VICTORIA ARLEN’S story is often told as a narrative of miraculous recovery and extraordinary physical resilience. As a young girl, she was struck by two rare neurological disorders, which were initially misdiagnosed and left her trapped for years in a body that would not respond. Eventually, she became a Paralympian and TV presenter, but the story she tells in her new book reaches beyond this miracle, to something that is far more common — recovery from a mental-health crisis.
The recovery that the world saw, after four years as a teenager with locked-in syndrome, is, the book explains, only part of her story. What followed were years of unseen trauma, anxiety, and depression — struggles that emerged long after her physical health appeared to stabilise.
Although her experience is extreme, the book that she has written about her recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), The View Is Worth It, is intended for a wide audience, particularly those navigating mental distress. It is, she says, the book she herself needed when she felt most alone — one that offers companionship rather than prescription.
“I just wrote from a place of ‘What did I need at that time?’” she says. “I needed to feel seen. I needed to feel heard.”
Looking back, Ms Arlen, 31, recalls a profound isolation that lasted throughout her twenties, when she was at the height of her fame. There was, she says, “a lot of toxic positivity” surrounding her story — an expectation that resilience meant moving quickly past pain rather than acknowledging it.
Public pressure to continue to appear to manifest a miraculous recovery worsened her mental health. From the outside, she appeared to be flourishing, winning three silver medals and one gold as a swimmer for Team USA in the 2012 Paralympic Games, learning to walk again after a decade of paralysis, starring on TV in Dancing with the Stars (the US version of Strictly Come Dancing) in 2017, and building a successful broadcasting career. Internally, however, she was struggling.
“I thought living in a constant state of panic was normal,” she says. “I didn’t know how to say, ‘This is not OK.’” When asked what the word “fame” meant to her at that time, she answers bluntly: “My trauma being glorified.”
Her understanding of trauma developed gradually. Eventually, she came to recognise the pattern as PTSD, but, by then, anxiety had embedded itself into her daily life. She describes years of sobbing in hotel rooms while travelling for television work.
The years between physical recovery and acknowledging the psychological consequences were shaped by public pressure and huge expectation. Her story had been told publicly when she was still a teenager, positioning her as a symbol of resilience. This brought with it pressure to remain consistently strong. “There was never a convenient time to not be OK,” she says.
INSTEAD, she turned to achievement, convinced it would eventually bring relief. In retrospect, she sees this as another form of coping which masked the underlying issue. “I really thought that achieving the next thing was going to finally make me feel better,” she says. “I almost anaesthetised my pain with achievements and accomplishments.”
Behind the TV image of curated success, she was contending with depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. Her early medical experiences compounded the feeling that she needed to hide her symptoms. Initially misdiagnosed as a psychiatric patient when she was in fact suffering from transverse myelitis and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, she came to associate expressing her distress with dismissal and disbelief.
The point of rupture came in her twenties. “I didn’t know that panic attacks every day were not normal,” she says, “or crying, or feeling like I just wish I would get hit by a bus. I was really struggling, but I didn’t know who to tell, because I didn’t want to let anyone down.”
She pauses before continuing: “I was really good at playing this character where everything was good.”
Victoria Arlen
In 2021, this led her to attempt to take her own life. She called her mother, Jacqueline, at 3 a.m., expecting to reach voicemail and leave a final message. Instead, the phone was answered. “She stayed on the phone with me until sunrise,” Ms Arlen remembers.
In the days that followed, her mother travelled to be with her, and together they began to address what had remained unspoken for years. Therapy has brought her new understanding, particularly of the cumulative nature of trauma.
Her mother remains a central figure in her life. Ms Arlen describes her as “really good at meeting me where I’m at”. She continues: “You just need one person who’s willing to jump into the water and remind you that you can swim.”
This sense of accompaniment shaped her intention for her book. She hopes that it might reach those who do not have such a person in their lives to answer a desperate call at 3 a.m.
What she calls her recovery from “Rock-bottomville” has not been smooth. Another serious relapse — her fourth in three years — left her hospitalised and temporarily unable to walk at the end of last year. At one point, she told her mother she wanted to abandon everything, including the book itself.
Her mother asked her to read the manuscript not as the author but as someone she intended to write it for. It became, she says, a “full-circle moment”.
“It definitely was a massive turning point for me, and maybe it had to happen before this book could come out,” she says. “There were a lot of blessings that came in the midst of all that, too.”
LEARNING to care for herself has required both practical changes and a shift in priorities. For years, she directed her energy outward, responding to expectations and obligations that came with a career in the spotlight. Now she is learning to recognise her limits, to rest, and to set boundaries.
The change is neither instinctive nor complete. It includes small, deliberate decisions — choosing rest over productivity, allowing herself to step back from the work days when she needs to. “My therapist has been big on accepting where I’m at,” she says.
Her faith is a consistent thread through her story. As a child in New Hampshire, she was brought up in a Christian home. But it was during her illness, when she could not communicate outwardly but remained fully conscious, that prayer became central.
“When nobody could hear me, I thought maybe God could hear me,” she says. “Maybe this God guy could hear me.” She began praying constantly during the years she was trapped in her body. In an earlier book, Locked In, she recounted some of the abuse that, she says, she experienced from healthcare workers during that period.
She describes a night when she remembers a nurse throttling her until she almost lost consciousness. “I remember just praying to God and saying, ‘Help, help, help,’” she says. “I definitely didn’t want to go out like this.” She remembers the nurse suddenly stopping and rushing from the room.
“At that point, I knew that God was real, and I knew that he was listening,” she says. “And then I said a very bold prayer after that. I said, ‘Look, if you need to take me home, take me home. But I can’t do your work in this hospital bed. So, if you give me back my life, if you give me back my voice, I’ll use my voice to change the world and help others like me.’
“Two weeks later is when I started blinking and letting my family know that I was in there.”
She describes faith as both anchor and lifeguard through her physical and psychological trauma — in a God who, she says, “just keeps showing up for me”. Writing this new book was part of what she sees as a promise to use her experiences to help others.
She remains cautious, however, about being framed publicly as a finished success story. “Healing isn’t linear,” she says. “It’s literally a bumpy, windy road. You just have to stay the course.”
Remembering Jesus’s own time in the wilderness, she says that mental suffering is compatible with a committed Christian faith. “Anxiety is mentioned more times than we realise in the Bible,” she says. “Jesus found himself in the wilderness. If I’m sharing my rock-bottom moment, it maybe encourages someone. A goal for me is continuing to use my voice, keeping my promise to God to really help people and make an impact.
“Obviously, I want to make my parents proud. But I want to make God proud too, and honour this fifth chance at life I’ve been given after everything that’s happened. I want to make the most of it.”
The View Is Worth It: Unlocking the beauty in life’s peaks and valleys by Victoria Arlen is published by David C Cook, £18.99 (Church Times Bookshop £17.09), 978-0-8307-9177-4