Ashleigh: PTSD, isolation, and self-acceptance
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.7 • 15.6K Ratings
🗓️ 17 May 2024
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nobody’s worse off than you; everyone just experiences things differently. This is what 27 year old Ashleigh has come to understand about her own trauma. Previously, she minimised her own experiences, thinking it can’t be that bad, but learnt that until she acknowledged her own pain she couldn’t move forward.
In this chat with Fearne, Ashleigh explains how PTSD led her to develop facial tics and a stammer, isolating her personally and professionally. They talk about how to cope when those around you don’t understand what you’re going through, plus, how the Prince’s Trust have given her game-changing support to start her own business helping others with mental health struggles.
Fearne is a Goodwill Ambassador for Mental Health and Wellbeing for The Prince’s Trust. They help support young people aged 11-30, and believe that every single young person should have the chance to succeed, no matter their background, or their personal challenges. They offer support into education, training, and jobs; that’s exactly what they did for Ashleigh.
As well as catching up on Ashleigh’s progress, Fearne has a very special surprise for her at the end of the episode...
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Happy Place with Me Fern Cotton. Today something that's going to make your heart so happy. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm chatting to a young woman who's worked her way through some real mental health struggles. She's called |
| 0:15.3 | Ashley. I think acceptance was the thing that took me the longest. I spent so long |
| 0:20.5 | in denial and again it just comes back to anger and it so long to |
| 0:25.0 | to actually, and it just comes back to anger, |
| 0:24.8 | and it took a lot of grieving. |
| 0:26.8 | It took me so long to actually believe |
| 0:28.6 | that my experience was valid. |
| 0:31.3 | It did happen. Everybody's so quick with our opinions and it's not that |
| 0:34.9 | your experience isn't valid but it becomes somebody's got it worse off than you. |
| 0:39.7 | I'm now such a firm believer and nobody's got it worse off than you. |
| 0:43.4 | Everybody experiences things differently. So for me to actually say it and then believe it and accept it |
| 0:49.2 | was a really, really hard blow. |
| 0:51.6 | Ashley has overcome a lot of mental health challenges over the |
| 0:55.0 | last few years. She was diagnosed with PTSD which was causing her to experience |
| 1:00.3 | anxiety, depression, facial ticks and a stammer for the first time. |
| 1:06.0 | As a result of her health, she was signed off work from her role in community care. |
| 1:10.6 | She was appointed a community psychiatrist nurse and joined support groups all helping her to start addressing her drama. |
| 1:18.0 | It was during this time that Ashley realized she wanted to make a career out of helping other people who've experienced mental health issues. |
| 1:26.0 | So having seen an advert for the Prince's Trust Enterprise Program, she reached out to the charity as a first step to starting her business. |
| 1:35.0 | The Prince's Trust is an amazing charity. |
| 1:38.0 | I'm a goodwill ambassador for mental health and well-being for them and I am extremely proud of that role. They help |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Fearne Cotton, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Fearne Cotton and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.