Survival Mode Disrupted with Leticia R Francis

In this raw, unfiltered conversation, Karen Paolicelli shares the reality of survival mode inside a long-term abusive marriage — not just the “big moments,” but the daily performance, the masking, and the quiet psychological gymnastics that keep you functioning while everything is falling apart. Karen opens up about being a single mom navigating divorce and custody, surviving deep financial and em...

In this powerful episode of Survival Mode Disrupted , Juanae Crockwell shares how survival mode began for her at just 15 years old after a sexual assault she didn’t even recognize as assault for two decades. What followed looked like success: scholarships, leadership roles, church involvement, academic excellence. But beneath the performance was addiction, depression, criminal charges, and a relen...

In this powerful episode of Survival Mode Disrupted , Kristell Miles shares her extraordinary story of living in survival mode for decades — including spending more than 10 years as a fugitive while building a self-sustaining brand, raising children, and holding onto unwavering faith. Kristell opens up about identity fragmentation, living a dual life, and what it means to survive by never fully be...

In this deeply honest episode of Survival Mode Disrupted , Natasha Ickes joins Leticia to unpack how survival mode often begins in adolescence — long before we have language for abuse, boundaries, or nervous system regulation. Natasha shares multiple experiences of teen and young-adult dating violence, homelessness, and control, revealing how unmet emotional needs and parental wounds made chaos fe...

In this powerful Season 3 opener of Survival Mode Disrupted , Dan Roth joins Leticia to unpack teen dating violence from a perspective we rarely hear — a male survivor’s lived experience. Dan shares how neurodivergence, early depression, body dysmorphia, and deep unworthiness made him more susceptible to abusive relationships in his late teens and early twenties. He opens up about physical and sex...

In this soul-level conversation, Bill Pautler joins Leticia to redefine survival mode as conforming to the world instead of being attuned to yourself . Bill shares multiple spiritual awakenings — including a life-changing moment in 1988 that cracked him open emotionally, and a later awakening that made him feel love for strangers like a spiritual electric shock. But awakening came with a cost: com...

Rosa Casquino joins Leticia to unpack survival mode through the lens of trauma, culture, and community healing. As a Peruvian immigrant and survivor herself, Rosa shares how childhood violence, abuse, and cultural conditioning shaped her survival identity — and how healing required awareness, rewiring, and reinvention. Highlights include: 🧠 Survival mode = internal safety strategies (fight/flight...

Mitch Webb breaks down what survival mode actually looks like in the body — and why so many people spend decades chasing “root causes” without realizing trauma and nervous system dysregulation are driving the symptoms. This episode isn’t fluffy. It’s practical, blunt, and deeply validating for anyone who’s been stuck in chronic anxiety, insomnia, gut issues, fatigue, or emotional shutdown. Highlig...

Georges Cordova shares his survival-mode story through a decade-long battle with advanced melanoma, including multiple surgeries and brain tumors. He breaks down the mental and emotional shifts that helped him beat the odds — and why healing isn’t just physical, it’s whole-body and deeply internal. In this episode, we explore: 🧠 Why the mind clings to what’s familiar — even suffering ⚡ How “deci...

Linda Henderson shares the raw reality of what survival mode looks like after losing a child — not the polished version, the real one. In this episode, we talk about grief as a full-body experience and why time moves you forward even when you don’t want to go. Highlights include: 🖤 Why grief can make you feel like a “robot” 📝 How micro-actions (like writing “shower” on a list) can restart life...

Ronda’s story is raw, heartbreaking, and deeply relatable for anyone carrying a mother wound. At 17, she was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend — and when she told her mother, she was dismissed, blamed, and called a liar. That betrayal shaped the next 30 years of her life, impacting her relationships, safety, trust, and even her physical health. In this episode, we unpack what survival m...

In this raw and disruptive conversation, Tracy shares her story of growing up in severe dysfunction — from childhood abuse, neglect, and emotional isolation to being a “different” child who could see, hear, and feel what others couldn’t. She walks us through how survival mode became a learned pattern, not a personality trait, and how we often cling to our trauma stories because there’s a hidden pa...

In this gripping and deeply vulnerable conversation, Kelly shares her 61-year journey through survival mode — from childhood trauma to parentification, infertility, cancer, widowhood, raising a special-needs child alone, and ultimately surviving a rare autoimmune disease that nearly claimed her life. She opens up about her addiction to chaos, how trauma became her home base, how she built a $6M au...

In this powerful, vulnerable episode, Colinda takes us through her story to and through survival mode —from being the youngest of six in a tiny northern Canadian town, to growing up in poverty, dealing with abandonment, family addiction, abuse, and unresolved grief. Every man in her life left. Her home was chaotic. Her body carried trauma long before she had the language for it. Survival mode turn...

In this raw and unfiltered conversation, Honey shares how she spent most of her life in chronic survival mode —anxious, exhausted, over-medicated, and completely disconnected from her own needs. From growing up in the 50s and 60s under a picture-perfect version of patriarchy, to battling menopause, chronic pain, brain fog, and a cabinet full of prescriptions, Honey’s story is a brutal mirror for w...

In this deeply human episode of Survival Mode Disrupted , Leticia sits down with Gerald “RunRev” Collins , who takes us inside the darkest season of his life — the unexpected loss of his mother, the collapse into depression, and the spiral into survival mode that almost cost him his marriage, his fatherhood, and himself. Gerald describes: The shocking 72-hour decline of his mother How grief stripp...

In this raw, deeply educational episode of Survival Mode Disrupted , Leticia sits down with somatic psychotherapist Suzy Butts to unpack the neuroscience of trauma, how stress gets stored in the body, and why so many of us are unknowingly living high up on a “stress cliff” that we think is normal Suzy breaks down: How trauma has shaped human behavior for thousands of years Why we learned not to ro...

In this episode of Survival Mode Disrupted , I’m joined by relationship coach & mentor, Terraine , a man who was raised by his grandmother, reunited with parents who didn’t know how to love him well, and found refuge in religion before finally confronting his own survival patterns. Together, we unpack what survival mode looks like when you’re functioning , high-achieving, and still completely...

In this raw, unflinching episode of Survival Mode Disrupted , I’m joined by Dr. Dawnmarie Risley-Childs —a board-certified psychiatrist and survivor of 24 years of domestic violence, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect. Dawnmarie doesn’t just bring clinical insight. She brings lived experience. We walk through her story of growing up in a house that looked “fine” on the outsi...

In this episode of Survival Mode Disrupted , I sit down with mentor, international speaker and author of a dozen books, Kam Knight , to dismantle one of the most frustrating parts of survival mode: knowing what you want, knowing what to do… and still not doing it. Kam breaks down internal resistance as a very real part of the brain built to keep you “safe” (AKA stuck), and we explore how this play...

Survival mode doesn’t always look like chaos on the outside — sometimes it looks like the “strong one,” the over-functioning one, the one who can read the room before anyone says a word. In this episode, Tenya shares how growing up with a bipolar mother, constant emotional chaos, and unspoken expectations put her into survival mode long before she had language for it. We walk through anxiety, depr...

This episode is not light. It’s not soft. And it’s not going to let you sit comfortably behind your assumptions about mental health treatment. Lisa survived more than 100 ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) treatments , a practice still used — and often unregulated — in the U.S. and around the world. She shares how depression, bipolar disorder, OCD, panic attacks, and anorexia led her into a medical s...

In this soul-shaking episode, Leticia sits down with Lena , a speaker and emotional intelligence consultant whose entire life shifted three and a half years ago when every buried emotion, fear, memory, and childhood wound erupted at once. What she thought was depression was actually the collapse of years of survival mode. What she thought was “just burnout” was her nervous system screaming for rel...

In this raw conversation, Leticia sits down with Giada , a marketing message strategist and mentor who helps women entrepreneurs own their brilliance and attract high-level, perfect-fit clients— without shrinking or apologizing for who they are. Behind her expertise is a lifelong journey through OCD, generalized anxiety disorder, undiagnosed autism, a narcissistic parent, and childhood abuse that...

In this episode of Survival Mode Disrupted , Leticia sits down with spiritual coach and psychic Tracy Fance , who proves that trauma isn’t always loud, dramatic, or headline-worthy. Sometimes it’s adoption, constant criticism, emotional instability, and a life that makes you feel “never enough.” Tracy shares how being adopted, bounced between homes, and raised by highly critical parents shattered...