#86 Address Underlying Causes with Dr. Doni

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining me. I'm Dr. Donnie and I'm a host of the How Humans Heal podcast. And today I wanted to share some insights with you just directly from me. And it has to do with stresses and how we're exposed to stresses as humans living our lives and how those stresses can go from potentially an emotional stress to showing up as physical symptoms in the body. And to think about how to think about how to be understanding that and then what to do about it.

I realized that this is such an important part of how humans can heal, and it's something that I don't always get to talk about very specifically. So I am really excited to be able to cover this more in depth with you today. So the thing is that let us first think about the different kinds of stresses that we are exposed to. And this is something that I definitely cover in my upcoming book called Master your Stress, Reset yout Health. So I am looking forward to you being able to have that in your hands. But to begin with, what I invite you to do is to just think about some of the stresses that you've been exposed to in your life, including starting from childhood, even when you were in your mom's pregnant belly, what were some of the stresses you were exposed to through childhood and throughout your life? Sometimes these are things we, you know, we tend not to want to think about. You know, we tend to kind of rush through our day and, and almost avoid thinking about traumas that we've experienced because it's uncomfortable. Sometimes it brings up emotions that we tend to try to avoid. Things like sadness or anger or shame or embarrassment or just wishing things could have been different. But I find that there is some aspect of acknowledging what you've been through that helps you to connect with yourself, understand yourself, and integrate those experiences into being you going forward. And so it actually can be helpful to do a review of your life. If you haven't done that, sometimes it's a matter of writing it. When I was in naturopathic medical school, this was an assignment we had to each write our a journal about our lives. And this was part of a course called Physician Heal Thyself. And. But I find that it's very helpful for everyone. In fact, that's some of the benefit of meeting with a practitioner where you can talk about and verbalize your experience and what you're feeling and what you've been through. There's actually benefit to being able to either write about it, talk about it, identify it, and I would say helps you integrate it into your way yourself into your state of being, or to process some of these traumas and be able to let them go. Because the thing is, is that when we experience stresses or traumas or, you know, loss, sometimes it's an experience of loss in your life, Loss of a loved one, loss of.

Something you hoped for or dreamed for, loss of a relationship. You know, these are experiences that happen to us in our lives. And it's not like we can just try to avoid these things. I mean, of course, to the best that we can, we can try to choose now, going forward, relationships and experiences that are more loving and supportive to us. But when we were a child or young, at different times of our life, things might have happened that we don't have control over. And I think that's sometimes why it can feel stressful, too, is because when something happens that we tend to want to blame ourselves. Even if it's something we have no control over, sometimes we still tend to blame ourselves. And when we blame ourselves or if we feel guilty or ashamed, that can be a stress that we carry forward into our lives. And of course, if something happens that you want to apologize for or you want, then definitely forgive yourself for. So there's a part of it that's, you know, really, you know, sometimes we do need to acknowledge and apologize and forgive what has happened. So it's not about being dismissive. It's not about ignoring things that you went through. It's about being present with it. And sometimes it helps to be with another person, whether that's with a therapist or with a practitioner or with a friend or another type of healer who can be present with you as you bring back these memories or as you process these experiences.

The reason why it can be so useful and important to do this is because when we have different stresses that occur, they can show up in different ways in our bodies. They can show up on emotional level, like carrying forward a sense of anxiety or. Or, say, being hard on ourselves ongoing into the future. I don't know if some of you can relate to that, where maybe if you find yourself sort of criticizing yourself in your own mind or being hard on yourself. Maybe you realize that's because of something that happened earlier in your life. And once you start to realize that connection, then you can have more awareness and you can start to shift that conversation you have with yourself in your mind. You can, you can notice it and choose differently. Choose to be more supportive, loving, forgiving, accepting of yourself in your own mind. Also, what can happen is when we have various different stresses we're exposed to, it can show up on a physical level in our bodies. Sometimes you might start to think about if you're experiencing any kind of discomfort or imbalance or anything in your body, whether it's digestion, whether it's immune system related, autoimmunity, cancer, even if it's in your joints, on your skin, in your eyes, really anywhere. These physical symptoms can be related to past traumas or stresses. This is something that there's a lot of awareness for. In other traditional forms of medicine, like in Chinese medicine, for example, they really connect emotional experience to what's happening on a physical level in the body.

Sometimes we can even look at the physical symptoms and get a sense of what emotion might be unprocessed or unresolved. For example, the lungs are related to grief.

Sometimes if a person has experienced a lot of loss and grief that maybe they haven't had a chance to really process thoroughly, they may be more likely to experience symptoms in their lungs. Homeopathy also, which is a system of medicine from India, also notices that connection between emotional state and physical state. A homeopathic remedy often will address both at once. Thinking about the lungs, for example, there's a homeopathic remedy for grief called ignatia. Ignatia. Ignatia is also used when a person has symptoms related to their lungs or shortness of breath, or maybe a feeling of a lump in their throat. It's so amazing when we see that these ancient systems of medicine, we're already really noticing and paying attention to the connection between our mind and body, between our emotions and our mental, emotional state and our physical state.

Sometimes what I hear from patients, and I know for myself as well, if we get frustrated with something that's going on with our health, like if you're feeling frustrated that the symptom is not resolving right? Like, you're like, I've tried everything. I've been to the different specialists, I've, I've taken different herbs and nutrients, I've changed my diet. Maybe you just feel like, okay, I'm doing everything I can, or I'VE done a lot of things and I still am not seeing enough of a change in my experiences, my symptoms.

What I would invite you to consider is that maybe there is something unresolved. Maybe there's sometimes it's a stress or experience or even a belief you have from earlier in your life. That's the thing. When we're children and we experience stress, we tend to create a belief. We tend to attach our experience to a belief. Those beliefs sometimes then carry forward with us throughout our lives until we notice and we go, wait a minute, is that really true? Sometimes, if a childhood belief might be, I have to do everything myself. I can only rely on myself, you know, sort of as a negative. Right? And then a different time in your life, you might realize, well, it's true that we each are responsible for ourselves and accountable for ourselves and ultimately need to prioritize our own care for ourselves. But that's not a negative. That's not necessarily a, you know, I can't depend on anyone else. I have to depend on myself. It's more like even when we have, we realize we're all connected anyway. We're all humans in this experience together, all interconnected anyway, so we're not really alone. But at the same time, we are making choices to prioritize ourselves within that interconnected system. And so that's a knowledge and awareness that comes with age that children don't have. Children may not have that knowledge. And so they, they make a belief that, you know, might serve them in the moment, but later in life that that may need to shift so that you can feel the interconnectedness and the ultimately the support that you need in order to move forward towards your goals and including your health goals.

Sometimes it can help to just consider if there may be some, what we call limiting beliefs from your childhood.

That may be showing up for you in different ways. Sometimes it's under the surface or behind the scenes, or maybe you only notice it when it's quiet, like on a day off or when you're taking a shower or when you're going to bed or when you're waking up in the morning. I find those are common times for people to notice these thoughts and these beliefs that might then affect their choices. And when those beliefs affect our day to day choices, it means that we may be choosing to do something or not do something that could actually be affecting our health. Until we realize, why am I making this choice? Why am I continuing to choose to.

Say, go toward. I think this is where sometimes different addictions come out.

I think another very common experience as humans is when we're under stress and just in general, when we're trying to keep up with life, we can become addicted to different things, whether that's caffeine or chocolate or alcohol or different, even medications.

Different relationships. There's a lot of things that we can become addicted to. And addicted meaning that we're choosing it, even if without thinking about it and choosing it because we feel like we have to. It starts to feel like I have to. We can't not choose it. And actually our biochemistry becomes dependent on sometimes these substances or these relationships where we may get a dopamine response or an oxytocin. These are neurotransmitters that are normal. We normally have dopamine and oxytocin. Those are good things. But if we choose certain activities or behaviors or relationships that give us a spike of dopamine, it can feel really exciting at first. But then what happens is as time goes on and then levels come down, then it feels not so good, it feels bad. When we are withdrawn from that substance or that activity, it becomes this roller coaster where we have a high and a low and a high and a low and a high and a low. And we become addicted to that experience of the excitement of the high and then the withdrawal of the low that pushes us toward choosing that substance again.

Something a lot of people don't know is that too much stress can actually create an abundance of health problems like high blood pressure, high blood sugar, anxiety, migraines, insomnia, even fertility issues. This is because high stress puts your adrenal glands on overload. They release quite a bit cortisol and adrenaline, which controls your digestion, hormones, immune system, energy focus, and even your emotional response. So how can you beat stress when you don't know where to start? That's why we have a free seven day stress reset program. It's designed to help support weight loss, digestive healing and hormone balancing. It includes support for integrating self care. Daily tips come to you by email and video. Gluten free dairy free meal plans as well as grocery shopping lists, journal pages and more. This free program will help you beat stress and put you on the path to wholeness in your body. Get your plan now for free@drdani.com and.

So these addictive patterns can happen without us even sort of realizing it. They can. You know, all of a sudden we realize, oh my gosh, I am in a pattern. And it's. I don't even know how to not be in that pattern. And so, you know, sometimes just, I think it's that awareness of self awareness that helps us to realize. And this is why I think sometimes doing something like a, you know, what might be called a cleanse or a reset or detox can be helpful. Or even just taking a vacation from our usual lives can be so insightful because we're out of our usual environment, our usual daily schedule. If you make a dietary change or say you decrease your caffeine or your alcohol or any other substance that you often consume and you put yourself into a different situation, maybe with different people, maybe away from WI Fi and all of a sudden now you're connecting with yourself because.

You'Re not as distracted with all the things we usually have distracting us, all the different stimulations. And so now you can become more aware of your choices and more aware of how you feel in each step along the way. And so this can be really life changing, you know, to actually have a little bit of time to reflect and to, to integrate and to know yourself better and to realize that.

You know, you're, you're human, you're doing your best. And sometimes we have, right, these experiences or these choices that catch up with that can cause us to feel trapped and to feel. And when usually we start to feel trapped, we start to feel anxious or depressed. And so those symptoms happen along with symptoms on a physical level. And so I invite you, if you're listening and this resonates with you, if you start, maybe you start to think about things you've experienced in your life or, or symptoms you've been experiencing or health issues that have been unresolving for you, then I invite you to just start to bring more awareness to it. It doesn't mean that you have to immediately choose to do a 10 day cleanse or something. I would just start with 10 minutes. Just start with.

Maybe each day having a little bit of self reflection time or check in time where you can just take a few breaths. Maybe it's when you're in the shower, or maybe it's when you're just waking up, or maybe it's when you're taking a walk.

I encourage you to connect it with an activity that helps you feel centered and a chance you have to just be with yourself. Where you're not on a deadline to get somewhere or get something done, where you can just have a little space. And sometimes it can start with one minute. I mean, I understand what it's like to be a parent and a business owner and all the things we have to get done. Sometimes we realize we don't even have a minute for ourselves. If that's the case for you, start small and then see if you can create 10 minutes. Or see if you can create an hour each week or maybe four hours each week where you can just.

Do your journaling, do your, maybe for some people it's a meditation or a mindfulness exercise. Sometimes it's listening to music, sometimes it's again being outside in nature where you can just kind of disconnect from everything else going on and just see what comes. Amazingly, our bodies, I really believe that our bodies have a healing tendency, A magnet, almost a pull automatically. So when we give ourselves that space automatically, your mind and your body are going to start to give you the information you need to be able to create these shifts. At first.

Your mind can almost give you a flood of stuff. You might want to just start writing it down quickly because you want to be able to keep it flowing and, and to not be afraid, you know, just know, wow, all of that was waiting for your attention. All of that was waiting for you. And as you get to do that more often, then it's going to be not such a build up. It's going to be, oh, okay, let me see what's here today or now. What, what, what do I, what am I feeling? What am I experiencing? How, what are some interconnections that I didn't realize before? You know, sometimes it'll, your intuition will start to just start talking to you more and you'll start to make connections that maybe you weren't making before. And so this is how practices of these various practices of mindfulness, I often refer to them as stress recovery activities, have been shown over and over in research to help us. We see even that our heart rate and our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system come into better balance. What's called a heart rate variability we can measure.

It shows us that our stress system is already resetting. We can also see that sometimes that your sleep might improve. They see that the nerves in our brain start to repair and create new neural pathways called neuroplasticity. We know even from studies that these activities help our bodies reset even in small increments, even in 10 minute period of time or less, whatever, wherever you can begin and then expand from there and be knowing that this is the way that you can sometimes then realize what was underneath your health issue all along. You know, sometimes once you realize that, you're like, oh my gosh, of course I, of course that makes sense. Of course, I pretty much already knew that. I just didn't. I didn't vocalize it. I didn't put it together in such a way where I could actually choose differently. And that's always cool when you can, you know, really draw those connections for yourself. Because, I mean, what comes to mind is, like, for. In my example, some of you may know, last year I had a growth on my clavicle, and I had a surgery to have it removed. That's the thing. Sometimes we wish, like, okay, whatever's going on in my body that's causing pain, that's causing a disturbance, can't I just have a surgery to have it removed? Now, of course, thank goodness we have surgery as an option. And yes, even I had a surgery to remove that growth. But what it really made me realize that I still needed to.

Consider, what is it that caused that growth to begin with? Even if I know I can pinpoint certain injuries that occurred that likely contributed, I can say to myself, let me try to avoid that injury to my joints again. But I also then can think about, well, why is it that I was putting myself in that situation? Why was I choosing an activity that put my joints at risk? And when I asked that question, then I start to think about, what are the other ways that I might be putting myself in a vulnerable position, putting myself at risk when I really don't need to? Maybe there's other ways where I can still exercise and not put my joints at risk. I can still.

Do other things I'm passionate about and want to do without, hopefully putting myself at risk of harm or injury.

You see what I mean? You can start to peel back the layers and look a little deeper and see.

This is what the experience was for me was. How do I choose to take better care of myself, prioritize myself, listen to my body, listen to myself, to know when I might be going beyond putting myself in that risk zone and then choosing differently. Because I think it made me realize that a lot of us put ourselves at risk every day, all the time.

Sometimes we do that without really realizing, wait a minute, I could be putting myself at risk of an injury or something, infection.

Something that could really be harmful to your life and your health in general.

Maybe that's part of my message today, is just inviting you all to consider that are there times where you maybe could be doing something to choose differently, to be.

Helping to keep yourself safe?

Are there times when maybe you're making yourself a little too vulnerable to certain kinds of risks?

I think that to some degree, to do that requires that we first value ourselves, first have a sense of, I'm loved, I'm worthy, I'm a priority.

I matter. And some things. These are some of those underlying beliefs that maybe were never developed. And this is something that a lot of times, if some of you have worked with a therapist, they will help with this. But you can also do it on your own to just go, wow, how do I start to really believe in your heart? How do you believe in your heart that you're loved, you're worth it, you matter. And because you matter.

It matters that you're safe. It matters that you get to interact in the world and share your passion and live your purpose, but also in a way that doesn't have to be sacrificing yourself or making yourself sick in order to accomplish those goals. So just a chance to check in on that. Because this is a very. Sometimes it's a very fine line, right? Like, it can be really exciting sometimes. I was talking about addictions. We can also be addicted to work if we, you know, we're.

If we're. See, we turn that off.

When we're addicted to our work. We can be. At first, we're excited about a project. We feel inspired, motivated. But at the same time, if we don't get to sleep and eat and do all the other things to take care of ourselves, exercise and do stress recovery, then that project at work becomes too much of a stress, right? So it's a matter of understanding which stresses. We may want to choose.

On purpose, choose to be a parent or choose to have a business, or choose to, you know, whatever that project may be, go on a trip. We're going to choose these stresses sometimes, but we want to make sure that we also choose to give ourselves support to be able to keep up with it, to be able to get enough sleep, get enough good food to eat, movement or exercise, stress recovery. We need these things in order for our mind and body to function well so that we can do what we love and what we're passionate about. You see what I mean? So it's about creating that balance, about knowing where that balance point is. And it's different for each person. You know, what might be the right amount of. Of activity or work or focus for you could be very different for another person. So you. I think a lot of just living our lives is a matter of finding that for ourselves. Where is that perfect middle for you? And you're gonna, I think, just figure that out by checking in each day. You know, check in. How is my energy level? How's my mood? How is my sleep? How is my focus and motivation? And how do I feel in my physical body? And when we check in on those levels each day, we can get information and go, okay, yesterday I did a little too much. Today I need to do a little less work and more recovery.

This is where we can start to find a path, a schedule, a daily schedule, and a routine that allows us to do what we love without wearing ourselves out, which I really believe is possible now. I have definitely challenged it in my life by doing the things I have been inspired about and wanted to do. I have worn myself out many times. And so you are not alone. If you are feeling like you have gotten burned out and crashed and burned over and over, I am with you. But each time I use it as a chance to reflect and go, okay, what happened there? What can I do differently this time so that I can really be able to maintain the activities that I would like to be able to do without wearing myself out or without causing another health issue?

I hope that's helpful for all of you today. I love to hear your comments. Please.

Like or subscribe to the How Humans Heal podcast to hear more from me, including interviews with upcoming guests where we'll cover these kind of topics and more to really help you to be able to think about.

What does it take for a human to be healthy while also living a life with purpose? What is that? What's required? That's why I love to interview other practitioners and people from what they've discovered. What do they find that helps humans to be healthy while stressed or healthy while being human?

Thanks again for joining me. Please if you enjoy this podcast and others, please also write a review. I would love that. I'd love to hear from you. If you have any other topics you'd like me to discuss, please let me know. All right. I hope you have a good rest of the day. Bye.

Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdonnie.com.