How to Deal When the Shit Gets Real Podcast · Rietta Boksha

Pamela Topjian: Abuse and HypnoBreakthrough

·44 min·2 clips

Pamela finds alcohol bottles and hidden psychotropic medications, then decides to divorce her second husband.

Pamela Topjian opens by saying that when life gets intense, she slows down and looks closely at what is happening around her. She says that helps her find where things started. She introduces herself as a former nurse. She also says she became a hypnotherapist. After that, she moved into pet sitting. She has written two memoirs. One follows childhood trauma into adult trauma and the healing work that came after. It also traces the effort of building her life back up. The second memoir looks behind the scenes of her nursing career. She says it explains why she left that work. The conversation then turns to the death of her daughter. Pamela says her daughter was 18. She had just graduated high school. Her college acceptance letter was waiting at home. The host reflects on how grief compounds when reminders keep arriving later. Pamela recalls mail and phone calls that reopened the loss again and again. She then moves into the period after her first marriage ended. She says she had been married for 15 years. After the divorce, she got her first laptop from school. She started looking at social media for the first time. The conversation points toward a second divorce and a full breakdown. Pamela keeps coming back to the idea that hard things have to be traced, named, and understood before they can be handled. The episode stays close to her voice as she connects trauma, work, grief, and recovery.

As heard by us

A plainspoken conversation about trauma, grief, and starting over.

Pamela Topjian talks through how she handles hard stretches: she steps back, pauses, and tries to trace a difficult moment back to where it started.

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Why you'd press play

A plainspoken, intimate story about childhood trauma, grief, and rebuilding after collapse.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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