The Dysregulated Podcast

Elliot Waters | Lived Experience Mental Health
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Weekly

I live with anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism, OCD & BPD — and this podcast shares the hard-fought lessons I’ve learned along the way. This is lived-experience mental health, told with complete honesty and zero filter, including the vulnerable and significant moments that continue to shape my life today. Through personal reflections, therapy insights, interviews, nervous system regulation, and real-world struggles, I explore what it means to live with complex mental illness — grounded in psychological science and research.

  1. 3d ago

    Manchester Madness (Part 2): Hurtling Towards BPD Catastrophe

    A couple of beers, one old song, and suddenly I’m right back in the headspace that kicked off Manchester Madness. But before I even set foot in the UK, there’s a pretty big blind spot in this story that I need to own. This isn’t just my story. It’s also the story of a woman who got pulled into the chaos of my untreated, untamed Borderline Personality Disorder — and wore far more of the emotional fallout than anyone should have had to carry. I rewind to the lead-up to my student exchange, the Manchester Metropolitan University group chat, and the bigger, louder version of myself I started creating online. Then a psychology student goes from being “someone interesting” to, somehow, “the one”, before we’d even met. Looking back, the warning signs were everywhere: idealisation, obsession disguised as purpose, intense attachment and a desperate need for connection that I simply didn’t understand at the time. I also unpack what BPD felt like from the inside, while being brutally honest about some of the more cringe-inducing parts of this story. Because if I’m going to tell Manchester Madness properly, I can’t polish the uncomfortable bits or pretend my mental health only affected me. This is where the story really begins. -- Follow The Dysregulated Podcast: Instagram – @elliot.t.waters Facebook – The Dysregulated Podcast YouTube – The Dysregulated Podcast (Official Channel) Created by Elliot Waters — Inspired by lived experience. Mental health insights, real stories, real conversations.

  2. 5d ago

    What If Self Improvement Arrives Too Late?

    I didn’t plan to record again so soon, but the last chat about Manchester lit something up that I couldn’t ignore. After I stop talking, I’m back walking Newcastle Beach, doing that familiar late-night scan of the stars and asking the same old question: why am I still alone? The unsettling part is that life looks different now and I’ve done so much work on myself, yet the feeling lands in the same place. I get into a word I missed last time: insight. Awareness is noticing what’s happening, but insight is understanding why it happens and what it costs. With more insight, therapy tools, and hard-earned stability, I’m not the “perfect” version of me, but I am a better version. That’s why it stings when Avril Lavigne pops up on my playlist and the emotional flashback hits. The soundtrack changes, the years pass, and still the relationship questions follow me from the beach to the highway. Then I lay out the big metaphor: my life as a car that used to be powerful but unreliable, with gremlins that could make it blow up. Over time the engineers (me, plus treatment and effort) fixed the faults. The 2026 model is solid, resilient, and ready, but it feels like nobody’s buying, like the market has moved on to a different life stage. If you’ve ever felt the frustration of mental health recovery not delivering the one thing you want most, you’ll understand the punch-in-the-guts honesty here -- Follow The Dysregulated Podcast: Instagram – @elliot.t.waters Facebook – The Dysregulated Podcast YouTube – The Dysregulated Podcast (Official Channel) Created by Elliot Waters — Inspired by lived experience. Mental health insights, real stories, real conversations.

  3. Aug 19

    Manchester Madness (Part 1): Prelude To Amplified Life-Changing Chaos

    A six-month university semester to study in Manchester, United Kingdom was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime. Looking back, it became the dividing line between thinking I was coping and realising there was a hell of a lot more going on in my head than anxiety and depression alone. Walking along Newcastle Beach (like so many times before), I kick off Manchester Madness, a three-part series looking back at one of the most chaotic and important periods of my life. Part 1 is the build-up: disengaging from uni, drifting through life without much direction, and then suddenly having this huge adventure on the horizon. Manchester became more than a student exchange trip. In my head, it was going to be the place where I beat social anxiety, became confident, found myself and maybe even found love. For a while, I felt almost invincible. But underneath it all were patterns I didn't yet have names for — intense relationships, intrusive thoughts, jealousy, emotional instability and behaviours I would later understand very differently. This is the story before everything went off the rails. Before the diagnoses. Before I understood what was happening to me. And before Manchester changed everything. -- Follow The Dysregulated Podcast: Instagram – @elliot.t.waters Facebook – The Dysregulated Podcast YouTube – The Dysregulated Podcast (Official Channel) Created by Elliot Waters — Inspired by lived experience. Mental health insights, real stories, real conversations.

  4. Jul 17

    Forged in Steel: Memories From God’s Country

    CONTENT WARNING: Themes of suicidaility and drug use   Back in Newcastle for the weekend, I jump in the car and let the city tell the story. We drive past the places that shaped me, from the University of Newcastle and the pressure of honours, to the Mater Hospital where survival became the priority. It's a raw, real-time reflection on what it's like returning to the streets that forged you. Along the way I talk about living with ADHD, autism and borderline personality disorder, and how that mix can fuel loneliness, validation seeking and the feeling of never quite being enough. I also unpack the reality of drugs and alcohol, not as a way to have fun, but as a way so many people try to cope, function and simply make it through the day. We finish down at the beaches where I used to do some of my deepest thinking, reflecting on social anxiety, recovery, and the strange feeling of loving your hometown while knowing you had to leave it to survive. If this episode resonates with you, I'd love it if you subscribed, left a rating, and shared it with someone who might need to hear it. -- Follow The Dysregulated Podcast: Instagram – @elliot.t.waters Facebook – The Dysregulated Podcast YouTube – The Dysregulated Podcast (Official Channel) Created by Elliot Waters — Inspired by lived experience. Mental health insights, real stories, real conversations.

  5. Jun 29

    Wrestling With Anxiety: Borrowing Confidence To Ease The Mind

    Anxiety doesn’t always show up when something goes wrong. Sometimes it hits hardest when nothing’s happening at all. Sitting in the bunk at Ravensworth (Hunter Valley) with the UHF crackling and a two-hour wait ahead of me, my brain starts running wild, replaying mistakes that haven’t happened, imagining consequences, and convincing me they’re inevitable. In this episode I talk about catastrophising—that classic anxiety trap where your mind treats imagined disasters as reality. I explain why logic and CBT can help me realise there’s no evidence for what I’m fearing, but often don’t switch off the physical anxiety. When the situation is a one out of ten but your anxiety is sitting at a nine, that mismatch can make an ordinary workday feel unbearable. I also share one coping strategy that genuinely helps me: borrowing confidence from people I admire. Whether it’s listening to someone like Stone Cold Steve Austin or reminding myself how they'd approach the situation, it can be enough to interrupt the spiral and keep moving forward. If you're living with anxiety, depression, or both, I hope this episode reminds you that you're not alone. If it resonates, I'd really appreciate you subscribing, leaving a rating, and sharing it with someone who might need to hear it. -- Follow The Dysregulated Podcast: Instagram – @elliot.t.waters Facebook – The Dysregulated Podcast YouTube – The Dysregulated Podcast (Official Channel) Created by Elliot Waters — Inspired by lived experience. Mental health insights, real stories, real conversations.

  6. Jun 14

    Driving Through Life With The Handbrake On: Anxiety, ADHD and The Things I Can't Seem To Do

    Why is it so hard to do things that should be easy? In this episode, I unpack a pattern that has followed me for as long as I can remember: putting off even the simplest tasks until they build into a mountain of overwhelm. From shaving and grocery shopping to university commitments, podcast episodes and launching Resilient Roadways, I explore what happens when ADHD and Generalised Anxiety Disorder collide. For me, anxiety isn't something that appears only during stressful moments. It's a constant companion. A handbrake that never fully releases. I talk about living in freeze mode, the exhausting cycle of avoidance and panic, and the frustration of knowing exactly what needs to be done while feeling unable to do it. Along the way, I reflect on trucking life, the challenge of finding balance, why anxiety follows me even into some of the greatest moments of my life, and how these struggles continue to shape the purpose I'm pursuing through mental health advocacy. If you've ever looked at a simple task and felt completely overwhelmed, this episode is for you. -- Follow The Dysregulated Podcast: Instagram – @elliot.t.waters Facebook – The Dysregulated Podcast YouTube – The Dysregulated Podcast (Official Channel) Created by Elliot Waters — Inspired by lived experience. Mental health insights, real stories, real conversations.

  7. May 24

    Loneliness, Long Hauls and Sacrifice: Is This The Price Of Purpose?

    Driving through Newcastle in the rain, I found myself asking the question I hate considering after recording: what if being honest does more harm than good? This episode is about loneliness, uncertainty, and the fear that some parts of life might never happen the way you imagined. I talk about living between Newcastle and Wodonga, long days in trucks, coming home exhausted, and wondering whether relationships, family and friendships are realistic goals for me, or whether my life is taking a different path. A path that’s clearly defined and (hopefully) attainable, but missing so much. I reflect on the realities of battling Autism, BPD, OCD, ADHD, bipolar II, anxiety, depression and the rest. How therapy and my obsessive efforts to understand myself have worked, and yet the strange paradox that insight can definitely help, but too much insight can trap you in your own head. And how this hyper awareness of my thoughts, emotions and behaviours has hindered me so much, yet helped immeasurably as well. Finally I explain how I’m re-collaborating the podcast, and returning to episodes focused on the science of psychology, different therapeutic approaches and interventions, the academic research and what it can tell us about human behaviour, as well as further exploration of my past and the moments that have shaped who I am today. That means more Discharge Papers, more Psych Ward Stories, My Journal entries and episodes of those pivotal moments that explain so much of today. -- Follow The Dysregulated Podcast: Instagram – @elliot.t.waters Facebook – The Dysregulated Podcast YouTube – The Dysregulated Podcast (Official Channel) Created by Elliot Waters — Inspired by lived experience. Mental health insights, real stories, real conversations.

  8. Apr 28

    Highway Confessions: Facing Our Mortality

    The highway is supposed to be quiet, but my mind never is. On a 9pm drive from Newcastle down the Hume Highway (M31) toward Wodonga, I record another Highway Confessions and let you sit in the passenger seat that is usually empty. What starts as my favourite coping strategy for complex mental health quickly turns into the kind of deep thinking that can feel like standing too close to a fire, warm at first, then painful when you cannot pull away. I talk honestly about loneliness, being single, and the fear that life will end with a list of regrets. From there I go straight into mortality and death anxiety, the stuff many people can filter out but I cannot. I share what it is like to carry those thoughts while trying to live a normal life, and why stress and mood can make the same themes feel heavier on some nights than others. There is light in it too. I push back against the spiral with something real: meaning and purpose. I am going for my dream in trucking, and even when the job scares me, it is proof that I am not sitting still. Along the way I reflect on gratitude, mindfulness, positive psychology, and the spiritual questions that show up under the stars, including memories of my grandparents and thoughts about my dad. If you have ever felt stuck in your head, this one will feel uncomfortably familiar in the best way. Subscribe to “The Dysregulated Podcast”, share it with a mate who needs it, and leave a review so more people who live with mental illness can find honest stories like this. -- Follow The Dysregulated Podcast: Instagram – @elliot.t.waters Facebook – The Dysregulated Podcast YouTube – The Dysregulated Podcast (Official Channel) Created by Elliot Waters — Inspired by lived experience. Mental health insights, real stories, real conversations.

See All (244)

About

I live with anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism, OCD & BPD — and this podcast shares the hard-fought lessons I’ve learned along the way. This is lived-experience mental health, told with complete honesty and zero filter, including the vulnerable and significant moments that continue to shape my life today. Through personal reflections, therapy insights, interviews, nervous system regulation, and real-world struggles, I explore what it means to live with complex mental illness — grounded in psychological science and research.

Information

  • Creator
    Elliot Waters | Lived Experience Mental Health
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    244
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Dysregulated Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Dysregulated Podcast

You Might Also Like