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I teach tools and practices that utilise neuroplasticity yes, but those tools are not my primary goal of working with people nor the driving force of how I healed myself.
Due to being an HSP (highly sensitive person) I was struck at such a young age at how much pain people carried. I could see it in their eyes, hear it in their voice and feel it in their bodies. I know it was my path to work with people. I moved towards this at university first with a BA, then Masters and internship to train as a psychotherapist so I could empower people. Instead, as I entered my profession, I found a model of mental health that pathologised the human experience into DSM classifications; in other words into symptoms.
This is useful to guide some interventions absolutely yes - but entirely useless in terms of:
The model I was being asked to practice within was about what was ‘wrong’ with the person. This confused me because what I see and feel inside each person since my childhood is the intrinsic wholeness inside of them. I sense it as a kind of song/frequency. Everyone’s is different. I could sense this but could also clearly feel their separation from this whole authentic self, separation from their body, from their painful emotions, and from the present moment. I realised as I got older that this was not how others saw and experienced people.
Due to what I perceived, I felt that the truth of their recovery would come from helping them re-connect to their authentic Self, their body, the present moment, being able to safely feel all their emotions and also to come home to a sense of their spiritual Self that was not tied to their physical body and known personality/ego.
My psychotherapy internship broke my heart as it was all about ‘mental illness’. How could I see someone deserving to learn how to work with their inner conflicts and pain to come home to the truth of their wholeness, whilst ‘treating mental illness’? I could not reconcile what I knew in my heart with the practicum I was being asked to adhere to. I left the field. I became a high flying banker for over a decade and I left my soul path.
My Own Illness
Fortunately for me, my purpose was not going to be derailed forever. A course correction came in the form of devastating complex chronic illness that took my career, freedom and life as I knew it for a decade (for my diagnostic labels you can see the About Me section as there were many!)
The divine comedy for me was that after many years of searching for the ‘right’ treatment, protocols, tools, ‘root causes’, programs to ‘do’ so that I could get rid of my symptoms and get away from my situation, I was humbled to realise I would need to heal myself in the way I had perceived from my childhood that others needed. Healing was about reconnection with my mind, heart and body. The body was the brave messenger that I kept shooting down as a ‘problem’ and simply did not know how to listen to. The symptoms were a healing response to alert me to care needed. True neuroplasticity, the ability to shape my mind body connection needed to come from self understanding, self acceptance, and self commitment.
“That’s the biggest gift I can give anybody: “Wake up, be aware of who you are, what you’re doing, and what you can do to prevent yourself from becoming ill.” – Maya Angelou
I realised how much I had shut down that deeply vibrant, sensitive, authentic me in order to survive in a traumatising and traumatised society, and in order to cope with my own trauma and level of innate sensitivity (which is a superpower but I just had no idea how move through the world with it). My personality had adapted to survive and protect that vulnerable authentic part of me in multiple ways; by achieving, people pleasing, helping, being critical of me, getting things ‘right’, controlling my environment, disconnecting from my body. These were all defence mechanisms I thought of as just ‘me’ or ‘I am type A’. In doing so I had shut down many of my gifts too. My nervous system had also shifted into higher gear at a young age to protect me, and was not at a comfortable regulated baseline due to a lifetime of chronic stress.
This is why for me just ‘doing a program’ would not be enough and this is why I do not do this with clients now as a practitioner. I had to start a process of inner discovery about myself. How my mind body was currently mapping and understand the origins of this. About what was creating dysregulation day to day, which linked to my past experiences. I had to as Maya Angelou says in the above quote ‘wake up, be aware of who you are, what you are doing’ and then gain mastery with tools over time and with a lot of practice. Without asking the deeper questions with compassion, I would not have the foundational sense of Self and trust growing that I needed to heal at the depth I was called to.
My Unconscious Mind Body Connection - Becoming Aware
I started to become aware that how I spoke to myself and moved through the world was putting me in a chronic stress response. Pressure on ourselves to heal is an emergency/threat in the brain, so is criticism, perfectionism etc. So whilst I was working so ‘hard’ to heal - I was not actually creating the space, true rest, and safety my system needed to do what it is created for - to find balance. My defence mechanisms/protective parts of me like achieving, perfectionism, helping, people pleasing were working so hard to keep me away from emotional pain and discomfort. They were needed survival adaptions to help me cope with my childhood along with gendered and societal conditioning that shaped these parts of me too. But as an adult they were creating havoc in my mind body as they were part of what put me in a stress response. They needed my kindness and understanding; for me to see them, to then let me as an empowered adult to choose new ways of being that allowed me to self regulate and be authentically who I am.
I realised that the physical symptoms had also become a psychological defence; a distraction to keep my attention away from the true root of the pain, which was emotional. I realised my avoidance of situations, people and life during illness had become part of why I felt so unsafe because avoidance created further unsafely and loss of authentic expression. I realised that the safety behaviours I had created were keeping me stuck. I was not actually in my body despite being hyper vigilant in my mind about my physical state. This lack of embodiment was also a defence against feeling things in my body that were uncomfortable. My mind would pull me out of it when I became activated/stressed/dysregulated. However to heal we need to inhabit our body and its sensations, changes and dynamic expressions.
I did not treat myself well and therefore was judgemental of others too. I was too dialled into how other others were healing and not trusting of my own direct and unique experience that I had to commit to discovering in daily life. I perceived offence everywhere as I was so identified with the parts of me/defence mechanisms that protected childhood wounds like shame and beliefs like ‘there is something wrong with me’. I could do any program or protocol you asked me to from my intellectual mind as I am very smart. But to commit to myself; to getting to know and love ALL parts of me? To realise I would heal me and there was no time limit on this, that I was responsible for my future experience of this lifetime no matter what I have been through? To actually grieve and feel/process all I needed to in order to come to that acceptance? To accept that my daily life was my true medicine and neuroplasticity practice? No thanks. Another supplement and fancy skill please instead haha. It took me a long time to realise with kindness that I was my medicine.
Central Sensitisation
My nervous system was on level 1000 danger alert because it had become so over sensitised to an inner world that felt so dangerous to me (this is usual in trauma and no ones fault) and I was perpetuating this sensitisation unknowingly with the conditioned patterns of how I was treating myself/thinking/believing/behaving/protecting myself and also the way I was approaching my recovery; with pressure, panic, lack of trust and reacting with such fear to symptoms.
Due to this internal sensitisation, my nervous system was perceiving environmental factors in the outside world (smell, mold, people, places) as a threat too. Over time this had become a cycle of increased central sensitisation that was leading to further symptoms, pain, safety behaviours, false attributions like; ‘it’s the food, the mold, the movement, my body, the other person, the no sleep last night’. This all caused further anxiety, depression and loss of feeling influential in my life. This was a true psychoneuroimmune (mind brain body/immune system) illness so it was very real in my body and life. But I was so blocked emotionally and energetically so how could I expect my physical body to heal, detox, feel free to move, be present, move in the world with energy and ease?!
It was a tough walk down honesty street to realise that my relationship with my body and myself was unhealthy. I was so identified with my body’s physical condition, labels, symptoms, and saw it as an extension of all that I felt was wrong about me as a person. By identifying with the body’s condition/labels/symptoms so much - I was not allowing it to heal as it naturally wants to every moment. The symptoms were really a sign of where that healing was stuck. Chronic in mind body syndromes and unsealing injuries just means incomplete healing. I needed to understand what blocked that innate healing, how to remove those blocks and instead empower and nourish my system.
I became aware that my inner energy was so low and showing up in chronic fatigue from trauma holding my body in a chronic stress response, chronic maltreatment of myself, being controlling with restrictive diets, re-victimising myself by not truly self caring, checking out, distracting myself, working ‘hard’ in my recovery, not allowing myself to have feelings and needs, not cultivating sustainable healthy ways of being as I was focused on my life being about ‘healing and recovery’ instead of growing the healthy version of me I wanted to practice, not accepting myself, being chronically hyper focused in what was ‘wrong’ with me and not cultivating any heart lead spiritual practice.
I was constantly in a sympathetic nervous system state (fight flight) or a dorsal vagal state (freeze/collapse). Over time these states had become my default conditioned responses to internal and external challenges and I was on a tough hamster wheel of losing more resilience, faith in myself, and response-ability.
My Recovery
I needed to be honest with myself about really what was going on in me. Radical honesty, radical responsibility and radical permission to heal in much deeper ways. This was a path only I could get to the start of. (Some people that come to me just want to ‘do’ a program. I refer them onto coaches who can do that with them as this is not of interest to me or aligned with my passion for healing).
I began to shift my orientation on my healing entirely. From trying to fix everything ‘wrong’ with me, I began to look for what was right in me. I took my hyper-vigilant focus off my body. I began to nourish my health instead of treating sickness. I had to consider what I really wanted from my process, what mattered to me. Not to get away from something, but what I actually wanted to experience. For me personally it was freedom (more on this later). I had to get familiar with my core values and start to live from those, working through the fears and blocks that arose from doing so - with self compassion.
Instead of focusing 24/7 on everything that scared me and was ‘wrong’ or ‘better then worse’ day to day, I began to take little moment pauses to take in the good. As an HSP this is actually a super power but both my mind and nervous system had been conditioned to look for danger so well that it had scanned out positive about myself and the environment, like a horse with blinkers on. I had to begin to reconnect with the present moment, my body and my emotions in tiny, titrated ways and then shift my nervous system state into more harmony and create states of being I wanted to experience more of. I stopped fighting and started befriending. This is the ONLY way we heal a nervous system. I learned to recognise signs my system was becoming dysregulated. I began to care for it instead of blaming myself or getting lost in the thoughts and stories that were actually more of a reflection of my nervous system state, than about me as a person. This understanding of my nervous system started to lift the shame and blame - and things got a little easier. This is why psychoeducation is so powerful for us all around trauma, chronic pain, fatigue etc and nervous system healing
I did use powerful tools from all of my training to begin to help heal my nervous system states and befriend all parts of me, but with the deeper awareness of WHY I was using them and HOW they connected to who I was as a person. I stopped practicing from panic or trying to ‘get’ somewhere. Instead I worked (and still do) to help create a better connection between my unique brain, mind, body and spiritual body - moment by moment by moment in really small ways that I integrated as ways of life (that are ongoing now). I personally also do not see these conditions as a limbic system ‘dysfunction’ or ‘impairment’. The brain and psyche adapts in service to us to help us survive. It is an adaptive evolutionary mechanism and not something ‘wrong’ with the brain or us. We have to thank it for its service and be curious about how to help our entire system return to homeostasis, which it wants to.
I began to consider how I could get to know my body and myself as if it were a rescue puppy that was bruised and mistreated. How would I teach that puppy that I was a safe person to be around. Would I shove 3758 supplements down its throat and tell it ‘YOU NEED TO DO THIS PRACTICE DAILY OR ELSE!’. No, clearly not. I would learn to befriend it. I would start to observe it without judgement with fresh eyes to see what it needed in that moment, its unique way of being in the world that would be different to every other puppy out there. To understand that the tremors, behaviours, avoidance, other symptoms it displayed were symptoms of its deeper fear and disconnection and that trust would be built through consistent, curious, kind attention.
It took time, consistency and trial and error but the only true learning came from direct experience and trusting my system’s feedback. It was not rocket science either. The foundations of health; sleep, light, nature, nutrition, reducing toxicity (on all levels), addressing deficiencies (these often arise too due to a chronic stress response but we do not need 3856 supplements - we can balance this in ways the body can assimilate), movement, mind body connectivity, play/laughter, social connections, work, forgiveness, compassion, spirituality - are gentle practices we put in place over time with feedback from our unique system to let us know what works for it. All these factors feed into our recovery in different ways for different people. There are top down factors (beliefs, thoughts, traits etc), bottom up factors (gut health, nervous system, vagus nerve), and outside in factors (work, relationships, environmental factors, social connections) that all intersect to help us shape our nervous system and recovery.
I began to work with myself in new kinder ways with deeper understanding. I was clumsy, I made a lot of mistakes, I failed and I survived the failure. I began to get to know myself through the willingness to stay curious about what felt helpful for my unique system and different parts of me at different times, by not making myself ‘wrong’ when shit hit the fan and I dipped, by learning to observe myself through kinder eyes. This was all new to me. I had to give myself a container I did not have as a child (no blame, it is just a fact of our current societal and familial models along with the high burden of trauma). It was a whole new world to learn to heal under my own kind attention (not intense judgemental scrutiny). Safety is the presence of attuned connection. We know it when we feel it with others as we are wired from birth for connection. We can learn to give it to ourselves too, with a lot of patience and practice. We can learn to grow it with others, with patience and practice.
Psycoeducation In My Recovery
I cannot over emphasise the importance of psychoeducation for all. Those I work with that are open to the learning I provide them ALWAYS do better than those that are closed off to new ideas and learning about the mind body connection. I went back to school during my recovery with my last savings and into post graduate fields I had access to due to my former qualifications. My original academic background is social psychology and neuroscience. My primary loves within that that I branched into whilst healing myself are:
The psychoeducation about the mind body connection I learned (and now teach) brought my fear down a great deal. I knew in my heart I had influence and I could make a difference. I realised when my immunity came up - my chronic infections would come back into balance. And that as my nervous system healed I would get more functionality and less fatigue. I truly did not know if my body could be 100% out of pain or fatigue and be well again but I no longer saw this as the static outcome of ‘success’. I knew I could get peace, be accepting of my body and who I am - and THAT WAS FREEDOM. I could not wait for some mythical outcome in order to feel ok each day. I had to teach my system that NOW was ok. Life is short and wherever we go, there we are so it is best to change our inner world, in order to change our whole world of recovery.
The big fat lie I had been telling myself was that ‘when I get to 100% healthy I will feel ok about myself, life will be easy, the unicorns will slide down the rainbows’. I had to stop telling that story and come to accept where I was here and now, in order to create a life and way of connecting with myself that created harmony.
The body will re-organise when it feels safe. I needed to create that safety over time in thought, in how I used my mindful attention, learning safe ways to feel emotion in my body in tiny titrated ways, learning to shape my neural pathways, learning to respond instead of react to my symptoms, build resilience in tiny steps, take actions aligned with caring for my physical self, live from my values, cultivating healthy relationships, learning boundaries and what parts of me found them tough, getting to know all parts of me - especially the parts of me I rejected or suppressed, and grow a sincere appreciation that I am an HSP and so need to cultivate my life in a way that is counter culture in order for me to thrive.
In short, to appreciate the unique biopsychpsocialspiritual nature of my recovery and nourish each aspect in tiny little baby steps. I do mean this - tiny incremental change is how our nervous system can process. Parts of us can have a tendency to go large with change and push past limits in our healing practices too. This can swiftly hit the overwhelm button both in mind and nervous system, which will lead to the brain returning to our more energy efficient known habits and patterns (no matter how counter productive they may be). We have to respect that the unknown and uncertainty takes more energy in the system and we have to integrate each change with care and snuggle it in. This gets easier the less pressure we put on ourselves for a set outcome. The more we do this from true self care and befriending, the easier it gets to too. We do not have to be fully healed to feel peace, joy and freedom. That comes from how we are cultivating our state of BEING, NOW.
Beliefs - Unlearning
We are deeply programmed in our society with beliefs about illness, germs, our physical body, trusting authority outside of us when it comes to our health. These come up during recovery as limiting factors about what we are capable of. We have to address these as they emerge as they form part of the limitations we communicate to our body as a lack of trust in its abilities, and it alters our epigenetic expressions for health and disease. I was told my 45 doctors how much was wrong with me and that I would not heal, or I would need to do x y or z protocols otherwise I would be seriously ill. Yet here I am healthy. I did a great deal to get well in terms of supporting my physical body yes and these continue now as a consistent lifestyle, but none of it was from fear or belief that anything was ‘wrong’.
We also have limiting childhood beliefs; usually learned/imprinted in times of an unsupported emotional pain that we just did not have the capability to process. In a moment of confusion, shame, rejection, fear, violence, abuse, neglect, chronic stress, sadness etc in our early life, our child’s mind lacking the processing abilities of an adult, reasoned it must have been our fault; ‘I am not good enough, it is my fault, there is something wrong with me etc’. This discovering and unlearning of our childhood imprints can be so hard because the truth is often painful, but it is also the path to freedom. If these are left untouched in the system they again can create limitations on our freedom of authentic expression, and by extension how our body functions.
Shame and guilt have been routinely used to train the ‘right’ behaviours into children at school, in church and at home in families. This can lead to significant internalised shame, sadness, anger and guilt. This is especially true in trauma, and for highly sensitive people. This too needs to be connected to and integrated for some, myself included. Trauma and emotional burdens can also be passed down family lines and through race-based traumatic stress (which is ongoing for many). So it is important to understand that intergenerational trauma is not rare. It is a powerful truth to be a cycle breaker of that - so be gentle with yourself if it is that case. Baby steps in these cycles are mountains being climbed. A note too on this; it may be part of your experience to deeply honour yes - but it is also not all of you. We cannot fully identify with ANY label if we want to be free.
Surrender
I also realised in my recovery that I am not here to be God. I am not here to control any outcome. I had the humility from my growing spiritual practice to realise that I had to let go of the level of control I was trying to wield over my body and my recovery. I was strangling my innate ability to heal due to the pressure and force of my ego seeking control of the process in order to feel safe (which of course has the opposite effect). There was also an element of trying to control in order to stay away from the existential truths we simply avoid in our society about the life cycle, about death and about suffering.
We do not initiate our kids into truths like life and death, the universality of suffering, that we have no guarantees of anything in life, that we deserve a great deal but are entitled to nothing, that there will always be more pain and more joy in our future, that we are spiritual/energetic beings here to have a physical experience and we are not our body. We do not help them accept these when they are initiated into adulthood so many kids grow into adults deeply over identified with their physical body and their personality (opinions, beliefs, traits), uncomfortable with change or challenge, and so scared of their mortality that they are scared to live life fully.
There is also no shame EVER in working with a physical condition, pain, physical limitations that we may have to adapt to in life. You are not less spiritual, worthy, or free if you are working with something in your physical body. We do not have to ‘overcome’ all challenges in any set way to be worthy of a full life. Acceptance and self compassion heal at a level much deeper than the physical. Transforming our experience needs us to accept what we are working with and surrender the need to control the outcome in order to feel a certain way or ‘get’ somewhere. We have no idea what will happen in our lives, none - and for the human personality that likes to feel control for safety, this is tough! But where ever you go - there you are, so it is best to meet your present moment experience and self with love. Surrender also comes more easily when we cultivate and grow our faith in whatever spiritual tradition is true for our unique Self, because that is a depth of love and holding that we can truly lean into and trust. It is also a way to connect with inner Truth and ancient wisdom that is not reliant on anything outside of us. Plant medicines like Psilocybin, San Pedro and Ayahuasca can also help us along that particular path if we are called to that work.
Acceptance
Life is about contrast. There is no health without illness, no joy without pain, no life without death. We are here to learn to accept that. To accept reality so we can influence our expereince of it. All beings have the great potential to change their experience of their life. I know this to be true from the hundreds of individuals I have seen change their own lives. But we cannot change our neural pathways unless we accept responsibility (the ability to respond) for being the conductor of our neural orchestra. To realise neuroplasticity is about gaining enough kind awareness and self knowledge to understand why our mind body is firing and wiring in its current default mode, accept this, and then CHOOSE what we would rather experience. Without the acceptance of who and where we are in this moment, we will just keep recycling our experiences. Acceptance of what has come before too in our history is part of this and this happens in titrated safe ways so we can safely process/integrate/release grief, sadness, anger - anything that we need to from the past in order to accept the reality of now.
Opposition is a catalyst for transformation. Opposing forces are necessary for growth, progress, and evolution, and exist to take us beyond their duality to to a deeper unity.
Erich Fromm wrote about the ways we seek freedom from something. But freedom from is a life on the run. There is no freedom from reality. In contrast, Fromm proposed that we have freedom to: freedom to love, freedom to be with what is, freedom to become transformed by uniting with the emotional truth of this moment. Freedom to embrace outer and inner reality.
We seek freedom in forms it never takes, in places it’s never found: freedom from reality, from conflict, from feelings, from death. So strange, isn’t it? True freedom is not freedom from reality but within reality: freedom to embrace conflict, feelings, death—your inner life, your sensations moment by moment. That’s emotional freedom.’ This is a neuroplasticity practice worth the daily work to shape our neurons to accept what IS, surrender the need for control and all that is not under our influence, and move towards what we want to experience more of.
Our work is to help create safety and a robust inner relationship to the body and all parts of us, so that this healing can occur. This is how I recovered and this is how I work in my own practice. It is an incredibly empowering way of working with ourselves. To start with the truth of each person’s wholeness that cannot be broken or taken away. To understand how and why we disconnected from that wholeness, our body, our emotions, and the present moment. And build bridges to grow home in unique ways that allow us the freedom to BE, which is what real health is - regardless of our current physical condition.
We are all unique; we can be neurodivergent, we are all different races, varying ages when we begin our process, all different diagnostic labels, many unique factors. But underneath those parts of what makes us who we are, is the deeper universal Self lead power to heal and transform our experience of this life. For me in my recovery and having seen hundreds through their own self healing - it still comes down to core similarities I see people display as they come to know themselves; to really see and love the truth of themselves. Compassion, curiosity, consistency, commitment, community, acceptance, surrender, spiritual connection, play and laughter. Please let 2022 help you move closer to who you really are with tender kindness. Your healing matters in the world. You matter. Healing is less something we ‘do’ and more something we learn to allow by coming home to trust our own wisdom and body over any authority or ‘fix’ outside of us.
I get to see the beauty of the human experience through my work with so many remarkable people. For those I will get to meet this year, I am excited to meet you, see you and know you.
May you be happy. May you be well. May you be safe. May you be peaceful and at ease.
With love
Nadia
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