Forty Seizures in Six Weeks: Learning to Stop Hiding

*Content note: this episode includes discussion of suicidal thoughts and a crisis hotline call.* Travis White was twenty-three, newly engaged, and by his own description living the dream when his body started sending signals nobody had taught him to read. One ordinary night, studying for a web development class, he felt off. Hours later, he woke up surrounded by paramedics and police, unable to remember any of it, and the first question they asked him was what drugs he'd taken. He hadn't taken any. He'd had a seizure, and over the next six weeks he had forty or fifty more. What came after was almost harder than the seizures themselves. Medication that made him hallucinate. Neurologists who ran out of answers and handed him off. Jobs he walked out of mid-shift and never returned to because he was too ashamed to explain what had happened. Dissociative episodes that once had him driving an hour and a half home without remembering the trip. For fifteen years, Travis mostly kept all of it hidden, even as the seizures came and went, even as he built a career, got married, and became a father. Then in late 2024, months after his third child was born, the seizures returned in a brutal cluster. This time doctors gave the condition a name: psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, stress firing through the body in a pattern that looks like epilepsy but isn't. The diagnosis didn't come with a clear treatment plan, and Travis spiraled into a depression severe enough that he became suicidal. A call to the 988 hotline and a brother-in-law who reached out and meant it were the turning point. From there, Travis went all in on therapy, functional medicine, and a handful of simple tools that finally let him stop just managing his life and start rebuilding it. Today Travis hosts Overcome, a podcast built around the same honesty he fought to find for himself. What You'll Hear: - The night in April 2009 that started it all, and waking up surrounded by paramedics - Getting asked what drugs he'd taken when he'd never touched them - Forty to fifty seizures in six weeks and a week hooked up to 24-hour monitoring - Medication that caused hallucinations, and tapering himself off against medical advice - Losing jobs by walking out and never going back, too embarrassed to explain - What dissociation actually felt like, including driving home without remembering it - Rebuilding a career, buying a house, and becoming a father while still hiding the struggle - The 2024 seizure cluster and the diagnosis of PNES - Becoming suicidal, calling the 988 hotline, and the phone call from his brother-in-law - Therapy, functional medicine, diet changes, and the tools that actually helped - Why starting Overcome became part of his own healing Guest Bio: Travis White is a speaker and the host of Overcome with Travis White, a mental-health podcast featuring honest conversations about trauma, grief, addiction, identity, and resilience. After seizures disrupted his independence and sense of self, Travis spent years trying to reclaim his old life before learning to grieve who he had been and build a meaningful new one. Through Overcome, he has hosted more than 80 conversations designed to help people feel less alone and recognize that difficult seasons do not have to define the rest of their lives. Website: https://overcomepod.com Listen and follow: www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/follow Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thelifeshiftpodcast.beehiiv.com/ **You Might Also Like:** - Lemon-Sized Brain Tumor: The Life That Grew After Surgery - The Cost of Quiet: Learning to Speak Up After Years of Silence seizures, PNES, psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, mental health stigma, dissociation, depression, 988 hotline, therapy, fatherhood, project manager, Overcome podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices