Any form of abuse can have a massive toll on a person’s mental and physical health. It can lead to severe anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse. The most effective way to deal with the trauma is to open up and talk it out. Mental health advocate and military veteran Olivia Nunn has made it her goal to remove the stigma around seeking help.
Olivia Nunn served in the military forces of the United States of America for 20 years. She has been a survivor of physical and mental abuse and, during her retirement, went through a rough patch where she was constantly haunted by the recollections of her deployment days.
In an interview with Pivotal Media Movements, she transparently discusses the time she was assaulted by her platoon sergeant on her first deployment in 2003. She recalls, “he was huge compared to me, you know, he lifted me up by my bust, he wrenched my arm behind me, he had smashed my face, he threw me to the truck, he did all kinds of things to me, and that was not the first physical altercation that he had with me there were other times he had thrown me out of the truck before he had kicked me in my gut a few times he had done other things.”
Olivia was shattered, feeling a lack in her skills and competency as part of a male-dominated field of work – she elaborates her feelings as “I had chalked it up to the conclusion that I wasn’t perfect enough as a leader, I had failed as a leader to control him….” She suppressed the horrific incident and tried to move on, yet she could feel it resurfacing time and again.
In retrospect, she now understands the behavioral changes that occurred after the incident; ice-cold or extremely aggressive responses were an aftereffect of the coping mechanism. Her mental health was terrible, and by closing herself off from any external help, she was unconsciously trying to protect herself and survive.
Even after years, Olivia is haunted by the ghosts of the past; however, she now knows how to tame them. The vital step is to seek out and find resources that are of help. However, she found a lack when it came to the sufficiency of resources and, thus, decided to create spaces that would provide the necessary resources to help those struggling.
Olivia is currently the executive director of Work-Play-Obsession All In Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to heal invisible traumas and wounds due to military service. She is also the CEO of her company, Olivia Nunn Communications, which communicates stories for her clients and helps bring change productively.
She believes that it is only together as a society that we can bring efficient change and leave a positive impact. Follow Olivia on Instagram to learn more about her and the work that she has done!
