Every year, I choose one training that helps me get closer to the future version of myself that I want to grow into. One more course that will help me help my clients feel less stuck.
This year, I’ve been taking a class to go deep on somatic experiencing to heal trauma.
You’re probably wondering- What does trauma have to do with health?
After years of battling with my body, the greatest lesson I learned is that mental and physical health are deeply connected.
I had a line of thoughts like, “What’s wrong with me?”, “I’m broken,” and “I’m a mess.” I judged myself harshly for it. But now I know that those messy little broken parts are my human parts. I continue working to fully accept and embrace them, knowing that over time, I can change them when I choose to.
I spent years thinking that if I changed my weight, my struggles would heal. Unfortunately, it never worked.
After years of personal training, being in medicine, and coaching, I know it’s not just me. It’s most people. This is a common struggle.
Our culture teaches us that everything is structural, something we can “fix” – just eat the right calories, do the exercises, or get the surgery.
We often consider stress to be external to us. It’s our careers, keeping up with our families, and everything we can’t control.
The truth: Eighty percent of our chronic stress is in the mind.
Our nervous system can’t distinguish between imagined stress and real stress. So, if you spend two hours catastrophizing about losing your job because you made a mistake on a project, the body feels the effects of it as if you lost your job.
Stress shifts how you digest and store your food. It changes hormones and immunity. It changes the way blood flows to your muscles. It changes your breathing and your heart rate. It shifts your energy. It changes the tension in the postural muscles. It can create pain or symptoms or drive you towards intense cravings.
Stressful thought patterns are often the drivers for weight gain and persistent symptoms.
It’s why I spent so many years struggling to follow a nutrition or exercise plan. Stress is a powerful force.
As a culture, we’ve also been taught to believe that stress from trauma has to be from one big, horrible event: sexual abuse, physical abuse, a natural disaster, or a war.
Trauma is so much more. Even someone with a seemingly “normal” life can show trauma responses. Me included.
The truth is that trauma is a soul-level belief that we need to betray who we are to survive.
How does it look?
You spend all day meeting everyone else’s demands, neglecting your own needs.
You anxiously pretend to be someone you aren’t in order to fit in.
You feel stuck in patterns of behavior that you deep down want to change.
Your energy isn’t consistent with the way you sleep and eat.
You never know when a random, unexplained symptom or pain will pop up and ruin your day or week.
You eat in a fog and don’t realize you’re even eating until the food is gone.
You eat as though your life depends on it- nothing can stop you in the moment. The food has energy over you.
The deepest layer of my coaching is to remind you of this:
You are enough.
You are worthy of life and space in this beautiful world regardless of what you weigh and regardless of how much “work” you put into the world.
If you’re struggling to believe it, that’s the real work, underneath the weight and symptoms.
Once you truly believe that about yourself, you naturally care for yourself differently.
The food loses its power and energy. Your job becomes less stressful. Your family is something to experience, not something to create and change.
We’re all on a journey of healing as we work towards becoming the best version of ourselves.
Never stop working towards becoming who you want to be.
As we welcome more light, let it find the shadows.