About 7 years ago I was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, after a routine health check up. It wasn’t advanced enough to take medication but I was told it was an inevitable trajectory, and that Hashimoto’s was incurable.
I am ever thankful that I had already started training in mind-body therapy as a eutaptics® FasterEFT™ practitioner. This fuelled me with powerful knowledge, optimism and determination that this would surely not be my fate. I knew my doctor was doing her job, informed by her conventional training, but I never allowed her definitive outlook to become mine.
“The simplest step in healing is also the hardest: believing it is possible..An insidious process often happens with chronic disease, when the illness becomes your identity..The key to shifting our beliefs is to step outside of the prognoses and diagnoses long enough to tap into the innate intelligence within our cells. Because the body is where the subconscious lives, and where symptoms are trying to tell us the imbalances that are brewing.” Dr Cynthia Li, MD
What creates and contributes to our physical wellbeing and the role we play in our own health, was becoming my focus. Not only nutrition, sleep, exercise, and environment, but emotional well-being. I had been learning about the power of belief, the placebo and nocebo effect (when a person’s positive or negative belief determines the effectiveness of a medication, surgery or device) and how to change nefarious subconscious beliefs that drive behaviour and create our reality. I just knew that I was not stuck with this condition. I was grasping the thrilling idea that I was a powerful creator of my life, could affect my body chemistry and could dare to swing this around.
I stood at the foot of what I saw as an exciting, gentle mountain to be conquered. It wasn’t lost on me that the timing of this diagnosis was perfect now that I was studying the mechanics of how to change my emotional landscape, which would ultimately affect my physiology. Mind-body connection, right? Contrary to the conventional route of dealing with symptoms, I was focused on finding and transforming the root causes of my presenting physical dysfunction.
It has taken me a few years to understand the deeper correlation with my emotions and my nervous system as I continue to work on and understand the nuances and connections between my inner world and my physical health. There have been so many aha moments. It has given me leverage and confidence in helping my own clients.
The premise of my work is that the body is one holistic system where every aspect of self is relevant and connected. We thrive on a healthy diet, enough sleep, exercise, grounding in nature, a healthy physical environment and emotional wellness. I was ticking boxes in all these departments quite well, but my psychological landscape was working against me and I was totally unaware. I was immersed in my subconscious, self-defeating beliefs, programming and trances!
I was discovering so many leaders in functional medicine and holistic wellness. And they were so often underscoring that the mindset/ emotional piece was playing centre stage in health outcomes.
“A 2021 study on the biggest influence on development of Alzheimer plaques on the brain, was negative thinking, and particularly repetitive negative thinking, regardless of the APOE gene variant and lifestyle factors.” Dr Dawson Church, PhD.
And so I began to understand the source of my body’s dysfunction from an emotional/ mindset and trauma-informed perspective.
I have never experienced overt trauma in my loving household and score 0 in the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). But the saying goes: No-one escapes childhood, where we are biologically wired to give away our authenticity in favour of love and belonging. This is known as developmental or relational trauma. To be concise, I was a sensitive, quiet little girl, eager to please my parents and teachers. I quickly became “a good girl”. This is how I received love and positive attention; it worked in my favour. This behaviour became my gold standard well into adulthood. I began to “lose myself” and confidence too often, going against my truth, my unique essence, my authentic life force, so I could be liked and stay aligned. I looked for positive attention from everyone and in order to do that I had to be a chameleon, changing my behaviour to suit whoever I needed a “hit of love and approval” from. I was later triggered working in our pharmacy where I now had hundreds of people to please, and quickly!
Not being in favour was an instant body reaction of abandonment. There is more I could write on this and the nervous system, for another time. It has also made me ponder the dynamics of inherited family trauma, where we carry the emotional code of family before us. “The traumas of our parents, grandparents, and even great grandparents can live in our unexplained depression, anxiety, fears, phobias, obsessive thoughts and physical symptoms, ” says Mark Wolynn, author of It Didn’t Start With You.
Personal beliefs are just that – so unique to each of us – and are pivotal in our emotional wellness. It’s worth mentioning that I grew up in South Africa, a woman, in my time, with the notion that people were dangerous and the world unsafe. Frankly, anyone could take on this belief, anywhere in the world. Our fears can be very subtle but insidious when perpetuated long term because this becomes a brain pattern: the brain’s amygdala (fear centre) can interpret daily life as an ongoing threat, till you realise what’s happening and change it.
The biology of fear
Fear turns on the hypothalamus which communicates to the pituitary gland, which gets the adrenal gland to secrete stress hormones like cortisol, norepinephrine and epinephrine, which triggers the sympathetic nervous system and puts us into fight-flight or shutdown mode. I hung out here too often and for too long; sensitive, no voice, powerless, on alert for approval and scary people in a scary world. Amazingly, it was all operating in the background under my awareness and all the while a cocktail of negative chemistry was being produced too often, which longterm creates inflammation and a weaker immune system.
“Chronic inflammation is known to be a superhighway that runs straight to the most deadly diseases out there.” Harvard’s Dr Jeff Rediger, author of Cured.
THEN….I had a FasterEFT session on myself where my self-sabotaging behaviour and tendencies were spotlighted. I could not believe the links, programs, patterns and limiting beliefs that underpinned my existence! The secondary gain of this limiting behaviour? I WAS SAFE BEING CO-OPERATIVE. I WAS LOVED. I WAS APPROVED OF. I COUNTED. I BELONGED…..DUH!!
What a gift to unwrap these realisations. What a walk to freedom I had just begun. Towards myself, self-love and acceptance. Self empowerment. Confidence. Agency. Peace. Calm. I was so impressed at how quickly I could re-write my programming, I started studying to become a practitioner. I continued to have sessions on myself. “Hashimoto’s Fashimotos,” said one practitioner while tapping Chinese meridian points on my face, confusing my conscious mind into the great hypnotic suggestion that this was nothing to fear and not worth keeping. This was my method of “super learning”, a term by Dr Bruce Lipton, describing rapid reorganising of the subconscious mind, where we happen to hang out about 95% of the time.
Almost a year after being diagnosed, I walked the 800km Camino de Santiago. It was now my intention to reverse engineer my diagnosis for good and upgrade my tendencies. This sacred road is known for a few miracles, so what better place to continue my walk to freedom. I challenged myself to BE ME, to connect with people fearlessly in my purest authenticity. I loved, supported and showed up as me, relaxing my nervous system in perfect harmony with the world. It felt so damn good to be me for such a long stretch of beautiful way-finding in Spain and nature. I was miracle-making on foot.
I found a measure of my progress one afternoon as I walked into Samos, hot and tired after walking another successive day of 30km. My American friend and I saw a quaint little building where a lady was offering massage. We were soon lined up. After a very spiritual massage with lots of interesting hand movements, my session ended. As I walked away the lady ran after me. “Just letting you know, your energy is clear,” she said in a strong accent. I burst into tears. This was my sign I was mending.
Months after I got home, I went for another blood test with another doctor. My results were clear of thyroid antibodies and the Hashimoto’s markers. “What have you been doing?” he said. “Tapping,” I said. “And I’ve just walked the Camino.” He just smiled at me in confusion. So did I. Where would I begin to explain?
It is now another five years later and just recently I decided to do some more blood tests. They came back healthy and Hashimoto’s free. I’m not too surprised. I am a different person. My nervous system is now my sweet friend and my barometer. I look after it. I breathe, walk, tap and release stress whenever I need to. I continue to let go. I encourage myself to speak out. I know the wreckage stress hormones cause when prolonged. I have joy dates with myself to keep my happy hormones flowing. I have greater purpose. I hang out more often in my relaxed, ventral vagal, parasympathetic system with healing hormones like dopamine, oxytocin, nitric oxide and endorphins which bathe every cell in the body and repair them. This is my medicine – being relaxed, calm, in joyful oneness with everything. I am the biggest project I will ever work on. And I get to share this wonderful way to freedom now with many others that cross my path. My passion is taking beautiful groups of mostly women on wild walking adventures (where we dose on joy, connection and healing hormones) in Europe and sacred places.
I hope my story inspires you to unravel some of your patterns, to live consciously and to your own beat. You hold the key to your own healing. May you unwrap the gift of new insights and self empowerment.
“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it…Joy is not made to be a crumb.” Mary Oliver
Disclaimer
I am not a doctor or psychologist. I am a holistic mind-body wellness practitioner using EFT tapping, NLP, hypnotherapy, Polyvagal Theory and nervous system regulation techniques. Always confer first with your own trusted doctor/ healthcare provider.
Darene
Darene Puttergill Holistic Mind-Body Health 