Sara Hawkins was the victim of a horrific assault in 2012, which left her with debilitating PTSD – she was unable to work for two years and housebound for four months.
Since then, she’s found that exercise combined with cognitive behavioural therapy and talking therapy has been completely life changing.
Now, Sarah has founded her own facility – Projekt 42 – that provides gym classes alongside on-site access to therapists and counsellors – to help others who have gone through similar trauma.
‘Within 24-hours, my life had changed. The change in myself was quick and I found it difficult to adjust to who I was after the attack,’ Sara tells Metro.co.uk.
‘I tried really hard to act as the same person I was before the attack, but everyday activities, such as leaving the house, going to work, and daily tasks like food shopping left me anxious, overwhelmed and fatigued.
‘I struggled with flashbacks and nightmares, and lived in fear of other activities re-triggering the PTSD. This just became a way of life.’
Sara’s PTSD started with anxiety and over-thinking. Before work she would wake up at 5 am, panicking about the day ahead and all the things that could go wrong. She was constantly exhausted, stopped socialising, stopped sleeping and couldn’t focus on even the simplest tasks.
‘I became unable to understand how to do my job,’ she says. ‘I felt like I was swimming against a tsunami, coming up for air sporadically and whilst sinking, had to appear calm and together on the outside.
‘The hardest thing about living with PTSD is not being able to predict when anxious thoughts will overcome my mind, when the fear of doing everyday tasks might pop-up again, out of nowhere and what my reaction will be.
‘It has taken me several years to understand myself, to see the signs that highlight I may not be mentally well.’
Sara says the key support that she needed when she first became unwell with PTSD was simply someone who would listen to her. She says she felt as though she had lost her voice.
‘Doctors had a prescriptive approach to dealing with mental illnesses, and I had to fall into their plans of how I would become well again,’ she explains.
‘First, medication, then different medication when the first prescription didn’t work, and a third when the second drug failed to make any improvements; a referral to a counselling service that would be in touch “sometime in the future”.
‘At the time of being unwell, you don’t really know what you need and you place so much reliance on the people around you to provide the help you need to become well again.
‘I didn’t know what help I needed, I had never been unwell before and did not understand the types of treatments available to me.’
After a few years of waiting to access treatment on the NHS, Sara started to look into alternative avenues for help – everything from person centred counselling to reiki.
She was eventually forced to use all of her savings to pay for her own mental health treatment. It was around that time that she realised fitness and working out could be an invaluable element of her recovery.
‘My friends at the time suggested I use my time away from work to try new activities and purchased a gym membership for me,’ says Sara. ‘At first, I attended the centre and sat in the changing rooms and never made it to a class. After a few weeks, I started to attend on a regular basis and was able to feel myself becoming happier.
‘To start with, I only ever attended cycling classes. I would sit on a bike, strap my feet in and would know that leaving would cause a fuss and people would see me. I tricked myself into working out.
‘Eventually, it became something I actually wanted to do.’
Sara then began to set herself fitness challenges outside of the gym – this was a huge step for her confidence and her ability to finally leave the safety of her limited comfort zone.
‘It started with a phone call to a friend, to meeting for a coffee and then to participating in activities outside of the gym with friends, or even sign up for a new activity with the chance of meeting new friends.’
She felt like the world had opened up to her again. She was spinning, weight lifting, running even trying yoga and meditation. And with each new thing she tried she felt her confidence and motivation building.
‘Soon after I started running I entered the Edinburgh Marathon,’ Sara tells us. ‘Having a new goal meant I had something to work towards. Running meant I had to get outside.
‘I felt like I was starting to wake up – my mind became active, my confidence was growing and my self-esteem was improving. Through exercise I gained the confidence to work with a counsellor and a life coach.’
Founding Projekt 42 has been a life-changing achievement for Sara. Not only is she helping herself, but she is now providing a facility that can help thousands of other people who have faced a similar struggle.
‘The idea was to create a space that would bring together a variety of services that could be accessed by people easily, and to provide people with the autonomy to choose between the different types of mental health services that they believe would benefit them,’ says Sara.
‘During the time I was mentally unwell, I felt I did not have a voice, and the options of the different treatments available were never discussed with me. I wanted to make sure this could be different for other people.’
Projekt 42 brings together the different elements that Sara needed to become mentally well, and it is the first centre in the UK to combine personal training, group fitness, yoga and mental health services.
‘We’ve taken away some of the barriers people face to accessing mental health services,’ explains Sara. The mental health therapies are all booked in the same way as a yoga or spinning class. And there is financial support available for people who need it.
‘The circular revenue model, where we take a percentage of each monthly membership fee and use these funds to provide free and part-funded counselling and gym memberships, ensures that every member of our community gets the chance to access the support that they need when they need it.
‘Over time, I hope we can launch Projekt 42’s across the UK and help encourage social prescribing, such as access to community led activities as a means of overcoming mental illness and social isolation as a form of treatment for common mental illnesses.’
Sara thinks better wellness means developing a positive attitude towards physical fitness, mental health and our social environment
‘We work to strengthen the connection between our physical and mental health, and understand the need to take care of both,’ she explains. ‘Exercise can be empowering, confidence building and can lead to people taking a better approach to their self-management.’
Last year, Sara took home the social enterprise award at the inspiring NatWest everywoman awards, and she says the win has helped her shake off any self-doubt she had about building her initiative.
‘Winning in the Gaia category sparked a new found commitment to continuing to build the charity, to franchise and to create as many opportunities for people to access mental health services in communities across the UK.
‘In 2012, I thought I’d never be able to go back to work, and now I manage a team of 60+ people and have created a service that has provided help to 100s of people. Winning the award has given me the confidence to continue to keep improving Projekt 42.’
Sara thinks the term ‘strong women’ is all about being self-aware and accepting who you are.
‘To be strong is to no longer look for validation from society that can often tell you to be something else, to hide your insecurities,’ she says.
‘Being strong is accepting your own weaknesses and not letting someone else define them for you, it means defining your own strength, instead of adhering to a set of standards society has decided for you.
‘Being a strong woman is having the ability to help other women around you become strong in themselves.’
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/04/strong-women-horrific-assault-left-ptsd-fitness-helped-wake-11997221/
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