120 Could Self-Discovery be the Real Secret to Managing Autoimmune Struggles?

Health Mysteries Solved: Thyroid and Hashimoto's Revealed

120 Could Self-Discovery be the Real Secret to Managing Autoimmune Struggles?

Released: Jun 9, 2022

The Case:

Leila has been dealing with Hashimoto’s, Lyme and Crohn’s disease for years. She was managing her symptoms through a strict regimen of supplements, diet, and various practitioners. Emotionally, she was feeling disconnected, discouraged, and joyless.

We so often focus on the biochemistry side of autoimmune issues that we forget the importance of taking care of our emotions and connection to life. In other words, there’s more to feeling good than just the physical.

The Investigation

Getting to the root of health issues, especially chronic and mysterious ones, is quite multi faceted. We really have to address it from all angles. While biochemistry is important, it's just one part and there are many areas that also play a very large role. This was what was missing for Leila and felt it was going to be important for her to really connect with herself and discover her true self.

This is not always easy so to help out, I invited a self-discovery coach to join me on this episode of Health Mysteries Solved.

Sara Katherine is the host of the podcast, Be Your Own Badass and the author of Your Self-Discovery Journal, I’m Awesome: Here’s Why, and Be Happy. Be Calm. Be YOU.

Her mission is to help women achieve their goals without letting people-pleasing or perfectionism get in the way.

What is Self-Discovery?

Before we can dive into self-discovery, it’s important to be able to frame it. For Sara, self-discovery is understanding what you want and what makes you you. She says the ultimate goal of being in tune with who you are, your values, what motivates you and your passions is that the more you’re in tune with these, the more action you can take in life. And, that action will feel authentic and right.

For someone like Leila, or anyone who is so focused on their symptoms and their health journey, it’s easy to start to feel disconnected with that authentic self. Being able to tap into what makes you you again will help you take care of your symptoms and day-to-day issues but also remind you that you’re more than what you're dealing with right now.

How to Get Started with Self Discovery

For anyone who has never looked into self discovery, it can be a bit daunting. Sara recommends starting small by tuning in to your intuition (which is just like doing a gut check). She says to hold space and check into how you’re feeling about something. Pay attention to how your body responds to that thought. Too often our minds are going a mile a minute and we don’t stop to check in with ourselves. She explains the concept of listening to our intuition as having an inner mentor (the opposite of the inner critic). It's the part of you that understands you and wants the best for you. It has the best results for you in mind. Checking in with your inner mentor can take as little as 5 minutes. To do it, start by sitting in silence. Then, do a life audit and scan through what you’re going through on a day-to-day basis. Pay attention to what comes up from your inner mentor. This is a great first step in reconnecting with yourself again.

How to Tell Intuition from Fear

The challenge that many people have with intuition or listening to their gut is that sometimes, when we have fear, we call it intuition. Sara says that she has also struggled with this because anxieties can creep up and get in the way of intuition. She says it’s all about understanding that deep connection to your truth which comes with practice. Practice by paying closer attention to your emotional and physical responses to things. Meditation is also a way to hone your intuition skills. She also suggests paying close attention to which feeling comes first. Usually, the fear comes first but when you sit with it for a moment you can let the intuitive response in.

Misconceptions Around Self-Care

Ask someone for an example of self-care and chances are the response will be either get a message or take a bubble bath but are these really examples of self-care? Sara says they may be but only if that’s what personally fills you up. Self-care is personal. Each person has a different way of recharging their batteries. For some, it might be connecting with friends while others prefer time alone.

There is no one size fits all for self-care - it is highly personal.

If you don’t know what fills you up or recharges your batteries, you need to try new things and pay close attention to how it feels before, during and after. But, don’t wait until your cup is empty - find what fills it up before you need it filled. For example, for me, if I don't sleep, I don't feel well. One of my forms of self-care is going to bed early and getting lots of sleep. If I wait until I’m tired to get more sleep, it’s already too late.

The Difference Between Self-Care and Self-Love

The act of self-care is an act of self-love because it cultivates self-love. Sara also says to think of self-care as the action and self-love as the state you achieve. Being able to take care of yourself and understand yourself throughout the process, that helps you be kinder to yourself and appreciate different pieces about you. This all brings self-love into your life. Self-love also has to do with the inner critic versus the inner mentor. When we are in a state of self-love, we listen more to our inner mentor instead of our inner critic.

Being kind to ourselves, and honoring the inner mentor can be a challenge especially for those who are people-pleasers or perfectionists. The inner critic is strong in these personalities, so there is a lot more work that needs to be done to combat the inner critic. For anyone dealing with autoimmune issues or who are on a health journey, it can be very hard to focus on the inner mentor because things don’t always go smoothly and the path isn’t always linear. So, practicing self-care and cultivating self-love are really important because a negative mindset can affect the healing journey.

How Can a Lack of Self-Love Manifest Physically

While this is difficult to prove scientifically, anecdotally there are many stories of people struggling with health until they are able to cultivate self-love. Sara says that she notices it physically. For her, it’s the digestive system that responds to times when she is allowing stress to creep in, when she’s not getting enough sleep or when she listens too much to her inner critic.

When you let the inner critic win, you end up in a negative state and that can spiral. You stop appreciating the positives, you may not do the things you need to do to feel good (like take time to go for a walk in nature or even just to take some deep breaths). It can compound if you don't combat it with some self-care practices.

Fueling Self-Care and Confidence

Confidence and self-care go hand in hand. When your self-care and self-compassion are low, it affects your self-love. If your self-love is low then it’s hard to be confident. For anyone dealing with autoimmune disease, this confidence is critical.

However, Sara points out that nobody feels totally confident every single day. Confidence comes and goes. Sara says that confidence is more like a muscle than a state of being. Building (and maintaining) confidence requires regular practice, just like self-care. One common way to boost self confidence is through daily affirmations. Another is to remind yourself of what’s good in your life by keeping a daily gratitude journal.

These practices help you focus on the positive each day and give you support through the challenging days. Even when things are challenging, you can always find something to be grateful for - even if it’s just the roof over your head or the apple in your hand.

All of this adds up. When you're taking care of yourself, you’re practicing self-care and cultivating self-love and confidence, you’ll find yourself in a positive state. Your body is more likely to respond positively to that state.

How to be Grateful When You’re in Pain or Your Autoimmune Symptoms are Acting Up

One of the first things to let go of when you are struggling to find something to be grateful for is the stress of trying to find the positive. Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s okay to just feel what you’re feeling; to sift through it rather than push it down. It’s important to process the emotions that come with the struggle of autoimmune symptoms.

Processing these emotions allows us to move and find those little things to be grateful for.

The more you do these practices, the easier it is to get through the hard days. It's a culmination of your daily habits, your emotions, your gratitude, and listening to your inner mentor. You can do big things but it's really about the culmination of the smaller habits that you integrate into your daily life. Even starting on such a simple level of gratitude of just what even exists right now in your situation.

Spark Joy

Another great positivity practice is noticing what brings you that spark of joy, passion or purpose. It could be anything from a book, a television show, spending time with a specific person or anything, as long as it makes you feel good. This is something you can start doing right away - just start by noticing feelings of joy. Ask yourself what the source of that joy is and note it. You might keep a notebook handy or use an app on your phone to make a quick recording. Be mindful and appreciative about it. And then you can use this to combat negative feelings and also to look for more opportunities to spark that joy again.

As you do this, you’ll start to reconnect with who you are and what you want. This will lead to a deeper understanding of your passions and purpose.

For anyone dealing with a health issue, whether it’s due to autoimmune or something else, this practice can help take the focus off your sickness or symptoms and shift it to the positive. Too often we start to identify with our illness instead of remembering who we really are.

What is Perfectionism and How does it Impact our Health?

A perfectionist feels a need to achieve all things to the best of their ability, and often that means without any errors, missteps, or mistakes. They feel that if it’s not perfect, it’s wrong. Anything they do that is not perfect is seen as a failure. They have extremely high expectations of themselves.

Many high achieving people deal with perfectionism and it can be quite destructive to their inner mentor. And, it can make taking action impossible because the fear of not getting it perfect is debilitating.

This can be a challenge for anyone dealing with autoimmune disease or health issues because they have an expectation of their body that if they do everything they are supposed to do then the body should respond. If they don’t get the result they are looking for then they take it personally. This further damages their inner mentor and allows the inner critic to take over.

Getting over perfectionism is a process - you can’t just decide one day not to be a perfectionist.

Conclusion

When it comes to healing, there are so many areas that play a role and mindset is one of them. This is where we started with Leila.

Leila had quite a few limiting beliefs around healing so this was where we began our work together. It took some time for her to realize the difference between what was reality and what was a belief. Deactivating limiting beliefs can take some time because they often come from a trusted source like a past caregiver or authority figure. If we believe these things then our body will also believe these things.

Leila also worked on appreciating her blessings. For so long, Leila had focused on fixing what was wrong that she stopped seeing what was right. Starting a gratitude practice helped shift this focus.

We also worked on her mind-body connection. I designed a set of exercises that she added to her daily routine. These helped her feel instead of just think. She never realized how much she can actually feel in her body and how much she was able to move and shift her own energy until she tried.

Doing all of this really raised her mood and energy and sky rocketed her motivation. She was able to feel so much more in charge of her circumstance than she realized. Everything began to flow better.

Next Steps

We also did some new blood work because despite having Hashimoto’s, she’d never been evaluated for her thyroid type. If you are unfamiliar with thyroid type, I covered it in this Free Training and I also have a step-by-step, customizable program you can access on my website: https://www.thyroidmysterysolved.com/

We discovered that Leila was ‘Unavailable Thyroid Type’ so it was no wonder that her medications weren’t working optimally since they weren’t being absorbed properly. We worked on shifting that by further supporting her biochemistry. She was already on a restricted diet and taking many supplements. I wondered if this might be having an effect on her mindset. So, we started looking at what we may be able to take away. I know this sounds weird but sometimes, the body can be overwhelmed with too many things.

Happy Ending

After 6 months of working together, Leila’s energy was higher, she was sleeping better, her aches and pains had improved, and she had a much better outlook on life. She was able to go out and enjoy life including seeing friends, eating out without worrying about it, and doing the things that she considers to be part of a normal life. She’s so happy and grateful now.

Eliminating Health Mysteries

For Leila we were able to find that missing piece of the health puzzle and help her regain her health. Could mindset be the missing clue for you or someone in your life?

Links:

Resources mentioned

Thanks to my guest Sara Katherine. You can connect with here through her website and on Instagram