Tell me if your journey sounds similar to my healing journey.
You meet with a doctor to address depression and anxiety from childhood trauma, praying they can help. You go in expecting one diagnosis, but they give you five, among them are anorexia, depression, and anxiety. They give you a pill (actually,for me, five called a ”cocktail”), a magic pill that you truly believe will take away the pain and memories…but it doesn’t. So you meet with the therapist to go over the trauma…but it doesn’t make it better. If anything, it makes it worse because now you’re hyper aware of everything you’ve been through. On top of that, the meds barely take the edge off and give you some sh!tty side effects and you’re left wondering,”is this really worth it?”
This is where holistic health comes into play. I started to look at the whole picture. I was expecting the pills to change everything, but I wasn’t making an effort to improve my overall health. That’s what the pills are for, right? I expected to take my medication and go to therapy (one hour a week, every week) and, magically, my life would start to get better. However, to my dismay, it did not improve. I became frustrated because I was taking my medications, I was going to therapy, I was doing everything the doctors and therapists were suggesting, but I still suffered from severe depression and crippling anxiety. Who wouldn’t be frustrated in this situation, right? I felt powerless. Everything felt out of my control.
That is until one night.
My husband and I love to watch documentaries. One night, we watched a documentary called Hungry for Change. It opened my eyes to the concept of holistic health. I now associate the word holistic with whole body. Before, I just assumed it referenced alternative healing or life off medications. But now, it means a totally different approach, one that I was capable of doing myself. I could take control of the situation. I started to look at aspects of my life that were within my power.
My diet wasn’t the healthiest, if I was being completely honest with myself. I was drinking 6-8 cups of coffee a day and I was so focused on the number of calories going into my body that nutrients were the last thing on my mind when I would make a meal, usually something easy and from the microwave. If it was under 200 calories, it was going to be my meal.I would often just eat the steamable microwaveable vegetable pouches that you find in the freezer section of the grocery store. Sometimes, I would even get the kind with a sauce if I felt really wild. I was eating vegetables, sort of, and I would sometimes make a cup of instant miso soup if I got too lightheaded or felt like I was going to pass out. I was so focused on the calories that I didn’t realize how utterly depleted of nutrients my body was becoming. Once I made this realization, I understood that I needed to put nourishing foods into my body. But, where could I go to find information to help nourish my body? The library, of course! I’ve already shared about how I found Crazy Sexy Juice, so I’ll just reference it here. But, one book can help catapult you into a new direction and this book very well may have saved my life.
So, I started adding more vegetables into my diet, adding smoothies, and getting curious about macrobiotics. I focused on the nutrition going into my body. I began to count the different types of vegetables going into my body instead of the calories. It was empowering! An apple has about 100 calories, but do you know what else it has? Vitamins, minerals, and fiber. These are things that I wanted in my body. I had been so brain-washed by the media growing up that I believed the least amount of calories that went into my body, the better. It didn’t matter that it made me feel weak. I was skinny, I looked like the models in the glossy magazines. But, I had given up my power to choose. Now, I was taking it back and I was choosing to put my health first instead of some ridiculous beauty standard. I started to learn about the healing benefits of whole, plant-based foods and it got me curious about other holistic practices that could help improve my health as well.
I started to go on nature walks. Nature has healing powers just by being in it! Being in the sunshine is a natural mood booster. I had been sitting inside for years. I’m a natural redhead, so the sun and I don’t get along. I burn in less than 15 minutes. When I was in college, I drove to meet up with my friend and art professor to go to New York City. It was a sunny day and I wore a tank top for the drive. My entire left arm was in the sun and I got a sunburn down my entire arm! When I finally made it to the university, our meet up spot, my friend said, “You look like a candy cane!” I walked around the streets of New York and went to all the famous art galleries looking like a candy cane. But, after years of avoiding the sun, I decided to give it another chance. I found a beautiful nature preserve in my area and decided to start taking walks on the mostly shaded paths. This is where I first learned about forest bathing. You submerge yourself into the forest and by the end of your walk, you come out fresh and clean, so to speak. As I walked the gravel path, I was giving nourishing carbon dioxide to the trees and they were giving healing oxygen to me. I would listen to the beautiful songs of the birds and watch for lazy turtles sunning themselves on the fallen logs in the pond. It is a marvelous experience if you get the opportunity to explore the forest.
Journaling is another amazing holistic approach to help get your thoughts on paper. I was in my head a lot, as you often are with depression and anxiety, and by writing everything out in a journal, I was able to process what was going on in my head. The more I would write, the more insight I would get about what was going on with me emotionally. Was I starving myself to be skinny to fit into society’s molds of women or was it because my mother made so many hurtful comments to me about my plus sized friends growing up? The more I wrote, the more memories from my childhood came up. It was like therapy, but I didn’t have to spill my heart out to a stranger who just sat in a chair opposite me and scribbled notes. It was a better experience for me. I also started to notice the things I was grateful for during the day. They could be small things, like my coffee was the perfect temperature or it could be big things, like someone bought one of my paintings. Big or small, I documented it and at the end of the week I would write it in my weekly wins. Weekly wins are something I still do to this day for both myself and my clients. It helps you to focus on the positive in your life.
Art was so helpful in getting my creativity out and it really allowed me to get a full range of emotion on the canvas. Sometimes, I would paint seascapes, other times I would throw paint on the canvas like Jackson Pollock. It was so cathartic to me. I would even tear pages out of my favorite book and glue it to the canvas. Sometimes, I would just take a razor to the canvas. Whatever I needed to do at that time, I would try my best to honor it. This was for me. Some creations turned out great and are still hanging in my studio. Others, let’s just say I pulled a Georgia O’Keeffe and burned them. What mattered to me was being able to express the emotions I had been suppressing, in some instances for decades.
These are some of the holistic approaches that have helped me and continue to help me to this day. Whenever I start to feel a little out of whack or like I’m stuck in the funk of “stinking thinking,” I do a mental checklist. Have I been eating nourishing meals? Have I been getting enough sunshine? Have I had a chance to check in with myself and journal lately? Am I allowing my creativity to flow freely? More than likely, the answer to these questions are no. I gently remind myself that my needs are just as important as my family’s. I take a walk, I make a smoothie, I journal how I am feeling, and I do something that brings joy to my life.
