Back In My Body

It took me a long time to realize I had even left my body.  I left for so many reasons.  I didn't love myself, I didn't feel safe to be myself, I didn't want to feel the pain that came with being in my body because I had no idea how to manage it, I was lost.  In my escapades of recklessness during these times, I was subconsciously operating off the idea that since I wasn't really in my mind or body fully then I couldn't and wouldn't experience the pain that was looking me dead in the eyes during those years.  It wasn't until my last semester of college that this false foundation came crumbling to the ground and left me and my health absolutely devastated. 

There were a lot of experiences that made me feel unsafe in mind and body including but not limited to toxic/emotionally abusive relationships/friendships and difficult family dynamics.  From my point of view now, I can see where even the most trivial experiences continued to reinforce the safety I found in leaving my body.  Every incident deepened my own internal bias that the only way to be safe was to not feel.  This lead to working extreme hours bartending until 3 or 4 am, waking up for class after only 2 hours of sleep (often pulling multiple all-nighters a week), abusing caffeine to drive me to work and study harder, working out for 2+ hours a day, and never ever giving myself time to rest because keeping myself busy and distracted allowed me to stay in a state of fight or flight that had become familiar to my nervous system after years of dysregulation. 

As hard as I tried to stay out of my body, it tried even harder to get my attention to come back into it.  So it goes that your body will whisper to you until it has to resort to screaming for your attention.  

The first struggles came from digestive issues.  Everything I ate was making me sick.  This coincided with starting birth control and when I was getting into an emotionally abusive relationship that wreaked havoc on my self-worth. Both put me into a chronic state of anxiety, cue the digestive issues. But, of course, because I was already out of my body it felt like a mystery.  

The more I took on emotionally without knowing how to process through the emotions, the more sick I became.  My leaky boundaries with myself and the people around me lead to a leaky gut.  Swallowing my emotions because I didn't feel like I had safety or a support system to feel them was poisoning me and my mind, and because of how checked out I was, I saw no patterns.  

Cut to the last semester of my senior year of college; what started as digestive problems snowballed into tidal waves of depression, panic attacks, anxiety, acne, bloating, POTS, severe back pain, widespread chronic pain, period pain/PMDD, insomnia, nightmares, shortness of breath/ felt like I could never breathe fully, headaches, fatigue....It was one day this fall that I couldn't get up my stairs into my apartment because my body was in so much pain.  Hunched over, practically on all fours, I dragged myself up the stairs and pushed myself through my apartment and into my bedroom where I laid on the floor and had an absolutely devastating panic attack. 

Unfortunately, the panic attack was nothing new.  It eventually subsided and I packed a joint to smoke off the full body aches that always follow a panic attack. What was new though, was a feeling from deep in my soul pleading for me to try something different because the level of pain and discomfort of my current lifestyle was unbearable.  In a moment of desperation, a download popped into my head that I needed to find an acupuncture physician.. the wake up call that saved my life.  

A few days before this wakeup call, I went off hormonal birth control. Holy. Shit.  This changed my life.  I will never stop preaching about the negative indications of going on birth control.  As women, even when we try to advocate for our health we are time and time again spoken to as if we are hysterical or wasting the doctor's time with ailments that are just "in our minds".  For years, a laundry list of health issues haunted me and not once ever did a doctor assess my lifestyle, diet, stress/emotional management or the prescriptions I was taking.  Knowing what I know now, I often send love and hope to my inner child that trusted doctors to look out for her safety and was time and time again let down. 

I was fearful towards the end of college because I felt like I was experiencing a very serious cognitive decline.  I consistently fought my impulse to google it, knowing web MD would likely diagnose me with a brain tumor and as far out of my body as I was, someone looking over me instilled a confidence in me that the answer was in front of my face and definitely was not a tumor.  

Again, in my last semester of college, I found myself sitting, sobbing silently as a fit of muscle spasms wrangled my body while I tried to study for an exam.  Again, I smoked to help manage the pain and ramped myself up with caffeine to lock into my school work.  Another download. It was time to go off hormonal birth control.  I went off the next day.  Within the first 2 weeks of being off my mental clarity and sharpness increased more than tenfold, my anxiety and depression plummeted, my digestive issues receded, and a part of me (my personality, my spirit, my soul, my connection to divinity) that I didn't realize was missing for all these years came back.  

It has now been over 4 years since this day and I can still remember it like it was yesterday.  This was one of the most significant milestones in all of my journey with my health.  Not only did it allow clarity and connection to my body again, but also showed me that my passion was in helping women come back into their bodies. 

Going off birth control was a huge piece of the puzzle in regaining control over my health, but equal to the problems that arose from going ON birth control were the problems that arose going OFF birth control.  The first few weeks of having significantly lowered symptoms were blissful, but I could feel something lingering, aching under the surface.  I had no idea what was to come.

Back to my wakeup call.  I had spent a few weeks feeling on top of the world, still not understanding that the years of neglect still had a compound effect that needed to be addressed.  The physical, mental, and spiritual pain crept back in and lead me to the wakeup call to see an acupuncture physician.  At the time, I had zero knowledge of this space outside of knowing these doctors use needles to help you.  I had no idea the power or knowledge behind this approach. 

Enter, Dr. Kim.  I can't even remember how I found him, I just know at the time I felt like I was guided to him, and though we had a significant language barrier he helped me in a way no doctor ever had before.  I knew he could energetically understand what I needed to recover my health and I took a massive leap of faith to put my trust into a provider that couldn't explain his approach/plan to me in an entirely new field of health, unlike any experience I had ever had in western/modern medicine.  It was a deep knowing that guided me during this time, a deep knowing that I've come to learn was my intuition.  Going off birth control allowed me to reconnect to divine source and tap into my soul's inherent knowing of how to move through this world. 

I worked with Dr. Kim for 9 months.  These 9 months were the most grueling months of my life.  Treatment required my symptoms to come up and out in order to be released and in doing so, I essentially experienced all the health struggles I had over the last 5 years at once and at a level 10x more severe.  I was beaten down by panic attacks, horrific full body pain, headaches, insomnia, depressive episodes, and everything in between in waves that just about drowned me, then would let me up to breathe for a moment before ripping me back under water again.  It sounds beyond dramatic (and only my sister will ever know the truth of how dark it got because we were living together at that time) and as dramatic as it sounds, it was even more dramatic to experience.  This experience catapulted me into my spirituality as I know it today.  I grasped onto anything that would give me hope for the turnaround.. and the turnaround came.

What made the TCM approach different from any other I had tried was that their intention was to treat the root cause.  In TCM, their goal is to stop seeing you once they have gotten your body to a point of healing and supporting itself. I fell in love with this approach.  When I first went in I didn't just have a bleak outlook on life, I had NO outlook on life.  I didn't see a future, I wasn't excited for what was to come, I was trapped in my pain.  At my last appointment, when Dr. Kim told me my treatment was finished, I cried.  I had never felt so safe in a doctor's care, so seen, so supported, so healthy.  I felt light and for the first time in my entire life, my future felt bright.  My body was able to sustain itself.  My first experience with TCM instilled a love and passion for herbal medicine in me that I never knew I could possess.  My experience is what inspired me to pursue an education in clinical herbalism and Chinese medicine. 

After finishing my treatment with Dr. Kim, I moved to South Florida to begin my life post grad.  I got hired as a clinical research assistant and TMS tech for a private psychiatric practice and began stacking up my hours to apply to medical school.  A few months into working this job I heard a few soft whispers from my higher self that maybe I wasn't so happy with this position.  I gently nudged them away and told myself I was just not used to working an 8-6 office job and that I would adjust and be happier down the road.  And of course, because I foolishly decided to ignore the whispers, my body started to raise its voice at me.  My skin started to break out in acne and rashes, I started getting frequent headaches, I started having bouts of sickness I never experienced before, and my soul started to feel dark and heavy.  

One day I was sitting alone in the office and happened to have a free 45 minute slot due to a cancelled patient appointment.  I can't quite remember what I searched, but I know it was along the lines of why am I not happy? This google search resulted in lists of therapists in the area.  I dove a little deeper into the different approaches these providers used and found Monica Walling.  I booked an appointment for the following week. 

Prior to the appointment I was supposed to fill out a long winded questionnaire that covered what I was struggling with, family dynamics, what I would like to accomplish working with her, and so on.  At the time I couldn't even get myself to care enough to fill this out, going to the first appointment was all the energy I had.

I worked with Monica for about 2 years.  A year and a half of these appointments were spent doing EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing).  This is a psychoanalytic therapy approach and it absolutely changed my life in all facets.  We combined this approach with IFS (internal family systems therapy).  Within the first 2 months of working with Monica I had not only realized how toxic my work environment was, but also I had gotten up the nerve to quit and find better for myself.  By the end of my 2 years with Monica I was self led.  This is one of the most powerful changes I made in my life and to this day is what keeps me on track and in healthy & happy relationships with others and myself and continues to keep me in a space of positive life experiences.  I will go into detail on these two forms of therapy and why I would never work with a therapist who only uses a talk therapy approach in different blog posts. 

The same week I quit my toxic job at the psychiatric practice, I got Lyme disease.  The biggest problem here was that no one, not even myself, knew I had lyme disease.  It started when I noticed a bite on my leg, but at the time it was so benign wasn't worried about it.  Over the course of a few weeks, the bite got bigger and I admittedly lacked concern.

After about 5 weeks, I started having weird symptoms but living in Florida never even thought Lyme was on the table.  Over the course of 3.5 months the bite turned into a massive bruise and the massive bruise spread into welts that covered both of my shins... even though the bite was only on one leg to begin with.  This is when the fear crept in.  I texted Dr. True, a chiropractic neurologist based in Stuart, that I had visited a few times for adjustments.  He was equally concerned and asked if I had seen anyone, to which I shamefully said "No, I kinda thought it would just go away."  

Dr. True and I chatted and decided I would go to urgent care that night.  I told him if they were going to prescribe a basic antibiotic and steroid that I wouldn't take it and would immediately come up to see him. (I had learned from many failed medical interventions in the past, as well as working at a hospital, that they have a basic formula for prescriptions to give to patients without doing proper investigation). Lo and behold, thats exactly what Jupiter Medical Urgent Care did.  They didn't ask about any symptoms or do anything besides give my leg a quick glance and prescribed doxycycline and a steroid.  They didn't even ask about those medications, to which I would have told the doctor, I have allergic reactions to doxycycline.  

By the time I saw Dr. True, got bloodwork done, and received a diagnosis of active Lyme, a significant amount of time had passed.  I had to take an extended leave of absence from work, I couldn't shower without passing out or getting very close to it, I could hardly eat, my brainfog was so severe I could hardly hold a small talk conversation and I was essentially put on bed rest for 3 months.  The entire foundation of robust health I built up with Dr. Kim withered away and the strength and muscle I had built up working with a physical therapist during the same year I worked with Dr. Kim completely atrophied.  Treatment was grueling and a full recovery took about 2 full years, but I have made a full recovery and am incredibly grateful to have done so.  I will go into more detail on this in a Lyme specific blog post.

Recovering fully from Lyme takes us to present day.  Over the last year, I had a few more health struggles pop up.  Although my health is remarkably stable and robust, that does not make me immune to facing struggles as I move through life. 

Last year I started having severe ovarian cysts.  The first time one popped, I thought my appendix burst and I almost sent myself to the hospital.  I worked with a TCM practitioner who prescribed herbs as well as weekly acupuncture appointments and resolved these cysts in about 3 months.  They have not occurred since.  While working with that practitioner, I also saw my gyno to get ultrasounds to check the progress, as well as to get testing to rule out any other concerns. My gyno could not believe that after 3 months of Chinese medicine intervention the cysts were completely resolved and never came back.. to be honest I was blown away too.  Every time I work with herbal medicine I am shocked to my core at the potent healing powers herbs hold.  Again, furthering my inspiration to go to school for this.

That was not the end of the pelvic problems, unfortunately.  After resolving the cysts, I was still having pain and decided to work with a pelvic floor specialist.  I went to Kaizen Pelvic Wellness.  I had always felt that I had some form of pelvic dysfunction, because I was diagnosed with a hypermobile pelvis and had pain that my body told me was linked to that; however, 3 different doctors (all men) told me that this made no sense and I was probably just having "normal period pain" (which .... for the record, periods should not be painful...).  When I went to Kaizen, I was finally met with an honest diagnosis (that resulted from a true assessment, not just questioning) that my pelvic floor was extremely tight and spasming.  BINGO.  My breath was out of wack because my pelvic floor was so tight, which didn't just explain the pelvic pain I was having, but also the struggle to breathe and the resulting pain that spread through my back and abdomen as a result.  I have now recovered from this and do daily physical therapy. (This is written about in depth in my blog titled "Pelvic Floor Therapy")

Between all of this physical therapy, I was also having severe neck and back pain.  Another issue that was written off by not 1, not 2, not 3, BUT FOUR DIFFERENT physical therapists and doctors.  I was told I was hysterical by a doctor who took x-rays and was shamed for "wasting his time".  I left all of those appointments in tears, desperate for someone who could tell me where this very real pain was coming from.  Finally, after four years of trial and error with other doctors I found Active Health.  Within my first appointment, I got a diagnosis as well as affirmation that there was absolutely something wrong and told that the other doctors I saw failed me.  Hearing this instantly brought me reassurance, I felt seen. I found support and a cure.  I did a form of neck therapy on a MCU machine that entirely rehabilitated my neck and shoulders.  Prior to this therapy and recovery, it felt like a workout to be able to hold my own head up.  Sometimes I look back on what was "normal" for me and am shocked by how severely injured or ailed I really was at the time.

Today, I am the healthiest I have ever been. My health is stable and robust and I am physically getting stronger every day. The thing we often don't realize when referring to our health journey is exactly that, IT IS A JOURNEY. It is not linear, it is not easy, it is not comfortable, but it is worth every tear, every effort and every ounce of dedication we put towards it.

What I have learned through all of these trials and tribulations with my health is to just keep getting back up. We are human, we are going to get knocked down, we are not invincible, but we can be resilient.

I have also learned it is deeply important to find your few people to lean on for support. When you are struggling with chronic pain or any issues that debilitate you from going about your normal life, ASK. FOR. HELP. I had a really hard time doing this at first because I didn't know what I needed help with. Find the ways people can be supportive of you and learn to communicate them.

Even more important than learning to lean on others for support, is learning to lean on yourself. You are healing, you are going through this journey, and you need to find the resilience within to keep showing up for yourself time and time again to get to the other side of your pain and suffering. Your dedication to and investment in yourself are the best and most precious gifts your higher self will give your present self in this lifetime. Give yourself love and grace.