The Day My Body Said Enough (And It Changed Everything)

“You know this isn’t normal, right?” the police officer said to me bluntly. I wasn’t sure if it was an actual question or a rhetorical statement, but as I confusingly looked up to the officer to answer the best I could, I noticed I couldn’t feel my face, my arms, or my legs – my entire body was numb. I was in shock. I was so confused as to how he got in my home and why two co-workers were standing in my living room casting concerned glances at me. The 12 hours that led up to this moment were an absolute blur. I truly don’t remember much of it to this day.

A therapist a couple months later would label this event as a “near miss,” which The National Safety Council defines as events that could have led to severe bodily harm and/or property loss but didn’t – this time. It took me years to truly understand what he meant by this statement, but 10 years later I still think about it some days.

Two weeks to the day of this event, I had my very first panic attack. I called 911 on myself as I was lying in my front lawn urgently telling the operator I was dying, and they needed to hurry. Maybe this sounds dramatic, but I had never had a panic attack, so had no idea what was going on in my body. The world was spinning around me, my entire body was numb, my heart rate was close to 200, and I couldn’t breathe. Once they arrived, they took me inside, gave me water, and I was able to slowly catch my breath. After a quick assessment, an EMT casually looked at me and said, “you’re fine, you just had a panic attack.” I quickly replied that was impossible. I’ve never had a panic attack before. Something else had to be wrong with me, but they urged me to get some rest and tomorrow would be better.

The next day I had a big event at work. I was in the middle of giving a tour of our new corporate headquarters to the founders 2 daughters and the middle of me explaining the perks of our new corporate cafeteria, that feeling started again – numb, dizzy, faint. I had to dismiss myself to sit in the restroom to calm down. After another panic attack that day sitting on the floor of a restroom stall, I landed in the ER a few hours later. The ran some tests and gave me some IV fluid’s and told me I was fine…again. I walked out of the ER that night so confused and having NO idea this was the beginning of a long journey desperately seeking answers and healing.

Over the next decade, I would experience more mystery symptoms and spend thousands of dollars searching for a reason my body was failing. I used to think these years of deep dark depression, financial burden, and extreme hopelessness was the worst thing that could happen to me – but now, I know this had to happen and was the journey of finding myself again.

This singular event was not the reason my nervous system broke. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back on an already extremely overburdened nervous system. If you have a 15-gallon tank and it ONLY holds 15 gallons. Your tank is just about to spill over and 100 gallons of water gets poured into it. What happens? Your tank overflows, liquid going everywhere, and a total mess is left to clean up.

My first panic attack rewired my brain and no doctor or prescription medication was going to fix it. For years, I went from doctor to doctor looking for answers. I had so many tests and scans and was always told the same thing. Nothing is wrong me and it’s in my “head”. Their solution was a cocktail of meds that when all mixed together made me feel worse than before. Combine this desperation to feel normal again with a demanding, stressful corporate managerial job and I found myself is the darkest place I’d ever been.

In 2015, I decided enough was enough. I found myself in a place to walk away from my corporate job, which is something I never thought I’d do. I knew what I was doing was not sustainable and decided it was time to find my way back to myself, whatever that looked like.

I started going to alternative medicine doctors and trying all types of different healing techniques. I’d spend many sleepless nights reading blogs and social media posts about others healing from panic disorders and would find small glimmers of hope connecting with strangers on the internet while leaning into to their stories. I knew if they could heal, then maybe it was possible for me to heal, as well.

In 2019, 4 years after my symptoms and mysterious health issues started, I found a program called DNRS: Dynamic Neural Retraining System. It is a is a drug-free, self-directed program that uses the principles of neuroplasticity to help reverse limbic system impairment in the brain and regulate a maladapted stress response involved with many chronic illnesses. The program incorporates both top-down (brain to body) and bottom-up (body to brain) processing strategies to heal the brain and body. When I started this program in April of 2019, it was the first time I felt the power to change my life. No doctor or health guru out there would ever know more about what I needed than I did.

From that day, I slowly started taking my life back, but it wasn’t my old life. I was becoming a different person, the person I never knew I needed. It’s now 2025 and as I type this, it’s hard to look back without a little grief mixed with joy. Grief of my old life, but joy that I took control and am not living a life I never knew was possible. Is everyday an amazing day? Nope. But is everyday a GOOD day? Absolutely.

May 1, 2014, was a turning point in my life. It was the day my body said ENOUGH, and it truly changed everything.

As always, cheering you on. 🖤