Heart On My Sleeve

Mitch Wallis speaks to Darren, whose experiences in his career as an engineer, coupled with becoming a dad, led him to pursue a new passion – to meet the need for men’s wellbeing. This episode covers: How far we can push our body and brain until it shuts down. How shame seeded in childhood can drive us to overcompensate, achieve and succeed, and at what point that energy source become toxic. How b...

In this episode we cover: The internal and external pressure on teenagers to excel in school The impact of family breakdown upon young people How parents can be there to support their young people going through mental ill health Breaking the stigma about seeking inpatient treatment How shame and self-judgment could be keeping us sick, and how hitting the ego’s breaking point and leaving pride behi...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Matthew Mitcham, Olympic diving champion on battling addiction and channeling that into winning. In this episode we cover: Getting stuck in the cycle of shame and addiction. What it takes to get clean and stay clean after dependence on narcotics. The unstable landscape of attaching your self-worth to achievement and external validation. What comes next after you've becom...

Trigger Warnings: this episode references sexual violence, suicidal ideation, paedophilia, sexual assault, intrusive thoughts including sexual, violent and homicidal. Mitch Wallis speaks to Dr Lena who's brave disclosure of navigating her intrusive OCD encourages him to share the parts of his mental health story that he has never told before. This episode covers: How OCD when experienced as se...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Amrei Marden, a German-Australian yoga teacher, with an amazing story of resilience.  This episode covers: Experiencing PTSD post war and the responses that haunted her. Losing material possessions & her safe space in the Australian Bush-fires. How to build resilience and disrupt the victim cycle by exploring, owning and releasing the pain. The death of ego - what happen...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Costa Zacharia, a well known Sydney barber with a huge heart, who shares a lesson for all of us on finding the courage to be who we really are. In this episode we cover: Learning to love himself for who he is, as a proud gay man. The battle to express his true self in the face of religion and its views on sexuality. What it was like to experience the moment of acceptance fro...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Aoife O'Connell, a leader in marketing who found out she was being made redundant whilst giving birth. This episode covers: How to create more purposeful careers? Techniques to navigate life-altering experiences How to minimise guilt and shame? Are we really advocating for equal opportunities for women? How to step into and own your voice and experience. Why parents shou...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Susan Hales, a psychologist and clinical hypnotherapist who helped treat previous guest, Nicole Blackie to overcome her eating disorder. This episode covers: How to uncover and reframe the stories we tell ourselves that keep us stuck and sick. Working with Nicole to help heal her disordered eating and thinking, and the importance of connection in recovery. Her own her though...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Madii Himbury – a young successful Olympic skier who is on a path to discovering who she is outside the world that people see everyday. In this episode we cover: What life is like as an elite athlete - How can we manage our mental health so that success isn’t so tied to our identity? Experiencing how freeing making space with your internal story can be? How important it is t...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Sharon Draper, a psychologist who's honesty about not always having her sh* together is a refreshing take on a career that can often expect perfection. This episode covers: exploring dual roles as both a mental health practitioner and a patient and the trauma that impacted her life and inspired her to become involved with psychology. dealing with her own inner demons suc...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Nicole Blackie, one of the greatest stories of anorexia recovery we’ve ever heard. After several admissions & years in psychiatric hospitals, almost a decade of professional help & medication etc that hardly changed a thing, Nicole has recently made a tectonic shift that now see’s her living a healthy, normal and fulfilling life. This episode covers: Nicole's har...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Sarah Daffy - a smart successful young business woman with the world at her feet - living with one of the least common or talked about mental health issues, depersonalisation disorder. This episode covers: - what is depersonalisation disorder? the symptoms and a standalone disorder - living with depersonalisation: a world that feels un-real, foggy and robotic. - surviving ex...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Joe, an ex-NRL player who paints a raw image of what life was and is like for indigenous Australians struggling with mental-ill health. In 2018 Joe was conferred the highest honour from Suicide Prevention Australia's LIFE Award for his outstanding work in communities across Australia... This episode covers: - genetic memory and intergenerational trauma, and how our ances...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Nick Ward who talks about his struggles with fitting in and we discuss how we both manage intense thoughts and intense emotions particularly as a young person with a brain that feels different to other people, whilst trying to navigate the pressures and realities of school and being a teenager. A great listen if you're going through anything similar or are a parent to a teen...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Thorald Koren, a singer-song writer who takes us through some his experiences with the bizarre and intrusive world of OCD, and how a shooting star of all things was something that changed the trajectory of his life forever. This episode covers: Mitch sharing a story about how he helped him eat a drawing of the devil to overcome his fear of being possessed, which out of conte...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Ruby Wax OBE, a very well-known comedian. In the 1980’s, Ruby starred in the sitcom Girls on Top, and came to prominence as a comic interviewer in shows including The Full Wax and Ruby Wax Meets, as well as writing for the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous otherwise known as Ab Fab! This is a more light hearted interview so enjoy listening to our sh*t and inappropriate jokes. What...

Mitch Wallis speaks to Francesca Hung, also known as Miss Universe Australia 2018. From the outside she has the perfect life... a beautiful model, from an affluent family, studying at university, living a life of privilege. What does she have to be sad about? A question that's plagued her for a lifetime... This episode covers: the guilt of “having it all” yet feeling so low battling with self este...

This episode covers: exploring his mental health journey in the public eye managing multiple mental ill-health conditions at once the reality of OCD, obsessive thought patterns and anxiety his experience with medication and treating his conditions the dark battle with alcohol addiction and coming back from the brink of psychosis