For most of his life, Isaiah Heller has oscillated between panic and prescriptions, alcohol, and marijuana to numb difficult emotions and a mind that “moved at 100 miles a second.”
The U.S. Army veteran tried to take his own life twice. He couldn’t keep a job, and his driver’s license was once revoked after he suffered a trauma-induced seizure disorder. He attempted—but walked out of—cognitive processing therapy, a specialized clinical treatment to reframe past events and gain emotional freedom.
Heller suffered from shame and trauma due to experiences in foster care, a near-death hate crime assault as a young teen, and sexual abuse in the military. But his silent suffering echoed in the walls of his own home with night terrors, paranoia, and his inability to be present—psychological symptoms that bled into the lives of his wife and children….