Reframing Healing

When we consider healing, we may forget just how bio-individual this process is. There are nuances, nooks and crannies, and many terrains to navigate. The path may be unclear. The steps may feel unsteady at times. And there’s a subtle calling -a quiet invitation rather- to trust the unknown. The key is here is navigating the unknown and becoming okay with it.

I had to learn this the hard way in many ways. I think of this often, just how difficult it was for me to be faced with illness in the midst of a turbulent period in my life.

What I was oblivious to was the immense amount of stress under, and that this state of low-grade, chronic hypervigilance would eventually lead to illness. I took my health for granted for years, prioritizing education, my work, and my passions at the cost of losing sleep and my wellness. I was neglectful and out of my body in ways I wasn’t even aware of.

Stress management is not part of our school curriculums either and I had little to no support, nor was I skilled at mitigating stress and learning to respond rather than react. My ability to respond to external or internal struggles was limited. I knew intellectually that strengthening my body is my key to health, but I was unaware of just how unconscious these patterns were at the time.

I was fresh out of grad school when I got sick. I was a great student and had a lot of passion and drive. I was working 2 jobs and volunteering while studying for another degree and thinking of how to start my own business. I was also grieving the loss of my sister in law and healing from a break up, and healing my past, too. I knew on a subconscious level that I was in over-drive, but I didn’t know just how bad this was. I didn’t even know what it meant to pause. The word terrified me.. Pause? You mean I can take a break? You mean I can breathe, inhale and exhale, eat in peace, walk my talk, and enjoy the wilderness inside and around me? You mean I could sleep and wake up feeling fresh and joyful to take on a new day with a vision that I created? Pausing meant I had to transform my perception of self and my life.

As I dove deeper into understanding my situation and the medicine, I reframed healing for me. This meant advocating for my needs from a holistic angle. It meant dropping the pretences and the facade of perfection that were consuming my life force and keeping me depleted. It was a major sabotage, if I’m being fully honest. We forget just how sabotaging and harmful perfectionism is. It’s like hurting ourselves and our sensitive hearts in order to fit into an adorned box. It’s looking good from the outside while suffering internally from self-neglect and lack of depth or compassion for just how worthy, enough, and important we are by virtue of being here and doing our best in life. Perfectionism meant I was fitting into a society rooted in neglect and covert abuse.

Perfection says: I’m imperfect and flawed – that must mean I’m not good enough and so I will feel ashamed. I will be ashamed of my innocence and the ways in which I am me. I must be a match for the unachievable standards others abide by to fit in; maybe then, for a split second, I can feel seen and heard. Maybe then, the elaborate performances I’ve given all my life to those who were committed to ignore and neglect me will pay off. And even then – I am not enough. I may still feel broken. I still don’t belong. I need to be accepted. I need to achieve higher standards, ones that would finally allow me to approve of myself through the lens of others – you see, external standards and external validation is the name of the game.

Perfection’s language is self- abandonment; because the ones we needed to hold and see us abandoned us. Perfection is a learnt skill after all, and as with any skill, this one’s particularly rooted in rejecting our incredibly intelligent physiological and somatic experiences. There are countless well researched books on the subject by pioneers in the area of trauma and post traumatic growth that speak of the importance of understanding our body’s language in navigating life and pain. The wisdom is in fact in the body and the body keeps the score. Physiologically speaking, we see the brain gut axis. Our gut is our second brain and when we’re chronically stressed our gut is compromised, often leading to hidden chronic health issues and fatigue. With that comes a lot of confusion and our decision making ability is also compromised. Mindfulness practices such as deep breathing and somatic experiencing are integral parts of the healing that need to be prioritized daily, in order to create a reset and return to homeostasis.

You see where I’m going with this.

Perfection drives dysregulation in many ways. When our nervous systems are in a constant state of vigilance and fear, our bodies are in an acute state of survival. I don’t think the day to day stressors we face are is at all normal. Denying this is also not supportive of the optimal level of wellness we want to experience.

As I’m revisiting all of this, I realize just how conditioned I was to ignore my body. I was neglecting all the signals it was working so hard to communicate to me. Not only did my body exhibited severe signs of inflammation and infection, but I was also feeling cognitively depleted and in need of a fast reboot/reset. So this is how my healing journey began. I was taken back by the harsh reality of stress wreaking havoc in my life. There’s now no surprise to me why I was functionally depressed and anxious. I had to get very curious about what I was experiencing, because it was either that or staying stuck and more stressed. I was in a dire need of a transformation.

Being the sharp researcher that I am, I quickly found out about functional medicine and my recovery began. I gained control and appropriately responded to the cues and protocols I was given. I advocated for myself throughout. I realized I had SIBO, SIFO, thyroid issues, and severe fatigue. After months of investigation, I found an excellent functional medicine naturopath in the city specializing in herbal medicine and chronic fatigue. With the support and expertise of my new health team, and my curiosity, I paved the way forward to my healing. I had to do a few functional tests to gain more knowledge and data on my situation as well, which powerfully guided me to select the correct protocol. Within a month I saw powerful results. And I mean POWERFUL. I began seeing transformation – as I had intended for. It all felt miraculous to me because allopathic medicine failed to see the gap in my symptoms and the specialists I saw showed little to no interest in investigating the root cause issue behind my symptoms. Throughout this intense process, food became my passion and medicine. I would cook even on my worst of days. I was focused, driven, and committed to interrupting the patterns feeding my symptoms, and I started to enjoy the process too – like really enjoying every day and witnessing my healing! Food was the way I expressed my creativity and heal my dysregulated nervous system. I also resumed painting after a few years of putting it aside to pursue other things. I was overjoyed and so passionate to make something out of it and perhaps take it even further as my business. Being in the kitchen and making delicious and healing recipes gave me incredible purpose and power. My diet was specific to my situation, as I was preparing whole foods and herbs in a very strategic and medicinal approach. I was making my medicine on a daily basis and having fun in the process – I haven’s stopped since.

This was a nuanced process the required perseverance on my part to take bold moves along the way. I had to trust – trusting myself, the treatment options, my intuition, and the unknown. An important reframe on my healing path was on what it meant to be in community. This was a pivotal step as it reshaped my understanding of health and wellness.

If I had to narrow down a reason behind my sickness, I honestly believe it was lack of support and healthy relationships. This was ultimately the reason. I was alone, isolated, and felt unsafe. I had unprocessed grief and was healing from an emotionally abusive relationship with a narcissist. I don’t use the term lightly and don’t subscribe to any thoughts or beliefs surrounding diagnosing people without research and understanding. I was working with a highly skilled psychotherapist specializing in the area of personality disorders with emphasis on NPD. She woke me up to the reality of my situation. Narcissistic abuse in fact the primary reason many autoimmune ailments such as fibromayalga and arthritis. As someone who went through this and got out with a mysterious illness, I know first hand what it’s like to be with a charming and yet emotionally abusive partner and secondly what it’s like to leave and break up with a narcissist. The pain of breaking up with a narc is systemic and hits all parts of our nervous system. For me, it was definitely a combination of fight, flight, and freeze. I had a couple of loving people but I was also quite alone during that time – I also had multiple narcissistic people in my circle of friends/community. People who charmed their way through who then exhibited signs of grandiosity, entitlement, engaged in a cycle of devalue/discard, and love-bombed or trauma-bonded. I was smart enough to leave and confused on my role in the process or why I’d be in these relationships in the first place. This is what I mean by a lack of healthy community. I also felt like a sponge for the negativity and toxicity around me without realizing or knowing much about having solid internal boundaries – I could distance myself physically but internally I would ruminate and internalize a lot of the abuse I had witnessed and experienced. I had to end and emotionally detach from many toxic people in order to re-align with the health and wellness that is my core state – and this took a few years and still going. The rumination was the fuel feeding the chronic stress I was experiencing fresh out of grad-school, working, going through a major break up from a narcissist, and also mourning a tragic loss in my family. To say it was unbearable and a lot is an understatement.

I constantly felt like I was in a state of bargaining with the world around me and within me. I was struggling with acceptance – radical acceptance of my situation without fighting for the things to change, rather working with my system to move through change. I was doing the work at the cost of my sleep, health and bandwidth.

As I’m stepping out of that 7 year cycle of recovery, I’ve realized these 10 practical truths that I want to share with you. You could apply this to your situation and your life at this moment.

1. Healing begins when we accept there’s a problem.
2. We accept there’s a problem when we pay attention to the somatic symptoms we feel.
3. Our bodies are wise. Learn to scan your body and feel the sensations or any tension you may feel. Locate these sensations.
4. Learn to sit with pain in order to observe and allow it to pass. Pain passes in a relaxed body. The more resistance, the more prolonged the pain will be felt.
5. Pain is a signal to something deeper. See any patterns you may find surrounding your pain. Whether this is psychological or physiological – although these two cannot be entirely separated. The point it to know yourself better.
6. The body is meant to heal. Remember that.
7. We are not our genes – we control our genes. There’s a difference. Our environments and behaviours change the way our genes express. We are in charge of these genetic expressions.
8. Food is medicine – Eat your colours, connect with your food, and give yourself time when eating your meals. This is a sacred time to nourish yourself and it’s important that you stay connected and slow-down.
9. Get creative – Creativity is a powerful tool to heal. It’s medicine.
10. Let go of any person or thing, it could be even your pattern, if you know that’s hurting you, and do it fast and soon. Remember that to heal, first and foremost we need a supportive community. It really does take a village.

Now, there’s a great deal of scientific research behind these findings. I happened to first hand experience them through personal experience and got powerful results. I learnt to interrupt patterns, change my lifestyle and shift my mindset through holistic avenues that would be of support in each specific area of focus.

Addressing the HPA axis is really important in this process, too, as it was for me. We need to see the brain gut connection and its direct relationship with our nervous system. Our healing journey is of purpose and focus so we need to holistically look at our situation and the underlying systems involved. Somatic work, mindfulness, psychotherapy and acupuncture proved to be powerful and transformative in this part of my process.

Note: “The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, or HPA axis, is a term used to represent the interaction between the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal glands; it plays an important role the body’s response to stress. The pathway of the axis results in the production of cortisol. The aim of the stress response is to provide energy for a long period of time.” 

https://www.simplypsychology.org/hypothalamic%E2%80%93pituitary%E2%80%93adrenal-axis.html

I hope I’ve been able to inspire you to see your healing from a new lens. There are no quick fixes or bandaids when it comes to your health. It does take curiosity and perseverance to stay the course and believe in your healing. When I say reframe what recovery means to you, I genuinely mean look outside the box of what it means to heal – outside the conventional medicine path to find your root causes and take appropriate action. This is a holistic process and it requires your 100% intention and effort to heal. Remember to always seek the right support that fits your needs and circumstances. You’re worth the financial investment and your healing is the greatest gift you give yourself. The relationship you’ll build with yourself on this journey is the single most nurturing and integral part. No matter what, have your back and advocate for your needs. The right people/support will always see you and be there walking you back home. Face your problems, ask for help, and find support. There’s always a way out.

If you seek my 1:1 services, you can always reach me at binherkitchen@gmail.com where we can discuss how to move forward beyond your limitations and step into your health and vitality. I know I can be of help.