Roll With The Punches

Vicki Connor has been through... well, honestly, I'm not sure how to describe it without sounding like I'm making sh*t up.
A serious head injury that changed her personality. Type 1 diabetes from the age of seven. Major surgery at 15. Elite sport. Abusive relationships. Severe depression. A complicated pregnancy. A massive postpartum haemorrhage. Early menopause. Cancer. Losing both her parents. And then, just last year, a haemorrhagic stroke that left her having to learn to walk and talk again.
And yet, the thing that has probably shaped her most isn't any one of those things.
It's the identity she built around being 'strong'.
Vicki talks about how being the strong one became something she was praised for from a very young age. She became the person who could handle anything, push through anything and never need anyone. And for a long time, that looked like resilience.
Until it didn't.
Because when being strong becomes who you are, asking for help starts to feel like failure.
This is such a bloody good conversation about resilience, identity, recovery, trauma, asking for help and what happens when the thing that got you through life starts getting in the way of actually living it.

SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS
Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au
VICKI CONNOR
Website: linkedin.com/in/vicki-connor
TIFFANEE COOK
Linktree: linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches
Website: tiffcook.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Katrina lost her husband Scott to a heart attack when he was just 42. He was fit, active, an exercise physiologist, didn't smoke, didn't have high cholesterol and had normal blood pressure. He'd even been to the doctor about chest pain. And yet, he still died.
That experience, as you can imagine, completely changed the trajectory of Katrina's life. She's now a heart health advocate, working with researchers to improve early detection and access to heart health checks, particularly in rural Australia.
We get into why being fit and healthy doesn't necessarily mean you're low risk, what family history can tell us, the limitations of current heart health screening, why rural Australians face another layer of risk, and why Katrina thinks we're putting far too much responsibility on patients to 'advocate for themselves'.
And then there's the other side of this conversation.
Grief. Raising two boys after losing their dad. Learning to live with the waves rather than trying to outrun them. And the decision to keep having a crack at life, even when life has dealt you a pretty effing brutal hand.
This one got me in the feels... Now get out there and get ya bloody heart checked!
SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS
Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au
TIFFANEE COOK
Linktree: linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches
Website: tiffcook.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Two ADHD-ers walk into a podcast studio... what could possibly go wrong?
Well, once we got past flamethrowers and weed killing, eventually we went down the rabbit hole of what happens when you finally understand how your brain actually works.
Patrick was recently diagnosed with ADHD, and the diagnosis has given him a completely different lens on a whole bunch of things he's done throughout his life. The distractions... hyperfocus... inability to sit still... endless interests... the ridiculous number of things he manages to cram into a weekend... and the fact that when something genuinely grabs him, he'll move heaven and earth to do it.
We compared notes on being the 'disruptive' kid at school, being labelled lazy or difficult, and what can happen when you're simply in the wrong environment or being asked to learn in a way that doesn't work for you.
We also talked about medication, executive function, motivation, finding the right career fit, taking risks, trying shit just because you're interested in it, and why I reckon we can do ourselves a fair bit of damage when we start believing someone else's story about who we're supposed to be.
Patrick has had one hell of an eclectic life, from journalism and radio to Tai Chi, technology, paragliding and community radio.
If that kind of feels relatable for you... maybe you're not flaky. Maybe you're curious.
Maybe you're not incapable of sticking at something. Maybe you just haven't found the thing that keeps you interested.
And maybe... just maybe, being a little bit different isn't something that needs fixing at all.

SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS
Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au
PATRICK BONELLO
Website: taichiathome.com.au/
TIFFANEE COOK
Linktree: linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches
Website: tiffcook.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Narcissism gets thrown around so much these days that I was really bloody interested to get underneath the label and actually talk about what we know, what we don't know, and where we've potentially got it very wrong.
Dr Peter Salerno has worked clinically with people who meet the criteria for severe personality disorders and now works predominantly with survivors of pathological relationships. We got into narcissism, psychopathy, manipulation, why highly intelligent and successful people can still get completely caught in these dynamics, and why telling someone to 'just leave' massively oversimplifies what can actually be happening to their brain and nervous system.
We also got into the nature versus nurture debate, genetics, trauma, empathy, confirmation bias, why some people actively target others, and whether you can actually break these patterns and future proof yourself from ending up in another toxic relationship.
There's a LOT in this one. And some of Peter's explanations completely challenge the way we usually talk about narcissism and abusive relationships.

SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS
Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au
DR. PETER SALERNO
Website: drpetersalerno.com
TIFFANEE COOK
Linktree: linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches
Website: tiffcook.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Imagine being a rambunctious & ridiculously active weapon one minute, and one who's barely able to walk from the car to the supermarket without your heartrate sky-rocketing the next...

Well, welcome to the world of Claire Clark... Claire was a paramedic, PT, yoga teacher, retreat organiser, ridiculously active human and basically someone who just kept doing all the things she could dream up. Until a back injury at work lead to a cascade of events that eventually saw her diagnosed with POTS.
She spent years of not being believed and being told her tests were 'normal', losing the career she'd worked so bloody hard for, watching friendships change, and having to completely rethink what her life was actually for.
I sure can't imagine the mental gymnastics of waiting so long for a diagnosis on an invisible illness in a body that's capacity to perform and function can change from one day to the next...
Chatting with Claire sure holds the mirror up when it comes to how we so often measure our life by how much we can do, how much we earn, or what we achieve.
These days it's all about 'finding the glimmers'... which sounds like a pretty bloody good philosophy if you ask me!
SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS
Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au
POTS FOUNDATION
Website: https://potsfoundation.org.au/become-a-member/
TIFFANEE COOK
Linktree: linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches
Website: tiffcook.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.