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What I've finally started to do is stop chasing a solution and be okay with wherever I'm at now.
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And so the way I can put this is I'm not living a chronic pain-free life, but I've started living life.
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What if what you thought was true is a lie?
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What if the thing that is wrong with you is actually right?
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Hi there, and welcome to rewriting the Illness Story, a space where we see ourselves and our journeys through a new lens and decide our own truth.
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Hi, and welcome back to Rewriting the Illness Story.
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I'm your host, Paula Hescock.
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Today we have Sandy Magder coming to join us and tell us about her journey with, chronic pain and chronic illness.
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Thank you so much for coming on today, Sandy.
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Thank you for having me.
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I'm really excited to be here.
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So how did your journey start?
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I know you said it started,, in early childhood.
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Can you tell us a little bit about that?
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Yeah.
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So the chronic pain wasn't so much in early childhood, but just for context, I have very early childhood memories, like probably going back to being a year and a half old.
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Oh, wow.
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So y- so I- as I've kind of gone down my journey, I've understood what maybe some of the symptoms were going back early, so I'll just mention them for context later.
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So when I was very young, I had chronic ear conditions, and in one instance, I remember my f- I w- I hated certain types of food.
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My family tried to force me to eat steak, and I was I sat there for five hours, and I was so traumatized, I got an earache that night.
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And I re- I distinctly remember this, so I wanted to kind of point to it,'cause again, I'll explain a little bit more why later, but that's just, like, an instance of something that I remember.
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And I, I always had, you know, I was sort of very susceptible to every flu, cold going around.
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If somebody gave it to me, I would get it worse.
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I got the chicken pox, the measles even after being vaccinated.
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When I was 12, I developed a very severe flu where I was having fever so high I was hallucinating.
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Now, that corresponds to a grade seven trip to, like, an outdoorsy place in the middle of winter that I didn't wanna go to.
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So again, this is a little bit of context for things I'll talk about later, but like, long story short, I didn't go on that trip because I was so sick.
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Mm.
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And after that, I had a series of couple of, like, horseback riding accidents that I fell off a horse, and things sort of started to progress from there.
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When I was probably 12, 13, after that flu, I had developed something that the doctors really never were able to mark, but my white blood cell counts were off, and so they had called it chronic fatigue of some sort, but it didn't really mark out to, like, Epstein-Barr.
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But so I was sick for probably about nine months where I was weak, I lost a lot of weight, I was nauseous.
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That led to me having a fear of leaving the house because I developed this fear of throwing up in public, even though it never happened.
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This was like, I went through all of these transitions and, you know, I eventually kind of recovered from that.
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And then when I was 18, I woke up one morning and I was almost paralyzed with pain.
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And so long story short with that one too, w- I was diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis at 18.
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At 18?
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Yeah.
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Wow.
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And that was a, you know, that was a huge shock, obviously, and I was given all kinds of medications and crazy things, and I was also a dancer and I wanted to be able to continue dancing.
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And so one of the joints that was very affected was my hip joint.
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And so the doctors, again, this was back in the'90s before the internet, so, you know, you kind of listened to doctors.
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There wasn't a lot of opportunity to look things up'cause there was no internet.
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And so the doctors had recommended that I get this series of treatments.
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It was radiation and cortisone.
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And I would go to a hospital, and they would take this giant needle, and they'd put it directly into my hip joint.
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And then they would tell me that I couldn't really move for three days'cause they didn't want the radiation to move around.
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And I was like,"Okay, cool.
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Sign me up." So I'd walk around on crutches- Wow trying to be careful not to move.
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You know, these are just sort of things that, a- again, you, back then, you kind of accept what the doctors tell you.
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And so that sort of, you know, the, I still deal with chronic...
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Like, again, we're fast-forwarding, but I still deal with chronic pain related to joint issues.
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Were you very active?
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Like-
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Yeah.
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I wasn't a strong kid.
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I was, uh, I was tiny, but I played baseball, I was figure skating, I was horseback riding, I was dancing.
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Yeah, I was a, I was a pretty active child, so that was...
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I think I had been water-skiing the summer before, so actually the first joint that ever really swelled up was my elbow, and they first told me it was bursitis from the water-skiing.
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Mm.
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And then the, everything else kind of just went haywire probably within a couple months.
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Were you able to function?
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were you in college at the time that all- I was- this other stuff was going on and?
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I was still in high school.
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Um, I grew up in Canada, and in Ontario at the time we had five years of high school in order to go to university.
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So I was- Oh just starting my last year of high school, which was very high-stress.
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And I can tell you looking back, and again, we'll maybe get into some of the work that I do now, I was a, I was a perfectionist kid to the, like, you know, highest degree, starting from when I was two,'cause I kinda learned that, like, you know, when you do things and people praise you, that becomes your identity.
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And so every exam, every assignment, everything was a potential point of failure.
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And this, the biggest flare-up that I had when I was really diagnosed with the arthritis was right before exams.
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Mm.
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And that sort of became a pattern throughout my life.
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I would notice that things would get significantly worse around times of high stress.
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It sounds like what you were saying before too is, like, people trying to push things on you and you found a way out of it by being ill.
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Yes, and this is something that I talk about now.
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I, and I, I didn't understand it at the time, but when you're that type of child, a perfectionist, and, and the research, and we'll talk about this too, that it, people, like, with my type of personality are susceptible to chronic pain because of all the pressure they put on theirselves.
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My mother used to say to me,"You're so sensitive to criticism." And I was like,"I am because I walk around with 50 people in my head telling me I'm not good enough." And they're all me, right?
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They're all versions of me.
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But so there's no space.
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I'm at max capacity for criticism.
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And so something, it was kind of a realization I had a couple years ago, when you're sick, especially if you're diagnosed with a big illness, it's kind of the only time people give you a pass and therefore you can give yourself a pass.
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Even now, if you get, like, a flu or something like that, you ki- people are just like,"Okay, I understand you're really sick.
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You know, you can have a couple days to relax." Yeah.
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And so I think that there was something in me that, like...
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A- and again, we go talk about all these smaller illnesses I had throughout my life and it's like those weren't big enough to get my attention to cause me to stop.
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Mm.
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So this was, like, the big one.
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And, you know, I've listened to your podcast and I've talked to other people with chronic conditions, and you go through a lot of trying to figure out what it is, and I had that experience when I was 12 and I had this mystery illness.
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So the arthritis diagnosis, it's kind of a blessing and a curse because you're given a name of something that somebody can identify and it makes it a real thing, but then it can also become your identity.
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And, and that s- can also shape what happens with chronic pain and sort of how your body responds to knowing, and I'm air quoting,"knowing" that you have a condition.
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When you were diagnosed with the arthritis and given the injections, did you have a lot of relief with that?
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Or how did that progress?
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Not really.
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I mean, I was given various medications that would work for a little bit, and then they would stop working, and then they would give me either a higher dose or something different.
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When I was in university, I was getting, um, injections of this drug called methotrexate, which is a cancer drug effectively.
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And all of these are designed to, to slow down your immune system because the theory of, of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases that your body is in some way attacking itself.
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And so, you know, the, the, the, the cure, but the, the way to alleviate symptoms is to kind of calm that down.
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And so you're given a lot of immune-suppressing drugs, which obviously will lead to other problems, and it did for me because I would get sick much more easily.
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So yeah.
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So basically knock down your immune system.
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Yeah, shut it down.
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Like, my- Yeah I finished my last year, my l- um, the end of my first year of university in the hospital because I'd gotten strep throat, and somehow, I don't know, something happened and my throat closed up.
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Couldn't swallow, couldn't...
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It was horrible.
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So I was in the hospital for a week on IV fluids because I couldn't consume any- anything, and that was because my immune system was just a wreck.
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How did you progress from there?
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Did you then start trying other modalities or try to do more, like, holistic naturopathic things, or
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Yeah, that actually started And, and to my parents' credit, you know, when, when First of all, the arthritis diagnosis, I remember even at 18 with no internet, when they told me my body was attacking itself for no reason, I thought that that was insane.
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I w- you know, I, that's just, that doesn't make any sense to me.
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And I would go to the rheumatologist's office and I'd look around, and everybody would be miserable and decrepit, and I knew in that moment that they weren't helping anybody.
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You know, they were doing, there was treatments, but they weren't helping anybody.
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And so my parents had started to look for sort of all sorts of different things.
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So my father's a dentist, so he had more of a scientific approach.
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He was looking at things like antibiotics.
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There was a theory that arthritis was a bacteria and it could be treated with antibiotics.
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My mother, I don't know where she found some of these people, but I went to one lady who worked with crystals, and she would test different substances against, I think it's, like, muscle, something where you hold a bag of crystal- certain crystals, and then she pushes on your arm.
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If that helps, that's good for you.
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I don't know.
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And then the, the-
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Muscle testing.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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And so then the weirdest one, again, I don't know who recom- We lived in a small town, so there were not that many people around.
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My mother took me to this woman.
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We get to her house.
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I didn't have any background.
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We walk in.
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She's like a 5'0", 80-year-old woman.
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And so her thing was that she channeled a pharaoh, an Egyptian, ancient Egyptian pharaoh.
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She took this deep breath- and drank some water.
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Her whole face changed, and then she had me get on a table, and she gave me this massage that was so strong and so intense, she could've been like a 250-pound linebacker.
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And she was speaking through it in this, uh, I don't even know how to describe it, but it was wild.
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And so from that, there's nothing too weird that I won't try, because how do you top that?
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But that happened.
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And I don't, I mean, I don't know that I felt any different after.
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I don't, I think she, I don't know if she was, it was like an exorcism.
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I don't know what was I, I don't remember exactly what was happening.
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But it was an old lady who channeled a pharaoh.
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That was the gist of it.
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So I had s- so from there, and I had gone to a chiropractor to help with the issues from falling off the horse, and we saw naturopaths and osteopaths, so there was always an alternative medicine theme to it, you know?
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And so, and I think I've always carried that with me because of the fact that I just don't understand this, your body's attacking itself for no reason.
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So I've always been on the search for different things, whatever they might be.
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Yeah.
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I've seen a lot of that myself, especially going to the pain doctor, and you're not really fixing anything, and that I'm just, like, a pin cushion or, like, an experiment or, you know.
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Yeah yeah, none of that's really, addressing what's really going on.
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Yeah.
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And your body's still going haywire, and they're just trying to put Band-Aids on it.
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Yeah.
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But I feel like, and I've, I've gone down this rabbit hole before.
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I found functional medicine, which I thought was really cool when I heard about it because it uses, you know, scientific lab tests like you would get.
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It, it takes them, it looks at them from a different perspective, and it's root cause based.
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So that was exciting when I heard about it, and I did all the tests.
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I did the gut stuff.
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I did all the blood te- I mean, I did, like, I spent You know, none of it's covered by insurance, so I did all of the testing.
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Mm.
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I did the food testing.
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And I gotta say, like, I, there were things that were discovered, but nothing that I was ever No supplement or thing that I was given made a difference.
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So even if there's something that could be diagnosed, you know, from a lab work perspective, nothing fixed it.
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Yeah.
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And so that's kind of when I changed my perspective, and it's, it's a newer perspective, but it's, I, I've, I've had to really shift the way I look at it because there doesn't seem to be, like, this easy fix.
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Yeah, some kind of modality that you can adopt the prescription of do X, Y, Z and then you're fine.
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Yeah.
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Right?
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Exactly.
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Yeah, I didn't have much luck with functional medicine.
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I did the, the stool tests and the food allergy tests and all of that, and I took the probiotics and everything that they gave me.
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Granted, It's probably been, like, 15 years since I've done it, so maybe they've gotten a lot better.
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But yeah, I didn't have much luck with that either.
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Yeah, and- You know, when you have a chronic condition, you're excited if something sounds like it makes sense.
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And so I would go through this phase of just, you know, I- hopelessly optimistic, I guess, because you have to believe something might work.
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But also I was Sorry, cautiously optimistic because, you know, it's like nothing had worked, but I wanna believe something will.
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And things made sense, but then I was always sort of chasing this state of health and pushing everything away thinking maybe one day when I feel better.
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You know, and I know you've dealt with chronic pain and it's very isolating.
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And it's like I don't, can't talk about it all the time, but it, it holds me back from making plans because I worry I'm not gonna feel good on that day and I'm gonna bring everybody down, or it's gonna be too much walking, or I'm gonna be out of the house and I'm not gonna have my special foods and all of those things.
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So it really affects your life, but it becomes almost a job, especially when you're taking supplements or you're eating certain foods.
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It's literally a full-time job.
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Yeah.
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now I look at it more of like how much am I perpetuating it because I'm so afraid of the Like, if I make this choice, am I gonna feel bad?
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If I do this, am I Is it gonna help?
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Is it gonna hurt?
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You know?
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So it's almost like everything becomes more like- Is this gonna hurt me?
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Yeah.
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You know?
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What else can I do to avoid the pain, you know?
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Instead of enjoying your life and living, without that, filter.
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Yeah.
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And that's the fear-based response that makes the pain worse, because it puts you in a state of fight or flight.
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And so where I'm at now, and I, I still have pain.
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Like, we're not, I'm not at the stage where I'm like, I, you know...
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I hear people, I listen to stories all the time of they're pain-free.
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I'm not at that stage.
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But what I've really fallen into a rabbit hole on is mind-body work, and understanding that the brain is neuroplastic and that pain doesn't actually originate from parts of the body.
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It's a response in the brain.
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And so I can go into a little bit about sort of the theory of it and the brain science, but the short story is, is that...
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And, and it makes sense now that I've s- kind of explained to you a lot of the times where I actually had these ailments, even going back to when I was two.
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But it's almost like something is going on, and your brain decides that it's easier to feel the pain in your body than it is to feel the emotions, or it just doesn't have anywhere to put it.
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And so then the pain is almost like a signal to you that something is wrong, but not necessarily wrong in the context of, like, you broke your leg and it hurts.
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Uh-huh.
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It's, it's a signal to, to look at something else in your life.
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And so again, you know, with the arthritis, like, it was, it stopped me, literally.
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It was my body's and brain's way of colluding to get me to take a break.
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And so I'm sort of down that track now, and a lot of the things that you said, like, that's really in line with that type of a work.
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Because when you have a chronic condition and you feel it, and you catastrop- I heard you...
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That's my favorite word.
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I heard you say it in another podcast.
00:16:11.707 --> 00:16:26.947
I love the word catastrophizing because it, it's, it's so relevant, because what happens is, like, you wake up and you're in pain, and you think,"Oh my God, I have all this work to do today." And you freak out about it, and it makes it worse, because then you're literally telling your mind and body that you're sick.
00:16:27.077 --> 00:16:28.177
You're reminding it you're sick.
00:16:28.197 --> 00:16:34.727
You're, you're raising all the alarm bells, and that keeps you in this state of,"I'm a sick person." Same thing with all these protocols.
00:16:34.727 --> 00:16:42.898
When you're spending all day taking the right supplements, eating the right foods, worrying about every single thing you do or don't do, that reminds you that you're sick.
00:16:43.817 --> 00:16:47.717
And so all of that just tells the brain that the pain belongs there.
00:16:48.717 --> 00:16:50.388
So is there a way out of that?
00:16:50.437 --> 00:16:55.498
Or have you figured out a modality or something n- not another modality- Yeah.
00:16:55.498 --> 00:16:59.738
Yeah but how do you stop going into that response?
00:17:00.268 --> 00:17:10.397
So I'm, I work with a few different, like I've been doing research on a few different programs, and so one of them is pain reprocessing therapy, and I can share some resources, but there's a good book by Alan Gordon.
00:17:10.407 --> 00:17:12.528
It's either called A Way, I think it's called The Way Out.
00:17:12.948 --> 00:17:19.268
And so pain reprocessing therapy is a lot of things, like when you feel the pain, you tell your body it's safe, right?
00:17:19.268 --> 00:17:21.698
Like if I, I, I've developed an issue with my ankle.
00:17:21.708 --> 00:17:23.877
It's probably in the last six months or a year, I can't remember the timeframe.
00:17:24.048 --> 00:17:28.778
But when I walk, it hurts, and so the natural reaction is to not walk.
00:17:29.587 --> 00:17:31.147
But nothing bad is happening.
00:17:31.167 --> 00:17:33.218
I'm not harming myself by walking, right?
00:17:33.218 --> 00:17:36.057
It's not like I have a broken ankle that I shouldn't be walking on.
00:17:36.077 --> 00:17:47.438
And so when that happens, there's a few things that you can do, either divert your attention to something else, acknowledge how nice it is outside, you know, not focus on the pain, or just remind yourself that you're safe.
00:17:48.577 --> 00:17:50.067
You know, little, like there's little things like that.
00:17:50.067 --> 00:18:03.407
And then the other one, so I do a lot of work, I'm actually, um, trained by her as well, but there's a woman named Nicole Sachs, and she worked with someone back in the day named John Sarno, and he's kind of like the godfather of this mind-body work.
00:18:03.657 --> 00:18:04.837
He's got a lot of great books.
00:18:04.857 --> 00:18:13.278
And so in her work, which comes a lot from him, a big component of is, is this like deep sort of stream of consciousness journaling.
00:18:14.038 --> 00:18:23.087
Because the theory is that your emotions kind of create this like reservoir, and when they get to a certain point, they overflow into this pain in the body.
00:18:23.097 --> 00:18:24.768
That's where like the alarm signal goes off.
00:18:25.298 --> 00:18:25.428
Mm.
00:18:25.428 --> 00:18:28.298
And so the journaling is designed to sort of just release it.
00:18:28.958 --> 00:18:31.847
And it's, it's kind of a thing where if you don't show anybody, you throw it out after you're done.
00:18:31.847 --> 00:18:33.837
It's, some of it's like really deep and intense.
00:18:33.847 --> 00:18:36.178
Some of it de- deals with inner child work and things like that.
00:18:36.178 --> 00:18:39.077
But that's, it's just about releasing some of the emotions.
00:18:39.468 --> 00:18:52.167
Now I'm not doing it consistently, but I've heard, I listen to her podcast and there's so many recovery stories of people that have every kind of weird symptom you could ever think of, and so many of them have been healed just by doing a lot of this work.
00:18:53.268 --> 00:18:54.087
Oh, interesting.
00:18:54.357 --> 00:18:54.607
Yeah.
00:18:54.607 --> 00:19:04.317
Is it like you quiet all the chatter and you get down deeper into like what you're really feeling and let it come out?
00:19:04.698 --> 00:19:06.387
Y- yes, you're kind of releasing it.
00:19:06.407 --> 00:19:12.907
'Cause sometimes, and there's been people, for example, that say,"Well, I'm not angry." Well, they might be repressing the anger, and they don't even know it.
00:19:12.907 --> 00:19:16.718
Like maybe when they were five they had a temper tantrum and someone said,"Don't act that way.
00:19:16.718 --> 00:19:22.198
It's not okay to be angry." And so they identify as someone who's a not angry person, but they're storing all of this anger.
00:19:22.198 --> 00:19:25.298
I mean, it's impossible to never have anger or frustration or things like that.
00:19:26.018 --> 00:19:30.567
So it's just about like excavating the emotions, and it could really be, it could be anything.
00:19:31.567 --> 00:19:32.298
Interesting.
00:19:33.298 --> 00:19:40.784
So you've had the chronic illness and the conditions, and now you're getting into this work that's helping, disrupt the patterns.
00:19:41.513 --> 00:19:44.723
Where are you right now with everything?
00:19:45.693 --> 00:19:48.983
It depends on the day too, because stress is still a trigger for me.
00:19:48.983 --> 00:19:51.844
And so, like, I have a full-time job, and that can be stressful.
00:19:51.864 --> 00:19:56.574
And then I beat myself up for not doing, not working hard enough at healing myself.
00:19:56.973 --> 00:19:58.284
You know, it's that kind of loop.
00:19:58.753 --> 00:20:02.243
So I'm, I'm kind of in this middle stage, but what I'm...
00:20:02.374 --> 00:20:09.673
What I've finally started to do is stop chasing a solution and be okay with wherever I'm at now.
00:20:10.094 --> 00:20:17.094
And so the way I can put this is I'm not living a chronic pain-free life, but I've started living life.
00:20:17.763 --> 00:20:21.023
Like, for example, I, last weekend I went to two concerts back to back.
00:20:21.023 --> 00:20:21.523
Same band.
00:20:21.564 --> 00:20:22.933
I liked it so much the first time, I went back.
00:20:23.134 --> 00:20:23.894
By myself.
00:20:24.564 --> 00:20:27.023
And the second night I was like I w- the first day I was in a seat.
00:20:27.054 --> 00:20:27.864
I wasn't close enough.
00:20:27.864 --> 00:20:35.084
Second day I decided I needed to be in the pit right in front of the stage, which meant I had to stand for, like, four or five hours, and I went through all the,"Oh my God, it's too many hours.
00:20:35.084 --> 00:20:35.963
How am I gonna drink water?
00:20:35.963 --> 00:20:36.634
I'm gonna pass out.
00:20:36.634 --> 00:20:38.503
Something's gonna..." And I wanted to go.
00:20:38.554 --> 00:20:38.913
So I went.
00:20:39.953 --> 00:20:49.443
And so that's, that's a new version of me, because up until very recently I would've let my fear of, of the outcome of whatever would happen hold me back.
00:20:50.114 --> 00:20:51.854
And so I'm trying to not be afraid.
00:20:51.854 --> 00:20:53.144
Like, not, I'm not gonna die, right?
00:20:53.144 --> 00:20:55.443
That's the you pick the worst-case scen- I'm not gonna die.
00:20:55.884 --> 00:20:57.683
And so, so what if I limp back to the car?
00:20:57.723 --> 00:20:59.503
I had a great time, you know?
00:20:59.503 --> 00:21:11.134
So I'm trying to sort of live in a space where I'm just accepting of wherever I am now is okay, and still believing that, you know, if I do the work, there will be a healing factor at play.
00:21:11.584 --> 00:21:14.983
But I can't, you know, just, like, stop life.
00:21:15.854 --> 00:21:16.233
Right.
00:21:16.243 --> 00:21:16.263
Yeah.
00:21:16.273 --> 00:21:20.364
So, you know, and I'm still, still, again, I still do all my things, and I, I meditate daily.
00:21:20.364 --> 00:21:31.173
Like, I do a lot of things that are beneficial for my nervous system so that I'm not in this hyper an- anxious, fight or flight state all the time,'cause that doesn't help anything, you know?
00:21:31.193 --> 00:21:32.034
And, like, little things.
00:21:32.034 --> 00:21:38.663
For example, years ago I was diagnosed with, I know, again, air quoting,"severe spinal stenosis," which is a, a back condition.
00:21:39.104 --> 00:21:41.294
And I didn't realize how bad it was until I...
00:21:41.483 --> 00:21:44.903
I was feeling like, um, it felt like I was doing a hamstring stretch when I was standing.
00:21:45.513 --> 00:21:46.324
It's the only way- Mm-hmm I can describe.
00:21:46.483 --> 00:21:47.913
So it was like a, it's a nerve thing.
00:21:47.913 --> 00:21:51.574
It's like your parts of your spine are compressed, so it's pushing on the nerves.
00:21:51.594 --> 00:21:59.463
And so I went to, I had an MRI, and then I went to a spinal surgeon, and when he came in the room, he looked at my chart, looked at me, walked back out.
00:21:59.824 --> 00:22:08.394
And then he came back in and he said,"Are you standing?" I said,"Yes." He said,"Well, the MRI that I looked at was, like, of an 85-year-old woman." But it was mine, so, and I was 35.
00:22:08.894 --> 00:22:10.723
So I had that in my head, you know?
00:22:10.723 --> 00:22:13.884
And then I had a chiropractor tell me my car with the bucket seats was no good.
00:22:13.884 --> 00:22:14.933
I needed a special backrest.
00:22:15.173 --> 00:22:21.304
So I lived for years and years with this diagnosis almost, like, playing in my mind in a visceral way.
00:22:21.304 --> 00:22:24.683
I could almost see things churning and compressing and, and...
00:22:24.683 --> 00:22:39.425
And then when I started getting into this mind-body work, I remembered that- One of the things that really s- struck me when I learned about this work is that, for example, two people can have the exact same MRI with the same deformities or abnormalities.
00:22:39.425 --> 00:22:41.145
One person has pain, the other doesn't.
00:22:41.635 --> 00:22:42.346
Exact same MRI.
00:22:43.066 --> 00:22:50.226
And so y- what you extrapolate from that is that that deformity or abnormality isn't necessarily the cause of the pain.
00:22:50.796 --> 00:22:53.476
The doctors will tell you it is,'cause that's all they know.
00:22:54.246 --> 00:23:01.615
And so that really clicked with me, and just that alone actually helped my back in a crazy way.
00:23:01.635 --> 00:23:08.425
And so now, for ex- you know, you hear that you're not supposed to bend over a certain way, and so when I would bend over, I had fear of creating more of an issue.
00:23:09.036 --> 00:23:14.415
And so now I'm aware of that, and before I go to pick something off the ground, I remind myself that I'm safe.
00:23:15.276 --> 00:23:16.986
It's that, just that little thing has changed it.
00:23:17.016 --> 00:23:23.786
Because other things, like I have The first joint that was ever a problem was my elbow, and it's, it's c- it's been really painful recently.
00:23:23.786 --> 00:23:29.145
And so before I move it, I'm aware of the second before where I anticipate it's gonna hurt me.
00:23:29.895 --> 00:23:33.266
And so I'm feeling the pain before I even move.
00:23:34.115 --> 00:23:46.145
And so I'm trying to stop doing that, stop anticipating the pain or being afraid to do things in an order, in order to, like, rewire my brain to believe that the pain is like, you know, one causes the other.
00:23:47.145 --> 00:23:47.506
Yeah.
00:23:47.506 --> 00:23:48.875
And it's super powerful.
00:23:49.486 --> 00:23:49.915
It is.
00:23:49.945 --> 00:24:02.455
And it's almost like a, a self-creating prophecy'Cause I've noticed the same thing, even working out or doing different movements that I know would cause me an issue.
00:24:02.476 --> 00:24:08.375
Now I'm like,"Okay, I can't think that or it's gonna continue to, perpetuate that."
00:24:08.846 --> 00:24:12.986
Yeah I know I'm not causing Again, this thing with my ankle and the walking, I know I'm not causing damage by walking on it.
00:24:13.395 --> 00:24:15.726
So that allows me to take the fear out of it.
00:24:15.836 --> 00:24:23.516
Because you associate, again, from, like breaking your leg or an acute condition, you associate the pain with stopping doing the thing that causes the pain.
00:24:24.165 --> 00:24:26.965
And again- Yeah that's true with a broken ankle.
00:24:27.145 --> 00:24:28.715
It's not true with chronic pain.
00:24:28.726 --> 00:24:28.746
Yeah.
00:24:29.476 --> 00:24:31.195
Because there isn't actually anything there to harm.
00:24:32.195 --> 00:24:33.165
That's so interesting.
00:24:34.266 --> 00:24:38.965
So you have a podcast that you do with a friend of yours?
00:24:39.286 --> 00:24:39.566
Yes.
00:24:39.576 --> 00:24:40.415
So I have a co-host.
00:24:40.415 --> 00:24:41.165
He's, I actually know him.
00:24:41.165 --> 00:24:48.306
He's a great friend of my sister's, and we were collaborating and deciding what to do, and both realized that we're both very into health and wellness for different reasons.
00:24:48.875 --> 00:24:57.756
And so yeah, about a year and a half ago we started conceptualizing the podcast, and we launched in, um, November.
00:24:58.746 --> 00:25:09.016
And for me, a lot of it is talking about my chronic pain journey and the mind/body work, and sort of all things health related through the lens of somebody who understands this mind/body work.
00:25:09.915 --> 00:25:16.455
Like, for example, we just had full body scans, like these full body MRIs, which, A, was horrible'cause I'm claustrophobic, but I got through it.
00:25:16.455 --> 00:25:22.665
But I, we, we recorded an episode about how we felt about doing it.
00:25:22.846 --> 00:25:31.726
And for me it was like I'm, you know, I have to be careful that if I see certain things, that I don't sort of cling to them and they become new issues that didn't actually exist.
00:25:31.776 --> 00:25:33.675
Now, obviously if there was cancer, that would be a whole other thing.
00:25:34.195 --> 00:25:42.036
But just, like, more things with my back or my neck or whatever it may be, I went into that knowing that I just had to be mindful of how I would normally interpret things.
00:25:43.036 --> 00:25:47.066
And so everything that I'm doing on my end with the podcast is sort of through that lens.
00:25:47.476 --> 00:25:50.215
But we talk a lot of general health, about general health topics.
00:25:50.215 --> 00:25:57.195
Like today we, we recorded an episode about colonoscopies, and we have a sleep doctor that came on and we're gonna release an episode about that soon.
00:25:57.195 --> 00:26:01.195
So we talk a lot of, you know, different health things, but it's also mostly from our experience.
00:26:01.836 --> 00:26:03.855
It's not just, like, general health information.
00:26:04.316 --> 00:26:04.786
It's really about- What's
00:26:04.846 --> 00:26:06.705
your co-host's background?
00:26:07.536 --> 00:26:10.685
Um, I mean, he's a male, so we have like a male and female perspective.
00:26:10.685 --> 00:26:11.756
He just has- Okay I mean, nothing...
00:26:11.806 --> 00:26:17.875
He doesn't, I mean, he has issues with his neck and he's had different health things, but it's not, not in the chronic pain realm.
00:26:17.875 --> 00:26:19.726
So we didn't connect over- Uh-huh something like that.
00:26:20.455 --> 00:26:23.625
We're just sort of- Yeah we each pick our own topics that we think are interesting.
00:26:24.496 --> 00:26:28.066
Which kinda creates a cool dynamic,'cause things that he doesn't know anything about the mind/body work.
00:26:28.066 --> 00:26:36.965
So we had a mind/body coach that came on to explain a lot of the brain science, and he learned a lot of things, and he actually had a realization about some of his pain.
00:26:37.506 --> 00:26:39.215
Not during the podcast, but after.
00:26:39.316 --> 00:26:42.215
You know, some of the information resonated with him,'cause he's always talking about,"I need another MRI.
00:26:42.215 --> 00:26:46.185
I need another MRI." I'm like,"Okay." You know, only so much I can tell him.
00:26:46.955 --> 00:26:49.566
But so that, you know, that side has been really interesting.
00:26:50.566 --> 00:26:51.455
And what's it called?
00:26:51.705 --> 00:26:52.625
The Health Hunt.
00:26:53.125 --> 00:27:08.006
Is the podcast like an exploration more to you that y- it's something that you wanted to do to help others, but also to kind of explore different modalities and different, expert opinions and that kind of thing?
00:27:08.556 --> 00:27:16.145
It's a little bit of both, but for me it's more about having a voice to talk about,'cause cr- I, I mentioned this before, like, chronic pain is very isolating.
00:27:16.155 --> 00:27:16.165
Mm.
00:27:16.715 --> 00:27:21.816
And so many people have it, they don't even, you know, they've been given diagnoses, they don't even know what to do with it.
00:27:22.296 --> 00:27:29.296
And so I just wanted to be able to share my experiences and also have people understand that they're, they're not alone, you know?
00:27:29.296 --> 00:27:34.395
I think that, just the sense of community helps, knowing that you're not suffering by yourself.
00:27:34.405 --> 00:27:38.695
Because a lot of times you don't talk to your friends and family about it because it gets old.
00:27:38.816 --> 00:27:47.046
Like, I don't walk around talking about being in p- when someone says,"How are you?" I might be horrible, but I'm gonna say,"I'm fine,"'cause- who wants to go down the rabbit hole of, like, complaining?
00:27:47.115 --> 00:27:49.425
I don't want someone to say that to me, you know.
00:27:49.425 --> 00:27:51.715
And a close friend, fine, if something happened and they need to vent.
00:27:51.756 --> 00:27:53.776
But you, you know, you sort of just live with it.
00:27:54.445 --> 00:27:54.465
Yeah.
00:27:54.665 --> 00:28:04.016
And so I really, I wanted to share all the things that I've learned, and, you know, our central sort of message is, is kind of be your own advocate and do your own research, you know?
00:28:04.016 --> 00:28:06.665
Like, I could have just taken what the doctor said,"You have arthritis.
00:28:06.665 --> 00:28:09.286
Here's the drugs you have to be on forever," but I didn't.
00:28:09.905 --> 00:28:12.615
And that applies to really anything across the board.
00:28:12.915 --> 00:28:17.955
So that's sort of a central theme that we try to really put out there,'cause I think it's important.
00:28:18.945 --> 00:28:19.435
Yeah.
00:28:19.955 --> 00:28:20.605
I would agree.
00:28:21.586 --> 00:28:31.885
I think it's interesting, too, I have a lot of friends that, don't really have any of the issues that I have, and I'm like my,"I'm the only one here", you know?
00:28:32.246 --> 00:28:44.346
It's So it is nice to have the platform to, like, speak about it and, and just let other people know,"Yeah, you're not alone." Like, there's, there's so many of us.
00:28:44.506 --> 00:28:45.875
It's- There's so many insane.
00:28:46.195 --> 00:28:46.695
Yeah.
00:28:46.736 --> 00:28:46.976
Yeah.
00:28:47.215 --> 00:28:52.976
And I think a lot of people h- don't, like, they have something chronic and they don't identify it necessarily.
00:28:52.986 --> 00:28:54.476
They live with it, right?
00:28:54.476 --> 00:28:54.506
Yeah.
00:28:54.506 --> 00:28:57.875
Especially as you get older, you have this mentality like,"Well, I'm just getting older.
00:28:57.875 --> 00:29:01.915
I have to live with these aches and pains." But that's not true, you know?
00:29:01.915 --> 00:29:09.425
And so I think you, there might be people in your, in your circle that actually are suffering from certain things, and maybe they'll hear the podcast, and you might learn more information.
00:29:09.425 --> 00:29:15.925
Like the very first episode that we d- I think we released three at a time, so the third episode is my story, and it's a lot of what we talked about today.
00:29:15.925 --> 00:29:16.816
I go a little bit deeper.
00:29:16.816 --> 00:29:29.665
But I had people that I haven't heard from in 10 or 15 years reach out and say,"You know, I've been going through these sorts of struggles, and I appreciate you talking about it, and I feel less alone, and there's more here that I want to explore," and I just would've had no idea.
00:29:30.605 --> 00:29:32.645
So that really makes it kind of worth it, you know?
00:29:32.645 --> 00:29:36.806
Like, when you hear that you've actually connected with someone, you know, it's worth getting on
00:29:38.036 --> 00:29:38.165
the mic.
00:29:38.165 --> 00:29:38.506
Yeah.
00:29:38.566 --> 00:29:39.256
Definitely.
00:29:40.306 --> 00:29:43.453
I'm sure you're having that experience,'cause I mean, I've listened to some of your episodes and it's- Great.
00:29:43.453 --> 00:29:49.173
There's just, I, I, I connect with so much of, with what your guests are saying because there's just so much commonality.
00:29:49.203 --> 00:29:56.344
And I think women are probably more susceptible to, so I think the, the prevalence of autoimmune conditions and other chronic illnesses is much higher.
00:29:56.344 --> 00:30:00.354
I don't know what the stats are, but much higher in women, and it's because we take on so much.
00:30:00.773 --> 00:30:06.003
We people please, we don't ask for help, kinda just try and do it all until something stops us.
00:30:07.263 --> 00:30:07.733
Yeah.
00:30:08.193 --> 00:30:09.953
Yeah,'cause we're the caretaker, right?
00:30:09.963 --> 00:30:09.983
Yeah.
00:30:09.993 --> 00:30:12.273
So we only stop when we're in bed.
00:30:12.854 --> 00:30:13.144
Yeah.
00:30:13.544 --> 00:30:14.403
That's exactly it.
00:30:15.403 --> 00:30:16.304
Pretty much.
00:30:17.304 --> 00:30:23.443
Is there any other things that you wanna share, any takeaways that you have for the listeners?
00:30:24.253 --> 00:30:40.784
No, I just think, again, like if, if anyone's interested in it, this, you know, if you have chronic conditions, if you're interested in this kind of mind-body work that I'm talking about, and I really, really only touched the surface of it, but episodes 21 to 23 of the podcast are where we brought on, um, a, a mind-body coach.
00:30:41.233 --> 00:30:48.084
And so in one episode she goes through the neuroscience,'cause that's, that's very interesting to learn and that helps you shift your thought process.
00:30:48.084 --> 00:30:55.493
And a lot of that, of that is related to what I said where if you may be diagnosed with a back condition, but it doesn't mean that's what's causing your pain.
00:30:55.854 --> 00:30:57.114
And so that's sort of the realization.
00:30:57.144 --> 00:30:58.743
And then we talked a little bit about her story.
00:30:58.743 --> 00:31:00.814
She had chronic pain and she's recovered from it.
00:31:01.074 --> 00:31:04.564
Talked a little bit about coaching, so I have some resources there.
00:31:04.663 --> 00:31:12.503
Um, that's probably a good starting point, but just again, like you don't have to take what someone says as the gospel, right?
00:31:12.534 --> 00:31:21.943
Like take in information if you go to a doctor, take in information, but start doing your own research, and it's so much easier now that we have the internet and there's just so much information out there.
00:31:22.663 --> 00:31:26.384
You know, and look for people that are going through the same thing.
00:31:26.413 --> 00:31:33.804
And not in a way to have like a sick pity party for yourself,'cause that's also not healthy, but to just find community.
00:31:34.134 --> 00:31:36.213
'Cause I think community really, really helps.
00:31:37.604 --> 00:31:38.453
Yeah, I would agree.
00:31:39.453 --> 00:31:47.213
I was so used to being, the 30-year-old in the room full of, people from 65 to 80 in the doctor's office.
00:31:47.213 --> 00:31:49.983
I'm like,"Oh my God, this is terrible."
00:31:50.153 --> 00:31:50.594
Yeah.
00:31:50.624 --> 00:31:51.223
No, I know.
00:31:51.223 --> 00:31:53.463
And, you had fibromyalgia at some point, too,
00:31:53.864 --> 00:31:54.634
or- Yeah.
00:31:55.304 --> 00:31:55.604
Yeah.
00:31:55.604 --> 00:32:02.163
So I felt, I had, I mean, I don't know if that's a, if, like if it was diagnosed or not, but it's, like, I had all the muscle pains.
00:32:02.163 --> 00:32:02.574
I can't...
00:32:02.794 --> 00:32:07.804
I still don't put shirts on over my head'cause I'm afraid I can't get out,'cause I have this thing where I don't think my shoulders work.
00:32:07.973 --> 00:32:14.763
And they're, they're fine, but I literally- Like, all kinds of weird things have come out of the limitations that I had 30-something years ago.
00:32:15.394 --> 00:32:16.794
You know- Yeah it's like you don't even realize it.
00:32:16.794 --> 00:32:18.114
But yeah, that, I, same thing.
00:32:18.114 --> 00:32:25.094
When I would go to the rheumatologist's office, there was a lot of elderly people, but also a lot of people that were younger, which was also disturbing to me.
00:32:25.314 --> 00:32:28.074
And again, they all looked like they were ready to, like they wanted to die.
00:32:28.084 --> 00:32:28.104
Yeah.
00:32:29.153 --> 00:32:31.564
And so I just hated going there even for that reason.
00:32:32.374 --> 00:32:36.634
Oh, I didn't even mention, so I had a hip replacement when I was 20, which is- Oh,
00:32:36.634 --> 00:32:37.084
wow
00:32:37.104 --> 00:32:38.844
probably a result of...
00:32:38.844 --> 00:32:41.483
Well, I had a knee replacement, too, but that's mostly from a car accident.
00:32:41.874 --> 00:32:44.074
But, so I, I was, like, bionic at 23.
00:32:44.614 --> 00:32:51.933
But the hip replacement was because of these cortisone and radiation injections, because it completely deteriorated the joint.
00:32:52.243 --> 00:33:01.794
And so when I was in university, I was supposed to be going to Florida to visit my grandparents, where I actually live now, and I wanted to get a cortisone injection'cause I knew that would give me a, a week of relief.
00:33:01.814 --> 00:33:05.784
And I went to a new doctor and he took some x-rays and he called me at 9:00 at night at home.
00:33:06.624 --> 00:33:08.463
And he said,"There's nothing for me to inject.
00:33:08.473 --> 00:33:15.523
There's no lining between your joint and your hip, and we don't usually do a hip replacement on someone who's 20, but what are we gonna do?
00:33:15.534 --> 00:33:16.614
Wait 60 years?
00:33:16.784 --> 00:33:19.284
Are you in?" So I had my hip replaced.
00:33:20.683 --> 00:33:20.903
Yeah.
00:33:22.163 --> 00:33:35.794
But it was actually- Yeah I mean, the result was pretty good, but now I wonder if maybe there was, you know, like, knowing what I know now if it would've been different, but I probably wouldn't change it at the time because, you know, when you have pain like that, and it was excruciating pain.
00:33:35.794 --> 00:33:40.493
I mean, I lived in, on painkillers part of my university'cause I was, I couldn't even get up the stairs.
00:33:40.534 --> 00:33:44.624
But, you know, when you're in that kind of pain, you'll kinda do anything that somebody says is gonna relieve it.
00:33:45.463 --> 00:33:46.034
Yeah.
00:33:46.124 --> 00:33:46.493
I know.
00:33:46.493 --> 00:34:05.364
I went through a lot of that, and looking back, I was talking to somebody about the manipulation under anesthesia that I had with Botox injections, and I'm looking back, I'm thinking,"I don't know how I thought that was gonna be a good idea." They put me under and, massaged all my muscles in my legs and my abdomen.
00:34:05.443 --> 00:34:15.074
I was, black and blue, and then they put Botox into my muscles so they would stop seizing up, and I'm like, yeah, I don't know.
00:34:15.074 --> 00:34:17.623
I mean, that doesn't even sound like a good idea.
00:34:17.634 --> 00:34:20.434
But at the time, I was just like,"I'm in so much pain.
00:34:20.434 --> 00:34:21.074
I don't know.
00:34:21.074 --> 00:34:23.983
Just do whatever is available," you know?
00:34:24.003 --> 00:34:35.193
So it's almost like you can self-abandon yourself just because you just don't know what else to do, and it might help for a little while, but then you just are back at square one.
00:34:35.474 --> 00:34:35.804
Yeah.
00:34:36.074 --> 00:34:38.664
Well, I, so I heard in one of your podcasts, I think it was with Shelly.
00:34:38.764 --> 00:34:40.043
Was that one of your- Mm-hmm recent guests?
00:34:40.043 --> 00:34:40.373
Yeah.
00:34:40.384 --> 00:34:53.793
So sh- you were both talking about things that sounded interesting because you talked about you would address one thing in one way, and then later another thing would happen, and then another thing would happen, and that's actually a red flag for this neuroplastic pain.
00:34:53.853 --> 00:34:57.873
Because what happens is, so you in theory fix something, but you didn't actually solve the problem.
00:34:57.923 --> 00:35:05.684
It's like if an alarm's going off and you spray water at the alarm, the alarm might go off'cause you broke it, but you didn't fix the fire.
00:35:06.574 --> 00:35:18.164
And so it's kind of like whatever is persisting that's causing your mind and body to collude and create this, this alarm signal has not been resolved, and so that's why you see a lot of times, like, symptom to symptom to symptom.
00:35:18.164 --> 00:35:19.023
Then you keep thinking,"Oh, my God.
00:35:19.043 --> 00:35:25.184
All these things are happening to me." And then you catastrophize that your entire body is shutting down and whatever that means.
00:35:25.224 --> 00:35:29.623
So it's actually, it's a really interesting concept when you start to look at it where things move around.
00:35:30.313 --> 00:35:30.634
Yeah.
00:35:30.634 --> 00:35:31.574
And that's, that's kind of how...
00:35:31.603 --> 00:35:35.014
That, that was what happened to my podcast partner after we had done this series of episodes.
00:35:35.153 --> 00:35:38.833
He, I think, did he go from back pain to, to neck pain to back pain.
00:35:39.664 --> 00:35:42.653
And he was like,"Well, that's weird'cause I didn't do anything different." Yeah.
00:35:42.653 --> 00:35:43.623
But the pain shifted.
00:35:44.233 --> 00:35:49.474
And so that's when he started to kinda have some aha moments about some of the neuroscience that we were talking about.
00:35:50.474 --> 00:35:51.273
It's very interesting.
00:35:52.594 --> 00:36:11.923
When you see things like that happening, is it just kind of a red flag then to say,"Okay, I need to be more mindful of what I'm thinking and, what programs, what loops my mind is going in and what I'm telling myself, or what I'm being anxious about?" Or do you know how that kind of works?
00:36:11.923 --> 00:36:12.253
A- absolutely.
00:36:12.253 --> 00:36:16.534
I mean, it's literally a time to pause and think about what's going on in your life.
00:36:16.934 --> 00:36:19.043
And it may not even be something that's happening now.
00:36:19.043 --> 00:36:21.213
It could be something that's repressed from when you were a child.
00:36:21.224 --> 00:36:21.253
Mm-hmm.
00:36:22.014 --> 00:36:22.264
Right?
00:36:22.264 --> 00:36:29.344
There's, it's not like there's a quick fix that you can just find the solution and work on it, but it, it is a signal to look into it.
00:36:30.184 --> 00:36:31.804
And again- Okay there's different ways to do that.
00:36:32.014 --> 00:36:38.454
That's, that's a whole other podcast, but it's just- It's just, when, again, there's so many great books out there.
00:36:38.454 --> 00:36:44.173
I know you had talked about one that you read, and I think that some of the concepts in there are probably along these lines a little bit.
00:36:44.653 --> 00:36:46.134
And it was You Are Not Your Pain.
00:36:46.353 --> 00:36:46.543
Is that-
00:36:46.554 --> 00:36:47.003
Yeah.
00:36:47.164 --> 00:36:47.463
Mm-hmm.
00:36:47.474 --> 00:36:47.903
Yeah.
00:36:47.923 --> 00:36:52.884
So that's a way of, like, sep- because again, I, the rheumatoid arthritis, it sounds great that I got a diagnosis.
00:36:52.884 --> 00:36:56.514
People who go 20 years without getting a proper diagnosis may be grateful for that.
00:36:56.793 --> 00:36:57.934
But then it became my identity.
00:36:57.974 --> 00:36:59.233
I tell people I have arthritis.
00:36:59.233 --> 00:37:00.333
I call it my arthritis.
00:37:00.333 --> 00:37:03.603
That's, I'm trying to change the language of that,'cause I don't want it.
00:37:03.623 --> 00:37:04.673
I don't want it to be mine.
00:37:05.293 --> 00:37:10.554
So I'm trying- Right I'm trying to de-identify as that's my story.
00:37:11.414 --> 00:37:23.353
So now I, you know, I'll say I, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, or I have some joint pain, but I'm trying to disassociate from it being an identity that I carried around for a long time,'cause that perpetuates it.
00:37:24.353 --> 00:37:24.733
Yeah.
00:37:25.733 --> 00:37:28.173
You still have like flare-ups and stuff now.
00:37:28.193 --> 00:37:38.623
Is there anything that you feel like was a turning point for you as well as to try to shift from being in chronic pain so much?
00:37:39.253 --> 00:37:41.983
So it's not that I'm having flare-ups per se.
00:37:41.983 --> 00:37:44.744
I've had flare-ups where it's like you wake up and you physically can't move.
00:37:44.753 --> 00:37:44.784
Okay.
00:37:44.833 --> 00:37:46.434
I don't have that anymore.
00:37:46.704 --> 00:37:49.454
I have various degrees of the same pains.
00:37:49.454 --> 00:37:54.043
I have, again, my, my, my knees and, and there is some degeneration there.
00:37:54.043 --> 00:38:01.724
So that's the other component that gets messy for me with the mind body work, is that I- it's hard for me to get past that there's probably joint damage.
00:38:02.614 --> 00:38:05.684
Which again, may or may not be causing the pain, but it's different.
00:38:05.684 --> 00:38:10.463
Like with my back, I had a very bad event with my back, and at first I was like,"Oh my God, it's my back.
00:38:10.483 --> 00:38:16.463
It's the s- stupid stenosis thing," and then I realized that it was, it was, I was in the beginning stages of a very difficult breakup.
00:38:17.213 --> 00:38:17.653
Mm.
00:38:17.704 --> 00:38:18.514
And so when I...
00:38:18.603 --> 00:38:27.684
It took me a few days, I wallowed in this pain, and then I was listening to one of these books and I had this realization, like it's, it's actually the trauma from what's going on in this breakup.
00:38:28.213 --> 00:38:35.994
And it got almost, not 100% better, but it got significantly better, and that's when I started going back down this rabbit hole of all of the mind body work.
00:38:36.003 --> 00:38:37.583
I sort of like started following the breadcrumbs.
00:38:38.353 --> 00:38:40.764
And so with the back, I'm able to mostly control it.
00:38:40.773 --> 00:38:46.523
I'm still struggling a little bit with the joints, again,'cause I think my brain hasn't fully accepted that it's not the joint damage.
00:38:46.954 --> 00:38:53.793
And, and it's f- 30 plus years of like, we, we talk about the brain being like plastic.
00:38:53.804 --> 00:38:54.983
It's learned these things.
00:38:54.994 --> 00:38:57.353
It's learned that if I move my elbow, it's going to hurt.
00:38:57.364 --> 00:38:57.373
Mm.
00:38:58.213 --> 00:39:03.643
And so a lot of this is, again, what I said, rewiring my brain to understand that it doesn't have to be that way.
00:39:04.364 --> 00:39:08.893
Which again, is a, maybe a difficult thing to unwind, but that's kind of where I'm, that's what I'm working on.
00:39:08.974 --> 00:39:09.463
Yeah.
00:39:09.574 --> 00:39:10.724
Yeah, it takes time.
00:39:10.974 --> 00:39:11.204
Yeah.
00:39:12.204 --> 00:39:14.074
So, and again, just living my life, right?
00:39:14.074 --> 00:39:23.514
Like yes, I have pain, but I, I'm doing things, which is a, a shift, and I think that that takes you a little bit out of the fear cycle of a chronic condition.
00:39:24.724 --> 00:39:39.844
Yeah, I would agree,'cause then I'm, I do the same thing, and it's more of like, well, I'm just gonna go do whatever it is I wanna do and enjoy myself, and then if I decide that I don't wanna be there or something is happening, then I can leave.
00:39:39.844 --> 00:39:42.063
It doesn't have to be so much pressure.
00:39:42.063 --> 00:39:48.434
I think that amount of pressure and, trying to control everything and adds more stress.
00:39:48.623 --> 00:39:49.103
Yeah.
00:39:49.114 --> 00:39:52.554
And I'm someone, like even back in high school, I always liked to have my own car.
00:39:52.583 --> 00:39:53.724
I like an exit strategy.
00:39:53.824 --> 00:39:59.653
That, that just even, I don't necessarily need it, but emotionally, that helps me feel like if I don't feel well, I can leave.
00:40:00.414 --> 00:40:02.393
And trying to kind of get out of the people pleasing.
00:40:02.853 --> 00:40:03.153
You know?
00:40:03.153 --> 00:40:06.784
Like, if you maybe just really don't feel good on a certain day, it's okay.
00:40:07.474 --> 00:40:09.423
Or if you wanna go home early, it's okay.
00:40:09.693 --> 00:40:09.903
Right?
00:40:09.903 --> 00:40:14.954
'Cause we can also carry a lot of guilt and shame about ruining somebody else's plans.
00:40:14.963 --> 00:40:14.983
Yeah.
00:40:15.673 --> 00:40:16.744
But that makes it worse.
00:40:17.034 --> 00:40:20.704
So kinda just, you know, again, it's And, and these things don't come naturally.
00:40:20.704 --> 00:40:22.673
I have to remind myself all of the time.
00:40:22.753 --> 00:40:28.844
Even when I went to these concerts, I was thinking about all the things and worrying about it, and I just like,"I wanna go." So I b- I bought a ticket.
00:40:28.844 --> 00:40:34.954
Normally, I wouldn't buy a ticket until the last minute fearing that I wasn't gonna feel good, and then I would talk myself out of going.
00:40:35.574 --> 00:40:38.313
So my new thing is to just, I see it, I wanna go, I buy the ticket.
00:40:39.563 --> 00:40:41.074
You know, and then I work it out later.
00:40:41.844 --> 00:40:42.344
Yeah.
00:40:43.344 --> 00:40:45.103
Yeah, it sounds like a lot more freedom
00:40:45.753 --> 00:40:46.634
It is, yeah
00:40:46.634 --> 00:40:47.063
Yeah
00:40:47.503 --> 00:40:54.014
Cause I spent so much time hermiting in my house being afraid to do things,'cause I was worried about how I feel.
00:40:55.193 --> 00:40:55.664
Yeah.
00:40:56.693 --> 00:40:57.414
And I get it.
00:40:57.414 --> 00:41:02.744
It's definitely It's not a, a fear of something that doesn't happen either, right?
00:41:02.744 --> 00:41:07.273
It's not like a, a fear that you're having that you don't experience.
00:41:07.304 --> 00:41:08.193
You know what I'm saying?
00:41:08.204 --> 00:41:09.364
Like, some kind of phobia.
00:41:09.373 --> 00:41:13.534
Yeah When you deal with pain all the time, it's for sure real.
00:41:14.074 --> 00:41:16.233
Yeah, and you have to moderate yourself, you know?
00:41:16.244 --> 00:41:21.623
I, I struggle with finding the right balance between giving myself rest and pushing myself to do things.
00:41:21.653 --> 00:41:24.074
'Cause a lot of times when I make plans I'm like,"Ah, I don't feel like going.
00:41:24.074 --> 00:41:24.634
I'm too tired.
00:41:24.634 --> 00:41:27.684
Something hurts." And then I go and I don't wanna go home'cause I'm having so much fun.
00:41:28.594 --> 00:41:41.143
But other times I do need to rest, so I have to manage pushing myself, but I don't always trust that I can distinguish between when it's kind of the illness, like f- when I really should rest, or if I'm kind of taking it too far.
00:41:42.094 --> 00:41:44.333
You know, that's something I'm still trying to kind of balance.
00:41:45.634 --> 00:41:46.264
Yeah.
00:41:47.393 --> 00:41:49.474
I'm learning to balance a lot these days.
00:41:50.474 --> 00:41:50.974
It's tough.
00:41:50.974 --> 00:41:51.474
Right?
00:41:51.554 --> 00:41:51.793
It's tough.
00:41:51.793 --> 00:41:53.844
Yeah We wanna do, we wanna do all the things.
00:41:55.164 --> 00:41:55.753
Yeah.
00:41:56.353 --> 00:42:08.393
Yeah, and Being a woman and trying to hold all, you know, hold everything together and do everything that you feel like you need to do to have accomplished, to-
00:42:08.744 --> 00:42:08.994
Yeah
00:42:09.233 --> 00:42:19.324
Not so much people please, but, you know, I mean, we wanna show everybody that we're here to help and we're here to contribute and all that stuff, but it just It's a role, right?
00:42:19.333 --> 00:42:19.693
It's-
00:42:19.713 --> 00:42:19.983
Yeah
00:42:19.983 --> 00:42:28.693
So I'm trying to learn a lot more now, Where am I doing things out of obligation versus, you know, like...
00:42:29.804 --> 00:42:30.603
I, I don't know.
00:42:30.614 --> 00:42:36.853
I- it's like a fear that, that people aren't gonna think that I'm doing enough.
00:42:36.893 --> 00:42:37.833
You know what I'm saying?
00:42:37.833 --> 00:42:38.043
Yeah.
00:42:38.043 --> 00:42:46.494
Like, oh, well if I don't show it in this way, then people are gonna think I don't give a shit or I don't wanna contribute or something.
00:42:46.844 --> 00:42:48.893
So it's interesting.
00:42:48.893 --> 00:42:49.059
But
00:42:49.059 --> 00:42:56.054
you, you know that you can do all the things, and if somebody's not in the space to receive it, they're still going to receive it as not enough.
00:42:56.804 --> 00:42:57.244
Yeah.
00:42:57.253 --> 00:42:58.373
So that's, that's the thing.
00:42:58.373 --> 00:43:07.583
I mean, you could burn yourself into the ground, but if somebody doesn't see it or they're, they're having their own issues and it doesn't, it's not apparent to them, it doesn't matter.
00:43:08.324 --> 00:43:08.463
Yeah.
00:43:08.463 --> 00:43:09.083
And I think that that's...
00:43:09.103 --> 00:43:13.943
I mean, that's a hard thing to wrap your head around, but I think, you, you,'cause you can't control someone else's reaction to something.
00:43:14.023 --> 00:43:19.284
You may do something that's like the nicest thing that you would love, because we do things that we often think like we would enjoy.
00:43:19.884 --> 00:43:20.173
Mm-hmm.
00:43:20.173 --> 00:43:27.884
So I, I s- my analogy is like, okay, I'm a vegetarian so I- if somebody cooked me the most amazing steak, I wouldn't be excited, right?
00:43:27.884 --> 00:43:29.583
They might spend all this money.
00:43:30.063 --> 00:43:30.844
Like, you know?
00:43:30.844 --> 00:43:33.634
But first of all, I'd be mad that they didn't know that I didn't eat steak.
00:43:33.653 --> 00:43:39.063
But like in theory, you know, somebody might not have the reaction that you expect, even if you gave them the world.
00:43:39.914 --> 00:43:44.643
So it's, you know, you have to, again, manage how you moderate all of that.
00:43:45.173 --> 00:43:45.753
Yeah.
00:43:46.123 --> 00:43:55.764
It's true also that, you can do as much as you want, but if somebody already has you pigeonholed as a certain way, they're not gonna see what you're offering either, you know?
00:43:55.764 --> 00:43:55.923
No,
00:43:55.923 --> 00:43:56.523
exactly.
00:43:56.534 --> 00:43:57.523
So yeah.
00:43:58.114 --> 00:43:58.554
Yeah.
00:43:58.804 --> 00:44:10.353
I always find it's, uh, sometimes even easier to interact with new people because they're only getting to see the version of me at that time, not the version they knew from 30 years ago that they still remember, and that's at the lens through which they see me.
00:44:11.224 --> 00:44:11.764
Yeah.
00:44:11.994 --> 00:44:17.333
So I think that's why it's important to grow and kind of have new people in your world,'cause you get to be more authentically you each time.
00:44:18.414 --> 00:44:18.864
Yeah.
00:44:19.123 --> 00:44:27.244
Yeah,'cause people have those impressions and then instead of really seeing you, they see their impression of you, you know- Yeah no matter how you show up, so.
00:44:27.273 --> 00:44:27.773
Exactly.
00:44:27.784 --> 00:44:27.804
Yeah.
00:44:27.813 --> 00:44:32.574
Which also is partly based on their own impressions of themselves, but that's a- Yeah whole other topic.
00:44:33.574 --> 00:44:36.164
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
00:44:36.514 --> 00:44:37.173
It was my pleasure.
00:44:37.173 --> 00:44:37.614
It's fun.
00:44:37.623 --> 00:44:39.173
And I love, I mean, I love what you're doing.
00:44:39.173 --> 00:44:40.804
I love the, the name of the show.
00:44:40.804 --> 00:44:44.744
I think it's great because that's, again, you're rewriting your story.
00:44:44.974 --> 00:44:46.443
It's not, you're not your illness.
00:44:47.603 --> 00:44:47.934
Yeah.
00:44:47.934 --> 00:44:47.943
Absolutely.
00:44:47.943 --> 00:44:51.233
So I, I really, I love what you're doing and I'm excited to hear more episodes.
00:44:51.914 --> 00:44:53.233
Well, thank you so much.
00:44:53.313 --> 00:44:54.753
I'm, I'm working on it.
00:44:55.833 --> 00:44:56.123
I know.
00:44:56.123 --> 00:44:57.324
Well, that's a whole other thing, right?
00:44:57.373 --> 00:45:07.288
Like, for a perfectionist like me, having a podcast is great, but also it's extra work, and I have to moderate- Not getting overwhelmed,'cause that will lead to other problems.
00:45:07.867 --> 00:45:08.077
So.
00:45:08.077 --> 00:45:08.728
Yeah.
00:45:09.027 --> 00:45:16.527
Between the, the recordings and the editing and- Yeah trying to, to keep up with the IT, and I know you work full time as well.
00:45:16.527 --> 00:45:16.757
Yeah.
00:45:16.757 --> 00:45:25.777
You know, so it's like just trying to keep it fun and more of a passion project, and I don't want any- Yeah anything, uh, to be a chore.
00:45:25.938 --> 00:45:27.458
I'm working on that, too.
00:45:27.478 --> 00:45:28.427
You know, making...
00:45:29.297 --> 00:45:37.327
Changing my viewpoint of, of why I do the things I'm doing, is because I want to, not because I have to.
00:45:37.338 --> 00:45:37.358
Um.
00:45:38.728 --> 00:45:39.108
That's good.
00:45:39.137 --> 00:45:40.018
That's very powerful.
00:45:40.498 --> 00:45:41.047
Yeah.
00:45:42.047 --> 00:45:44.967
Trying to see the blessings in all of the things that I've chose.
00:45:44.967 --> 00:46:09.947
It's funny'cause I was talking to somebody The other day, one of my friends sent me a meme that was something about I got married and I had this dream of having this husband and this life and, and the job and everything, and it's like all these things we chose, but then once we get them, we're like,"Oh, but I don't like this," or,"I don't like that." So it's like that attitude of coming from"I chose this.
00:46:09.978 --> 00:46:15.918
This, this was my dream at some point," and now I have it, and now, why am I like,'Oh, I don't wanna be here.
00:46:15.918 --> 00:46:16.898
I don't wanna do this,'" yeah,'cause...
00:46:16.898 --> 00:46:18.088
nothing is ever what it seems.
00:46:18.088 --> 00:46:20.507
And also, we don't even always know why we want something.
00:46:20.688 --> 00:46:22.188
You know, like there's conditioning from when you're little.
00:46:22.188 --> 00:46:26.248
You're told to, you, you know, you get a- you, you grow up, you find somebody, you get married.
00:46:26.248 --> 00:46:28.898
Like, that's just part of how we expect life to go.
00:46:29.487 --> 00:46:36.947
And then you have that and you're like,"I don't know." I, I'm a forensic accountant and I'm doing mostly family law right now, so all I I do a lot of divorce work.
00:46:37.748 --> 00:46:38.108
So.
00:46:38.217 --> 00:46:38.588
Mm.
00:46:38.978 --> 00:46:42.347
So I'm seeing a lot of people's, you know, the, regretting the choices they made.
00:46:43.347 --> 00:46:47.878
And then they have all this stuff, and they're fighting over it, and some of them don't even have this much stuff and they're fighting over it.
00:46:47.887 --> 00:46:48.737
They don't know why.
00:46:48.748 --> 00:46:54.628
They're just mad at somebody else, and it's kind of like the cycle of life unless you pull yourself out of it.
00:46:55.398 --> 00:46:56.047
Yeah.
00:46:56.177 --> 00:46:56.588
Yeah.
00:46:56.677 --> 00:46:57.858
And live deliberately
00:46:57.918 --> 00:46:58.027
yeah.
00:46:59.217 --> 00:46:59.717
Absolutely.
00:47:00.717 --> 00:47:01.068
Oh.
00:47:01.887 --> 00:47:05.998
Well, thank you, and I will look forward to hearing more of your podcasts.
00:47:06.407 --> 00:47:06.978
Thank you.
00:47:07.007 --> 00:47:08.027
It was great talking to
00:47:08.438 --> 00:47:14.228
if you know of someone that would be the perfect guest or would like a certain topic explored, please reach out to me.
00:47:14.547 --> 00:47:19.340
My contact information is in the show notes Thank you for listening.
00:47:19.530 --> 00:47:26.320
If you've enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend.
00:47:26.391 --> 00:47:30.061
Until next time, you get to choose who writes your story.
00:47:30.291 --> 00:47:32.052
Let's make it amazing
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.299
What I've finally started to do is stop chasing a solution and be okay with wherever I'm at now.
00:00:07.719 --> 00:00:14.720
And so the way I can put this is I'm not living a chronic pain-free life, but I've started living life.
00:00:18.204 --> 00:00:21.533
What if what you thought was true is a lie?
00:00:22.164 --> 00:00:26.153
What if the thing that is wrong with you is actually right?
00:00:26.783 --> 00:00:36.893
Hi there, and welcome to rewriting the Illness Story, a space where we see ourselves and our journeys through a new lens and decide our own truth.
00:00:41.734 --> 00:00:45.014
Hi, and welcome back to Rewriting the Illness Story.
00:00:45.673 --> 00:00:47.613
I'm your host, Paula Hescock.
00:00:48.194 --> 00:00:57.463
Today we have Sandy Magder coming to join us and tell us about her journey with, chronic pain and chronic illness.
00:00:58.143 --> 00:01:00.463
Thank you so much for coming on today, Sandy.
00:01:00.634 --> 00:01:01.603
Thank you for having me.
00:01:01.613 --> 00:01:02.753
I'm really excited to be here.
00:01:03.753 --> 00:01:05.313
So how did your journey start?
00:01:05.313 --> 00:01:07.614
I know you said it started,, in early childhood.
00:01:07.644 --> 00:01:09.683
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
00:01:10.134 --> 00:01:10.483
Yeah.
00:01:10.483 --> 00:01:18.073
So the chronic pain wasn't so much in early childhood, but just for context, I have very early childhood memories, like probably going back to being a year and a half old.
00:01:18.614 --> 00:01:18.784
Oh, wow.
00:01:18.793 --> 00:01:27.554
So y- so I- as I've kind of gone down my journey, I've understood what maybe some of the symptoms were going back early, so I'll just mention them for context later.
00:01:27.554 --> 00:01:34.823
So when I was very young, I had chronic ear conditions, and in one instance, I remember my f- I w- I hated certain types of food.
00:01:34.823 --> 00:01:41.504
My family tried to force me to eat steak, and I was I sat there for five hours, and I was so traumatized, I got an earache that night.
00:01:42.263 --> 00:01:51.183
And I re- I distinctly remember this, so I wanted to kind of point to it,'cause again, I'll explain a little bit more why later, but that's just, like, an instance of something that I remember.
00:01:51.224 --> 00:01:56.763
And I, I always had, you know, I was sort of very susceptible to every flu, cold going around.
00:01:56.763 --> 00:01:58.853
If somebody gave it to me, I would get it worse.
00:01:59.313 --> 00:02:02.334
I got the chicken pox, the measles even after being vaccinated.
00:02:02.703 --> 00:02:09.783
When I was 12, I developed a very severe flu where I was having fever so high I was hallucinating.
00:02:10.373 --> 00:02:16.454
Now, that corresponds to a grade seven trip to, like, an outdoorsy place in the middle of winter that I didn't wanna go to.
00:02:17.044 --> 00:02:24.193
So again, this is a little bit of context for things I'll talk about later, but like, long story short, I didn't go on that trip because I was so sick.
00:02:24.204 --> 00:02:24.213
Mm.
00:02:24.713 --> 00:02:32.864
And after that, I had a series of couple of, like, horseback riding accidents that I fell off a horse, and things sort of started to progress from there.
00:02:33.723 --> 00:02:47.764
When I was probably 12, 13, after that flu, I had developed something that the doctors really never were able to mark, but my white blood cell counts were off, and so they had called it chronic fatigue of some sort, but it didn't really mark out to, like, Epstein-Barr.
00:02:48.144 --> 00:02:54.473
But so I was sick for probably about nine months where I was weak, I lost a lot of weight, I was nauseous.
00:02:54.933 --> 00:03:00.563
That led to me having a fear of leaving the house because I developed this fear of throwing up in public, even though it never happened.
00:03:00.604 --> 00:03:07.243
This was like, I went through all of these transitions and, you know, I eventually kind of recovered from that.
00:03:07.304 --> 00:03:13.503
And then when I was 18, I woke up one morning and I was almost paralyzed with pain.
00:03:13.794 --> 00:03:20.644
And so long story short with that one too, w- I was diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis at 18.
00:03:20.894 --> 00:03:21.653
At 18?
00:03:21.764 --> 00:03:21.984
Yeah.
00:03:22.014 --> 00:03:22.383
Wow.
00:03:22.824 --> 00:03:31.734
And that was a, you know, that was a huge shock, obviously, and I was given all kinds of medications and crazy things, and I was also a dancer and I wanted to be able to continue dancing.
00:03:32.213 --> 00:03:34.903
And so one of the joints that was very affected was my hip joint.
00:03:35.044 --> 00:03:42.473
And so the doctors, again, this was back in the'90s before the internet, so, you know, you kind of listened to doctors.
00:03:42.473 --> 00:03:45.713
There wasn't a lot of opportunity to look things up'cause there was no internet.
00:03:46.431 --> 00:03:50.111
And so the doctors had recommended that I get this series of treatments.
00:03:50.532 --> 00:03:52.262
It was radiation and cortisone.
00:03:52.502 --> 00:03:57.012
And I would go to a hospital, and they would take this giant needle, and they'd put it directly into my hip joint.
00:03:57.391 --> 00:04:00.872
And then they would tell me that I couldn't really move for three days'cause they didn't want the radiation to move around.
00:04:01.822 --> 00:04:02.891
And I was like,"Okay, cool.
00:04:03.141 --> 00:04:07.231
Sign me up." So I'd walk around on crutches- Wow trying to be careful not to move.
00:04:08.062 --> 00:04:13.951
You know, these are just sort of things that, a- again, you, back then, you kind of accept what the doctors tell you.
00:04:14.662 --> 00:04:18.192
And so that sort of, you know, the, I still deal with chronic...
00:04:18.192 --> 00:04:24.961
Like, again, we're fast-forwarding, but I still deal with chronic pain related to joint issues.
00:04:25.961 --> 00:04:27.151
Were you very active?
00:04:27.182 --> 00:04:27.581
Like-
00:04:28.732 --> 00:04:29.351
Yeah.
00:04:29.401 --> 00:04:30.732
I wasn't a strong kid.
00:04:30.732 --> 00:04:36.701
I was, uh, I was tiny, but I played baseball, I was figure skating, I was horseback riding, I was dancing.
00:04:37.211 --> 00:04:40.151
Yeah, I was a, I was a pretty active child, so that was...
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I think I had been water-skiing the summer before, so actually the first joint that ever really swelled up was my elbow, and they first told me it was bursitis from the water-skiing.
00:04:47.112 --> 00:04:47.122
Mm.
00:04:48.012 --> 00:04:51.661
And then the, everything else kind of just went haywire probably within a couple months.
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Were you able to function?
00:04:54.021 --> 00:04:57.951
were you in college at the time that all- I was- this other stuff was going on and?
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I was still in high school.
00:04:59.541 --> 00:05:04.252
Um, I grew up in Canada, and in Ontario at the time we had five years of high school in order to go to university.
00:05:04.291 --> 00:05:10.072
So I was- Oh just starting my last year of high school, which was very high-stress.
00:05:10.081 --> 00:05:26.482
And I can tell you looking back, and again, we'll maybe get into some of the work that I do now, I was a, I was a perfectionist kid to the, like, you know, highest degree, starting from when I was two,'cause I kinda learned that, like, you know, when you do things and people praise you, that becomes your identity.
00:05:26.632 --> 00:05:32.331
And so every exam, every assignment, everything was a potential point of failure.
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And this, the biggest flare-up that I had when I was really diagnosed with the arthritis was right before exams.
00:05:38.822 --> 00:05:39.062
Mm.
00:05:39.101 --> 00:05:41.562
And that sort of became a pattern throughout my life.
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I would notice that things would get significantly worse around times of high stress.
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It sounds like what you were saying before too is, like, people trying to push things on you and you found a way out of it by being ill.
00:05:55.172 --> 00:05:57.922
Yes, and this is something that I talk about now.
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I, and I, I didn't understand it at the time, but when you're that type of child, a perfectionist, and, and the research, and we'll talk about this too, that it, people, like, with my type of personality are susceptible to chronic pain because of all the pressure they put on theirselves.
00:06:11.041 --> 00:06:19.262
My mother used to say to me,"You're so sensitive to criticism." And I was like,"I am because I walk around with 50 people in my head telling me I'm not good enough." And they're all me, right?
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They're all versions of me.
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But so there's no space.
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I'm at max capacity for criticism.
00:06:23.901 --> 00:06:36.762
And so something, it was kind of a realization I had a couple years ago, when you're sick, especially if you're diagnosed with a big illness, it's kind of the only time people give you a pass and therefore you can give yourself a pass.
00:06:37.362 --> 00:06:42.192
Even now, if you get, like, a flu or something like that, you ki- people are just like,"Okay, I understand you're really sick.
00:06:42.641 --> 00:06:44.851
You know, you can have a couple days to relax." Yeah.
00:06:45.451 --> 00:06:47.791
And so I think that there was something in me that, like...
00:06:47.791 --> 00:06:56.872
A- and again, we go talk about all these smaller illnesses I had throughout my life and it's like those weren't big enough to get my attention to cause me to stop.
00:06:56.882 --> 00:06:56.891
Mm.
00:06:57.682 --> 00:06:59.052
So this was, like, the big one.
00:06:59.401 --> 00:07:09.872
And, you know, I've listened to your podcast and I've talked to other people with chronic conditions, and you go through a lot of trying to figure out what it is, and I had that experience when I was 12 and I had this mystery illness.
00:07:10.512 --> 00:07:22.372
So the arthritis diagnosis, it's kind of a blessing and a curse because you're given a name of something that somebody can identify and it makes it a real thing, but then it can also become your identity.
00:07:23.651 --> 00:07:32.922
And, and that s- can also shape what happens with chronic pain and sort of how your body responds to knowing, and I'm air quoting,"knowing" that you have a condition.
00:07:33.471 --> 00:07:39.781
When you were diagnosed with the arthritis and given the injections, did you have a lot of relief with that?
00:07:39.791 --> 00:07:41.262
Or how did that progress?
00:07:41.942 --> 00:07:42.492
Not really.
00:07:42.651 --> 00:07:51.132
I mean, I was given various medications that would work for a little bit, and then they would stop working, and then they would give me either a higher dose or something different.
00:07:51.141 --> 00:07:58.031
When I was in university, I was getting, um, injections of this drug called methotrexate, which is a cancer drug effectively.
00:07:58.041 --> 00:08:07.401
And all of these are designed to, to slow down your immune system because the theory of, of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases that your body is in some way attacking itself.
00:08:07.992 --> 00:08:15.201
And so, you know, the, the, the, the cure, but the, the way to alleviate symptoms is to kind of calm that down.
00:08:15.312 --> 00:08:21.692
And so you're given a lot of immune-suppressing drugs, which obviously will lead to other problems, and it did for me because I would get sick much more easily.
00:08:23.091 --> 00:08:23.471
So yeah.
00:08:23.622 --> 00:08:25.752
So basically knock down your immune system.
00:08:25.932 --> 00:08:26.822
Yeah, shut it down.
00:08:27.331 --> 00:08:38.692
Like, my- Yeah I finished my last year, my l- um, the end of my first year of university in the hospital because I'd gotten strep throat, and somehow, I don't know, something happened and my throat closed up.
00:08:39.101 --> 00:08:40.142
Couldn't swallow, couldn't...
00:08:40.201 --> 00:08:40.892
It was horrible.
00:08:41.272 --> 00:08:48.822
So I was in the hospital for a week on IV fluids because I couldn't consume any- anything, and that was because my immune system was just a wreck.
00:08:49.822 --> 00:08:50.922
How did you progress from there?
00:08:50.922 --> 00:08:58.402
Did you then start trying other modalities or try to do more, like, holistic naturopathic things, or
00:08:59.501 --> 00:09:11.131
Yeah, that actually started And, and to my parents' credit, you know, when, when First of all, the arthritis diagnosis, I remember even at 18 with no internet, when they told me my body was attacking itself for no reason, I thought that that was insane.
00:09:11.552 --> 00:09:13.912
I w- you know, I, that's just, that doesn't make any sense to me.
00:09:13.912 --> 00:09:22.662
And I would go to the rheumatologist's office and I'd look around, and everybody would be miserable and decrepit, and I knew in that moment that they weren't helping anybody.
00:09:22.741 --> 00:09:25.601
You know, they were doing, there was treatments, but they weren't helping anybody.
00:09:25.652 --> 00:09:29.581
And so my parents had started to look for sort of all sorts of different things.
00:09:29.591 --> 00:09:32.802
So my father's a dentist, so he had more of a scientific approach.
00:09:32.802 --> 00:09:34.782
He was looking at things like antibiotics.
00:09:34.782 --> 00:09:38.331
There was a theory that arthritis was a bacteria and it could be treated with antibiotics.
00:09:38.631 --> 00:09:51.601
My mother, I don't know where she found some of these people, but I went to one lady who worked with crystals, and she would test different substances against, I think it's, like, muscle, something where you hold a bag of crystal- certain crystals, and then she pushes on your arm.
00:09:51.611 --> 00:09:52.662
If that helps, that's good for you.
00:09:52.662 --> 00:09:52.912
I don't know.
00:09:53.652 --> 00:09:54.322
And then the, the-
00:09:54.322 --> 00:09:55.101
Muscle testing.
00:09:55.192 --> 00:09:55.522
Yes.
00:09:55.532 --> 00:09:55.692
Yeah.
00:09:55.751 --> 00:10:00.851
And so then the weirdest one, again, I don't know who recom- We lived in a small town, so there were not that many people around.
00:10:01.942 --> 00:10:03.422
My mother took me to this woman.
00:10:03.422 --> 00:10:04.231
We get to her house.
00:10:04.231 --> 00:10:05.471
I didn't have any background.
00:10:06.162 --> 00:10:06.711
We walk in.
00:10:06.711 --> 00:10:09.241
She's like a 5'0", 80-year-old woman.
00:10:09.792 --> 00:10:15.011
And so her thing was that she channeled a pharaoh, an Egyptian, ancient Egyptian pharaoh.
00:10:16.402 --> 00:10:18.432
She took this deep breath- and drank some water.
00:10:18.652 --> 00:10:27.322
Her whole face changed, and then she had me get on a table, and she gave me this massage that was so strong and so intense, she could've been like a 250-pound linebacker.
00:10:28.221 --> 00:10:33.662
And she was speaking through it in this, uh, I don't even know how to describe it, but it was wild.
00:10:33.701 --> 00:10:39.081
And so from that, there's nothing too weird that I won't try, because how do you top that?
00:10:39.081 --> 00:10:39.701
But that happened.
00:10:39.741 --> 00:10:42.652
And I don't, I mean, I don't know that I felt any different after.
00:10:42.652 --> 00:10:44.721
I don't, I think she, I don't know if she was, it was like an exorcism.
00:10:44.741 --> 00:10:47.971
I don't know what was I, I don't remember exactly what was happening.
00:10:48.182 --> 00:10:50.432
But it was an old lady who channeled a pharaoh.
00:10:50.741 --> 00:10:51.971
That was the gist of it.
00:10:51.981 --> 00:11:04.831
So I had s- so from there, and I had gone to a chiropractor to help with the issues from falling off the horse, and we saw naturopaths and osteopaths, so there was always an alternative medicine theme to it, you know?
00:11:04.831 --> 00:11:12.432
And so, and I think I've always carried that with me because of the fact that I just don't understand this, your body's attacking itself for no reason.
00:11:13.072 --> 00:11:17.142
So I've always been on the search for different things, whatever they might be.
00:11:18.142 --> 00:11:18.751
Yeah.
00:11:18.881 --> 00:11:31.471
I've seen a lot of that myself, especially going to the pain doctor, and you're not really fixing anything, and that I'm just, like, a pin cushion or, like, an experiment or, you know.
00:11:31.501 --> 00:11:36.902
Yeah yeah, none of that's really, addressing what's really going on.
00:11:36.912 --> 00:11:36.932
Yeah.
00:11:37.282 --> 00:11:41.351
And your body's still going haywire, and they're just trying to put Band-Aids on it.
00:11:42.131 --> 00:11:42.511
Yeah.
00:11:42.562 --> 00:11:45.881
But I feel like, and I've, I've gone down this rabbit hole before.
00:11:45.881 --> 00:11:53.211
I found functional medicine, which I thought was really cool when I heard about it because it uses, you know, scientific lab tests like you would get.
00:11:53.231 --> 00:11:58.091
It, it takes them, it looks at them from a different perspective, and it's root cause based.
00:11:58.091 --> 00:12:02.481
So that was exciting when I heard about it, and I did all the tests.
00:12:02.511 --> 00:12:03.761
I did the gut stuff.
00:12:03.761 --> 00:12:08.971
I did all the blood te- I mean, I did, like, I spent You know, none of it's covered by insurance, so I did all of the testing.
00:12:08.971 --> 00:12:09.001
Mm.
00:12:09.001 --> 00:12:10.211
I did the food testing.
00:12:11.292 --> 00:12:19.881
And I gotta say, like, I, there were things that were discovered, but nothing that I was ever No supplement or thing that I was given made a difference.
00:12:20.951 --> 00:12:27.942
So even if there's something that could be diagnosed, you know, from a lab work perspective, nothing fixed it.
00:12:28.081 --> 00:12:28.101
Yeah.
00:12:28.971 --> 00:12:39.812
And so that's kind of when I changed my perspective, and it's, it's a newer perspective, but it's, I, I've, I've had to really shift the way I look at it because there doesn't seem to be, like, this easy fix.
00:12:40.812 --> 00:12:48.471
Yeah, some kind of modality that you can adopt the prescription of do X, Y, Z and then you're fine.
00:12:48.792 --> 00:12:49.001
Yeah.
00:12:49.001 --> 00:12:49.121
Right?
00:12:49.131 --> 00:12:49.731
Exactly.
00:12:49.831 --> 00:12:52.861
Yeah, I didn't have much luck with functional medicine.
00:12:53.392 --> 00:13:02.562
I did the, the stool tests and the food allergy tests and all of that, and I took the probiotics and everything that they gave me.
00:13:02.562 --> 00:13:08.131
Granted, It's probably been, like, 15 years since I've done it, so maybe they've gotten a lot better.
00:13:08.701 --> 00:13:12.011
But yeah, I didn't have much luck with that either.
00:13:12.312 --> 00:13:17.402
Yeah, and- You know, when you have a chronic condition, you're excited if something sounds like it makes sense.
00:13:17.711 --> 00:13:27.081
And so I would go through this phase of just, you know, I- hopelessly optimistic, I guess, because you have to believe something might work.
00:13:27.461 --> 00:13:33.721
But also I was Sorry, cautiously optimistic because, you know, it's like nothing had worked, but I wanna believe something will.
00:13:33.721 --> 00:13:42.381
And things made sense, but then I was always sort of chasing this state of health and pushing everything away thinking maybe one day when I feel better.
00:13:42.892 --> 00:13:46.001
You know, and I know you've dealt with chronic pain and it's very isolating.
00:13:46.081 --> 00:14:00.072
And it's like I don't, can't talk about it all the time, but it, it holds me back from making plans because I worry I'm not gonna feel good on that day and I'm gonna bring everybody down, or it's gonna be too much walking, or I'm gonna be out of the house and I'm not gonna have my special foods and all of those things.
00:14:00.072 --> 00:14:06.101
So it really affects your life, but it becomes almost a job, especially when you're taking supplements or you're eating certain foods.
00:14:06.101 --> 00:14:08.162
It's literally a full-time job.
00:14:08.851 --> 00:14:09.341
Yeah.
00:14:10.682 --> 00:14:22.381
now I look at it more of like how much am I perpetuating it because I'm so afraid of the Like, if I make this choice, am I gonna feel bad?
00:14:22.631 --> 00:14:24.611
If I do this, am I Is it gonna help?
00:14:24.631 --> 00:14:25.402
Is it gonna hurt?
00:14:25.481 --> 00:14:25.942
You know?
00:14:25.942 --> 00:14:30.607
So it's almost like everything becomes more like- Is this gonna hurt me?
00:14:31.177 --> 00:14:31.288
Yeah.
00:14:31.288 --> 00:14:31.847
You know?
00:14:32.018 --> 00:14:34.847
What else can I do to avoid the pain, you know?
00:14:35.217 --> 00:14:39.357
Instead of enjoying your life and living, without that, filter.
00:14:39.707 --> 00:14:40.057
Yeah.
00:14:40.227 --> 00:14:45.518
And that's the fear-based response that makes the pain worse, because it puts you in a state of fight or flight.
00:14:45.538 --> 00:14:50.197
And so where I'm at now, and I, I still have pain.
00:14:50.268 --> 00:14:52.248
Like, we're not, I'm not at the stage where I'm like, I, you know...
00:14:52.288 --> 00:14:54.418
I hear people, I listen to stories all the time of they're pain-free.
00:14:54.447 --> 00:14:55.518
I'm not at that stage.
00:14:55.548 --> 00:15:09.587
But what I've really fallen into a rabbit hole on is mind-body work, and understanding that the brain is neuroplastic and that pain doesn't actually originate from parts of the body.
00:15:09.668 --> 00:15:10.927
It's a response in the brain.
00:15:11.898 --> 00:15:17.697
And so I can go into a little bit about sort of the theory of it and the brain science, but the short story is, is that...
00:15:17.727 --> 00:15:25.658
And, and it makes sense now that I've s- kind of explained to you a lot of the times where I actually had these ailments, even going back to when I was two.
00:15:25.658 --> 00:15:35.908
But it's almost like something is going on, and your brain decides that it's easier to feel the pain in your body than it is to feel the emotions, or it just doesn't have anywhere to put it.
00:15:37.038 --> 00:15:44.508
And so then the pain is almost like a signal to you that something is wrong, but not necessarily wrong in the context of, like, you broke your leg and it hurts.
00:15:44.518 --> 00:15:44.548
Uh-huh.
00:15:45.467 --> 00:15:48.638
It's, it's a signal to, to look at something else in your life.
00:15:48.788 --> 00:15:53.238
And so again, you know, with the arthritis, like, it was, it stopped me, literally.
00:15:53.248 --> 00:15:57.227
It was my body's and brain's way of colluding to get me to take a break.
00:15:58.197 --> 00:16:03.758
And so I'm sort of down that track now, and a lot of the things that you said, like, that's really in line with that type of a work.
00:16:03.788 --> 00:16:09.197
Because when you have a chronic condition and you feel it, and you catastrop- I heard you...
00:16:09.197 --> 00:16:10.038
That's my favorite word.
00:16:10.197 --> 00:16:11.307
I heard you say it in another podcast.
00:16:11.707 --> 00:16:26.947
I love the word catastrophizing because it, it's, it's so relevant, because what happens is, like, you wake up and you're in pain, and you think,"Oh my God, I have all this work to do today." And you freak out about it, and it makes it worse, because then you're literally telling your mind and body that you're sick.
00:16:27.077 --> 00:16:28.177
You're reminding it you're sick.
00:16:28.197 --> 00:16:34.727
You're, you're raising all the alarm bells, and that keeps you in this state of,"I'm a sick person." Same thing with all these protocols.
00:16:34.727 --> 00:16:42.898
When you're spending all day taking the right supplements, eating the right foods, worrying about every single thing you do or don't do, that reminds you that you're sick.
00:16:43.817 --> 00:16:47.717
And so all of that just tells the brain that the pain belongs there.
00:16:48.717 --> 00:16:50.388
So is there a way out of that?
00:16:50.437 --> 00:16:55.498
Or have you figured out a modality or something n- not another modality- Yeah.
00:16:55.498 --> 00:16:59.738
Yeah but how do you stop going into that response?
00:17:00.268 --> 00:17:10.397
So I'm, I work with a few different, like I've been doing research on a few different programs, and so one of them is pain reprocessing therapy, and I can share some resources, but there's a good book by Alan Gordon.
00:17:10.407 --> 00:17:12.528
It's either called A Way, I think it's called The Way Out.
00:17:12.948 --> 00:17:19.268
And so pain reprocessing therapy is a lot of things, like when you feel the pain, you tell your body it's safe, right?
00:17:19.268 --> 00:17:21.698
Like if I, I, I've developed an issue with my ankle.
00:17:21.708 --> 00:17:23.877
It's probably in the last six months or a year, I can't remember the timeframe.
00:17:24.048 --> 00:17:28.778
But when I walk, it hurts, and so the natural reaction is to not walk.
00:17:29.587 --> 00:17:31.147
But nothing bad is happening.
00:17:31.167 --> 00:17:33.218
I'm not harming myself by walking, right?
00:17:33.218 --> 00:17:36.057
It's not like I have a broken ankle that I shouldn't be walking on.
00:17:36.077 --> 00:17:47.438
And so when that happens, there's a few things that you can do, either divert your attention to something else, acknowledge how nice it is outside, you know, not focus on the pain, or just remind yourself that you're safe.
00:17:48.577 --> 00:17:50.067
You know, little, like there's little things like that.
00:17:50.067 --> 00:18:03.407
And then the other one, so I do a lot of work, I'm actually, um, trained by her as well, but there's a woman named Nicole Sachs, and she worked with someone back in the day named John Sarno, and he's kind of like the godfather of this mind-body work.
00:18:03.657 --> 00:18:04.837
He's got a lot of great books.
00:18:04.857 --> 00:18:13.278
And so in her work, which comes a lot from him, a big component of is, is this like deep sort of stream of consciousness journaling.
00:18:14.038 --> 00:18:23.087
Because the theory is that your emotions kind of create this like reservoir, and when they get to a certain point, they overflow into this pain in the body.
00:18:23.097 --> 00:18:24.768
That's where like the alarm signal goes off.
00:18:25.298 --> 00:18:25.428
Mm.
00:18:25.428 --> 00:18:28.298
And so the journaling is designed to sort of just release it.
00:18:28.958 --> 00:18:31.847
And it's, it's kind of a thing where if you don't show anybody, you throw it out after you're done.
00:18:31.847 --> 00:18:33.837
It's, some of it's like really deep and intense.
00:18:33.847 --> 00:18:36.178
Some of it de- deals with inner child work and things like that.
00:18:36.178 --> 00:18:39.077
But that's, it's just about releasing some of the emotions.
00:18:39.468 --> 00:18:52.167
Now I'm not doing it consistently, but I've heard, I listen to her podcast and there's so many recovery stories of people that have every kind of weird symptom you could ever think of, and so many of them have been healed just by doing a lot of this work.
00:18:53.268 --> 00:18:54.087
Oh, interesting.
00:18:54.357 --> 00:18:54.607
Yeah.
00:18:54.607 --> 00:19:04.317
Is it like you quiet all the chatter and you get down deeper into like what you're really feeling and let it come out?
00:19:04.698 --> 00:19:06.387
Y- yes, you're kind of releasing it.
00:19:06.407 --> 00:19:12.907
'Cause sometimes, and there's been people, for example, that say,"Well, I'm not angry." Well, they might be repressing the anger, and they don't even know it.
00:19:12.907 --> 00:19:16.718
Like maybe when they were five they had a temper tantrum and someone said,"Don't act that way.
00:19:16.718 --> 00:19:22.198
It's not okay to be angry." And so they identify as someone who's a not angry person, but they're storing all of this anger.
00:19:22.198 --> 00:19:25.298
I mean, it's impossible to never have anger or frustration or things like that.
00:19:26.018 --> 00:19:30.567
So it's just about like excavating the emotions, and it could really be, it could be anything.
00:19:31.567 --> 00:19:32.298
Interesting.
00:19:33.298 --> 00:19:40.784
So you've had the chronic illness and the conditions, and now you're getting into this work that's helping, disrupt the patterns.
00:19:41.513 --> 00:19:44.723
Where are you right now with everything?
00:19:45.693 --> 00:19:48.983
It depends on the day too, because stress is still a trigger for me.
00:19:48.983 --> 00:19:51.844
And so, like, I have a full-time job, and that can be stressful.
00:19:51.864 --> 00:19:56.574
And then I beat myself up for not doing, not working hard enough at healing myself.
00:19:56.973 --> 00:19:58.284
You know, it's that kind of loop.
00:19:58.753 --> 00:20:02.243
So I'm, I'm kind of in this middle stage, but what I'm...
00:20:02.374 --> 00:20:09.673
What I've finally started to do is stop chasing a solution and be okay with wherever I'm at now.
00:20:10.094 --> 00:20:17.094
And so the way I can put this is I'm not living a chronic pain-free life, but I've started living life.
00:20:17.763 --> 00:20:21.023
Like, for example, I, last weekend I went to two concerts back to back.
00:20:21.023 --> 00:20:21.523
Same band.
00:20:21.564 --> 00:20:22.933
I liked it so much the first time, I went back.
00:20:23.134 --> 00:20:23.894
By myself.
00:20:24.564 --> 00:20:27.023
And the second night I was like I w- the first day I was in a seat.
00:20:27.054 --> 00:20:27.864
I wasn't close enough.
00:20:27.864 --> 00:20:35.084
Second day I decided I needed to be in the pit right in front of the stage, which meant I had to stand for, like, four or five hours, and I went through all the,"Oh my God, it's too many hours.
00:20:35.084 --> 00:20:35.963
How am I gonna drink water?
00:20:35.963 --> 00:20:36.634
I'm gonna pass out.
00:20:36.634 --> 00:20:38.503
Something's gonna..." And I wanted to go.
00:20:38.554 --> 00:20:38.913
So I went.
00:20:39.953 --> 00:20:49.443
And so that's, that's a new version of me, because up until very recently I would've let my fear of, of the outcome of whatever would happen hold me back.
00:20:50.114 --> 00:20:51.854
And so I'm trying to not be afraid.
00:20:51.854 --> 00:20:53.144
Like, not, I'm not gonna die, right?
00:20:53.144 --> 00:20:55.443
That's the you pick the worst-case scen- I'm not gonna die.
00:20:55.884 --> 00:20:57.683
And so, so what if I limp back to the car?
00:20:57.723 --> 00:20:59.503
I had a great time, you know?
00:20:59.503 --> 00:21:11.134
So I'm trying to sort of live in a space where I'm just accepting of wherever I am now is okay, and still believing that, you know, if I do the work, there will be a healing factor at play.
00:21:11.584 --> 00:21:14.983
But I can't, you know, just, like, stop life.
00:21:15.854 --> 00:21:16.233
Right.
00:21:16.243 --> 00:21:16.263
Yeah.
00:21:16.273 --> 00:21:20.364
So, you know, and I'm still, still, again, I still do all my things, and I, I meditate daily.
00:21:20.364 --> 00:21:31.173
Like, I do a lot of things that are beneficial for my nervous system so that I'm not in this hyper an- anxious, fight or flight state all the time,'cause that doesn't help anything, you know?
00:21:31.193 --> 00:21:32.034
And, like, little things.
00:21:32.034 --> 00:21:38.663
For example, years ago I was diagnosed with, I know, again, air quoting,"severe spinal stenosis," which is a, a back condition.
00:21:39.104 --> 00:21:41.294
And I didn't realize how bad it was until I...
00:21:41.483 --> 00:21:44.903
I was feeling like, um, it felt like I was doing a hamstring stretch when I was standing.
00:21:45.513 --> 00:21:46.324
It's the only way- Mm-hmm I can describe.
00:21:46.483 --> 00:21:47.913
So it was like a, it's a nerve thing.
00:21:47.913 --> 00:21:51.574
It's like your parts of your spine are compressed, so it's pushing on the nerves.
00:21:51.594 --> 00:21:59.463
And so I went to, I had an MRI, and then I went to a spinal surgeon, and when he came in the room, he looked at my chart, looked at me, walked back out.
00:21:59.824 --> 00:22:08.394
And then he came back in and he said,"Are you standing?" I said,"Yes." He said,"Well, the MRI that I looked at was, like, of an 85-year-old woman." But it was mine, so, and I was 35.
00:22:08.894 --> 00:22:10.723
So I had that in my head, you know?
00:22:10.723 --> 00:22:13.884
And then I had a chiropractor tell me my car with the bucket seats was no good.
00:22:13.884 --> 00:22:14.933
I needed a special backrest.
00:22:15.173 --> 00:22:21.304
So I lived for years and years with this diagnosis almost, like, playing in my mind in a visceral way.
00:22:21.304 --> 00:22:24.683
I could almost see things churning and compressing and, and...
00:22:24.683 --> 00:22:39.425
And then when I started getting into this mind-body work, I remembered that- One of the things that really s- struck me when I learned about this work is that, for example, two people can have the exact same MRI with the same deformities or abnormalities.
00:22:39.425 --> 00:22:41.145
One person has pain, the other doesn't.
00:22:41.635 --> 00:22:42.346
Exact same MRI.
00:22:43.066 --> 00:22:50.226
And so y- what you extrapolate from that is that that deformity or abnormality isn't necessarily the cause of the pain.
00:22:50.796 --> 00:22:53.476
The doctors will tell you it is,'cause that's all they know.
00:22:54.246 --> 00:23:01.615
And so that really clicked with me, and just that alone actually helped my back in a crazy way.
00:23:01.635 --> 00:23:08.425
And so now, for ex- you know, you hear that you're not supposed to bend over a certain way, and so when I would bend over, I had fear of creating more of an issue.
00:23:09.036 --> 00:23:14.415
And so now I'm aware of that, and before I go to pick something off the ground, I remind myself that I'm safe.
00:23:15.276 --> 00:23:16.986
It's that, just that little thing has changed it.
00:23:17.016 --> 00:23:23.786
Because other things, like I have The first joint that was ever a problem was my elbow, and it's, it's c- it's been really painful recently.
00:23:23.786 --> 00:23:29.145
And so before I move it, I'm aware of the second before where I anticipate it's gonna hurt me.
00:23:29.895 --> 00:23:33.266
And so I'm feeling the pain before I even move.
00:23:34.115 --> 00:23:46.145
And so I'm trying to stop doing that, stop anticipating the pain or being afraid to do things in an order, in order to, like, rewire my brain to believe that the pain is like, you know, one causes the other.
00:23:47.145 --> 00:23:47.506
Yeah.
00:23:47.506 --> 00:23:48.875
And it's super powerful.
00:23:49.486 --> 00:23:49.915
It is.
00:23:49.945 --> 00:24:02.455
And it's almost like a, a self-creating prophecy'Cause I've noticed the same thing, even working out or doing different movements that I know would cause me an issue.
00:24:02.476 --> 00:24:08.375
Now I'm like,"Okay, I can't think that or it's gonna continue to, perpetuate that."
00:24:08.846 --> 00:24:12.986
Yeah I know I'm not causing Again, this thing with my ankle and the walking, I know I'm not causing damage by walking on it.
00:24:13.395 --> 00:24:15.726
So that allows me to take the fear out of it.
00:24:15.836 --> 00:24:23.516
Because you associate, again, from, like breaking your leg or an acute condition, you associate the pain with stopping doing the thing that causes the pain.
00:24:24.165 --> 00:24:26.965
And again- Yeah that's true with a broken ankle.
00:24:27.145 --> 00:24:28.715
It's not true with chronic pain.
00:24:28.726 --> 00:24:28.746
Yeah.
00:24:29.476 --> 00:24:31.195
Because there isn't actually anything there to harm.
00:24:32.195 --> 00:24:33.165
That's so interesting.
00:24:34.266 --> 00:24:38.965
So you have a podcast that you do with a friend of yours?
00:24:39.286 --> 00:24:39.566
Yes.
00:24:39.576 --> 00:24:40.415
So I have a co-host.
00:24:40.415 --> 00:24:41.165
He's, I actually know him.
00:24:41.165 --> 00:24:48.306
He's a great friend of my sister's, and we were collaborating and deciding what to do, and both realized that we're both very into health and wellness for different reasons.
00:24:48.875 --> 00:24:57.756
And so yeah, about a year and a half ago we started conceptualizing the podcast, and we launched in, um, November.
00:24:58.746 --> 00:25:09.016
And for me, a lot of it is talking about my chronic pain journey and the mind/body work, and sort of all things health related through the lens of somebody who understands this mind/body work.
00:25:09.915 --> 00:25:16.455
Like, for example, we just had full body scans, like these full body MRIs, which, A, was horrible'cause I'm claustrophobic, but I got through it.
00:25:16.455 --> 00:25:22.665
But I, we, we recorded an episode about how we felt about doing it.
00:25:22.846 --> 00:25:31.726
And for me it was like I'm, you know, I have to be careful that if I see certain things, that I don't sort of cling to them and they become new issues that didn't actually exist.
00:25:31.776 --> 00:25:33.675
Now, obviously if there was cancer, that would be a whole other thing.
00:25:34.195 --> 00:25:42.036
But just, like, more things with my back or my neck or whatever it may be, I went into that knowing that I just had to be mindful of how I would normally interpret things.
00:25:43.036 --> 00:25:47.066
And so everything that I'm doing on my end with the podcast is sort of through that lens.
00:25:47.476 --> 00:25:50.215
But we talk a lot of general health, about general health topics.
00:25:50.215 --> 00:25:57.195
Like today we, we recorded an episode about colonoscopies, and we have a sleep doctor that came on and we're gonna release an episode about that soon.
00:25:57.195 --> 00:26:01.195
So we talk a lot of, you know, different health things, but it's also mostly from our experience.
00:26:01.836 --> 00:26:03.855
It's not just, like, general health information.
00:26:04.316 --> 00:26:04.786
It's really about- What's
00:26:04.846 --> 00:26:06.705
your co-host's background?
00:26:07.536 --> 00:26:10.685
Um, I mean, he's a male, so we have like a male and female perspective.
00:26:10.685 --> 00:26:11.756
He just has- Okay I mean, nothing...
00:26:11.806 --> 00:26:17.875
He doesn't, I mean, he has issues with his neck and he's had different health things, but it's not, not in the chronic pain realm.
00:26:17.875 --> 00:26:19.726
So we didn't connect over- Uh-huh something like that.
00:26:20.455 --> 00:26:23.625
We're just sort of- Yeah we each pick our own topics that we think are interesting.
00:26:24.496 --> 00:26:28.066
Which kinda creates a cool dynamic,'cause things that he doesn't know anything about the mind/body work.
00:26:28.066 --> 00:26:36.965
So we had a mind/body coach that came on to explain a lot of the brain science, and he learned a lot of things, and he actually had a realization about some of his pain.
00:26:37.506 --> 00:26:39.215
Not during the podcast, but after.
00:26:39.316 --> 00:26:42.215
You know, some of the information resonated with him,'cause he's always talking about,"I need another MRI.
00:26:42.215 --> 00:26:46.185
I need another MRI." I'm like,"Okay." You know, only so much I can tell him.
00:26:46.955 --> 00:26:49.566
But so that, you know, that side has been really interesting.
00:26:50.566 --> 00:26:51.455
And what's it called?
00:26:51.705 --> 00:26:52.625
The Health Hunt.
00:26:53.125 --> 00:27:08.006
Is the podcast like an exploration more to you that y- it's something that you wanted to do to help others, but also to kind of explore different modalities and different, expert opinions and that kind of thing?
00:27:08.556 --> 00:27:16.145
It's a little bit of both, but for me it's more about having a voice to talk about,'cause cr- I, I mentioned this before, like, chronic pain is very isolating.
00:27:16.155 --> 00:27:16.165
Mm.
00:27:16.715 --> 00:27:21.816
And so many people have it, they don't even, you know, they've been given diagnoses, they don't even know what to do with it.
00:27:22.296 --> 00:27:29.296
And so I just wanted to be able to share my experiences and also have people understand that they're, they're not alone, you know?
00:27:29.296 --> 00:27:34.395
I think that, just the sense of community helps, knowing that you're not suffering by yourself.
00:27:34.405 --> 00:27:38.695
Because a lot of times you don't talk to your friends and family about it because it gets old.
00:27:38.816 --> 00:27:47.046
Like, I don't walk around talking about being in p- when someone says,"How are you?" I might be horrible, but I'm gonna say,"I'm fine,"'cause- who wants to go down the rabbit hole of, like, complaining?
00:27:47.115 --> 00:27:49.425
I don't want someone to say that to me, you know.
00:27:49.425 --> 00:27:51.715
And a close friend, fine, if something happened and they need to vent.
00:27:51.756 --> 00:27:53.776
But you, you know, you sort of just live with it.
00:27:54.445 --> 00:27:54.465
Yeah.
00:27:54.665 --> 00:28:04.016
And so I really, I wanted to share all the things that I've learned, and, you know, our central sort of message is, is kind of be your own advocate and do your own research, you know?
00:28:04.016 --> 00:28:06.665
Like, I could have just taken what the doctor said,"You have arthritis.
00:28:06.665 --> 00:28:09.286
Here's the drugs you have to be on forever," but I didn't.
00:28:09.905 --> 00:28:12.615
And that applies to really anything across the board.
00:28:12.915 --> 00:28:17.955
So that's sort of a central theme that we try to really put out there,'cause I think it's important.
00:28:18.945 --> 00:28:19.435
Yeah.
00:28:19.955 --> 00:28:20.605
I would agree.
00:28:21.586 --> 00:28:31.885
I think it's interesting, too, I have a lot of friends that, don't really have any of the issues that I have, and I'm like my,"I'm the only one here", you know?
00:28:32.246 --> 00:28:44.346
It's So it is nice to have the platform to, like, speak about it and, and just let other people know,"Yeah, you're not alone." Like, there's, there's so many of us.
00:28:44.506 --> 00:28:45.875
It's- There's so many insane.
00:28:46.195 --> 00:28:46.695
Yeah.
00:28:46.736 --> 00:28:46.976
Yeah.
00:28:47.215 --> 00:28:52.976
And I think a lot of people h- don't, like, they have something chronic and they don't identify it necessarily.
00:28:52.986 --> 00:28:54.476
They live with it, right?
00:28:54.476 --> 00:28:54.506
Yeah.
00:28:54.506 --> 00:28:57.875
Especially as you get older, you have this mentality like,"Well, I'm just getting older.
00:28:57.875 --> 00:29:01.915
I have to live with these aches and pains." But that's not true, you know?
00:29:01.915 --> 00:29:09.425
And so I think you, there might be people in your, in your circle that actually are suffering from certain things, and maybe they'll hear the podcast, and you might learn more information.
00:29:09.425 --> 00:29:15.925
Like the very first episode that we d- I think we released three at a time, so the third episode is my story, and it's a lot of what we talked about today.
00:29:15.925 --> 00:29:16.816
I go a little bit deeper.
00:29:16.816 --> 00:29:29.665
But I had people that I haven't heard from in 10 or 15 years reach out and say,"You know, I've been going through these sorts of struggles, and I appreciate you talking about it, and I feel less alone, and there's more here that I want to explore," and I just would've had no idea.
00:29:30.605 --> 00:29:32.645
So that really makes it kind of worth it, you know?
00:29:32.645 --> 00:29:36.806
Like, when you hear that you've actually connected with someone, you know, it's worth getting on
00:29:38.036 --> 00:29:38.165
the mic.
00:29:38.165 --> 00:29:38.506
Yeah.
00:29:38.566 --> 00:29:39.256
Definitely.
00:29:40.306 --> 00:29:43.453
I'm sure you're having that experience,'cause I mean, I've listened to some of your episodes and it's- Great.
00:29:43.453 --> 00:29:49.173
There's just, I, I, I connect with so much of, with what your guests are saying because there's just so much commonality.
00:29:49.203 --> 00:29:56.344
And I think women are probably more susceptible to, so I think the, the prevalence of autoimmune conditions and other chronic illnesses is much higher.
00:29:56.344 --> 00:30:00.354
I don't know what the stats are, but much higher in women, and it's because we take on so much.
00:30:00.773 --> 00:30:06.003
We people please, we don't ask for help, kinda just try and do it all until something stops us.
00:30:07.263 --> 00:30:07.733
Yeah.
00:30:08.193 --> 00:30:09.953
Yeah,'cause we're the caretaker, right?
00:30:09.963 --> 00:30:09.983
Yeah.
00:30:09.993 --> 00:30:12.273
So we only stop when we're in bed.
00:30:12.854 --> 00:30:13.144
Yeah.
00:30:13.544 --> 00:30:14.403
That's exactly it.
00:30:15.403 --> 00:30:16.304
Pretty much.
00:30:17.304 --> 00:30:23.443
Is there any other things that you wanna share, any takeaways that you have for the listeners?
00:30:24.253 --> 00:30:40.784
No, I just think, again, like if, if anyone's interested in it, this, you know, if you have chronic conditions, if you're interested in this kind of mind-body work that I'm talking about, and I really, really only touched the surface of it, but episodes 21 to 23 of the podcast are where we brought on, um, a, a mind-body coach.
00:30:41.233 --> 00:30:48.084
And so in one episode she goes through the neuroscience,'cause that's, that's very interesting to learn and that helps you shift your thought process.
00:30:48.084 --> 00:30:55.493
And a lot of that, of that is related to what I said where if you may be diagnosed with a back condition, but it doesn't mean that's what's causing your pain.
00:30:55.854 --> 00:30:57.114
And so that's sort of the realization.
00:30:57.144 --> 00:30:58.743
And then we talked a little bit about her story.
00:30:58.743 --> 00:31:00.814
She had chronic pain and she's recovered from it.
00:31:01.074 --> 00:31:04.564
Talked a little bit about coaching, so I have some resources there.
00:31:04.663 --> 00:31:12.503
Um, that's probably a good starting point, but just again, like you don't have to take what someone says as the gospel, right?
00:31:12.534 --> 00:31:21.943
Like take in information if you go to a doctor, take in information, but start doing your own research, and it's so much easier now that we have the internet and there's just so much information out there.
00:31:22.663 --> 00:31:26.384
You know, and look for people that are going through the same thing.
00:31:26.413 --> 00:31:33.804
And not in a way to have like a sick pity party for yourself,'cause that's also not healthy, but to just find community.
00:31:34.134 --> 00:31:36.213
'Cause I think community really, really helps.
00:31:37.604 --> 00:31:38.453
Yeah, I would agree.
00:31:39.453 --> 00:31:47.213
I was so used to being, the 30-year-old in the room full of, people from 65 to 80 in the doctor's office.
00:31:47.213 --> 00:31:49.983
I'm like,"Oh my God, this is terrible."
00:31:50.153 --> 00:31:50.594
Yeah.
00:31:50.624 --> 00:31:51.223
No, I know.
00:31:51.223 --> 00:31:53.463
And, you had fibromyalgia at some point, too,
00:31:53.864 --> 00:31:54.634
or- Yeah.
00:31:55.304 --> 00:31:55.604
Yeah.
00:31:55.604 --> 00:32:02.163
So I felt, I had, I mean, I don't know if that's a, if, like if it was diagnosed or not, but it's, like, I had all the muscle pains.
00:32:02.163 --> 00:32:02.574
I can't...
00:32:02.794 --> 00:32:07.804
I still don't put shirts on over my head'cause I'm afraid I can't get out,'cause I have this thing where I don't think my shoulders work.
00:32:07.973 --> 00:32:14.763
And they're, they're fine, but I literally- Like, all kinds of weird things have come out of the limitations that I had 30-something years ago.
00:32:15.394 --> 00:32:16.794
You know- Yeah it's like you don't even realize it.
00:32:16.794 --> 00:32:18.114
But yeah, that, I, same thing.
00:32:18.114 --> 00:32:25.094
When I would go to the rheumatologist's office, there was a lot of elderly people, but also a lot of people that were younger, which was also disturbing to me.
00:32:25.314 --> 00:32:28.074
And again, they all looked like they were ready to, like they wanted to die.
00:32:28.084 --> 00:32:28.104
Yeah.
00:32:29.153 --> 00:32:31.564
And so I just hated going there even for that reason.
00:32:32.374 --> 00:32:36.634
Oh, I didn't even mention, so I had a hip replacement when I was 20, which is- Oh,
00:32:36.634 --> 00:32:37.084
wow
00:32:37.104 --> 00:32:38.844
probably a result of...
00:32:38.844 --> 00:32:41.483
Well, I had a knee replacement, too, but that's mostly from a car accident.
00:32:41.874 --> 00:32:44.074
But, so I, I was, like, bionic at 23.
00:32:44.614 --> 00:32:51.933
But the hip replacement was because of these cortisone and radiation injections, because it completely deteriorated the joint.
00:32:52.243 --> 00:33:01.794
And so when I was in university, I was supposed to be going to Florida to visit my grandparents, where I actually live now, and I wanted to get a cortisone injection'cause I knew that would give me a, a week of relief.
00:33:01.814 --> 00:33:05.784
And I went to a new doctor and he took some x-rays and he called me at 9:00 at night at home.
00:33:06.624 --> 00:33:08.463
And he said,"There's nothing for me to inject.
00:33:08.473 --> 00:33:15.523
There's no lining between your joint and your hip, and we don't usually do a hip replacement on someone who's 20, but what are we gonna do?
00:33:15.534 --> 00:33:16.614
Wait 60 years?
00:33:16.784 --> 00:33:19.284
Are you in?" So I had my hip replaced.
00:33:20.683 --> 00:33:20.903
Yeah.
00:33:22.163 --> 00:33:35.794
But it was actually- Yeah I mean, the result was pretty good, but now I wonder if maybe there was, you know, like, knowing what I know now if it would've been different, but I probably wouldn't change it at the time because, you know, when you have pain like that, and it was excruciating pain.
00:33:35.794 --> 00:33:40.493
I mean, I lived in, on painkillers part of my university'cause I was, I couldn't even get up the stairs.
00:33:40.534 --> 00:33:44.624
But, you know, when you're in that kind of pain, you'll kinda do anything that somebody says is gonna relieve it.
00:33:45.463 --> 00:33:46.034
Yeah.
00:33:46.124 --> 00:33:46.493
I know.
00:33:46.493 --> 00:34:05.364
I went through a lot of that, and looking back, I was talking to somebody about the manipulation under anesthesia that I had with Botox injections, and I'm looking back, I'm thinking,"I don't know how I thought that was gonna be a good idea." They put me under and, massaged all my muscles in my legs and my abdomen.
00:34:05.443 --> 00:34:15.074
I was, black and blue, and then they put Botox into my muscles so they would stop seizing up, and I'm like, yeah, I don't know.
00:34:15.074 --> 00:34:17.623
I mean, that doesn't even sound like a good idea.
00:34:17.634 --> 00:34:20.434
But at the time, I was just like,"I'm in so much pain.
00:34:20.434 --> 00:34:21.074
I don't know.
00:34:21.074 --> 00:34:23.983
Just do whatever is available," you know?
00:34:24.003 --> 00:34:35.193
So it's almost like you can self-abandon yourself just because you just don't know what else to do, and it might help for a little while, but then you just are back at square one.
00:34:35.474 --> 00:34:35.804
Yeah.
00:34:36.074 --> 00:34:38.664
Well, I, so I heard in one of your podcasts, I think it was with Shelly.
00:34:38.764 --> 00:34:40.043
Was that one of your- Mm-hmm recent guests?
00:34:40.043 --> 00:34:40.373
Yeah.
00:34:40.384 --> 00:34:53.793
So sh- you were both talking about things that sounded interesting because you talked about you would address one thing in one way, and then later another thing would happen, and then another thing would happen, and that's actually a red flag for this neuroplastic pain.
00:34:53.853 --> 00:34:57.873
Because what happens is, so you in theory fix something, but you didn't actually solve the problem.
00:34:57.923 --> 00:35:05.684
It's like if an alarm's going off and you spray water at the alarm, the alarm might go off'cause you broke it, but you didn't fix the fire.
00:35:06.574 --> 00:35:18.164
And so it's kind of like whatever is persisting that's causing your mind and body to collude and create this, this alarm signal has not been resolved, and so that's why you see a lot of times, like, symptom to symptom to symptom.
00:35:18.164 --> 00:35:19.023
Then you keep thinking,"Oh, my God.
00:35:19.043 --> 00:35:25.184
All these things are happening to me." And then you catastrophize that your entire body is shutting down and whatever that means.
00:35:25.224 --> 00:35:29.623
So it's actually, it's a really interesting concept when you start to look at it where things move around.
00:35:30.313 --> 00:35:30.634
Yeah.
00:35:30.634 --> 00:35:31.574
And that's, that's kind of how...
00:35:31.603 --> 00:35:35.014
That, that was what happened to my podcast partner after we had done this series of episodes.
00:35:35.153 --> 00:35:38.833
He, I think, did he go from back pain to, to neck pain to back pain.
00:35:39.664 --> 00:35:42.653
And he was like,"Well, that's weird'cause I didn't do anything different." Yeah.
00:35:42.653 --> 00:35:43.623
But the pain shifted.
00:35:44.233 --> 00:35:49.474
And so that's when he started to kinda have some aha moments about some of the neuroscience that we were talking about.
00:35:50.474 --> 00:35:51.273
It's very interesting.
00:35:52.594 --> 00:36:11.923
When you see things like that happening, is it just kind of a red flag then to say,"Okay, I need to be more mindful of what I'm thinking and, what programs, what loops my mind is going in and what I'm telling myself, or what I'm being anxious about?" Or do you know how that kind of works?
00:36:11.923 --> 00:36:12.253
A- absolutely.
00:36:12.253 --> 00:36:16.534
I mean, it's literally a time to pause and think about what's going on in your life.
00:36:16.934 --> 00:36:19.043
And it may not even be something that's happening now.
00:36:19.043 --> 00:36:21.213
It could be something that's repressed from when you were a child.
00:36:21.224 --> 00:36:21.253
Mm-hmm.
00:36:22.014 --> 00:36:22.264
Right?
00:36:22.264 --> 00:36:29.344
There's, it's not like there's a quick fix that you can just find the solution and work on it, but it, it is a signal to look into it.
00:36:30.184 --> 00:36:31.804
And again- Okay there's different ways to do that.
00:36:32.014 --> 00:36:38.454
That's, that's a whole other podcast, but it's just- It's just, when, again, there's so many great books out there.
00:36:38.454 --> 00:36:44.173
I know you had talked about one that you read, and I think that some of the concepts in there are probably along these lines a little bit.
00:36:44.653 --> 00:36:46.134
And it was You Are Not Your Pain.
00:36:46.353 --> 00:36:46.543
Is that-
00:36:46.554 --> 00:36:47.003
Yeah.
00:36:47.164 --> 00:36:47.463
Mm-hmm.
00:36:47.474 --> 00:36:47.903
Yeah.
00:36:47.923 --> 00:36:52.884
So that's a way of, like, sep- because again, I, the rheumatoid arthritis, it sounds great that I got a diagnosis.
00:36:52.884 --> 00:36:56.514
People who go 20 years without getting a proper diagnosis may be grateful for that.
00:36:56.793 --> 00:36:57.934
But then it became my identity.
00:36:57.974 --> 00:36:59.233
I tell people I have arthritis.
00:36:59.233 --> 00:37:00.333
I call it my arthritis.
00:37:00.333 --> 00:37:03.603
That's, I'm trying to change the language of that,'cause I don't want it.
00:37:03.623 --> 00:37:04.673
I don't want it to be mine.
00:37:05.293 --> 00:37:10.554
So I'm trying- Right I'm trying to de-identify as that's my story.
00:37:11.414 --> 00:37:23.353
So now I, you know, I'll say I, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, or I have some joint pain, but I'm trying to disassociate from it being an identity that I carried around for a long time,'cause that perpetuates it.
00:37:24.353 --> 00:37:24.733
Yeah.
00:37:25.733 --> 00:37:28.173
You still have like flare-ups and stuff now.
00:37:28.193 --> 00:37:38.623
Is there anything that you feel like was a turning point for you as well as to try to shift from being in chronic pain so much?
00:37:39.253 --> 00:37:41.983
So it's not that I'm having flare-ups per se.
00:37:41.983 --> 00:37:44.744
I've had flare-ups where it's like you wake up and you physically can't move.
00:37:44.753 --> 00:37:44.784
Okay.
00:37:44.833 --> 00:37:46.434
I don't have that anymore.
00:37:46.704 --> 00:37:49.454
I have various degrees of the same pains.
00:37:49.454 --> 00:37:54.043
I have, again, my, my, my knees and, and there is some degeneration there.
00:37:54.043 --> 00:38:01.724
So that's the other component that gets messy for me with the mind body work, is that I- it's hard for me to get past that there's probably joint damage.
00:38:02.614 --> 00:38:05.684
Which again, may or may not be causing the pain, but it's different.
00:38:05.684 --> 00:38:10.463
Like with my back, I had a very bad event with my back, and at first I was like,"Oh my God, it's my back.
00:38:10.483 --> 00:38:16.463
It's the s- stupid stenosis thing," and then I realized that it was, it was, I was in the beginning stages of a very difficult breakup.
00:38:17.213 --> 00:38:17.653
Mm.
00:38:17.704 --> 00:38:18.514
And so when I...
00:38:18.603 --> 00:38:27.684
It took me a few days, I wallowed in this pain, and then I was listening to one of these books and I had this realization, like it's, it's actually the trauma from what's going on in this breakup.
00:38:28.213 --> 00:38:35.994
And it got almost, not 100% better, but it got significantly better, and that's when I started going back down this rabbit hole of all of the mind body work.
00:38:36.003 --> 00:38:37.583
I sort of like started following the breadcrumbs.
00:38:38.353 --> 00:38:40.764
And so with the back, I'm able to mostly control it.
00:38:40.773 --> 00:38:46.523
I'm still struggling a little bit with the joints, again,'cause I think my brain hasn't fully accepted that it's not the joint damage.
00:38:46.954 --> 00:38:53.793
And, and it's f- 30 plus years of like, we, we talk about the brain being like plastic.
00:38:53.804 --> 00:38:54.983
It's learned these things.
00:38:54.994 --> 00:38:57.353
It's learned that if I move my elbow, it's going to hurt.
00:38:57.364 --> 00:38:57.373
Mm.
00:38:58.213 --> 00:39:03.643
And so a lot of this is, again, what I said, rewiring my brain to understand that it doesn't have to be that way.
00:39:04.364 --> 00:39:08.893
Which again, is a, maybe a difficult thing to unwind, but that's kind of where I'm, that's what I'm working on.
00:39:08.974 --> 00:39:09.463
Yeah.
00:39:09.574 --> 00:39:10.724
Yeah, it takes time.
00:39:10.974 --> 00:39:11.204
Yeah.
00:39:12.204 --> 00:39:14.074
So, and again, just living my life, right?
00:39:14.074 --> 00:39:23.514
Like yes, I have pain, but I, I'm doing things, which is a, a shift, and I think that that takes you a little bit out of the fear cycle of a chronic condition.
00:39:24.724 --> 00:39:39.844
Yeah, I would agree,'cause then I'm, I do the same thing, and it's more of like, well, I'm just gonna go do whatever it is I wanna do and enjoy myself, and then if I decide that I don't wanna be there or something is happening, then I can leave.
00:39:39.844 --> 00:39:42.063
It doesn't have to be so much pressure.
00:39:42.063 --> 00:39:48.434
I think that amount of pressure and, trying to control everything and adds more stress.
00:39:48.623 --> 00:39:49.103
Yeah.
00:39:49.114 --> 00:39:52.554
And I'm someone, like even back in high school, I always liked to have my own car.
00:39:52.583 --> 00:39:53.724
I like an exit strategy.
00:39:53.824 --> 00:39:59.653
That, that just even, I don't necessarily need it, but emotionally, that helps me feel like if I don't feel well, I can leave.
00:40:00.414 --> 00:40:02.393
And trying to kind of get out of the people pleasing.
00:40:02.853 --> 00:40:03.153
You know?
00:40:03.153 --> 00:40:06.784
Like, if you maybe just really don't feel good on a certain day, it's okay.
00:40:07.474 --> 00:40:09.423
Or if you wanna go home early, it's okay.
00:40:09.693 --> 00:40:09.903
Right?
00:40:09.903 --> 00:40:14.954
'Cause we can also carry a lot of guilt and shame about ruining somebody else's plans.
00:40:14.963 --> 00:40:14.983
Yeah.
00:40:15.673 --> 00:40:16.744
But that makes it worse.
00:40:17.034 --> 00:40:20.704
So kinda just, you know, again, it's And, and these things don't come naturally.
00:40:20.704 --> 00:40:22.673
I have to remind myself all of the time.
00:40:22.753 --> 00:40:28.844
Even when I went to these concerts, I was thinking about all the things and worrying about it, and I just like,"I wanna go." So I b- I bought a ticket.
00:40:28.844 --> 00:40:34.954
Normally, I wouldn't buy a ticket until the last minute fearing that I wasn't gonna feel good, and then I would talk myself out of going.
00:40:35.574 --> 00:40:38.313
So my new thing is to just, I see it, I wanna go, I buy the ticket.
00:40:39.563 --> 00:40:41.074
You know, and then I work it out later.
00:40:41.844 --> 00:40:42.344
Yeah.
00:40:43.344 --> 00:40:45.103
Yeah, it sounds like a lot more freedom
00:40:45.753 --> 00:40:46.634
It is, yeah
00:40:46.634 --> 00:40:47.063
Yeah
00:40:47.503 --> 00:40:54.014
Cause I spent so much time hermiting in my house being afraid to do things,'cause I was worried about how I feel.
00:40:55.193 --> 00:40:55.664
Yeah.
00:40:56.693 --> 00:40:57.414
And I get it.
00:40:57.414 --> 00:41:02.744
It's definitely It's not a, a fear of something that doesn't happen either, right?
00:41:02.744 --> 00:41:07.273
It's not like a, a fear that you're having that you don't experience.
00:41:07.304 --> 00:41:08.193
You know what I'm saying?
00:41:08.204 --> 00:41:09.364
Like, some kind of phobia.
00:41:09.373 --> 00:41:13.534
Yeah When you deal with pain all the time, it's for sure real.
00:41:14.074 --> 00:41:16.233
Yeah, and you have to moderate yourself, you know?
00:41:16.244 --> 00:41:21.623
I, I struggle with finding the right balance between giving myself rest and pushing myself to do things.
00:41:21.653 --> 00:41:24.074
'Cause a lot of times when I make plans I'm like,"Ah, I don't feel like going.
00:41:24.074 --> 00:41:24.634
I'm too tired.
00:41:24.634 --> 00:41:27.684
Something hurts." And then I go and I don't wanna go home'cause I'm having so much fun.
00:41:28.594 --> 00:41:41.143
But other times I do need to rest, so I have to manage pushing myself, but I don't always trust that I can distinguish between when it's kind of the illness, like f- when I really should rest, or if I'm kind of taking it too far.
00:41:42.094 --> 00:41:44.333
You know, that's something I'm still trying to kind of balance.
00:41:45.634 --> 00:41:46.264
Yeah.
00:41:47.393 --> 00:41:49.474
I'm learning to balance a lot these days.
00:41:50.474 --> 00:41:50.974
It's tough.
00:41:50.974 --> 00:41:51.474
Right?
00:41:51.554 --> 00:41:51.793
It's tough.
00:41:51.793 --> 00:41:53.844
Yeah We wanna do, we wanna do all the things.
00:41:55.164 --> 00:41:55.753
Yeah.
00:41:56.353 --> 00:42:08.393
Yeah, and Being a woman and trying to hold all, you know, hold everything together and do everything that you feel like you need to do to have accomplished, to-
00:42:08.744 --> 00:42:08.994
Yeah
00:42:09.233 --> 00:42:19.324
Not so much people please, but, you know, I mean, we wanna show everybody that we're here to help and we're here to contribute and all that stuff, but it just It's a role, right?
00:42:19.333 --> 00:42:19.693
It's-
00:42:19.713 --> 00:42:19.983
Yeah
00:42:19.983 --> 00:42:28.693
So I'm trying to learn a lot more now, Where am I doing things out of obligation versus, you know, like...
00:42:29.804 --> 00:42:30.603
I, I don't know.
00:42:30.614 --> 00:42:36.853
I- it's like a fear that, that people aren't gonna think that I'm doing enough.
00:42:36.893 --> 00:42:37.833
You know what I'm saying?
00:42:37.833 --> 00:42:38.043
Yeah.
00:42:38.043 --> 00:42:46.494
Like, oh, well if I don't show it in this way, then people are gonna think I don't give a shit or I don't wanna contribute or something.
00:42:46.844 --> 00:42:48.893
So it's interesting.
00:42:48.893 --> 00:42:49.059
But
00:42:49.059 --> 00:42:56.054
you, you know that you can do all the things, and if somebody's not in the space to receive it, they're still going to receive it as not enough.
00:42:56.804 --> 00:42:57.244
Yeah.
00:42:57.253 --> 00:42:58.373
So that's, that's the thing.
00:42:58.373 --> 00:43:07.583
I mean, you could burn yourself into the ground, but if somebody doesn't see it or they're, they're having their own issues and it doesn't, it's not apparent to them, it doesn't matter.
00:43:08.324 --> 00:43:08.463
Yeah.
00:43:08.463 --> 00:43:09.083
And I think that that's...
00:43:09.103 --> 00:43:13.943
I mean, that's a hard thing to wrap your head around, but I think, you, you,'cause you can't control someone else's reaction to something.
00:43:14.023 --> 00:43:19.284
You may do something that's like the nicest thing that you would love, because we do things that we often think like we would enjoy.
00:43:19.884 --> 00:43:20.173
Mm-hmm.
00:43:20.173 --> 00:43:27.884
So I, I s- my analogy is like, okay, I'm a vegetarian so I- if somebody cooked me the most amazing steak, I wouldn't be excited, right?
00:43:27.884 --> 00:43:29.583
They might spend all this money.
00:43:30.063 --> 00:43:30.844
Like, you know?
00:43:30.844 --> 00:43:33.634
But first of all, I'd be mad that they didn't know that I didn't eat steak.
00:43:33.653 --> 00:43:39.063
But like in theory, you know, somebody might not have the reaction that you expect, even if you gave them the world.
00:43:39.914 --> 00:43:44.643
So it's, you know, you have to, again, manage how you moderate all of that.
00:43:45.173 --> 00:43:45.753
Yeah.
00:43:46.123 --> 00:43:55.764
It's true also that, you can do as much as you want, but if somebody already has you pigeonholed as a certain way, they're not gonna see what you're offering either, you know?
00:43:55.764 --> 00:43:55.923
No,
00:43:55.923 --> 00:43:56.523
exactly.
00:43:56.534 --> 00:43:57.523
So yeah.
00:43:58.114 --> 00:43:58.554
Yeah.
00:43:58.804 --> 00:44:10.353
I always find it's, uh, sometimes even easier to interact with new people because they're only getting to see the version of me at that time, not the version they knew from 30 years ago that they still remember, and that's at the lens through which they see me.
00:44:11.224 --> 00:44:11.764
Yeah.
00:44:11.994 --> 00:44:17.333
So I think that's why it's important to grow and kind of have new people in your world,'cause you get to be more authentically you each time.
00:44:18.414 --> 00:44:18.864
Yeah.
00:44:19.123 --> 00:44:27.244
Yeah,'cause people have those impressions and then instead of really seeing you, they see their impression of you, you know- Yeah no matter how you show up, so.
00:44:27.273 --> 00:44:27.773
Exactly.
00:44:27.784 --> 00:44:27.804
Yeah.
00:44:27.813 --> 00:44:32.574
Which also is partly based on their own impressions of themselves, but that's a- Yeah whole other topic.
00:44:33.574 --> 00:44:36.164
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
00:44:36.514 --> 00:44:37.173
It was my pleasure.
00:44:37.173 --> 00:44:37.614
It's fun.
00:44:37.623 --> 00:44:39.173
And I love, I mean, I love what you're doing.
00:44:39.173 --> 00:44:40.804
I love the, the name of the show.
00:44:40.804 --> 00:44:44.744
I think it's great because that's, again, you're rewriting your story.
00:44:44.974 --> 00:44:46.443
It's not, you're not your illness.
00:44:47.603 --> 00:44:47.934
Yeah.
00:44:47.934 --> 00:44:47.943
Absolutely.
00:44:47.943 --> 00:44:51.233
So I, I really, I love what you're doing and I'm excited to hear more episodes.
00:44:51.914 --> 00:44:53.233
Well, thank you so much.
00:44:53.313 --> 00:44:54.753
I'm, I'm working on it.
00:44:55.833 --> 00:44:56.123
I know.
00:44:56.123 --> 00:44:57.324
Well, that's a whole other thing, right?
00:44:57.373 --> 00:45:07.288
Like, for a perfectionist like me, having a podcast is great, but also it's extra work, and I have to moderate- Not getting overwhelmed,'cause that will lead to other problems.
00:45:07.867 --> 00:45:08.077
So.
00:45:08.077 --> 00:45:08.728
Yeah.
00:45:09.027 --> 00:45:16.527
Between the, the recordings and the editing and- Yeah trying to, to keep up with the IT, and I know you work full time as well.
00:45:16.527 --> 00:45:16.757
Yeah.
00:45:16.757 --> 00:45:25.777
You know, so it's like just trying to keep it fun and more of a passion project, and I don't want any- Yeah anything, uh, to be a chore.
00:45:25.938 --> 00:45:27.458
I'm working on that, too.
00:45:27.478 --> 00:45:28.427
You know, making...
00:45:29.297 --> 00:45:37.327
Changing my viewpoint of, of why I do the things I'm doing, is because I want to, not because I have to.
00:45:37.338 --> 00:45:37.358
Um.
00:45:38.728 --> 00:45:39.108
That's good.
00:45:39.137 --> 00:45:40.018
That's very powerful.
00:45:40.498 --> 00:45:41.047
Yeah.
00:45:42.047 --> 00:45:44.967
Trying to see the blessings in all of the things that I've chose.
00:45:44.967 --> 00:46:09.947
It's funny'cause I was talking to somebody The other day, one of my friends sent me a meme that was something about I got married and I had this dream of having this husband and this life and, and the job and everything, and it's like all these things we chose, but then once we get them, we're like,"Oh, but I don't like this," or,"I don't like that." So it's like that attitude of coming from"I chose this.
00:46:09.978 --> 00:46:15.918
This, this was my dream at some point," and now I have it, and now, why am I like,'Oh, I don't wanna be here.
00:46:15.918 --> 00:46:16.898
I don't wanna do this,'" yeah,'cause...
00:46:16.898 --> 00:46:18.088
nothing is ever what it seems.
00:46:18.088 --> 00:46:20.507
And also, we don't even always know why we want something.
00:46:20.688 --> 00:46:22.188
You know, like there's conditioning from when you're little.
00:46:22.188 --> 00:46:26.248
You're told to, you, you know, you get a- you, you grow up, you find somebody, you get married.
00:46:26.248 --> 00:46:28.898
Like, that's just part of how we expect life to go.
00:46:29.487 --> 00:46:36.947
And then you have that and you're like,"I don't know." I, I'm a forensic accountant and I'm doing mostly family law right now, so all I I do a lot of divorce work.
00:46:37.748 --> 00:46:38.108
So.
00:46:38.217 --> 00:46:38.588
Mm.
00:46:38.978 --> 00:46:42.347
So I'm seeing a lot of people's, you know, the, regretting the choices they made.
00:46:43.347 --> 00:46:47.878
And then they have all this stuff, and they're fighting over it, and some of them don't even have this much stuff and they're fighting over it.
00:46:47.887 --> 00:46:48.737
They don't know why.
00:46:48.748 --> 00:46:54.628
They're just mad at somebody else, and it's kind of like the cycle of life unless you pull yourself out of it.
00:46:55.398 --> 00:46:56.047
Yeah.
00:46:56.177 --> 00:46:56.588
Yeah.
00:46:56.677 --> 00:46:57.858
And live deliberately
00:46:57.918 --> 00:46:58.027
yeah.
00:46:59.217 --> 00:46:59.717
Absolutely.
00:47:00.717 --> 00:47:01.068
Oh.
00:47:01.887 --> 00:47:05.998
Well, thank you, and I will look forward to hearing more of your podcasts.
00:47:06.407 --> 00:47:06.978
Thank you.
00:47:07.007 --> 00:47:08.027
It was great talking to
00:47:08.438 --> 00:47:14.228
if you know of someone that would be the perfect guest or would like a certain topic explored, please reach out to me.
00:47:14.547 --> 00:47:19.340
My contact information is in the show notes Thank you for listening.
00:47:19.530 --> 00:47:26.320
If you've enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend.
00:47:26.391 --> 00:47:30.061
Until next time, you get to choose who writes your story.
00:47:30.291 --> 00:47:32.052
Let's make it amazing
