I’ve Been Gone. Here’s the Real Story.
**Content note: this episode talks about depression and suicidal thoughts.
I disappeared for a couple of months. This is where I was.
My depression got bad enough that I was having intrusive thoughts fifty times a day or more, and they got so normal that I started saying them out loud to my husband like I was commenting on the weather. I tell you what that sounded like, what it did to my motivation, and why I was holed up in my house as much as I could be.
I also tell you about printing off my own Nervous System Regulation Toolkit and using it like a beginner. Yes, the nervous system coach needed her own toolkit. I walk through the tools I reached for, plus the imposter feeling and shame spiral that came with it.
Then there’s the morning I woke up, decided I’d had enough, and started ketamine therapy after medications and TMS didn’t work. I’m in month 3 of daily low-dose troches through Joyous. I break down the science of what ketamine does in the brain, and I share what my husband said three weeks in that made me cry.
You also get a life update, and apparently I’m a plant lady now.
I’m not a doctor and this isn’t medical advice. Talk to yours.
If you’re struggling right now, call or text 988.
What is Combative Calm?
This isn’t your sugary, sweet, diabetes-inducing healing podcast.
This is Combative Calm—where nervous system regulation meets rage rituals, somatic releases, and spicy affirmations laced with f-bombs to unfck your trauma responses.
Hosted by Sarai Speer—a trauma-informed yoga + meditation teacher, somatic healer, and high-energy bitch who tells it like it is—this show delivers real tools, not toxic positivity.
It’s trauma-informed, nervous system-rooted healing for the emotionally constipated, burnout-curious, high-functioning humans who are done pretending they’re fine.
It’s time to regulate your shit.