Mental health Changed my life

In August 2012, I achieved my childhood dream of becoming a Police Officer. From 2012 to 2017, I was working in the community I grew up in, Lindsay, Ontario, Canada.

At the end of 2017, within a two month time frame, I responded to two separate suicides of a young person. Both youth had hanged themselves and I located the body of both of them. The one female shared the same name as my daughter.

A few months passed by and I was starting to have nightmares of the suicides, which led to flashbacks, panic attacks, insomnia, anxiety, and depression. From the end of 2017, until June 2019, I continued to work while displaying all the signs and symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. I was isolating myself from my family and friends, abusing alcohol, and started to live a second life. Then in June 2019, I was working a night shift and pulled my cruiser into a restaurant parking lot around 2am. I started to have thoughts of suicide. I can remember having my hand on my gun, and my mind was telling myself to end my life. From some miracle, I pulled a picture of my two children out of my wallet. This gave me a moment of clarity within all the chaos that was going on in my mind. I decided right then, that I needed to stay alive for my kids. I didn’t want them growing up without their dad.

That morning, I went home and broke down to my wife. I told her that something was wrong with me, and I needed help. My wife got me into my family doctor the next day. I was wrote off work and referred to a psychologist and a psychiatrist. For the next year I would continue therapy, trying to recover from PTSD. Nothing really seemed to be working to get me better. Then in November 2020, one of my co-workers was seriously injured during a incident where he was struck by a vehicle. I had feelings of sadness and wanted to help my co-workers so badly, but I knew there was nothing I could do at this time. I was feeling like I was useless and didn’t have a purpose in life, and this is when I knew that I had to do something to keep me busy and to help others.

This is when I created Twisted Trauma. Twisted Trauma is a podcast where I share my struggles with mental health. I also started a Twisted Trauma fundraiser to raise awareness and money for mental health programs and initiatives in our communities. I have been able to raise over $6000 for different mental health organizations. I received hundreds of messages from other people that were suffering with a mental health illness or injury. They all told me how much I was helping them by sharing my story. I started to feel better about myself and speaking out about my struggles was not only helping others but myself as well. I had found a purpose in life through the creation of Twisted Trauma. The Twisted Trauma Foundation has become my passion, and is now a registered non-profit organization in Canada that provides peer support to individuals living with a mental health illness or injury, as well as their spouse or partner. We also raise money for mental health programs and initiatives in our communities. People should support the Twisted Trauma Foundation because it assists people who are struggling with mental health and gives people hope to overcome their mental health illness.

Twisted Trauma saved my life and my family.