Simone Gisondi on the Hidden Cost of Living in Survival Mode

After surviving abuse, scarcity, immigration, and a major stroke at 35, Simone Gisondi explains why healing begins when we stop judging our adaptations and start listening to the body.

By Conner Tighe

What happens when survival mode becomes so familiar that it feels normal?

On this episode of Get Obsessed, host Mika Altidor sits down with Simone Gisondi, host of the Health Confidential podcast, for a deeply personal conversation about childhood trauma, the nervous system, self-worth, and the long journey back to the body.

Simone's story begins in communist Romania, where fear existed both inside and outside her home. Food, water, and electricity were rationed. Her family sometimes stood in line at three or four in the morning for basic necessities. At home, she endured severe physical abuse from her father and witnessed the devastating consequences of his violence toward her mother.

It was an environment in which vigilance was not a personality trait. It was protection.

When Survival Becomes the Default

Simone explains that children begin forming their understanding of safety long before they have the language to describe it. They watch, adapt, and create internal rules designed to help them survive.

“The idea of safety or threat is shaped in those environments,” Simone says. “I hadn't established a relationship with my body.”

Behaviors such as people-pleasing, emotional shutdown, hypervigilance, or ignoring physical needs can be easy to criticize in adulthood. In childhood, however, they may have been intelligent adaptations to an environment a child could not escape or control.

Mika recognizes that pattern in her own life, describing how her nervous system learned to create safety inside an unsafe environment. Their shared insight reframes the question. Instead of asking, What is wrong with me? healing can begin with, What did this behavior once help me survive?

A Childhood Marked by Scarcity—and One Lasting Act of Kindness

In Romania, scarcity shaped Simone's relationship with her body. Hunger cues had to be ignored when there was not enough food. Water had to be strategically divided among drinking, cooking, bathing, and toilet flushing. Electricity outages meant doing homework by candlelight.

Her family eventually escaped that system and immigrated to Canada. During a layover at New York's JFK Airport, Simone and her family saw shelves of snacks they had never encountered before, but they had no American money. A stranger noticed them and gave Simone's mother $20.

Simone still becomes emotional recalling that moment. After growing up surrounded by fear, one woman's spontaneous generosity offered a very different lesson about people and the world.

“This woman was literally an angel,” she says. “She just came in so that we can have the first taste of what it is like in the West.”

The memory is a reminder that small acts of kindness are not always small to the person receiving them. Sometimes they become evidence that a safer world is possible.

Leaving the Danger Does Not Automatically End Survival Mode

Immigration brought freedom, but it did not instantly create safety. Simone entered a new culture without speaking English, faced bullying, moved across Canada, and continued living with instability at home. After her parents separated, her family experienced severe financial hardship. Simone and her brother searched parking lots for change; some meals consisted of bread, jam, and tea.

“When you're in those kinds of states, your brain does not think of studying and getting good grades,” she says. “It's thinking of survival.”

This is one of the episode's most important takeaways: the circumstances can change before the nervous system catches up. A person may be physically removed from danger while their body remains prepared for the next threat.

Old patterns can then reappear in adult relationships. Simone describes entering a marriage in which she tolerated betrayal because endurance and people-pleasing had been normalized in childhood. What looked like a choice from the outside was connected to lessons learned much earlier.

The Stroke That Forced Simone to Listen

At 35, Simone suffered a major stroke. She had been exercising and appeared healthy externally, but internally she felt overwhelmed by everything she had carried.

“No matter what you do on the outside, there is just such an inextricable connection between the mind and the body,” she says.

During her hospitalization, Simone could no longer outrun or override her feelings. Recovery required stillness and, for the first time, a deliberate relationship with her body.

Her experience led her to return to school, to research healing, and to learn more about emotional health and nervous system regulation. That work eventually became part of Health Confidential's mission.

Simone speaks from personal experience, and her reflections should not be treated as a medical diagnosis or a substitute for professional care. Still, the broader invitation is valuable: physical symptoms deserve medical attention, and emotional well-being deserves attention too. Care does not have to be either physical or emotional; it can accommodate both.

Healing Is Not a Finish Line

Many people approach healing like a project with a completion date. Simone challenges that idea.

“We're so conditioned to look at the final destination,” she says. “It's like we want a checkered flag—like, ‘I've arrived. I'm healed.’ But trust me, that never ends, because we accumulate stressors and trauma as we go through life.”

That does not make healing hopeless. It makes it ongoing. Simone describes the wisdom, friendship, and sisterhood she has found along the way as part of the reward, not merely consolation prizes while waiting to become “fixed.”

Her message is ultimately one of possibility: “You are worth the exploration into regulating your nervous system.”

What Your Relationships May Be Reflecting

The conversation closes with a direct challenge about self-worth and relationships. Simone asks listeners to consider whether the treatment they accept matches what they believe they deserve.

“Is the way this person is treating me appropriate to what I think I'm worth?” she asks.

It is a simple question, but not an easy one. It shifts attention away from explaining another person's behavior and toward recognizing how a relationship affects your own sense of safety, dignity, and value.

From Self-Judgment to Curiosity

Simone Gisondi's story is extraordinary, but the invitation at its center is relevant to anyone who has spent years judging the ways they adapted.

Your patterns may not be proof that you are broken. They may be evidence that, at one point, your mind and body found a way to keep you going.

Healing begins when those adaptations no longer have to operate unnoticed. It can begin by listening to the body, seeking qualified support, examining the relationships around you, and replacing shame with curiosity.

You survived with the tools you had. Now you are allowed to learn new ones.

Listen to the full conversation with Simone Gisondi on the Get Obsessed podcast.