping drinking, there were several horrific things that happened, which which I can't believe e any of those singular events didn't stop me drinking, but they didn't.
00:18:04.079 --> 00:18:09.039
I kept kind of I somehow kept managing to say, well, it's alright, I was just having a laugh, it's okay.
00:18:09.200 --> 00:18:11.519
And you the bravado, you know, you kind of laugh it off.
00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:25.599
Yeah, and then in nine uh in 2011, and I'd just finished a law degree, and I was I couldn't get a training contract, couldn't get a law training contract, and I was really depressed.
00:18:25.839 --> 00:18:34.480
My daughter was at a dad's, so I was on my own free night, Wednesday night or something, in this horrible job that I hated at Sheffield Hallam University.
00:18:34.640 --> 00:18:37.359
Nothing wrong with Sheffield Hallam University, but I hated the job.
00:18:37.519 --> 00:18:38.000
Yes.
00:18:38.799 --> 00:18:46.720
And I went, I had a bottle of wine in the house and I drank it really quickly, sort of six o'clock, just like walloped it back.
00:18:46.799 --> 00:18:49.440
I think probably about half an hour that drunk the whole thing.
00:18:49.680 --> 00:18:56.079
And then I thought, well, I'll just go and buy one more bottle of wine from the Tesco's up the road, and then I had to buy one, get one free.
00:18:56.240 --> 00:18:57.440
So I bought two bottles of wine.
00:18:57.759 --> 00:19:02.160
Would have been rude not to, yeah, and then thought, well, I won't drink both of them, obviously.
00:19:02.400 --> 00:19:13.279
Went home, drank both of them again very quickly, and found a bottle of a litre of strong cider in the back of the fridge, which I didn't even drink cider, somebody had left it there.
00:19:13.599 --> 00:19:22.240
Drank the whole lot, and I mean, God, I don't even want to think about how many units that is, fifty units of alcohol or something in about three hours.
00:19:22.799 --> 00:19:49.920
And I took the dog for a wee at the top of the drive and went for a cigarette, and I passed out and was throwing up in on the street about half nine at night, unconscious, and somebody drove past who I knew and saw me on the pavement, and the dog sadly passed now, Betty, bless her, was running around with the lead hanging off her collar, nobody holding the lead, running around in the road.
00:19:50.240 --> 00:19:52.720
So he stopped and called an ambulance.
00:19:52.799 --> 00:20:14.240
And then I woke up in the Sheffield's Northern General Hospital about three o'clock in the morning and had absolutely no idea where I was, covered in my own sick, stark lights, you know, hospital bed, very unsympathetic nurse, and it was just utterly shameful.
00:20:14.480 --> 00:20:17.200
I was so devastated.
00:20:17.440 --> 00:20:21.440
It was just like the worst thing that had ever happened to me.
00:20:21.680 --> 00:20:33.440
And it was all that denial just went, you know, everything, all the kind of stories I'd told myself about how I was just having a laugh, and I was just, you know, like everybody else, and it was a treat, and all the rest of it just fell away.
00:20:33.759 --> 00:20:36.160
What caused you to drink that much that night then?
00:20:36.559 --> 00:20:39.920
I think I was just on a complete self-destruct mission.
00:20:40.079 --> 00:20:42.960
I think it was a a combination of never having an off switch.
00:20:43.200 --> 00:20:45.200
I just I just never knew when I was drunk.
00:20:45.279 --> 00:20:54.319
You know, I it I was genuinely mystified how people could have several drinks and then feel a bit drunk and say, I've had enough now, I'm gonna have a cup of tea.
00:20:54.640 --> 00:20:56.160
I couldn't understand how they did that.
00:20:56.240 --> 00:21:12.400
I I drank to get drunk, and I always drank to get drunk, and then it was just not being able to get a training contract, I'd I'd spent five or ten thousand, I think, of my own money on going back to university to do a law degree, I'd invested all this stuff in it.
00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:24.319
I was a single parent, I'd been working my butt off for like a year, working like 70 hours a week, just got got a first nearly, just two percent short of a first.
00:21:25.039 --> 00:21:43.599
Just give me the first, you know, so you know, gutting that I'd done all that to try and better myself after years of being this you know poverty stricken single parent doing crappy jobs that I hated, and then I couldn't get a training contract and I couldn't afford to to pay the rest of the the training, you know, the legal training.
00:21:43.839 --> 00:21:45.440
And I just hit self destruct.
00:21:45.519 --> 00:21:59.119
I think I was quite suicidal, really, on a sort of low, like a kind of not something that I'd openly acknowledge to myself, but I think on a subconscious level, I think I'd pretty I felt very defeated.
00:21:59.359 --> 00:22:06.000
Because you you Mentioned obviously w at the end of end of your marriage, you know, you said there obviously there was mental health issues there as well.
00:22:06.319 --> 00:22:09.839
Do you want to talk a little bit more about that and how that ties into to everything as well?
00:22:10.079 --> 00:22:29.519
Yeah, I mean that was a a very a big part of my life actually, an event when I was 20 that had caused PTSD, which again, you know, this is like a different era now, isn't it, where we talk about mental health problems and people know they recognise mental health problems.
00:22:29.680 --> 00:22:34.160
I had PTSD for 20 years and had no idea I had PTSD.
00:22:34.559 --> 00:22:47.519
So when I was drinking in my 20s, I was self-medicating massively for an event that happened when I was 20 where I got attacked very violently.
00:22:47.680 --> 00:22:55.279
And I mean, I look back now and I don't know how I survived it to be honest, by an ex-boyfriend.
00:22:56.000 --> 00:23:00.079
And it it scarred me enormously.
00:23:00.160 --> 00:23:01.599
I had no support.
00:23:01.759 --> 00:23:06.079
I had to live in hiding for a while, so he couldn't find me.
00:23:06.400 --> 00:23:12.319
I eventually moved to London to get away from him because I was so terrified of him.
00:23:12.640 --> 00:23:14.319
And I never got any support for it.
00:23:14.400 --> 00:23:17.839
I never talked about it to a professional therapist.
00:23:18.160 --> 00:23:23.119
I just sort of swept it under the carpet and thought, well, these things happen, it was my fault.
00:23:23.200 --> 00:23:26.319
You know, I shouldn't have gone out with somebody who was like that.
00:23:26.400 --> 00:23:29.359
And I put myself in that situation, so I've just got to deal with it.
00:23:29.680 --> 00:23:35.039
But I I think talking about the alcoholism, you know, now you've shared that story.
00:23:35.279 --> 00:23:39.119
Everything else, I'm not saying that's the reason for it, but everything else suddenly makes a little bit more sense.
00:23:39.200 --> 00:23:40.000
Now you shared that part of the story.
00:23:40.240 --> 00:23:45.359
I mean, I'd been drinking, I'd been drinking sort of destructively from 13.
00:23:45.519 --> 00:23:48.880
So that you know, I'd already got an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.
00:23:49.039 --> 00:23:51.039
That was like the straw that broke the camel.
00:23:51.279 --> 00:23:55.359
That pushed me into a different kind of drinking where and I didn't understand it.
00:23:55.519 --> 00:24:01.200
And then I remember being about 40 and watching a documentary about PTSD.
00:24:01.680 --> 00:24:14.079
I mean, 40, I'd been sober for five years, and it was, you know, like I felt like I was quite self-aware and I'd done a lot of personal development work, I'd had therapy, I felt like I was in a really good place.
00:24:14.319 --> 00:24:21.759
And I watched this documentary and I just broke down completely and thought, shit, I've got PTSD.
00:24:22.160 --> 00:24:23.119
I didn't even know.
00:24:23.359 --> 00:24:28.960
And I thought if you did have anything like that happen, you might have PTSD for a year or a couple of years.
00:24:29.119 --> 00:24:33.519
I didn't know you could have PTSD for 20 years without knowing it.
00:24:33.759 --> 00:24:45.599
And I went to see a EMDR therapist, a sort of Googled EMDR therapists, and amazingly, there was one who lived about two minutes up the road from me, and she was absolutely fantastic.
00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:58.480
And I had about 10 EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization and reprogramming therapy for trauma, for unprocessed trauma, and it was life-changing.
00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:00.559
It was completely life-changing.
00:25:00.799 --> 00:25:03.359
Tell me a little bit more about what that process entails though.
00:25:03.599 --> 00:25:13.279
I mean, the the theory behind it is that pro PTSD is caused by events that are are so traumatic our brain can't process them.
00:25:13.440 --> 00:25:15.440
And so it remains live trauma.
00:25:15.680 --> 00:25:32.079
So you have flashbacks, you have nightmares, you break out in sweats, you know, if if you something reminds you of something, or you you saw that person who did something to you, you know, like I saw that person who who attacked me several times afterwards.
00:25:32.559 --> 00:25:34.400
What was that like when you saw him?
00:25:35.039 --> 00:25:42.319
I mean, bizarre really, because he ended he died about ten years ago of cancer.
00:25:42.480 --> 00:26:04.880
So the last time I saw him, he was a he he looked like a 70-year-old man, and he was well, he would be my age now, he was he was 49 last time I saw him, and he looked about 75, and he was a big, scary man when I went out with him, and he he'd sort of shrunk into this like ill little old man because of his illness.
00:26:05.039 --> 00:26:29.839
So it was a very weird thing when I saw him because I'd lived in fear of him for so long, and then I just saw this kind of shell of a man, and yeah, but it still evoked that that complete trauma in me, and and I couldn't understand why so many years later I was in such a state when I saw him, you know, that that things that reminded me of him would just put me in this state of pan a panic attack, you know, full-on panic attack.
00:26:30.160 --> 00:27:00.240
So EMDR through weird, it's like a little machine that that you sit in front of with a light on it, and the therapist guides you through the memory of you you start off with a specific memory point of that event, and then whilst you're thinking about that, you let your mind sort of go free thinking about that event and where it takes you, and you follow the light on this machine in front of you, and then the therapist tells you to stop and asks you, where are you now?
00:27:00.480 --> 00:27:18.799
So you don't have to say, you can just acknowledge in your own mind, and then she starts it again, and then you keep going, and you keep doing that until you get to a positive end of the sequence of events, and so she sort of helped me get process it, I suppose.
00:27:18.880 --> 00:27:20.400
You're reliving it, yeah, yeah.
00:27:21.200 --> 00:27:22.880
I imagine that's quite difficult to do though as well.
00:27:24.480 --> 00:27:34.400
It was the first time I'd ever spoken to anybody about what actually happened, it's the first time I've told anybody the actual detail of what happened, and it was really, really difficult.
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