Mold and Emotions Series Part 8

Hey, everybody. Dr. Diane Mehler here. And in this video, we're going to talk about mold and emotions. I am a mold illness and Lyme disease survivor. You will hear me talk about my story throughout this channel. And basically in this particular video, from the emotional side of things, I want to talk a little bit about the importance of why working on the emotional and the mental body is so important in recovery. So as we talk about this, I want to repeat over and over and over again about how normal it is to be emotionally dysregulated in some way when you have mold illness. There's a lot of reasons why this happens. The topic for today is really looking at the nervous system. So when we have types of illness that are severe and chronic, like mold, illness tends to be our body goes into a fluid fight or flight type of state, right? Because we are basically trying to survive. So we secrete adrenaline, our body goes into hyper movement because we are really in the state of survive, survive, survive, survive. That's our goal. And so when we do that, we are cranking out adrenaline, we are cranking out cortisol, and guess what? The body does not do well. When we are cranking those things out, our immune system doesn't work as well, which our immune system is huge for removing mold toxins. In addition to that, we see changes on our hormones. We see thyroid hormones change, we see our sex hormones change. And so we begin when we can get in this vicious cycle, right, where we have the mold creating this adrenaline and cortisol response, these stress hormones. And then all of a sudden, we see our hormones like thyroid and our sex hormones get out of balance, and then we feel worse. And then usually we start thinking and trying to figure out in our head, and we get more stressed. That leads to more adrenaline and more cortisol and a bigger dysfunction of our other hormones and our immune system. And we get in this vicious cycle. And so this is a very classic vicious cycle that people with mold go through. I went through it, and it's really hard to get out of. So first of all, you're experiencing emotional dysregulation. Congratulations, you are normal. And please do not let anybody else tell you that there's something wrong with you, because what's wrong is the fact that you have these toxins in your body. So it becomes really tricky to work with because it's really. We want to make sure that we are honoring your experience and acknowledging that this is very, very real. This is happening to you. And there's some ways where it's like you're a victim of your environment. And at the same time, it's almost paradoxical. So we want to honor that. We also want to come in and help to realize that that when we're in this vicious cycle of mold, triggering fight or flight, triggering these other dysregulations, triggering further emotional imbalances, triggering worse fight or flight, we got to get you out of that cycle to heal, because we got to put you in a different nervous system state where you're not pumping out things like adrenaline and pumping out things like cortisol to survive. Because when you're not pumping those things out, you're sending molecules through your body that say healing, heal, repair, rest. Those are the things we want. Those are the chemical signals we want pumping out. We want those messengers to be very, very, very clear. So this is extremely important. So that being said, how do we do that? Well, this is where we want to work with the mind. And this is where it becomes pretty imperative, honestly, that you have some type of technique that is going to help your mind to get out of this vicious cycle. And so that technique could be something like breath work. So there's different types of breath work. There's things like box breathing. So it's accounts in account, out account. So let me actually start over. So box breathing would be, say, counting into account of 4. So you breathe into account of 4, you hold for a count of 4, you breathe out for a count of 4, and then you hold for a count of 4, and then you would do that again for 5. So 5 in, 5 hold, 5 out, 5 hold. And so basically, we would do this over and over and over again. And you can continue to ascend when you do this. So you can do six, you can do seven, you can do eight. Oftentimes when you have mold illness, you have shortness of breath. So many people, even just around a four is hard. But the idea with this is the hold of after the exhale especially is really, really calming to the body long term. Acutely, it might feel like you need to breathe, you need to breathe, you need to breathe. But when the body learns that it can survive that it's actually triggering a relaxing response in the body. So, point being, using some sort of breath work can really help get out of this vicious cycle. You can do visualization activities, you can do meditations. You go, if you type in UCLA meditations, they have some great, real short meditations. The grand scheme of this is it really doesn't matter if it's breath work or visualization or meditation or some sort of slow movement like yoga or qigong can be really helpful. It really doesn't matter. Hugely. One of these other things, there's some slight differences in their impact, but for the most part, they all have the same result of being able to get you out of that fight or flight and get you into that more human heal and repair part of your nervous system. And honestly, the mindset work, what I've seen in my clinical practice is this is the hardest thing to get people to commit to, but one of the most impactful things when they do. And the more you can do these, even if it's small chunks, Even if it's 30 seconds, once or twice a day, right? I know it's really hard when, like, there's so many symptoms sometimes too get yourself to do it. Another thing, when you're just trying to survive, but honestly, you guys, this is part of your ticket out, and it's not easy, but this is where sometimes we just have to go in and find that. That. That part of ourselves that is just the survivor, no matter what, and grip down and say, okay, well, when you're sick, when you're in bed, when you're not feeling well, what can you do? Or when you are just trying to survive and you're keeping up with work and kids and you feel horrible and you just can't wait to hit your pillow, and how can you still squeeze in even if it's 30 seconds, even if it's a minute, One of these types of activities? Because we got to get you out of the vicious cycle. We got to get you to a point where your body is sending the molecules that say to heal instead of the molecules that say to break down. So see what you can commit to. Commit to something small and attainable and really, really work hard to get yourself out of this cycle because it will help your healing. All right, everybody, please subscribe to this channel and I'll see you in the next one.