Overcome - A Mental Health Podcast

My Seizures Created a Monster | Overcome

Travis White Episode 1

In this deeply personal and raw first episode of Overcome: A Mental Health Podcast, host Travis White opens up about the traumatic journey that changed his life forever. What started with a sudden seizure in 2009 spiraled into years of unpredictable medical episodes, failed diagnoses, dissociation, and overwhelming mental health struggles.

Travis shares how his seizures led to intense depression, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts—bringing him to the brink more than once. With vulnerability and honesty, he discusses the pain of lost identity, the stigma of mental illness, the frustration with the healthcare system, and the toll it all took on his relationships, career, and sense of self.

But this story is also one of survival, faith, and healing.

What We Discuss in This Episode:

  • The onset of unexplained seizures and years of misdiagnosis
  • How depression and anxiety silently took over
  • Living with dissociative episodes and suicidal thoughts
  • The emotional cost of chronic illness and stigma
  • Support systems, faith, and finding the right people
  • PNES (Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures) and trauma-informed care
  • The power of speaking up and seeking help
  • Travis’ acronym for FAITH and what it means in the healing journey

This episode sets the tone for what Overcome is all about—real stories from real people who have endured darkness and fought their way back. Travis invites listeners to share their own stories, offering a safe space for connection, healing, and ending the stigma around mental health.

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Travis White (00:01)
Hello and welcome to Overcome, a mental health podcast. This is a podcast where your stories can come to life. And I'm getting used to this whole setup and staring into camera. So I hope you will bear with me. ⁓ sure. I'll be awkward for the first while, but anyways, before I get started, I want to go over what this podcast is and why I'm doing it. ⁓ so when it comes to the mental health industry,

I've found a lot of informational podcasts, none that are like telling raw, real stories of people and how they came about suffering from a mental health issue. ⁓ this may tend to focus a little bit more on depression and anxiety, but I welcome anybody who's willing to talk. So I want a place for that is safe for people to talk and open up and tell.

stories about their life and how they started suffering from these mental health issues.

That's really really it I've had this idea in my head for some time now But I've been suffering from what I would like to call imposter syndrome It's probably last year sometime I was listening to a podcast and the guy was the host was speaking on Imposter syndrome and saying that the majority of people

wanting to start podcasts suffer from this. They get the microphone, they get everything they need but never move forward because they're so afraid to start speaking up and that that was me. But then he said if you have the mic and you have a few words to say just do it you might be surprised what where it takes you. So that's where I'm at today and

I hope you will follow along with me for the journey, but eventually I will need your help. I'll need to hear from each and every one of you that has a story to tell.

to make this thing come to life. I mean, I have a story to tell, but I'm only one person. So there's only so much you want to hear from me and I want to hear from you. So let me begin by giving you a little bit of background about myself. My name is Travis White. I grew up in a small town in central Utah, nothing.

particularly special about where I grew up or how I grew up. ⁓ now I live in, I wouldn't say Northern Utah, but yeah, I don't even know a little bit further North than I did before. ⁓ we'll just leave it that. I love to read. I love music and I hope that you can.

I can bring some value by what I'm going to say. Because this is me trying to be vulnerable and hoping that if I can open up that it can bring some of you guys to open up as well.

Let's start off with my story.

My story goes all the way back to, it starts in 2009. I was recently engaged, life was going good, I was going to school, finally felt like I was progressing in life and all the cards were laid out for me. But in April of 2009 is when things started to go downhill.

I had my very first seizure.

⁓ by, by, I don't remember much of it is, I don't know how many of you have experienced seizures, but it's, it's a roller coaster. So my very first one, I remember I was sitting in front of a computer, ⁓ doing some homework. I went to school for digital media and was doing some, web development classes and I was working on a web development project. So simple HTML CSS.

And as I was trying to finish that project, I remember I was feeling funny. I could not focus for the life of me. I was really fidgety. My stomach hurt and my fiance and my roommates were pretty much watching me this whole time. They could tell something was off. So I remember them saying like, Trav, like you, you need to stop. You need to go to bed. Something's wrong.

Are you feeling okay? I went into the bathroom proceeded to change clothes and I remember turning off my bedroom light and my perception was so off that I couldn't even flip the light switch. took me a minute. I laid down and fell asleep. The next thing I remember were the paramedics were surrounding me, um, ask me a couple of questions, but my seizure, the seizure had just ended.

At that point I don't think I realized I had a seizure. But I remember I broke out, my blood vessels popped right here and all through my chest. So I guess that's common for drug overdoses. And so they thought I overdosed on some drugs and yeah, I'll just put it lightly. I don't do drugs, never have and never will.

So I went to the ER that night and they did a couple tests, mainly they did a CT scan to make sure there was no mass on my brain. Everything came back normal. the only thing I was really told that night was I think you had a seizure. mean, spending that long in medical training and to use the words, I think you had one that was. Bummer, but like, I didn't think anything about it.

and little did I know that would change the rest of my life. They, I was told that one in every, I think a hundred people have at least one seizure in their life and they'll never have another one again. I was hoping I'd be part of that statistic. So let's fast forward to the next day. ⁓ I had another one and then the next couple days I had more and more. I had

had an EG scanned by this time and got all hooked up and nothing ⁓ they read nothing that were happening so much the neurologist I was seeing said well since they're happening this often we need to put you on some medication so I I mean they put me on a ton of medication and medication that I I don't hope that anyone has to take because it's so harsh

I spent a week up in the University of Utah hospital for 24-7 evaluation. this time I had, this was probably at least a month after my first seizure. And in between that time I'd have had like at least 30 seizures. But by that time they had completely stopped and I have no idea why. I still don't know.

but nothing came back from those tests. And also from the medication that they had put me on. I mean, keep bear with me. Some of my timelines will be probably a little bit off. I'm just doing this from memory and from what I'm told. And a lot of this time I can't remember very well. But the medication they put me on, they put me on Keppra and Depakote. And anybody who's dealt with those medications before for anything, know that they're pretty...

Not good drugs, not good medication to be taking. I had really bad side effects. I was actually hallucinating and I told this to my neurologist and he said, well, if you're hallucinating, you probably better go see a psychiatrist. So I set up some time to go be evaluated by a psychiatrist. She told me that, no, these seizures are not caused by any stress from what she could determine.

Uh, so this, this went on for a while. I saw, think about five different neurologists. Um, every one of them promised me stuff, uh, to different testing and figured out that I was a weird case. I didn't have a brain tumor. So there was nothing that they could help me with, which was very disappointing. And this is kind of the first time where I remember.

my, my depression and anxiety really, ⁓ kicking in and kind of, I mean, I should rephrase that. Now I recognize this as that time when it kicked in. Back then I was in denial about it in denial about what was really going on with, with my life. ⁓ I didn't want to admit that I had a problem with mental health.

because it has such a stigma to it.

⁓ but when you have seizures, you feel very isolated and alone. ⁓ you feel like you're at that time, you're the only person that is going through and having these issues, which I can now almost guarantee that this is not true, not true at all. There's always someone going through some shit.

of some sort. And now I've read multiple stories that these types of things happen all the time. But these, this depression and anxiety turned me into a different person. used to be really, before my seizures, I was always fun and outgoing, very spontaneous, like to go out to big crowds and, you know, have fun and...

do stuff but

Now at this point, didn't like I remember I multiple times I got into really dark places. I, it was harder for me to get out of the house. I was more self-conscious about everything. I was totally afraid of having a seizure in front of people. I was worried that it would make me look bad and that

people might judge me for it, even though it's something that I can't control, which was a harsh reality. There were some points that I suffer from suicide, sidle thoughts. I actually had a plan in my head of how I was going to end my life. If it came to that point, there were times where there was a time where I actually did

take some pills, but fortunate enough for me, like it was, it turned out to be not a huge deal. Not saying that the thoughts and stuff were in a huge deal. I'm not trying to downplay suicide at all because I've had some friends that have been in pretty deep and one person I know of that has committed suicide. So I don't condone it at all. Like I, it breaks my heart for people struggling with this type of stuff.

But I took the pills. My fiance took me in to the hospital. Luckily for me, they didn't have to like pump my stomach or anything. I spoke to a counselor. said, you know, I don't consider since it was not a harsh substance that you took of, like I don't consider it a suicide attempt. I think you just need to be watched over. And I think you need to find the help that you need to move forward.

But these times were dark and they, I felt isolated. There were times where family members had kind of a different opinion or not opinion, I would say like thoughts on the whole situation. they weren't from my perspective, they weren't always there for me. So it just made it harder. Like I couldn't hold down a full-time job for the life of me.

was also suffering from, and looking back, I don't know if what I'm gonna tell you, it was part of the seizures or if it was really like something else. can't, I can't determine that. So I did at one time get diagnosed with dissociative disorder and which, you know, it could have been. At the time I didn't want to think it was that because I was doing some really weird and crazy stuff.

I would wander off all the time.

would become childlike.

and kind of come in a mindset that just wasn't me. But I'd read all these stories that like, you know, after a seizure, for those who have experienced one, you do kind of lose a sense of who you are, maybe the people around you. You kind of just forget everything and it takes a while for your mind to come back.

And this throughout this time, I the seizures for a while got worse and they'd get better. And the depression and anxiety just kind of stuck there like it would. I'd see periods where you know I'd be on a really high and then really, really low things would just all around me would be dark. When they first started, I did have to stop going to school, so it put me back my schooling. Could hold down jobs.

I remember I was at one job. I'd worked there for a few weeks. went into the restroom and had a small seizure and ended up actually peeing on myself. And so I was all wet. didn't know what to do. Didn't know how to communicate that with my manager. So I think I ended up leaving. I quit that job and never came back because I was so embarrassed of how I'd be treated. There was another job that I had a seizure. I was out for a couple of days.

and they wanted a doctor's note but I was so embarrassed of going back that I never went back to that one so

It's just crazy things like that that just...

And I don't even know if the word crazy is right. It just happened all the time. This, this held off my engagement for 10 years and people always look at me like, you're crazy. Like she stayed with you. Yes, she did. But why did it hold you off for that long? And I'll tell you why. ⁓ back when I got engaged was a time when you could only stay on your parents' insurance. If you were not married as soon as I would have gotten married.

I would have been kicked off and with all the hospital bills that I had coming in, I would have royally screwed myself. So I decided, you know what? It's better that I hold off for now. And I was thinking that that would only be a year or two.

and ended up being a lot longer much and unanticipated at all.

there was a point where I had to live with my fiance and mother-in-law out of sure, like necessity because I wasn't holding down a job. was not able to really take care of myself and I needed a constant care. Not that I needed like nurses to come care for me is more I needed people other than roommates to, ⁓

care for me and kind of just be there to watch over me. So I'm grateful.

that every day even though I'm grateful that I was able to do that they were there for me.

So those kind of took care of the seizures like back in the day. After the seizures died down, I mean most of this happened in 2009 to 2011, but the seizures eventually died down and I suffered from migraines and maybe some of the smaller seizures. eventually did get diagnosed with partial epilepsy. It took me years to do that.

It was through an ambulatory EG, which is an EG. So for those who don't know who one EG is, is they, they hook you up to these little, I don't even know what, node things that go all over your head and they measure like your brave wave wavelengths or brave activity, brain activity to see if they can.

catch those seizures as they're happening. So it's doing readings all the time. But the ambulatory EEG, they do it at your, out of the comfort of your own home. So you can go about your everyday life and see if any activity is happening because sometimes when you're in the hospital and you're not doing the same thing that you do on a daily basis, can, things just don't happen the way you want them to. And EEGs are

it's very hard to get a reading for a seizure. a lot of, not epilepsy, seizure patients actually go undiagnosed for years.

And so after the partial epilepsy diagnosis, I really didn't see doctor or neurologist for years. kind of gave up hope on them since I was thrown under the rug so many times. ⁓ I didn't, I didn't believe in that type of medicine for a while. So it kind of went, I went through a patch, a bunch of years where it was basically just one or two seizures per year and I could

pretty much relate them to changing of the seasons and some of you may find that it's actually kind of weird but I've heard of it happening before so it'd be like when it gets starts getting really cold or it starts getting really warm so twice per year and I could just plan on those happening um other than that I was having maybe a few of the smaller ones I have gone through

pretty much every single type of Caesar there is that could be...

I could put a link in the show notes to have you look at the types of seizures because there's a lot. But this isn't a seizure podcast. This is a mental health podcast. But all related back to my seizures. I can't think of another time in my life that would have caused my mental health issues. Fast forward to now. I went years and years only having one or two seizures and then

this year. don't know what happened or what was different, but it was definitely different than it has been. Back in May, it had let me rewind a little bit. It had been a long time since I had like a grand mal seizure where I like shook really violently and hurt myself or something like that. But back in May, I had

⁓ my first kind of bigger seizure of the year and then didn't have anything for a while and then come September we were camping and I had two in one night ⁓ and then I think also in September was when I had my first one in office while I was working ⁓ at this point I had started seeing a functional I met a

Medicine doctor.

Trying to get my, I wanted to check out my levels since I'd given up on neurologists and still to this day have a hard time with them.

It's just me.

But I started seeing a functional medicine doctor to check my levels, make sure there was nothing off because I had started having several of them. Then come October, I had a cluster of them. I...

In two weeks, I had probably about 20 to 30 seizures. I ended up staying in the hospital for a few days for them to monitor me. But since I have already have a partial epilepsy diagnosis, they filled me with some medicine to stop the seizures. So when they started back up, I was told that I have

as diagnosed officially with what's called PNES, a psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, which really put kind of a damper on things. was kind of like a let down because it's kind of like a let down in a way I should say, because non-epileptic seizures, you can't treat with medicine. They relate it back to trauma in your life.

and say that you need to go and get a special or certain kind of therapy to overcome this trauma. So it was something like, I don't like to be, they used to call these pseudo seizures and I'd been told before that I'd had these, but it's let down because it makes you feel kind of crazy inside. It makes you feel like your seizures aren't real because of the way that the neurologists treat you. But I landed a pretty good neurologist because

He didn't make me feel like I was crazy in any way. He still was able to tell me that these are real seizures. There's still something happening to your body. It's just not coming from your brain. But I also link back these types of seizures to possibly a physiological.

⁓ physiological issues. Cause like I said, I had mentioned just a few minutes ago that I suffer or I went to functional medicine doctor. They actually took my blood work and found a lot of like levels of like cholesterol B vitamins or B levels B12, B6, and a few other things that pre-diabetic and

I had started taking supplements for all these things. And once I took them and my levels came down, like I relayed it back to my seizure stopping, but being diagnosed with something like that, really takes a hit. the seizures themselves are just harsh on your body. I've been told that every seizure, every, ⁓ grand mall is like running a marathon in two minutes. So I was.

I put myself on medical leave at work. I was out for six weeks and those six weeks were pretty harsh. Like I was in bed, not mobile for least half of them. And I was dissociating myself. I was very, very extremely depressed and in a dark spot.

I was anxious about everything. was, you know, at this point, I have three kids now. So having a family and going through all this crap, like it's a lot harder than not. Like I was the thought of not being able to take care of my kids. Like made me fly through the roof. ⁓ I was afraid of losing my job. had to not gonna say too much about it, but I had a bad experience with HR. One that I don't wish upon anybody.

I...

The thoughts of suicide started coming back. I was really, really close to checking myself into a facility. And not many people know this. It was that bad. I dissociated one night and...

went I don't remember this I was sleeping I dissociated I went down and was about ready to hang myself and my wife realized I wasn't in the room so she found me in the garage doing stuff ⁓ and that's the night where I kind of just fell apart admitted that I needed help ⁓ I had actually called the suicide hotline

and spoke to members of the family. There's one night where I had some people stay here just stay at my house just to make sure that I didn't do anything stupid. At this point I finally started seeing a therapist and I mean this was all because my seizures came back full force and my body I just couldn't handle it. And now thank goodness I'm able to

work through the things and find ways of coping that I didn't know before because of therapy. And I'm actually in a place where things are going good, but I am.

Often I think of, know, like how did I endure these years of mental health issues and medical issues, like whether we're dealing with physical or mental things. Like I think we always...

have to have ways in things that we do.

to move forward in life.

And one of those things, the advice that I'd give to anybody that may be suffering from anything like this is you need to surround yourself with the right people. Not just people, the right people. You need someone who's going to care for you. Someone who will, you can communicate with and maybe they just listen to you. Maybe they don't even talk back. Maybe it's just a session where, know, this person will listen to me.

They'll hear me out. I have a really good friend that we've both opened up to each other about our mental health issues and he's guided me through a lot of dark days because I trust him. I know that he's gone through some of the same stuff as me. So like if I'm having a problem, you can guarantee that I'm going to reach out to him to help me overcome it.

So surround yourself with the right people and don't be afraid to speak up. Don't be afraid to admit that you're having these types of feelings or thoughts. ⁓ and you, you have to have the faith that things are going to get better, that there's light at the end of the top end of the tunnel. And by having the faith, mean,

I came up with an acronym that I'm going to...

Forgive me, I'm going to look down at my phone for a minute because I need to find this. I mean this I could actually do a podcast on this.

of itself.

But I'll tell you.

just the overall acronym and what everything stands for and a little bit about everything because I this is this has truly helped me out the more I dig into things and actually use this acronym to my advantage. So faith, F is for foundation. You need to build

a foundation upon a higher power. For me, that's going to be God. And I don't necessarily care what higher power you believe in, but God is who the savior Jesus Christ is who I put my trust in. That's who I get. That's how I get through my day to day. ⁓ I wouldn't have any other other way. A is for attitude.

You need to have the correct attitude, the right attitude to get through whatever challenge you are facing. If I went into, let's see, I did go into this cluster of seizures that I just had back in October with a horrible attitude. Do you think it got me anywhere? No, it didn't. It made me get stuck. It made me go into

a darker depression mode than I've been in in a long time. And my, my depression is here to stay. I know that I know there's going to be ups and downs, but I know that if I have the right attitude and can realize that things are going to be okay, that eventually they will be, they'll, they'll turn out usually better than anticipated. ⁓

I is for integrity.

You need to be honest with yourself and honest with other people. Have the integrity to speak out and speak up.

⁓ that's, that's one thing that I've learned the hard way. used to not be able to.

⁓ I used to not have the integrity to speak up and I would, I would internalize things a lot. And it just made things worse for me.

And T is for trust. You need to trust yourself, your internal instincts, and you need to trust others. This one is really important. This kind of goes back to what I said before I went into this acronym is you need to find people to speak with. Like they will talk to you and you need that good circle of tight friends, family members, whatever, but you need to trust them and

to able to be there for you and to take care of you. I know this is hard for me. Before my seizures and before all this stuff happened, I was a very independent person. So I had to learn to trust people and become a little bit more dependent than I ever thought I would be. And it was very, very difficult for me at first, but the more I did it, the more I was like, you know what? Like, maybe I needed this. Maybe this is where, you know,

That the, this is what God sent me to do, like to deal with in the challenge that I'm facing. So I do need to trust. And the last but not least, just be humble. Just, just be humble. Person, just be a humble person. ⁓ so show humility. I don't know if I said that word correctly, but forgive me. But.

think being humble can take us a long ways in life and help us out tremendously.

But this is my story and I'm hoping that someone out there will be able to sit down and listen to it and take something from it.

I am really at this point looking for your help. need your help. need people to be able to reach out to me and tell me their story. I want this to be a space where you can openly talk about your mental health issues. want to hear the trauma or that you went through and I want other people.

⁓ to hear it as well, because I think this is a way that we can help each other out and create a community, behind it. ⁓ but I really believe that this podcast has the ability to, ⁓ change lives, get rid of the stigma behind mental health and hopefully resonate with.

some of you and help you to be able to open up.

so if you are one of those people that believe that you have a story to tell, please reach out to me, ⁓ at overcome pod at gmail.com or follow me on, right now I only have an Instagram account. It's overcome it's at overcome pod. Follow me on Instagram, reach out to me through email. I want to hear from you.

I want to have you on this podcast. want to speak to you and I want us to create, create, form a community and help each other out and, ⁓ just get rid of the stigma of having mental health issues until next time.

Have a great day.