Challenges That Change Us

A huge thank you to Project Health Monitoring for powering this week's episode. PHM is a software company that provides digital solutions for industry, sport, and education, allowing you to focus on wellbeing, performance, and academic engagement in real time. This engagement helps you improve the mental health, wellbeing, and performance outcomes for all individuals. Click here to find out more!...

A huge thank you to Project Health Monitoring for powering this week's episode. PHM is a software company that provides digital solutions for industry, sport, and education, allowing you to focus on wellbeing, performance, and academic engagement in real time. This engagement helps you improve the mental health, wellbeing, and performance outcomes for all individuals. Click here to find out more!...

A huge thank you to Project Health Monitoring for powering this week's episode. PHM is a software company that provides digital solutions for industry, sport, and education, allowing you to focus on wellbeing, performance, and academic engagement in real time. This engagement helps you improve the mental health, wellbeing, and performance outcomes for all individuals. Click here to find out more!...

A huge thank you to Project Health Monitoring for powering this week's episode. PHM is a software company that provides digital solutions for industry, sport, and education, allowing you to focus on wellbeing, performance, and academic engagement in real time. This engagement helps you improve the mental health, wellbeing, and performance outcomes for all individuals. Click here to find out more!...

Trigger warning: Sexual assault, Suicide, Losing a parent, Depression/anxiety, Post natal depression, Charging a perpetrator. This may not be the right time or the right episode today. Give yourself permission to skip this episode and we will see you next week. It is my absolute honour to introduce our guest for this episode, Anna Lyon. Anna suffered trauma at a very young age when she lost h...

Trigger warning: Drug crimes and false arrests This episode is a story that took me completely by surprise and had my jaw absolutely on the flaw. Our guest is Brenda Denbesten, a chemical engineer with over 15 years' experience in the mining and manufacturing industries, and a Women in STEM advocate and driver for change Brenda is a best-selling author of ‘the FIFO wives tale’s’ and creator of 'Ch...

Trigger warning: Anxiety, panic attacks, cancer At this point we all know that the events in our formative childhood years can have long reaching effects, often influencing us decades later. So what happens when your Mum goes through life threatening cancer when you are just going through your teenage years? That’s exactly what happened to Erica Smith. Erica is an Associate Professor in Chemistry...

Trigger warning: suicide, depression and substance abuse. This episode is all about what comes after the challenge. At 19, Morgan T Nelson found himself in a toxic work and life situation that resulted in substance abuse and a suicide attempt. Shortly after he vowed to turn things around and reached financial freedom at the age of 23. Now he’s a business owner, international speaker and podca...

We’ve spoken before about the horrifying experience of being in limbo when the medical industry cannot give you a diagnosis. Imagine what it’s like when that happens to your new born baby. In this week's episode I’m speaking with my close friend and incredible mother, Jess Galvin. After having her first child, Jess and her husband were delighted when their daughter Lucy was born, apparently happy...

Trigger warning: brain injury and trauma This is an extra episode that we have released just to thank you all for listening. Today’s guest is Suz Greig, an amazing friend and an incredible woman who was rushed to hospital after her car was found wrapped around a tree in 1996. She suffered an acquired traumatic brain injury and the doctors told her family she would never walk, cycle, work or live i...

Sometimes one of the greatest challenges can be our interactions with other people. Settling disputes, overcoming inter-personal conflict or just reaching a compromise can often be anxiety inducing events. That’s why today’s episode will be highlighting advice on how to navigate these experiences with the help of Allan Parker. Allan Parker OAM is a Micro Behavioural Scientist and Negotiator. Allan...

Trigger warning: this episode discusses anxiety, depression and agoraphobia. We have spoken about anxiety and depression on this podcast before, but what happens when the panic attacks and symptoms are so bad that you end up feeling too scared to even leave your home. A small town country kid who never quite fit in. that’s the feeling that would follow Daniel Bentley for decades and eventually lea...

Challenges That Change Us Marie Claire Battling any illness is a challenges in and of itself, but when it comes to often unknown autonomic conditions, the medical field can leave patients feeling lost, ignored and forgotten. Combine that with trying to seek medical help in the 90’s in a second world country like Uzbekistan and you might begin to imagine the overwhelming challenge that Marie Claire...

In previous episodes we have discussed long term illness, but this week we are getting specific by talking to Andrea Wildenthal Hanson about the challenge she has faced in living with Multiple sclerosis. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2000, Andrea coaches people to become their own wellness guru. Andrea combines her experience from five years of life coaching and 16+ years of living well wit...

Trigger warning: this episode discusses suicide and depression. If you are struggling, please call lifeline on 13 11 14. After a few weeks of episodes discussing mental health and other struggles we noticed one thing that kept coming up. Lifeline. But a lot of people have been asking, what actually happens when you call lifeline? Well to clear things up and highlight how important of a service it...

Trigger warning: this episode discusses childhood sexual abuse and depression. In Australia support for sexual assault survivors is available at  1800 RESPECT  or 1800 737 732. Children and young adults, parents and teachers can contact the  Kids Helpline  on 1800 55 1800, and adult survivors of child sexual assault can seek help at the  Blue Knot Foundation . In today’s e...

Trigger warning: this episode discusses mental health, depression and anxiety as well as chronic pain. Jessica Macguire who has worked as a trauma informed integrated physio therapist for 14 years and is currently running programs on the vagus nerve. She aims to help people get to the cause of the problems, rather than relying on others to treat their symptoms She has studied neuro physiology thro...

Trigger warning: this episode discusses depression, anxiety, PTSD, strokes and stressful work environments. For this episode we are joined by Roger Sutherland. Roger is a veteran law enforcement officer and 24/7 shift worker for almost 4 decades. He has 2 children and a son in law that are all shift workers. His partner Melissa also works in a shift working environment and is a former 24/7 shift w...

Trigger warning: this episode discusses cancer, and endometriosis This episode’s guest is an incredibly strong woman who has battled through a lot. Catherine Stephen was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer at a much younger age than is normally expected. The five-year survival rate for ovarian cancer in Australia is just 48%, meaning those diagnosed get less than half a chance of surviving five years fr...

Trigger warning: this episode discusses family dysfunction. This weeks episode brings a story from someone who has truly lived a life. From leaving home in her teens to join the military, working in a prison, studying bachelor of arts (majoring social welfare), bachelor of social work, graduate diploma of social science, a diploma of disability and a masters of business administration, Cheryl has...

While we have talked about mental health throughout this podcast, in this weeks’ episode we will be specifically discussing anxiety. Our guest for the episode is my incredibly dear friend Jess Lawton She has over 17 years of experience in human resources and organisational development, is passionate about working with people and teams and her goal is to challenge status quo and use her experience...

This week’s episode is going to be a bit of a change of pace. As we approach spring, many of us will be starting to think about getting moving and getting fit and often that means we might decide to go for a run. But before you do up your laces, even a 5 km run can lead to injury and pain if not done properly, so today we’ll be talking to an expert to ensure you do things right. I am very lucky to...

**Trigger Warning** This episode contains discussions of sexual abuse. This may not be the right time or the right episode today. Give yourself permission to skip this episode and we will see you next week. In today’s episode we will be talking to journalist and podcaster Virginia Tapscott about the sexual abuse she and her sister suffered as children. This abuse and other subsequent traumas event...

As we get through this week we thought we'd give you something a little extra. We're approaching episode 20, which means we have 19 episodes of wisdom and advice and if you haven't managed to check all the episodes out, we thought we'd collate a 'greatest hits' of some of the best advice given in some of our previous episodes. This bonus mini episode contains inspiring anecdotes and useful advice...

In today’s episode we will be talking about grief and loss with two people who have made it their personal goal to help others through the grieving process. Both Kristy and James Thomas lost family members far earlier than expected and it was through the processing of this grief that they were inspired to start a charity to help others. Feel the Magic is a charity supporting grieving kids and teen...