Written by: Carla Atherton, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
This is Part 1 of an 11-part series. Search this site for the rest of the series!
My daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes when she was 11. Then all 5 members of our family experienced different combinations of mold illness, depression and anxiety, Lyme and coinfection, joint pain, GI distress, anemia I even had a spontaneous dissected carotid artery with a resulting clot that could have killed me, not to mention a family history of addictions and mental and emotional instability.
Those years were hard, yes; but I knew that experience was not what the doctors were telling me: permanent, unchangeable, predictive, needing to be medicalized and medicated. I didn’t see it that way then, and I certainly don’t see it that way now.
First, I decided that I wanted to know what and why, and how. I moved through training, research, and tests, then landed on trust, intuition, allowing, letting go, and an empowered assertion of my family’s resilience and limitlessness. I see the events of our past as part of life, my life, my family's life, that makes up the patchwork quilt that is our story, the beautiful kaleidoscope that is us, yet at the same time not defining our future. I probably should explain.
Through the 11 years since the big D-day (diagnosis), I have been cleaning off the lens through which I see health and dis-ease. Each and every discovery and experience makes things even clearer than the day before. This “cleaning of the glass” enables us to continue our evolution through times of challenge. But more importantly, the expression of that evolution is a full and vital life despite these challenges actually, maybe even because of them.
If you are reading this, you may be experiencing some significant health symptoms yourself. You or a loved one may have even been assigned a diagnosis of ADHD, autism, depression, anxiety, cancer, or what is sometimes classified as an autoimmune condition. You may be fatigued or gaining weight or have sleep issues or just feel blah most waking hours. You may have been told that your current experience is permanent or irreversible, you may even start to identify with the label you have been assigned or have gotten used to your new normal of daily discomfort.
Now, these experiences are significant, but what if I were to say that they are not, in essence, bad? And what if I were to say that each and every one of your symptoms or experience of dis-ease has a purpose and that the body never makes mistakes but adapts in order to remain alive and well?
When we struggle with health issues, we want to find out what is wrong and what to do about it. What if I were to tell you that in your case, there is nothing wrong and that there is a lot you can do about what you are currently struggling with, and one of those things is to simply allow your body, heart, and mind to do what it is designed to do: heal, regenerate, and repair while becoming stronger with every challenge.
We can investigate through labs and observation, employing support like friends, family, and professionals to help us to understand what happened and what to do to feel better. And this is a very important step to take to make sense of things, to find the causes and contributors, to avoid it happening again, but only as a starting point.
I have been in the coaching profession for long enough to know that for one thing to change, everything must change, and that “everything” is not what we believe is the right medication or even nutrients for our discomfort, but our very understanding of health and dis-ease itself.
You can feel better on protocols and lifestyle changes, but if you do not know what the true root of your dis-ease is, feel confident and empowered in your role in your own health expression, you cannot enjoy a lasting elevation of it to shift into a baseline status of “feeling pretty good most of the time.”
So, in this series, I will be taking you through many of these shifts, moving deliberately toward true health empowerment.
I feel Crappy. Make It Stop!
This is an entirely reasonable request. Make the pain go away. Make my depression lift. Make my discomfort stop. Yet, when we medicate and silence our symptoms, they will come back time and again with their messages. And the message usually is for you to stop and listen or that there is a healing process underway.
Yet, if symptoms become unbearable, you can support your emotional and physical body holistically, essentially turning down the volume so you can handle the discomfort without dumbing down the process. Symptoms are signs that something is in need of rebalancing or repair, and oftentimes is the healing process itself. So, they are not bad, they just “are” and do not mean that you are sick or broken. You are not at the mercy of an invader or disease.
Do you see the difference? Do you feel how empowering it is to know that?
Now, let’s talk a bit about the “D”-word (diagnosis). When we have discomfort or what we call symptoms, in the medical model, we see this as malfunction or pathology. We want to know what this thing is so we can make sense of it and know what to do about it. Yet, diagnosing can lead to fear, misinterpretation, and ineffective cookie-cutter protocols that do not address your individual needs or circumstances. They limit us and our potential for change. This model also creates a permeating misbelief that we are separate from what is happening “to” us. Symptom expression is a language of the body and psyche. A diagnosis is not the end but the beginning of the healing process.
First, understand that there is nothing wrong with you!
Second, you have the capability to be vital and are always self-healing.
Your First Shifts Into Kick-Ass Vitality
Ready to reclaim your vitality, joy, and control over your life? Repeat after me:
“I am ready to take the controls and fly the plane.”
“I don’t want to survive my life, I want to love my life.”
No kind of healing or sense of vitality can exist when you feel powerless. It doesn't matter if you are dealing with a financial crisis or a cancer diagnosis. If you wake in the morning overwhelmed by the day that has only just begun, spend the day either neglecting your own needs and body or dealing with some kind of chronic health condition, and fall into bed at night feeling defeated, there is very little room for joy, creativity, and abundance. So many of us are overwhelmed, and many are spinning our wheels in our own health. I know what that feels like. Absolutely. I have sometimes wondered if I would always suffer, hurt, and worry. Always worry.
It seems easy to succumb, to throw your hands up, to rant and rail to find some release but never change things, to settle into a lot in life and be limited in our existence. But is that what we really want? Is that how we want to spend our hours, our days, our lives? The martyr. The overwhelmed parent. The sacrificial lamb. The fixer. The doer. The lost self. The person in control of everything but barely, and at what cost? The person in control of everything but their own health and happiness.
So, it may seem easy when you don’t want more to succumb to the limited existence of ill health and overwhelm, to a lifetime spent doing things you don’t want to do. It’s not so easy to succumb when you do want more, when the concrete has been cracked and you see the Golden Buddha inside. The physical and/or emotional pain you feel is not bad in any way, and it is a clear and distinct “no” to that life and a push into what is waiting for you on the other side. That’s when you roll up your sleeves, pick up the chisel and hammer, and start knocking that shit off.
Additionally, sometimes “recovery” is not what we think or expect it will be; sometimes, the journey toward health isn’t to live longer or even supersede our health challenges but to discover something about ourselves along the way. And the decisions in life are up to each and every individual; we must go through our own journeys without mother medicine, father government, and codependent practitioner to take on both the responsibility and the power, both of which should be in our own hands.
As a coach, my ultimate goal is not to alleviate symptoms. I don’t tell you what you should do but what you can do. Symptom relief is only part of it and only the beginning, and we aim for something more. It is not enough to give people a nutraceutical, an exercise routine, or advice to look for mold in their showers. Of course, we do these very important things, but what is even more important is how you see your role in your own health and question what you are being fed by a consumerist, profit-focused, disempowered, fear-based, pop-culture of belief. Yes, I did just say that. And out loud, too!
My goal as a health empowerment coach is to help people to make shifts happen, to not only do things differently but to see differently, as well. This is what will make your health journey an evolution and the successes you have sustainable and longstanding.
Let’s move away from disempowerment and partial misinformation and toward building confidence, finding answers, and becoming empowered to experience vital wellness. Turn your diagnosis into an opportunity for discovery. Realize and tap into your limitlessness. Because limits are merely Illusions. And I can see through that Illusion and want you to see it, too. I want you to not only see your power but also feel it and have that be the catalyst for your healing.
So, if you are feeling unfulfilled, overworked, and undernourished in body, mind, and soul, if your kids or spouse have some kind of diagnosis, if you are not well yourself, or if you are feeling overwhelmed, depressed, anxious, alone, defeated, stuck, I want to tell you a few things:
You are not alone.
You can change it.
In fact, you are the only person who can.
Big Shifts for Today:
Shift symptoms into signs.
Shift your diagnosis into an opportunity for discovery.
Shift your expectations into possibilities, and be open to all of them.
Check back for the next installment of this series: Shifting from Chronic Health Conditions, Emotional Strife, and Stress into Kick-ass Health Empowerment
Session 2: The Matrix in Which We Live: Are You the Spider or the Fly?
Visit our website and sign up for the Healthy Family Formula newsletter to receive more support, information, and opportunities for your health empowerment and to listen to Carla’s 3-Part Coaching Series: Shift from Struggle to Harmony Through the HFF Health Empowerment Method FREE!
Carla Atherton, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Carla Atherton, MA, FDN-P, is the Director of the Healthy Family Formula and the HFF Practitioner Training Academy, Host and Producer of the Children's Health Summit, Author of Family Health Revolution, Host of the Family Health Revolution Podcast, Health Empowerment Coach, Holistic Family Health Consultant, Yoga Instructor and Mind/Body Facilitator, and Children's Health Advocate. Spurred on by the love for her three glorious and grown children and her husband, Carla's mission is to support people to achieve their best health through information, guidance, and empowerment.
Carla lives on an acreage in rural Saskatchewan, Canada, where she works from a home office. In addition to empowerment and health coaching, teaching others this skill through her academy, and leading “Hero’s Journey” creative writing workshops, Carla also works with families from all over the world on the reversal of conditions such as Autoimmunity: Type 1 Diabetes, PANDAS/PANS/Autoimmune Encephalitis, Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Celiac Disease and Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity; Asthma, Allergies, Eczema, and Reactivity; ADHD, Autism, Sensory Processing Disorder, Learning Disabilities; Depression, Anxiety, Mental Health Disorders, Eating Disorders, ODD; Other Neurological Conditions; Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, and Metabolic Disorders; Untangling Mystery Symptoms, Complex Cases, and Co-Morbidities (having more than one condition); Mold Illness; Multiple Chemical Sensitivity; Lyme; Other Infection; and Addictions. Carla is on a revolutionary mission to empower families to transcend our new normal of ill health and chronic dis-ease.
