why I made traumality

“I didn’t initially set out to create a documentary about trauma. It just so happened that what I set out to do became a film about trauma.

Early hours of a Monday morning back in 2017. The smell of the rain that hadn’t yet come. Hungover from my heavy weekend, walking from Old Street Station to my work offices.

The anxiety would set in as soon as I exited the station. Heart palpitations and adrenaline flooding my body. I was walking the plank, walking towards my inevitable death.

Well, it felt like that.
Really, I was facing my work colleagues.

New conversations. Eyes on me as it was my turn to speak. The fear that, once again, my mind would go blank and I would freeze in what felt like the worst feeling in the world.

During that walk, I would rehearse saying ‘hello’ and the shortest possible description of my weekend.

Time would freeze as I entered the offices. The eyes on me were palpable and I would blurt out my hellos, quickly sit down and avoid eye contact.

Eventually, my body dissociated and life felt hazy.

I don’t remember much from this period, but the only way I can describe it is numbness.

I didn’t even recognise my family.

My dad didn’t feel like my dad. My sister didn’t feel like my sister. My cousins didn’t feel like my cousins.

Everybody felt like a stranger.

This was my reality for nearly 10 years.

I decided that I had to do something about it.

I went to my GP who clustered my symptoms into a diagnosis and I was given medication.

Medication helps a lot of people. For me, intuitively, it didn’t feel right.

I left feeling even more broken because the very professionals who specialise in mental health don’t even have an explanation.

A voice in the back of my head kept whispering that there must be one.

My dad used to tell me that the question I’d ask the most as a small child was ‘why?’

I’ve always been inquisitive…. I need to get to the root of everything or I’m not interested.

Shortly after, I created a short film titled ‘A Day in the Life of Anxiety’, which went viral. 21 million views overnight, 34 million over time, and translated into 16 different languages across the world.

These symptoms were universal.
And I questioned: are we all disordered?
Or did something happen which caused these symptoms?

In August 2017, I wrote in my Notes app: ‘Documentary about the root of mental health.’ I wanted to provide answers to the millions of people who resonated with my anxiety video.

A few years later, I came across the word ‘trauma’ and began learning about what could actually be considered traumatic.

For me, learning about complex trauma was essential. I had always thought of trauma as something caused by a single, major event, but understanding complex trauma helped me recognise how repeated experiences, relationships and environments can shape the symptoms we carry into adult life.

I was recommended a book by Dr Bradley Nelson called ‘The Emotion Code’ and Bessel van der Kolk’s ‘The Body Keeps the Score’, which opened my eyes to how our experiences can show up today.

I resonated deeply.

But why didn’t my doctor know about this?

Why weren’t we taught this at school?

I had so many questions that I needed the answers to.

I searched for a film on this and I couldn’t find one.

Bingo.

This was my calling.

I shouldn’t have had to search to find the answers to why I was suffering or to find the solutions. It should be common knowledge.

I know I can make powerful content that connects, but this time I wanted to create it on a larger scale.

That’s the moment TRAUMALITY was born.

I tried to get funding to create it.

I failed.

I reached out to close to a hundred production companies and distributors and heard nothing back.

Fine, I’ll do it myself.
My way, with no dilution.

Four years later, 22 experts in the fields of trauma and mental health helped me tell the story of trauma.

It’s finally out in the world.

We’ve had screenings within the NHS educating staff, screenings all across the country and screenings planned across the world.

TRAUMALITY has taken on a life of its own, and I’m so excited to be partnering with PTSD UK for our screening.

I hope people come away from TRAUMALITY seeing themselves and other people with a little more curiosity, compassion and understanding. But awareness is only the beginning. The question now is: what do we do with this knowledge? How can we apply it in the way we parent, work, teach, care, lead, build relationships and respond to people who are struggling? TRAUMALITY is the awareness. What comes next is how we choose to live it.”