Breaking the Stigma Around Mental Health with Dr. Christina Bjorndal

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Welcome to the get yout Life Back podcast and you are in for a treat today. With me is the brilliant, the Beautiful, the compassionate Dr. Christina Bjorndell. She's a naturopathic physician and it is an absolute honor and pleasure to have you here. So thank you so much for being here. Dr. Christina.

Thank you. It's great to be here with you.

We're going to be talking about a lot of wonderful things pertaining to the mental health journey and integrative approaches and all of these great things that you're offering and developing. And before we jump into the content, I just want to brag on you a little bit and talk about what you've been up to and make sure that everyone who's listening can get access to your content. And so if you're listening to this right now and you're in a place where you can write some information down, I want you to pause, pull out your phone and then make sure to find Dr. Christina on her Instagram. And you're going to do that by going to Dr. Chris Bjorndahl. D R C H R I S B J O R N D A L so make sure you find her on Instagram. That's a really good hub. She's up to date. She has links in the bio. And then the second thing I want you to do is to bookmark her webpage because she has stuff on there that you're not going to want to miss. And that's Dr. Christinabjorndell.com and I'll be sure to put links because she's also on Twitter and YouTube and, and she has some courses we'll talk about. So be sure to check out the links in the bio and let me just brag on you just a minute here if that's okay, Dr. Christina. Sure.

Again, so let me read you her bio.

You guys, this is so, so impressive. So Dr. Christina Bjorndahl, naturopathic physician, is an authority in the treatment of mental illness like depression, anxiety, bipolar and eating disorders. And she gets it. She gets you. Having overcome many mental health challenges, Dr. Chris is a gifted speaker. I've watched her interviews, I've listened to her work so I can give a personal testimony to this. And she's a best selling author who loves to share her philosophy of wellness. She's been interviewed with icons like Jenny McCarthy and many more. And she's recognized as one of the top NDs to follow by two independent organizations. She's helped many patients achieve physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well being. She has written four books I tell you, four books on mental health. She's created two courses, a 10 week course for individuals and a clinician's Integrative Mental Health Week. And it's a 10 week course. And so you can find out more about those courses by going to her website. So, girl, I am so amazed, so impressed, so honored. Thank you for being here.

Yeah, no, it's great to be here with you. I'm so appreciative of your work as well. And just the fact that we just need more people who are talking about mental health and how to. How to actually overcome some of these challenges that are all too common.

And I like that you use the word overcome right out the gate because that word brings with it a lot of hope. So tell me a little bit about overcome and what that looks like for you and with your mission and the education that you're providing people.

Yeah, see the last chapter of my book, beyond the Label, it's about. It's all the myths of mental illness. And to me, these were all the things that I was told that, that when I was struggling. So things like, you're going to have to take medication for the rest of your life. You're always going to be, you know, basically, you're never going to be. Well, essentially was the message that I received. And I found that really disheartening. And after I had a real spiritual crisis, I'll call was a suicide attempt which left me in a coma with kidney failure. And I was, I was on dialysis. I was told I would need a kidney transplant. And I can tell you, when I came out of that coma, I was not happier than what, you know, the day, days prior when I went into that coma. Right. So when I came out of that coma, I was, first of all shot. I'm still here. And I'm like, now how do I reconcile this and how. Like what? And so that book that we were chatting about earlier is the friend gave me this book by Marianne Williamson called A Return to Love. And there's a book, there's a quote in that book on surrender which goes along these lines, that surrender is not about breaking out of anything, but it's a gentle melting into who you really are. So you take off that armor and you understand that all God needs is one sincere, sincere surrendered moment where love matters more than anything. And so for me, the key word in that quote by Marianne is this word love. Because I did not love and accept myself. And from the minute that I was diagnosed with depression and then subsequently anxiety and subsequently bipolar disorder, type 1. I can tell you, all I was doing was wearing a mask and stuffing everything down and projecting out into this world this fake image that, hey, you know what? I've got it all together. But I'm actually, like, literally dying inside and having no space to voice any of that because of the shame and the stigma and the. And the. And my psychiatrist had told me, don't tell anybody that you have this. Like, don't tell anybody. You know, so you're walking around like, oh, I've got this big, dark secret that's ugly, and no one's gonna ever love and accept me. You know, So, I mean, this is back in 1987, you know, to. In the late 80s, early 90s. I know that things have shifted over the last 34 years, that I've been working through these conditions, but I feel like there was no message of hope for. For me. And that's what I want to be for people is like, look, you don't actually have to struggle for 25 years like I did. You know, you can. You can see people like yourself, or you can talk to people like me, and you can learn that there actually is another way here to navigate your health.

So a word that you use to surrender, which I think is really powerful, and it might feel scary, scary for people who are listening, because oftentimes our strategies are to try to not surrender. We try to have control. We try to. I'm going to do the coping strategies. I'm going to do my exercise. I'm going to take my medications. And it can feel like this pendulum swing from chaos into control and chaos into control. And so can you tell us a little bit more about surrender and what that might look like?

So surrender is where you understand that there is a perhaps a force greater than you that is actually the one that's in control, if you will. Right? So, you know, they say things. There's this one quote I'm sure you've heard that, you know, you want to make God laugh, make a plan, right? You know, you think you're in control, but you're not actually in control. And so this spiritual piece is around the surrendering is understanding that there's a force within you, which we talk about in our medicine as the vital force. Or in Chinese medicine, it's this concept of qi, right? In Ayurvedic medicine, it's this concept of prana, right? I guess in Western medicine, we can just simply call it the breath, but it's this life force. And what, you know, the Difference between me and you and a cadaver is life force, right? It's energy. And so when we surrender, we let go. We take our hands off the wheel and we. And we sort of we.

We.

Look, you. You align yourself vertically versus horizontally. So what I mean by that is you align yourself with your heart and your soul and your spirit versus your ego, and you just learn to trust that the universe is working for you. Things are happening for you, not to you or against you. As long as you have a breath, right, as long as you have this ability to. To take a breath, then you have an opportunity to surrender and to move into the flow with life versus going against the grain, so to speak. And a lot of people are in resistance and struggling, so we can use the word surrender or struggle. And whenever you're struggling, you, you know, think of a struggle, right? It's. It's a. It's a. It's that idea of chaos, in a sense. It's tightness, it's fighting, it's sympathetic state. And that's not where healing happens. So, you know, I had my moment of surrender. It wasn't pretty, but it was. But I got. It was definitely a very. I don't talk about it much. I mean, I think you're probably the second person that has ever. Of all the podcasts I've done, you're probably the second person that I've ever. Maybe, maybe third that's ever asked me about surrender and not. And that moment. But it was, was. It was when, for me, it was. I was at the bottom. Like, that was the bottom. The bottom. So now I get emotional thinking about it.

Well, it's like a relinquishing of the.

Belief that we ultimately can control our way or resist our way or fight our way into the life that we want, when in all reality, what I hear you saying is that by releasing the need to control, by aligning vertically, by simply surrendering into the flow, that that's where true freedom can lie.

Yeah. For me, you know, and this wasn't like, you know, one minute I'm recovering and I open my eyes after trying to commit suicide, and then the next minute I'm surrendering and life is great. You know, it wasn't like that at all. But, you know, so this surrender has been a continual unfolding and a continual choosing towards light and love and life versus death and darkness. And really, I say that that was my bottom point. It really was. But I skimmed along that bottom for quite some time. Right. That was, you know, 1994. Then I had a subsequent suicide attempt in 97 and then I had a much one much later, which was 2009. And the thing is, I really was still in this bit of resistance, right. Like I was getting the concepts perhaps in the head, but I wasn't translating them right. Information is not transformation, so I wasn't transforming them into my heart. So it took many, many years. So I just, I want people to know that this is a definitely was for me, doesn't have to be for you, but it was for me a decade long or decades long process of unfolding into acceptance and love for myself.

How did you, how did you continually make that transformation? Because what I hear you saying is it's not like I hit rock bottom. There's this aha, kind of come to Jesus if you will moment and then everything's better. But rather it was a continuous process of leaning into that surrender and allowing yourself to be transformed. And it takes time. And so how, how did you do that?

You know, whenever you bump up against something, whether you bump up against a trigger, you bump up against a problem in your life, you are. We need to understand that everybody in your life is a mirror for you to be able to look perhaps within to see the pieces and parts of yourself that you're denying. And so the big part for me was just doing a lot of this counseling work. So looking at my shadow beliefs and my unconscious commitments, I just spent a year studying with Gabor Mati, who's into trauma. He's about trauma and really feels and believes that a lot of the mental illness that's out there in the world has a root cause based in trauma. Doesn't have to necessarily be big T trauma like growing up in an alcoholic home or, you know, sexual, mental, emotional abuse. It can be as simple perhaps as being bullied when you were in grade three or your parents divorcing. So. But we all, I think, share this commonality of this human experience of some sense of woundedness. And so for me, it's really been about this continual willingness to look within and to meet the place where I encounter resistance. So there's a great quote by Jeff Foster that says our suffering is equal to the gap between expectation and reality. So a lot of the struggles that we face is because we're not accepting of the actual situation. Right. Our ego expects, oh, I want to, whatever it might be, my partner to do this or my partner to be this or my partner to look like this, or my practice to be this busy or my job to be this way or My coworker, to do that. Right. So it's whatever that resistance is, this gap between expectation and reality. And you have a choice. You either recognize that you're in expectation and drop to reality, or you simply have to accept that reality.

Right.

Like it's. You're always going to be in resistance there. And so that's where, for me, the healing it has been is looking at where I'm in resistance with life.

I really appreciate the reference to the gap.

And I think that the gap can occur between what we expect and then what is actually occurring. And then I also thought about how.

That really marries up well with what.

You were saying about mirroring, where we all come into this world with a specific set of emotional and physical needs, and then we are reliant as infants and growing up as children, even into adulthood. I would say we're reliant on our caretakers to meet those needs. And if we. If there's a deficit, if there's a gap, like you're saying, between what we need as unique individuals and what our caretakers are capable or willing to provide with us, we then go through life with this deficit. And I'm thinking about self love, thinking about how in psychology, there's this concept of mirroring where the infant will create an idea or a sense of self that's based upon the mirroring they receive by gazing into the face and the eyes of their caretakers. And so if we have a gap or a discrepancy in that, then it can create this foundation where we might not feel that sense of worth, where we might not feel that sense of love. And then to go into the world with this deficit and then to have a gap in expectations and people aren't able to meet those needs and we're not able to meet our own needs, it can perpetuate this cycle. Tell me what your thoughts are as I'm saying that.

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly it. So what happens is, as children, we have three. We can just say there's these three needs. This is the teaching of Gabor Mate. We need this need for attachment, attunement and authenticity as little organisms. Well, first of all, I'll back it up. When we're in utero, the mental, emotional imprinting not only of the mother, but the father, too. There was a recent study in Sweden that looked at premature births, and they studied whether the father was depressed or not in the home. Mother was fine, but father was depressed. Higher rate of premature births in homes with depressed fathers. So we're Again, we're energetic beings. We're vibrational beings. We're picking up. And as the mom in the womb, we're picking up the energy of our husband. Doesn't matter. We might be emotionally sound, but we're still absorbing his energy and obviously probably concerned right about our spouse. And so the mental emotional imprinting happens in utero. That's starting in utero for. For me as a child, for you as a child. And so the state of the mother biologically and father affects the. Can set the child up with this predisposition for mental health challenges. So I'm adopted. So by the ver. Just by the fact that my biological mother had to make a choice about whether or not to keep me or not, pretty much probably she was stressed. So I came into the world wired that way. I was very anxious little child. And when I was speaking with. With Dr. Mata, he asked me, so, you know, don't you think that's a trauma? And I really had no, totally disconnected from that. But I can tell you that my beliefs were that I'm not worthy. My core wound, my core thought process that drove me in the world was, you're not enough, you're not good enough. You weren't wanted, you're not lovable. That was the dialogue of the inner critic from the age of five or probably earlier. And that drove me to be an overachiever in the world. Because my greatest need is attachment. And whenever and not just mine are, all of our greatest needs is attachment. And so we will do. We will sacrifice our authenticity that is the true expression of who we are, to maintain the attachment with that caregiver. So for me, I became this overachiever so as not to get sent back, if you will. I could never fail, and I had to be the best because my survival was at risk if I wasn't. That's the belief. It's not rational. Of course, you can sit here listening to this and go, well, that doesn't seem rational. It's not rational, but it's the survival mechanism that. And so what happens is we have to ask ourselves, what's the imprinting that we've received, the messaging that we received. And this isn't about blaming parents because every parent is doing the best that they can with what they know. But you cannot change anything within you if you don't have this come from this place of understanding. And we're also the culmination of the seven generations or more perhaps, that have gone before us with this concept of epigenetics and Intergenerational trauma that can get passed down too. So I know I've gone on a little bit of a tangent, but what I want to say is that attachment is the primary need. And if the infant and the young child is in a home, perhaps that where the attachment can be threatened, in the case of these bigger T traumas, the child will compensate to do whatever they need. So they might stay small, they might not. If in the case of abuse, or they might not speak out or. Or they. There's many ways that they will perhaps compensate because it's not safe for them to be authentic. Is that making sense? Hopefully that's making sense. The way I'm explaining it, you're bringing.

To mind the enneagram. I resonate very much with the way that you are compensating and adapting to your trauma. I'm a three on the enneagram. And the way that I've adapted in part to my suffering is to achieve. Because my value is what I achieve. At least that's my suffering you've also brought to mind. I haven't actually ever shared this with my audience. Very few people know about this is I've done an extensive amount of work in EMDR which for our listeners who aren't familiar with it, it's eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy was created by Francine Shapiro in the 1980s. And it's a really impressively effective form of therapy to help us get into the non verbal parts of the brain where trauma can live. And when I was doing this work.

Initially, every time I would go in.

There, I would be so hyper focused on the environment, like, is my therapist bored? Am I doing well? Am I achieving success at performing emdr? And so that's part of my suffering, that is part of how I adapt, like you were talking about. And then after about a year doing this work regularly, we started to get deeper into my experience. And at one point I had this impression of being in the womb. And I had this impression, this experience of feeling like I was taking up too much space, that I was big, that I was cumbersome, that I was creating suffering just by my sheer existence. And whether or not we can objectively confirm that, that that feeling came up, that that's a feeling that I very much have resonated with my entire life. And there weren't really words to it because oftentimes when these traumas get stored in our brain, they may not have verbal language if the brain had developed that. And so as you're sharing as you're speaking about this, and we're thinking about these fundamental belief systems that we develop, that they could come from the neonatal experience, they can come from the fetal experience. And even if the father is feeling stressed or if the mother is like, oh my gosh, pregnancy is so uncomfortable, that that can impact the infant, it can impact you, it can impact myself. And so I think that's really profoundly important because it requires that we go beyond the label, like your book, that we go beyond the logical, which is the primary methodology of mental health treatment, is just to logic yourself out of it and acknowledge these pieces. Dr. Chris. That you're talking about the spiritual, the emotional, the way that our souls live in our environment and how that can set the stage for this type of suffering.

Absolutely. I mean, it's all, you know, we, we don't start living when we're, when we enter the world. Right. That, like we were saying this in this in uterine environment is, is very powerful. And, you know, it's. Again, I think a lot of people think, well, gosh, you know, they're just, this baby is just, you know, an infant or they can't talk, but they're living, breathing, feeling beings and that's how they navigate the world at that point. And we're, you know, we're still making. Again, it's not on a conscious level, but we want to understand that 95% of what runs this brain is the subconscious mind. And so when. And what lies in that subconscious are these shadow, these beliefs that we develop when we're very little. And again, you're absorbing your environment whether you want to or not. Everybody has imprinted in here. Everybody. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers, coaches, friends. They're all in here. And so it's a matter of untangling and unwiring and unweaving some of these perhaps faulty imprints that might have got pressed in there. Like I'll give you a little example. One is I had a neighbor across the street when I was, from when I was zero to five, very, very young. We moved when I was five and I think I was four and I was drawing. He. And he was an artist and I was drawing and he came up and he. And again, I'm very sensitive to criticism, right? And he came up and he said that's. He said something about, he's, he was German. He was very kind of. And anyway, he just said something critical about the drawing. Well, I've never drawn again. And I told myself I'm a terrible artist. And that's. That's the belief that got imprinted from this offhand remark that. That this neighbor made. So I now therefore, have said to myself, I'm not an artist. I cannot draw. Is that true? Probably not. I probably. Who knows, Maybe I'm Picasso. But you'll never know because I won't pick up a pen. You know, I mean, maybe I will after this call. Who's to say? But, you know, and so it's. And then another example is I stayed in my corporate job for a decade. I reported to a CEO, again, this overachieving type. And I wanted to leave my job for eight years, but I never would leave my job. And my friends were like, why won't you leave your job? Why don't you leave your job? And the reason I didn't figure this out until much later, part of the reason I wouldn't leave my job is because my core belief, again, is, is this sensitivity. It was more of a shadow at this point, the sensitivity around rejection. Right. This whole piece. And so it felt safer to me to stay in a job that was sucking the life out of me, literally, than risk rejection, looking for another job. So we will always do what feels kind of safer to us. Whenever you're working with patients, for example, the person that says they want to say they want to lose weight or whatever it might be, but they don't, you have to know there's a shadow belief or an unconscious commitment at play. There's something else that's making it hard for them to do what it is they need to do. And until you uncover that you're not going to achieve that goal, you're always going to sabotage yourself.

So let's say a layperson, a non clinician is listening to this, and they're like, oh, my goodness, I so want to do this work. How can someone get started? You're going to draw, maybe, and I'm going to do some inner work.

And so this is what we're going to do.

So someone's listening to this, and they're like, oh, my gosh, I want to do this inner work, and I want to start today. Do you have a practical suggestion that somebody who's listening can do today?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the first place would be to start looking at where the resistance lies or where you might be sabotaging and writing down what your beliefs are. Like, start looking at that piece. But it's very important, I think, to navigate this with a skilled practitioner or a therapist. So the course that I have introduces you to these concepts. And it's a great introduction, so there's that option. But the person that I did a lot of this work with is. Or the books that I read. Well, the person I did this work with, her name is Nancy Levin, and I believe she offers a program that's called Jump and your life will appear Inch by inch approach to making a change in your life. And I took her course when I wanted to write, or I had written beyond the label, but I didn't want to put it out in the world because I was afraid of rejection. I didn't want people. I was. Nobody knew that I had bipolar. Well, not many people, I should say, knew I had bipolar disorder, type 1. I was very private about that. It was. I was in the closet, if you will, was not public. I couldn't even come on a podcast and speak it. And so I had a lot of shame. And so she helped me be able to get over myself and all of my. My fears and my issues and put that work out in the world. And so her work and then combined with Debbie Ford's, who has. Has passed away. But her book, a starting book for me to work, that I worked through and I've done this shadow work was. I'm on my fourth iteration of it. So again, you know, the first time you go through it, you might be skimming the surface, Right. Next time you do it, you might dive maybe a foot below the surface, and then you might eventually really get to the root of it.

All right.

Or dive deep. Right. So Debbie Ford's book is a great little book. It's called the Dark side of the Light Chasers. And people have a. People can look on YouTube, there's a documentary called the Shadow Effect by Debbie Ford. You can just. That's a great place to start, too, is just. And don't stop at the first five minutes when. Because she's talking about depression, and you might think, I'm not depressed. I think it's important to listen to the. All the way through, because I. We all. We all have these shadow beliefs and unconscious commitments.

Yeah. I kind of call it the dark night of the soul. Yes.

Yeah. And. And. And. And you can change them, right? You can. Once you bring it into the conscious awareness, into your conscious awareness, then from that place, you can make a different choice. You can see, oh, there I am. Okay, so now I can either go right or I can go left or I can go straight. I have a choice here now. I don't have to now be. Because you've uncovered it, if you will.

I think that's really powerful.

And something you said, I want to.

Emphasize is in the beginning of our conversation, you use the term kind of leaning in. And we were talking about resisting versus receiving, just allowing and allowing the awareness to be there, allowing yourself to feel instead of trying to push it down and control it and suppress it.

And so that's one of the initial.

Stages is to just simply acknowledge and notice. And what's coming to mind is I'm thinking about Pandora's box, in a sense.

And I think this is very important.

To mention because we can then open.

Up a whole world of feelings that.

Maybe we've been stuffing for our entire lives. And that's why it's important to have a helper like a trained trauma informed clinician, to be your advocate. And so I'm curious about this question I get asked quite often, and I'd love to hear your perspective is I have clients who ask me, what if I start to do the work and the emotions start coming up and I can't make them stop. So for example, to give you a practical example, there's a young woman that I work with and she has a lot of, just a lot of self hatred, self injurious behaviors and her best strategy is to just work. She's incredibly productive. She just works really hard and distracts herself. And so we've talked about the shadow work and she says, Dr. Kane, when I start thinking about these things, I start crying and I feel like it's a never ending avalanche. What can she do? What do you suggest?

Mm. So. So the healing is in the feeling and emotions are just so emotion. So E for energy in motion. So when we just look at it from that perspective that it's okay. I'm just, you know, I. You can say you're releasing, we're letting go, we're allowing, we're moving into the body. Because the body is your guide. The body is what holds this emotional self, if you will. And most people are living right here, right from the neck up. And we're discounting the body. We might have a whisper from our soul or our heart, but our ego will quickly negate it and keep us perhaps in this. Because the ego wants to protect you from this pain. But this pain was from 30 years ago. Perhaps pain is not actually happening now, but the pain lives inside of you and will always live in you until you allow it to be free. And so you're keeping yourself a prisoner within your own walls when you're, when you're Afraid of your emotions, the emotions, there's nothing really, there's nothing to be afraid of. Right. But when you, as soon as you're afraid or you think that, oh my gosh, I'm going to cry forever, that's a belief, that's a belief that's aligned on the horizontal plane with the ego that's keeping you stuck in your suffering. So Jill Bolte Taylor, she had a stroke. She wrote a book called My Stroke of Insight. I think it's called My Stroke of Insight. She has a TED talk. Yeah. What does she talk about? Right. She said she's a neuroscientist, has a stroke. And she was very sciency, not, you know, not into the emotional spiritual side at all. But after her stroke, she said emotions themselves will only live for about 90 seconds to five minutes. But it's your thoughts that fuel them. And I, and I'm, I can agree 100% of that. It's your thoughts that will fuel them to last a lot lifetime in the case of, you know, bitterness, resentment, not being willing to forgive these, the thoughts that we hold. So I would really, you know, gently nudge this, this patient of yours into, into awareness and the shadow piece. At some point perhaps somebody said to her like a lot of times over workers, people who are over workers or workaholics, they, their shadow is fun. They don't, they, they think fun is lazy and they don't connect with lazy. But if you visualize the yin Yang symbol, we have to be able to reconcile and align and integrate both of these aspects. And that's one of my shadows is like letting, having fun. I did that was not easy for me because I was always work, work, work, work, work, right? Study, study, study, study, study. Be the best, be the best, be the best. Climb, climb, climb, climb, climb. But what are you running from? Where are you trying to get right? Where are you trying to get? There's nowhere to be, there's nowhere to go. You just need to be here and now. So I wanted to say one other thing about that and I think I. It left my, left me. But for her, you know, I would just. It's just about being able to recognize what perhaps these thoughts are that are driving her and shift that belief that, that the avalanche is never going to stop. And if we use the avalanche example. Have you ever witnessed an avalanche that doesn't stop.

Right?

I've never seen an avalanche that doesn't stop. Actually, they're quite quick. I've actually been in an avalanche and I can tell you they do stop. So, you know, so there's a fear there. There's something she's not willing to look at, and it's probably rooted in childhood trauma.

And I want to emphasize what you said earlier, too, is that your emotions.

Are not dangerous, that it's. They're there regardless of if you feel or express them or not. And by holding them in, your body and your cells are going to suffer, and the natural need of the body is to release that. And so either we can do the work and be mindful and intentional in expressing, honoring, releasing, processing, leaning into those.

Emotions, or they're going to come out.

In other ways, whether it's autoimmunity or migraine headaches or I just have an.

Angry outburst and I want to kick the wall. And so you're emphasizing.

And I really want to emphasize. Your emphasis is that it's so important to know that your emotions are not dangerous. And I also want to emphasize what you said about how they will not last forever. And the avalanche is a good example of that, because they don't last forever. And another example I use is like the waves of the ocean, too. They're going to come in and they could feel like they're flooding you and drowning you and overflowing you, but they will. The tide will go out. And so I really appreciate. I really appreciate your perspective on that.

Yeah, I mean, I just want to say with that, you know, you're either expressing your emotions in a healthy, safe way, supportive way, or you're suppressing them. Those are the two options. And like, like, like Dr. Keane is saying, when you suppress your body, it's like a container. So if you're kind of keep the lid on and, and the emotion's really like a big one, and you're pushing it down, it's still pinging inside of you. And that's what we're. What we're saying this is. Can be at the root of autoimmunity. It's going to be at the root of cancer, not the root of. I mean, it's a. It's a piece of the puzzle. It's a piece of the puzzle. Migraines, like you said, there's so much. So, you know, when the body says no. So how often do we listen to the body? We spend a lot of time listening to the mind. But when are you actually tuning in and listening to your. What your body got to say to you? And what do you say about your body? More importantly, as me with somebody who's had an eating disorder, I Can tell you the relationship with my body has not been nice, has been very abusive, actually. Me being abusive to me. Right.

So moving from self criticism to self love.

I know it sounds sort of cliche, but it's very important. And I mean exercise an awareness that.

People can do is ask for a practical example. Here's a practical example.

When next time you go in the shower, I want you to see if you can just be present in the shower. Feeling the water, the lather of the soap. Just be present, that's it.

See what thoughts are there for you.

When I did this exercise, well, I won't give you the punchline away, so just see and hit us up, let us know what thoughts were there. Because the thing is, if you're truly present in this moment, there should be no thoughts, only stillness. And then I'll just take onto that ocean, you know, as the wave. You're the ocean, your body is the ocean, the motions are the waves. You can ride that wave as it rises in you. There is no other extreme emotional state than suicidal depression and psychosis, both of which I've experienced. That's the full range of human experience.

Experience.

Extreme, yes, full range. But to say you're wrong or you're bad, or you're not normal, or you got a problem or you're never going to get better without acknowledging the range of those emotions, those, those extreme sides, if you will, or selves or states, denies the human experience. And the eye opening piece for me in this work that I've done in my own healing is nobody, not one doctor, not one doctor, not one naturopathic doctor, not one medical doctor, not one psychiatrist ever asked me about my trauma. So we need to start, you know, having conversations. I know it's a kind of a popular word right now, but it's an important word. We are a traumatized society. And again, it's not about casting blame and pointing fingers. Every time you point the finger right, there's three pointing back at you. It all comes back to you and your capacity to lean into love for yourself and your capacity to lean into love for others. But you can't lean into love for others if you don't lean into love for you. Right? So I know I've gone on, off, on a tangent, but you're the ocean. You can hold any wave that rises within you. And as Nicole said, the wave will fall back down. But we want to get to this place of stillness, not this turbulence. You know, that's, that's a lot of us are in this sort of state of really, this sympathetic peace is really destroying us as a human race. I think.

And I want to validate and emphasize what you said about trauma. I have a lot of compassion and for trauma. And I love that you're talking, too, about big teen little T traumas, because I think that trauma wasn't spoken about for so long. And then when it became a thing and it was put in the dsm, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual by the American Psychiatric association, they only talked about PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder disorder. And so that's the linguistic narrative around it. I've had so many people tell me, well, my.

My.

The mole in the backyard died, and that shouldn't be traumatic, but I feel incredible trauma. Like, my husband's a counselor, and he had a patient who. There was a mole in her yard.

That died, and she cried for three.

Hours and had a ceremony for the molecules. And her boyfriend was like, you're ridiculous. But for her, it's like you were saying those three fingers pointing back is that it had. There was something about that for her that awoke this feeling that was a trauma feeling.

Right.

And so I really want to honor and emphasize what you're saying about trauma is. Trauma is anything that supersedes our ability to cope with it and move it out. It's something that gets locked in ourselves or something that activates something that has been locked in ourselves, and it isn't about the inducer, but rather how we experience it. And so what you're talking about, I think is profoundly important, and it is such a disservice to clients that you.

Went through these things that were huge.

And profound and could be arguably big T traumas, and yet nobody asked you about it. And so I'm thinking with compassion about our listeners, about how many of you.

Have had big T traumas, little T.

Traumas, who have had suffering, and nobody.

Has asked you about it.

You're listening to this podcast on mental health, so my guess is that you're more aware of the relationship between your experiences and how you feel. But what about your loved ones? Somebody who has a propensity to breaking bones or somebody who has diabetes or cancer or migraines or irritable bowel syndrome? Has anybody asked them about their trauma? And so I really respect you for bringing awareness and light to that.

Yeah. You know, you can only help somebody as far as you've gone yourself. And as clinicians, I think it's really incumbent upon us to be able to hold space. You don't necessarily have to be a psychologist to be able to hold space and to be compassionate and empathetic towards the person that you're working with. And this woman that was upset about the mole, you know, I'm a very. I can't handle seeing death anywhere. I cannot drive. I mean, I almost get in a car accident if I'm driving and I see an animal that's been hit. I. I'm, you know, I'm. I'm black. You know, I'm, you know, and I'm. I'm. I'm almost getting in an accident myself. Witnessing death. Whether you were, you know, you. You actually personally were. This was your pet, or whether this is just a bird that, you know, it's for empathetic beings. This is like they've, you know, part of them has died. And there's many people who are wired that way. Many people. So I think that the. We have to move beyond biochemistry and just. And I think for me, I know that a lot of people are carrying things. We're all the walking wounded. We're all carrying something. And I know that it's hard to look at it. For some, like, my mother is a classic example. She grew up in an alcoholic home. She, She. I mean, this article I wrote was called the Healing is in the Feeling was for her. And the other article was the Time Is now for Forgiveness. But she. She's like your patient. She's like, I, you know, she just. The emotions. She's 78 years old, and it's. She'll cry about this specific instant in a heartbeat. And it's because she's never let herself.

Really feel it all in there.

Hey, it's all in there. Totally. So, you know, I know that sometimes people don't want to ask the questions about pain and trauma because they don't know how to deal with the response. Right. They don't know what to do. And remember, it's not really about doing anything. It's about being in this loving presence, this loving, abiding presence. And the other thing I would just sort of. I wanted to say is just to emphasize how you said it as well, that trauma is not what's happened to you, is not the event. It's what you made it mean about you. That's. That's the trauma, and that's the trauma that continues because we repeatedly are making it mean something 30 years later. So you can change that narrative because that was a coping strategy that you developed as a result of the experience, because the environment may not have been safe for you, but that environment isn't happening now. So, yeah.

And a practical strategy for that, that environment is not happening now is I do timestamping. So you notice the part, this comes from IFS and ego state and emdr, where the understanding is that we have parts of ourselves that are kind of stuck in a time warp. It's like they've been cryogenically frozen and they've awoken in 2021, but they don't know it's 2021 or whatever year it is. And so as you're saying this is to notice that part, close your eyes, notice that part, and be like, okay, part. Do you know that it is 2021?

Or do you know that we are here right now and that you're not there anymore and you don't ever have to go back there? That we are here and I have resources that you didn't have and you're not alone and I've got your back. And doing that timestamping, experiment with the.

Parts to see how they feel by.

Knowing that it is now and not then.

Yeah. And that Dick Schwartz has a new book coming out called no Bad Parts. I think it's out now in July, Was supposed to be out this month. Yes. And so it just. That. Exactly. Holding. Holding that wounded self within with the loving presence of your adult self now almost parenting yourself, in a way, because you may not have got what you needed. That's what you were saying earlier, Right. You didn't get. Your needs weren't met. So now we have to meet those needs and integrate those parts that feel exiled or alienated or alone or are in fear or afraid because they're actually holding you hostage.

So how do you cultivate.

You were talking earlier about a vertical relationship instead of a horizontal. And I'm curious how you cultivate that feeling of, I am worth doing this work. I'm not actually just a piece of garbage, and I am worthy of love and acceptance. How do you cultivate that?

Yeah, that. That. That's a hard one. Right? Yeah. So for me, oh, gosh, very difficult for me because my narrative is, I am unworthy. And I used to hate. Well, hate is a very strong word. I used to resist people who said to me, change your thoughts, change your life. Oh, hey, Chris. Change your thoughts, change your life. I really was like, what? And I felt like people were implying that I was in my depression because, like, on purpose or something. I don't know. It was a very.

It's your fault.

Yeah. It was very challenging for me. This, this. This affirmation piece so. So for me, I had to lean into. Well, first of all, then what happened was learning and understanding psychoneuroimmunology, that your thoughts affect your physiology. So your thoughts create neuropeptides. The neuropeptides affect the hormones. The hormones in turn that get produced affect how you feel. So it's a little bit of a chicken and an egg problem that we have here. I was very engrossed in my thoughts. In the dark clouds of depression, I could not see or believe or understand that the sun was still shining behind the clouds. I was one with the dark cloud. When the cloud eventually lifted, I realized, aha, okay, there are other thoughts. I can choose to think it was a stretch for me to go from I am unworthy to I am worthy. But I could just stay very neutral for myself. I just would simply say I am and I wouldn't fill in the blank. And I am in a religious context, a very powerful statement. So try to go through your day just being neutral, not negative, not positive. We don't have to spiritually bypass anything or sugarcoat or Pollyanna your way through life. Just be aware of the thoughts you're thinking and if you can, see if you can just stay neutral. Because this piece, the psychoneuroimmunology piece, was a piece that was missing for me. Understanding the neuropeptide cascade and how that affects your physiology. It's not about believing the thought. Nobody says anything about believing anything. But the reality is as you start to produce a different hormonal environment in your body, your thoughts actually naturally shift. So for me, this worth piece as well, as I've mentioned, I've had three suicide attempts. I've only really been public about one of them, so I also follow. I'm kind of a sporty person. So three strike rule, right? Baseball, I think it's a good rule, three strikes are out kind of thing, right? If you're not going to get the lesson after three strikes, you better go back to school or something's up, right? So give people. You know, I usually give myself. You know, I might not get the lesson the first time, I might not get the lesson the second time, but hopefully by the third time I've gathered up the lesson. And so I think for me, I've just learned to. Because of my spiritual and background and beliefs, I believe that I'm here for a purpose. It's not my decision. I'm not in control of when I depart the planet. That's not up to my soul. I read in radical forgiveness and Also, Neale Donald Walsh talks about this as well in a children's book called Little Soul and the sun. That the soul we all come here with perhaps this. This purpose. And ultimately my purpose is very simple. And I actually think this is a common shared purpose for all of humanity, is how to learn how to love and accept yourself and your fellow being. So, you know, suicide attempt number one, Suicide attempt number two, Suicide attempt number three. It's like, okay, Chris, when are you going to actually, actually lean into love for yourself? When are you going to get that? Actually, this isn't the way out for you. Suicide isn't the answer for you. So I've just now accepted that suicide isn't the answer for me. And it's very painful. And I'm. I don't want to. I. And I. And I get it that people commit suicide. Suicide is a huge problem. Huge, huge problem. Greenblatt said by Dr. James Greenblatt said, by the year 2030, person will commit suicide every second. Like, every second. That's in one hour. That's 3,600 people. I think if I did the math right, and, you know, this was an issue before the pandemic, and I think it's the real pandemic that nobody's talking about. And now we've just come through and. Or are in or out. We're not really sure where we are in Canada anyway, this pandemic. And nobody. I mean, some people are talking about suicide. You and I are now talking about it, but it's happening at a big rate and more so, I think, as a result of this pandemic. So me being silent about my suffering, I don't think that's going to help. I think me being an example of, hey, I've been there, I've had many dark nights of the soul, and I'm still here. And there's a way that you can navigate your mental health by following these 10 steps. But ultimately, the most important step is this piece of love and compassion that not a lot of people are talking about.

And you Talk about these 10 steps.

In your book, beyond the Label. And so to get the 10 steps, I want y' all to read the book. And could you give us a little. And you did with this one piece here. Could you give us maybe four of the 10 steps to get us started?

Yeah, the foundation is so first, just understand that you are a being that's in this container that is a body. And your body is your guide. Right? Your body is your guide, and your emotions are the messengers to guide you back to safety and to wholeness. So physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, those are the four aspects that we want to look at with respect to overall health. And then the 10 steps that we want to guide people through. The first four are nutrition, then sleep, exercise, and then managing the stress piece. That's. That's the foundational piece. And that's where I started. You know, I started with nutrition. There's so much that can be done just on the nutrition part alone to support serotonin formation. Gaba, dopamine, all these neurotransmitters, balancing your hormones, looking at your organs of detoxification, how many, you know, this whole gut brain relationship, there's just so much on the physical level alone. Right. And that's where I started for many, many years, that's all I did. Because God forbid I should look at my thoughts or my emotions. No way. I'm not going there. Right. Like, you know, but eventually I bumped up against myself, right? Bumped up against all those things, that inner critic that had the stage. I mean, I don't even think I had an inner cheerleader. You know, I was driven by this. Anyway, I won't go off on that tangent.

So, yeah, what I love about that.

Is it can create this sense of.

It's kind of like meeting us where we're at. We call this the leading edge. And so some people, they'll go to a talk therapist and the talk therapist will say, just think positively. You are your thoughts. And that is so far out of the realm of not even going to happen. My thoughts have been wired this way from my neonatal environment. Like, this is the psychoneuroimmunological effect that has now occurred. This is where my thoughts are going. We've dug these trenches. This is where my thoughts are going. These foundational steps that you talk about and beyond the label honors that because you don't just stop at. Well, you got to think your way into positivity. And your brain will follow is you actually help, like you said, the chicken and the egg, you help to then work on the chemistry to change the neuropeptides that will then create a cascade where the thoughts will come more easily. And I love that you look at it from also a vitalistic perspective. Like you said in the beginning, is that feeling of the breath, the feeling of being fully alive, the belief that the body is designed to heal itself by following these basic principles. So I feel like it takes some of the pressure off of, like, I have to fix myself by thinking the right combination of thoughts. And doing all of the right yoga moves and making the perfect choices and medications and supplements. But rather following this really nicely laid out 10 step protocol that you have and trusting that the body is wise, it's going to express what it needs to. And our job is to just allow it to flow, allow it to happen, roll with it and honor the body and what it's asking you to do. And I think that's really profound and it gives a lot of hope. Which then brings us to the beginning of your, my conversation. You came out the door within, I think the first five minutes with the. Was a promise of hope, that there is hope. And you then, Dr. Chris created a solution, a guide map if you will, that people can work through with their helpers, with advocates, with you to then start the process of healing.

Mm, yeah. I mean, I think that's an important message, I think is not often the message that people get when they're first diagnosed with depression or anxiety or definitely bipolar disorder. Right. So I think what we do as a profession is so important and critical, I think to helping people navigate not only mental health but many, any, you know, many health, all health challenges. Right. And I think the key thing is to be to move into this space, I think of curiosity about yourself, like, like I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I never experienced crappy thoughts or dark thoughts. I do. But I do something different with them now, right. I don't entertain them, I don't fuel them, I don't ignite the fire anymore. The spiral down into the pit of depression with, with, with the train of thoughts. So just to leave this analogy for with people is look at your brain like a bus. Your thoughts are the passengers and your heart is the driver of the bus. So we want to be living our lives from a heart centered place versus a mind centered place. So the brain is the bus and you're the driver as the heart and you're driving the bus down the road. And sometimes, yeah, we get stuck in a rut, right. We get stuck in these ruts, but we can move that bust up onto solid ground. I mean this is this idea of neuroplasticity. We can create new neural pathways. You can learn to eventually think a different way. But it all starts with awareness and recognition of what's the thought, what's the thought that I'm thinking here. And then as you're driving the bus with your heart, you're going to really like, almost like, you know, it's almost like you're going to Take the thought out and look at it and say, are you hurting me or helping me? You supporting me or sabotaging me? Are you from the inner critic or the inner cheerleader? Are you coming from a place of love or. Fear is ultimately sympathetic state, parasympathetic state. And most people are in a sympathetic or stressed state. And when you're there, there's four kind of Fs, right? Fear, fight, fight, fawn, or freeze. So healing doesn't happen in a sympathetic state, nor does digestion. That's a parasympathetic process. So we need to move people out of that stress into relax. I just gave you lots of words that all are kind of the same word, you know, describing the same thing. Ultimately, you then get kind of objective about your subjective reality. Okay, what's happening? Is this thought useful? Okay. No, it's not. It's along the lines of that inner critic. Huh? Where did that come from? Huh? Where did I hear that? I wonder? I don't know. Well, sit, get quiet, write journal, paint, express, talk. Look within. The answers lie within you. They're all within you. Helpful to have a guide. Helpful to have a guide.

I love that, though, is really such.

A great way to end the conversation with that. The answers are within you. You have a guide. Like, you know, and then having. Having people in your life that can speak truth and help you audit those thinkers on the bus, I think is really profound. But really taking away the dependence of somebody giving you the label and giving you the protocol and telling you this is who you are and this is all that you can do and really removing the need for that. And so simply trusting yourself and trusting your body's innate healing wisdom, I think that's. That's beautiful and I'm really grateful that you spread this message. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you as well. Thank you so much for having me.

It's been really an honor.

And listeners, this has been the amazing Dr. Chris. You can find, find her information at her website, D R C H R I S T I N A B J O R N D A l dot com. She's also on Instagram. She's written the amazing book beyond the Label. So check that out. And then if you're a clinician and you want to learn how to be more informed in this world of the psychoneuroimmunology, that mind, body link, share, she has a course for you. Go and check it out. And then if you are a warrior, if you're curious, if you're somebody who wants to grow in these things that we're talking about. She has a course for you, too, so be sure to check that out. And also follow her on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. You're not going to want to miss a thing. So thank you, Dr. Chris. So, so very grateful for you.