Sad Sick and Stuck Rethinking Mental Health

when

i was in my mid-20s life appeared to be

going pretty well

i was working at my dream job as a tv

host at a local station and i had just

bought my first home

so i was really settling in and you know

just

feeling like life was on track i was

getting to put down some roots

near family and friends so you can

imagine my surprise

when one morning i woke up and i went to

the sink

to brush my teeth and the first thing i

noticed

was a huge bald patch on the side of my

head

and when i say bald patch i mean there

was not a single strand of hair on this

patch of skin that was about the size of

a golf ball

so next thing i’m on the phone with my

mom

asking her what is going on what do i do

is this normal

and she told me i should probably go get

it checked out so i did i went to the

doctor

and i was diagnosed with a condition

called alopecia areata

and two other autoimmune illnesses and

with autoimmune disease essentially what

happens

is your immune system attacks your

body’s own healthy cells

and in my case my hair follicles my skin

cells and my mucous membranes would all

be affected

and i remember my doctors really trying

to reassure me you know that this wasn’t

that bad

the symptoms were very manageable but

there was no cure

and once you have one autoimmune illness

you’re likely to get some of the others

and there are between

70 to 80 of them everything from lupus

to rheumatoid arthritis

uh and i basically was just supposed to

accept that this was

my life now and i remember thinking

absolutely not this is not what my 20s

were supposed to look like

i was supposed to be out having fun and

dating

not going to the doctor’s office and

having steroid injections into my scalp

hoping that my hair would grow back and

i was really afraid

you know i worried what if i did get

sicker what if i lost my job

lost my house lost my hair

maybe my sanity um so i really had to

get past this initial shock

and and when i did i kind of realized

you know what i had been

ignoring a lot of symptoms for a long

time so years prior to this i had had

chronic fatigue sleep issues digestive

issues

panic episodes and these periods of

anxiety and depression

but i really thought these were just

kind of normal stress responses

to a very demanding career so i tried

everything to fix

my situation i took all the medications

my doctors prescribed i went to a number

of medical specialists and holistic

practitioners

tried every diet and lifestyle change in

the book

and honestly nothing really got better

maybe a minor improvement you know here

and there but nothing

sustainable and what was becoming clear

though was that my mental health was

suffering

profoundly so i

several years into this and several

thousands of dollars

i just decided you know what maybe i

need to stop seeing medical

specialists and start seeing a therapist

and this wasn’t something i had really

considered before because i was still

functioning you know i was still going

to work

every day and i just i think there was a

bit of a stigma attached to it

but i did finally go and see a therapist

and i didn’t realize this at the time

but this would be the catalyst for me to

completely

switch gears um go back to grad school

at age 30 to pursue a career in mental

health

and that’s what i do now so i get to

work with my own therapy clients and

support them through some of their

challenges

so you see an interesting thing happened

when i went to a therapist and really

started to focus on my mental health

both my psychological symptoms and some

of my physical symptoms began to improve

and i’ll just say here no i did not cure

my autoimmune illness i still have them

but i don’t have flare-ups the way that

i used to my hair doesn’t fall out in

chunks

anymore thankfully now it just sheds

because i’m getting older but i i don’t

have such severe

flare-ups and you know more importantly

the way that i relate to myself and

relate to these diagnoses

that has completely shifted and that’s

really improved my quality of life

so i’d like to share what i’ve learned

with you and

you know health and mental health these

are such complex topics but

this is one perspective that has been

really helpful for me so when i first

started researching all of this i

consistently found there was a huge link

between mental health conditions and

chronic illness especially stress and

trauma related disorders and autoimmune

illness

and you know i always thought well i

don’t have trauma because again i was

still functioning

and i was kind of in denial honestly so

the word trauma didn’t really resonate

with me until i came across the work

of dr francine shapiro and she describes

trauma as existing

in a couple of categories so there are

the capital t traumas which are

the things we might think of like war

natural disaster

assault and then there are the little t

traumas which are

no less significant but they might be

less visible and these can be things

like

early life experiences or life

transitions that were overwhelming for

us

and we can think of the big t traumas as

a huge wound on our bodies

and the little tea traumas are like lots

of little cuts you can bleed out from

both

so once again once i got past my initial

denial

i realized you know what yeah i had

experienced both big t and little t

traumas but they were kind of scary to

look at so for years

i just told myself i was fine and i

ignored

all of my symptoms and feelings but when

i started to learn about the physiology

behind my responses

i felt a lot less crazy because i

realized you know what it’s not about

crazy

it’s about survival and dr bessel van

der kook’s work

really helped me to understand this so

he defines trauma as anything that

overwhelms our nervous system

so it’s less about the event and more

about the way our nervous system

responds to an event

and our nervous system’s functioning is

of course influenced by things like our

biology

our environments and any trauma and

stress

but whether you identify as having

trauma

you definitely have a nervous system so

i think understanding the way that it

works can really help us with our mental

health

and most of us already know the basics

here right that we have a fight or

flight response

to stress and threats but there’s a

third response that we don’t always

talk about and that’s the freeze

response and the freeze response happens

when our nervous system decides fight or

flight are not the best option here

and immobility is so we see this in the

animal kingdom

where some animals will play dead to

deter a predator

i see this a lot now in my work with

sexual assault survivors who

you know they blame themselves for not

running away from their attacker when

what’s actually happening

is the nervous system has decided within

milliseconds that the best way

to survive this threat is to completely

freeze up and your muscles

actually do lock up it’s called tonic

immobility and you might also completely

dissociate

from that painful experience and dr

steven porgis

is a neuroscientist and he says that

getting stuck in the freeze response

can look a lot like dissociation

depression

and a general sense of hopelessness and

another piece to all of this

is that whenever we’re experiencing

chronic stress or trauma

our limbic system is activating that

fight flight freeze response

and our logic system goes offline so

those thinking parts of the brain like

the prefrontal cortex

aren’t even fully available so this is

why it’s really hard when

you’re in like a really heated argument

with your spouse

to come up with a rational solution to a

problem

and when we’re constantly in fight

flight freeze our body gets worn out

and our thinking processes are affected

so there’s a very

real physiological component to

psychological health

ultimately we’re wired for survival and

our symptoms and behaviors often make

sense

in the context of trying to meet those

survival needs

even our most stubborn behavioral

patterns things like addiction

perfectionism codependency these can be

survival strategies

that we’re using to either get our basic

needs met

or to cope with our needs not being met

but we don’t usually think of it

like this right we think well something

must be wrong with me i’m weak i’m lazy

and it kind of makes sense because we

live in a society that

reinforces this message that we need to

hustle

hard to be worthy and never ask for help

and so we really normalize our actual

human needs

not being met and then we tell ourselves

we just need to toughen up

and try harder what do we do

instead here we have to start listening

to the wisdom

in our bodies and get curious about our

needs starting with one of our most

basic needs which is safety and not just

physical safety but a nervous system

that feels safe

and dr poor just says that safety is a

prerequisite to meeting a lot of our

other survival needs like connection

because without safety we’re not going

to get closer to other people and we’re

definitely not going to meet

our higher functioning needs like joy

and creativity

but what’s amazing here is when we

create safety we can support the ideal

environment that’s going to encourage

recovery and change to occur

naturally and change really can occur on

a neurological level

so neuroplasticity means that our brain

can create

new neural pathways and learn to

function

and respond in different ways so

let’s say one of our basic physical

safety needs are met

but we still feel unsafe in our own

bodies and this was a really tough one

for me it took me years to go from

my body is betraying me to my body is

protecting me

i really had to learn about my nervous

system and kind of befriend my own body

before it started to feel safer for me

and so i like to think of a dysregulated

nervous system

as a kind of chaotic house and if you

ever watch

the netflix show tidying up with marie

kondo you kind of already know what i’m

talking about here

but if you’ve never heard of her marie

kondo is a decluttering guru

and she helps these really stressed out

families reorganize their homes and

reclaim a sense of peace and this is a

pretty big task because you’ll see

in these homes you know families who are

not getting along

there’s stuff everywhere one person

might have a hoarding problem

and they’re just not functioning well

because the stuff in their homes has

become

overwhelming and when marie comes into

the home

the first thing she does is kind of

unexpected so she’ll gather up the whole

family

with all their disgruntled feelings

and she’ll ask him to sit in the living

room and she’ll usually kneel on the

floor and

put her hands on the floor and she’ll

ask everyone to close their eyes and

she’ll say

i want you to thank your home for

keeping your family safe

and this moment this recognition of the

home

as a supportive structure often brings

people to tears

because they’ve simply never seen their

homes as a haven

they’ve seen it as a source of stress

and shame

and i think this is how many of us feel

about our own bodies

but with marie you know instead of

shaming these families for having so

much stuff

she simply invites them to look at all

of it

to acknowledge all of it the painful

memories

the items that need repairing that have

been neglected

the messy parts that aren’t helping

and every item in the house gets

addressed so she’ll tell them to pick an

item up

hold it and feel whether it sparks joy

or not and if it doesn’t she’ll tell

them to thank the item

then repurpose it or let it go

and as the house becomes reorganized and

repaired

the whole family starts functioning

differently

there’s better communication there’s

more compassion

and there’s really more safety in the

home both emotionally and structurally

and this is so cool to watch you know

and of course if you’re watching it on

netflix you get to see it all happen

in 45 minutes but in real life this is

not such a

quick process because it really requires

us to slow down

and look at our stuff and when we look

inward we might find trauma that needs

processing

we might find that we’re living with

stressors that are really activating

that survival response

but when we can start to honor our pain

and start seeing

our bad habits as survival strategies

we can start to listen to what our body

is telling us

and it will often speak to us in

emotions

every emotion has an intention to

communicate a need

or to protest a need not being met and

when we ignore the emotion we also

ignore the possibility

of meeting our own needs sometimes our

bodies will speak to us

in symptoms in discomfort and pain that

force us to pay attention but we’re so

quick to think of symptoms

automatically as being a sign of

pathology

when sometimes they’re just a sign of

our humanity

and we think there’s something horribly

wrong with us when the fact that we are

currently alive is a sign that there’s

something very right with us

our nervous system is doing its job so

instead of making our mental health

about our perceived deficits

and character flaws sometimes we should

really be

asking ourselves what do i need to feel

safer

right now and there are so many ways to

create internal safety

whether that’s practicing healthy

boundaries and protecting your

environment

or mindfulness and deep breathing

exercises

that really counteract the shallow

breathing of the fight flight freeze

response

it’s different for everyone but we first

have to learn to stop

bypassing ourselves and instead ask

ourselves what needs are not getting met

and how can we choose to organize and

protect

our homes if there’s one thing you can

take away from this i hope it’s this

two ask yourself over and over again

what does your body

need and then to listen until you start

to feel

more at home in your own body with

practice and support

you can learn to reorganize your home

appreciate the safety it has provided

for you

and find the joy you didn’t think you

could have

thank you

you