Jillie Maria | When Doctors Say " We Don't Know" Podcast | Episode 201

3, 2, 1.

Welcome to the show. My name is Eva Vennari, founder of the Elevate Institute, and I'll be your host for today's podcast, When Doctors Say We Don't Know. It's an inclusive conversation. So many are craving to share their stories and experiences, and today's guest is no exception. Today's honored guest is Jillian Maria. She is an intuitive, certified Akashic Records and Sacred Soul Alignments practitioner, a healer, a medium. She She helps her clients achieve tangible results through being an advocate to rape and sexual assault victims. Jillie, welcome to the show.

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Yeah, glad to have this conversation. Thank you for raising your hand and saying, I want to be a part of this. This really is a very important conversation, and your subject matter is no exception.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here and talk about my story. It's one of the angles of my story that I don't talk about very often.

Yeah, transparency is sometimes the one thing that helps others hear where possibly there's a relationship between their history and what's going on with them physically. So I think this is really cool. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So just on that, have you ever been on the receiving end of a question, hey, why is this happening to me? And then getting the answer, we don't know.

Oh yeah. So my story starts in approximately 1997. At that time, I was working as a retail manager up in Boston, and I was exhausted, and I was having brain fog and all kinds of other issues, and I finally relented and went to the doctor, and they Went through all my symptoms and originally said, you have mono. And I said, I can't have mono. I work in a store that is about 20 feet by 10 feet, and my employees are all over each other. We're, you know, literally on top of each other, especially on receiving days. It was a magazine newspaper store, and especially on delivery days. We're, you know, stumbling over each other and customers. So if I have mono, everybody has mono. So they're like, you know, my doctor originally was, you know, huh, okay.

Does that make sense to you? Yeah.

Well, if it's not mono, let's do some blood work and you need to go home and have some chicken soup and, you know, just kind of giving me like You know, a base, super basic, like, let's treat this as a cold type thing. Okay, fine. So they go in and they give the— they give the slip to me to go get my blood drawn. So I go around the corner and the blood tech— I don't— I know they have an actual name. I don't know what it's called. But the woman who was taking my blood looks at me and she's like, um, well, you can't get much whiter. She kind of started chuckling. And I said, what do you mean? And she said, well, they're asking for 4 vials of blood. And I don't know, and I don't know anything about like how all that works at the time. So, okay. And so I sat down, she took the blood and gave me some juice and what have you. And they call me and they're, you know, alarmed. You need to come in. You know, we think we know what's going on. I'm like, okay, relief, right? You're just like, oh, someone, hallelujah, someone knows what's going on.

Right.

And never mind that I was working crazy hours as a loss prevention specialist manager, never mind all the things that I was doing, but I go back in and they tell me that I'm pregnant. Okay, now the reason why that's funny, because it is, and I just started laughing, I just lost it, I'm laughing. And the nurse and the doctor are both exchanging looks and Why is that funny? He said, well, either you have somebody else's blood work results or we're all millionaires because I'm a virgin. And there— and this is the, oh my God, okay. So then they look at the results further. My doctor's like, well, you have— and he's going through all the things— you have hepatitis, you have this, you have several STDs, this whole long like list of And I'm like, and I'm putting my hands up, stop, stop. Okay, let's try this again. Never had a blood transfusion.

Right.

I'm not sexually active in any way. So there's no possible way that any of that is mine. So that's not the fun part of the we don't know.

No.

But that's not, that's not the funnest part of the we don't know. So they go back out. They're really embarrassed. They go, they have drawn 2 more vials of blood. And they come back and they're like, all your results look really good. This is the part where they're stumped. So my doctor says, well, we can, you know, well, we can do, you know, we can do this and we can. So they give me this whole long list of, we're going to start you on these medications.

For what? You said you looked good. I don't—

And I'm like, well, if all my blood work is fine, why am I being put on meds? I don't understand. Well, we don't know what else to do. Well, okay, but that's not going to work for me. And I said, listen, I have a hard time keeping track of feeding my cats and getting myself dressed in the morning and getting to work and managing 15 employees. There's no possible way that I'm taking this whole long med list. I'm not doing it.

How many medications did they recommend?

I want to say it was 8 or 9.

That's, that's quite a bit for, for something they haven't had their finger on. And when you say, that's not going to work for me, you're not suggesting that the medications wouldn't work. It's just, it's not going to work for your value system. Is that the idea?

Correct. Yeah. And I had already— the thing is, is so I went and I started doing, you know, talking to my mom and my mom said, well, why don't you go to the Boston Public Library and see if they have a section of medical journals. Okay? Because honestly, when a doctor says, I don't know, you're kind of at a dead end for a hot minute.

Right.

And so I went to the public library and the old section of the public library— if you've ever been to Boston, there's a new section, there's an old section. The old section of the public library, they have all the medical journals. So they had the JAMA, which is the Journal of the American Medical Association, and they had the New England Journal of Medicine. journal. So I'm thumbing through and looking for anything about fatigue or brain fog or anything of those, you know, somewhat related. I don't know what I'm calling it. We don't know what autoimmune disorders are yet at that point. Um, I just know that I don't have mono, but something is wrong with me. And so I'm searching and I find a very early piece on chronic fatigue syndrome. And so I photocopy everything, take it to my doctor's office. I'm like, I think this is what I have. And it was like, oh, okay, well, then we recommend— and they gave me— I don't remember even what the drug was, but there— it was some sort of like— it was an antidepressant of some variety that was supposed to like stimulate and clear brain fog.

Hmm.

And I was not— I said, okay, you know, and I think I took it for maybe like 3 days. And I just— it was probably the precursor to what—

for—

to modern-day Lyrica. And I just— I couldn't function. I mean, I was like just a blob. And I— so I said no, went off of that. And, you know, I just— I don't know what I have, but I know for my person, For the work that I have to do, I have to be mentally present for my staff. I have to be physically present for my staff and my job. So none of this is going to work. The one drug I went on was Wellbutrin XL, and that proved as an okay. I mean, it helped. It helped in terms of lifting the brain fog a little bit. It wasn't an addictive thing. So if I had to go off it and I got sick with something else and I had to go off it for 10 days, it wasn't the end of the world. It worked for a while. And actually, it worked for a couple years, but then it was like, you know, you get to a space of, you know, what's going to change? And my medical journey outside of, you know, talking to doctors and trying to figure things out and trying to really get to a space of— Healing myself. Um, I mean, I lived with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia for— the fibromyalgia I think was officially diagnosed in, I want to say, 2000, 2001-ish or so.

Um. How long ago was that after your first venture where the doctor said you had mono? Like, what was the time frame there, the timeline?

Like 2 or 3 years.

Yeah, okay.

And the thing is, is fibro was such a brand new thing at that time that it was like, it was at the time, it was a death sentence. At the time it was. But the thing is, anything with autoimmune disorders is you have to do it backwards because there's no— I haven't looked at it recently, but I know when I was first going through all my stuff with diagnosis and what have you, you were eliminating everything it couldn't be and wasn't.

Right.

In order to arrive at, okay, the only thing we have left is—

Yeah. As science has discovered everything and we know it has to be in these walls.

And that's such a hard, you know, I think it's such a hard thing for doctors.

Yeah.

And I think it's a, you know, and one of the things that I've discovered as not only as a patient but also as a patient advocate for people is saying, you know what, keep digging.

Yeah.

Keep asking the questions. And the thing is too, is, you know, is one of the— because when people say to me, well, how did you get to a space of healing about it? Um, I was in— I will tell you, I was in a space from probably around 1999 to, to 2013-ish where I was In wintertime, I would be in 12 or 13 pain through the winter. So like middle of October till middle of March, my average day, I would be in— I would have to set my alarm for when I was still in the workforce and actively getting up and going to work. I would set my alarm 2 hours before I needed to go so I could have like an hour to get up, wake up, wake my body up, stretch out. get myself to a place where the pain would be enough that I could get out of bed and get myself ready for work and so on. And, um, one of the things that really helped me to heal— and again, this is not for everybody, this is what worked for me— um, but I started looking into the notion behind emotion, um, and emotion being stuck in our bodies and causing inflammation and pain and stacked emotion and how that— and how trauma informs our bodies. And that has helped me tremendously to release the emotion from my body. And when I say release the emotion, I mean shake it out, cry it out, get it out through— Crying, raging, just letting myself sit and feel my emotion. And when I say raging, I mean like sitting on my sofa or sitting on the floor and just letting my body shake and cry and get all that emotion to come up and out of my body. Because emotion is simply energy in motion. It just wants to move through you. And we are not— we— but we, in order to move it through us, we have to actually feel it. And part of what keeps autoimmune— the autoimmune disorders are basically the notion that your body is fighting itself. Um, and once I started discovering that and started reading up on it, it was, you know, a lot of things clicked for me that, oh, my body's fighting itself. So how do I become an ally with my body so that I can heal this? Uh, because I did go on a journey to see if I could get disability, as was— one of my doctors actually recommended it and said, I think that you need to really focus on just seeing if you can get long-term disability. And again, that wasn't for me as an entrepreneur. I started my entrepreneurial journey in 2008, and I'm not saying that it's— that was what works for you. As someone who has it, you know, I have absolutely— I will advocate for you. But for me personally, that didn't work. I mean, I just— that my mind was like, I'm not going to lay here on a sofa. I'm not going to be a victim to this because I was here first. I've existed, you know, for 20-some-odd years before this autoimmune disorder, this fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue ended up in my body. And having a doctor to say, we don't know. And I've had more than one doctor say, we don't know. But the interesting thing is too, is when I've said to doctors, This is what's going on with me, and knowing my history and knowing my body and knowing this is where this is going on, and this is what happened, and this is what helped me. Most doctors are fascinated by that, and they're willing to be in a space of at least the doctors that I've talked to—not only my own personal doctor, but other you know people that I know of, and different people in medicine that I've spoken with—and they've been fascinated by it from a from a. listening to the patient standpoint and saying, you know, there's not a whole lot written on this.

Well, you seem to have a natural and intuitive and innate capacity to get to the heart of a matter, to like continue to dig and have that, the fortitude and the I'm not going to give up attitude.

Absolutely. And I think that honestly that's essential. But I also understand because I've been an advocate for a number of people and I've been a, resource for a number of people that have been diagnosed over the years. I also understand when you've been in a situation where you've been feeling symptoms that you can't quite put your finger on and you've had doctors say, I don't know, and you're feeling like nobody validates you, you feel like you're crazy, or they tell you it's all in your head. I totally understand how exhausting that journey is and how you could say, I just can't, I when we get that diagnosis, it's this hallelujah, and we just need to be in it for a minute or however long it takes you to go, okay, now what's my next step? So for some people, you know, some people can't dig. Some people get to a space of they're just so exhausted trying to live that they— and getting knocked down from it that they don't know how to give themselves grace to say, okay, what happened? And the other thing that autoimmune disorders they're finding out is emerging science. And this is not like new in the last— this is probably like at least 7 or 8-year-old science. Um, I think the article came out and I'd be hard-pressed to find it again, but I remember reading about it. I came across it online, but talking about how autoimmune disorders often start with a trauma. Um, so some sort of body shock, whether it's a car accident whether it might be a physical body trauma in terms of rape, sexual assault, children being molested, things like that happening. It can be witnessing something. It can be from an experience where PTSD might inform the body, a lot of our veterans, that sort of thing, people that work in very high-stress, constantly high-stress jobs. The body's— the basic thing with autoimmune disorders is that the body fights itself. And I, you know, always thought, you know, that, you know, when people— when people— I mean, I never thought, oh my God, it's in my head. I knew my physical symptoms were real, and I always believed that they were real, even when I had people around me that were, are you sure? Are you sure? And they would question me.

Yeah, I'm nodding my head. Yeah, I'm nodding my head in agreement because yes, that's— that is probably the most important thing is to honor your yourself with knowing, or at least that's what I'm— that's what my experience is too.

Oh, 100%. And the thing is, when you know, like, you know, like, you know your body, don't discount it. Because, you know, the thing is, is, um, you know, as an intuitive, I tell people all the time, learn to trust your body. If your body is in pain, asking it what it needs, asking it what it wants, and learning to come to a space of, um, acceptance of it, and then being willing to be in a space of Okay, now how can I change this? Because a lot of times we get to a space of like victimhood where we're flattened and people— and I'm not, again, I'm not telling people if you've got a diagnosis, if you're listening to this podcast and you got diagnosed yesterday, I honor your diagnosis and your process of getting to a place of, okay, now what do I do?

Mm-hmm.

Because that is going to be— I mean, there are some people who, um, people have given People my information and they've never reached out, and then there's some people that get my information; they reach out immediately, and I'm and they're like, "Well, my doctor's saying it's in my head." I'm like, "No, actually it's in your body." I'm like, "It's in your emotional body, and if you want to get rid of it, I can help you." And one of the things that I I laugh about it now, but at the time it was it was a hard pill to swallow. Was I found all these online groups, all these boards for people that had um. autoimmune disorders and, you know, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue that were very specific to those things. And they would have like all these things about, you know, people would tell you about their diagnosis and all the stuff and what they were doing, and the doctor has them on 25 pills and such and such. And I would say, you know, at the time when I was still— before I got kicked out of all of them and banned, I would say, hey, have you tried you know, this or that, or, you know, have you tried, you know, changing your nutrition, or have you tried, you know, working on your emotion, have you tried work, you know, and I would get letters from the admins via email saying, you can't do that. This group is for advocacy, and this group is to be a support group and what have you. And when people would ask me what my story was, and I would— they would say, how many drugs are you on? And I would say, none. I was on Wellbutrin briefly. Funny story that my doctor had given me Lyrica. And because I was saying that my brain fog had increased at one point and that I was in more pain than normal, and my doctor said, let's try Lyrica. I was adamantly no. And she was like, let's just try it. I said, okay. She goes, I'm gonna give it to you for 30 days. And if you love it, I'll renew the prescription for you. And if you hate it, let me know and we'll wean you off it. So I had called the nurse, called my doctor's nurse on like day 4, and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna bring this back to you because I was on it for like 48 hours and I felt headless, so I weaned myself off of it.

I'm done.

And my poor— my— the poor doctor's nurse was like, you did what? And I said, I weaned myself off of it. Well, why would you do that? And I said, um, because it wasn't working for me. It was making me feel headless and I can't function like that. Yeah. And it was shortly— it was probably like, I think Lyrica had been out for like, gosh, maybe a year at the time, maybe not. It wasn't even that. It was newer than that. And, uh, I said, no, I can't do this. I can't. I— no, no, no, no. I, I can't be in a place where I feel like I'm not functional, and I need to be functional. And it was interesting to me how many people would When I would talk, like when I would talk on the boards about my diagnosis, when I got diagnosed, what have you, and I always knew that I wasn't the person who, I wasn't the typical person with fibro. I've never been a typical anything, so that's not so surprising that I'm not a typical person with fibro and chronic fatigue. And so when I was in a space of, You know, what are you gonna do about it? I'm gonna heal myself. And that was what got me into the coaching work that I do now, was that I, you know, the more I pushed, it was like, okay, now what can I do? Oh, this works, you know, feeling, allowing myself to feel my emotion. And I wasn't honestly doing that for any reason other than to get the emotion out of my body. Like, it was like, I don't want to be leaking emotion. I don't want to be leaking tears. I don't want to be crying inappropriately. I don't want to be sobbing my eyes out. listening to the national anthem. I mean, it's touching, but I shouldn't be sobbing my eyes out about it.

Right.

And so it's— but it's— that's a sign that you're leaking emotion, right? So I was sitting there and thinking, okay, I just wanted to really— the reason I had started the emotion work was more because I was fascinated by it than because I thought it was going to have any real effect on, um, my symptoms. Um, but the funny thing was, is I had done that work God, we're going on, like, this is like, it was around September, around this time of year, 6, 7 years ago. And I remember, like, doing all this work and I was just emotionally wrought. I mean, I was wrung out with feeling all this emotion, doing all the work, what have you. And then we go through winter and I notice that I am in far less pain. I noticed that where things would normally be me waking up in the morning and being in like 10 pain or not being able to, or like 8, 9 pain and not being able to really roll over without having to do all the machinations that are quite hilarious, but to try to move myself with as little pain as possible. To get myself up, what have you, and realizing my goodness, I feel like I can my body is you know I'm actually sleeping, and I'm not in as much pain. And being in a space of where winter because I I've never been a big fan of winter. It's just it's not my favorite season by a long shot. But the whole notion is when you have a When you have an autoimmune disorder that the weather affects you, it's even like it feels— I mean, people would say, what does it feel like? I said, imagine your body in a vice grip. And they go, oh gosh, that can't be fun. Nope. But the thing is, is the more that I allowed myself to feel my emotion, the more that I started healing the trauma, um, the more that I was not in pain. This last winter, I was in probably on my worst days, maybe 3 pain.

That's a lot better.

It's 100% better. And it's something where I also had— I also started using CBD oil daily, which again, it's not for everybody. But I use CBD oil that is broad spectrum, so it doesn't have THC.

Mm-hmm.

There's no high whatsoever, but it's— I found that it helped. And managing my emotions has also tremendously lowered the pain because part of the reason why your body's in physical pain is because your emotion is getting stuck in all those— if you imagine your body like a machine, all your joints, right, being machines, like your elbow joint, your wrist joints, your shoulders, your, you know, your, you know, your back, your pelvis. We store grief in our hips. We store guilt, grief, and shame in our bowl, so our belly area. And all of, like, knowing where your body stores what emotion and allowing yourself to feel that emotion allows it to leave your— dissolve and leave your body. Um, and then your body, when your body's not fighting itself, it lessens the impact of the autoimmune disorder.

And it's, it's never, it's never an easy or one-size-fits-all solution. I mean, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, I've hear— I've heard The stories of the, I can't move, I can't be productive, I don't want to be a part of Social Security Disability, that's not a functioning part of society. And you're right, when you're— when you have the drive to be an entrepreneur, you have a mission in the world. You have something you want to do. How can you do all of that which that you're wanting to do while you're on medication or simply trying to muddle through the pain? Because that was an awful lot of work to have to do in order to just function every single day. And at some point, that becomes a stressor way more than it does help because you're maintaining it every day.

Correct. And the— but the thing is too, is, you know, one of the things that I did was I had to make a conscious decision for myself that I wanted to heal, number one, that I was gonna heal, number two, and that I was gonna be an advocate for myself and I wasn't gonna take no for an answer. And—

That's beautiful.

You know, it's one of those things that when you hear someone tell you, I don't know, you can do one of two things. You can either resign and be like, Oh, poor me, and grab out your violin, which is a natural reaction. Again, it's never something that if someone came to me and said, and people have come to me and, you know, with their world's tiniest violin, and, you know, they're playing their sob story, what have you, and I'm like, I'm sorry to hear about your diagnosis. What I usually tell people is when you're ready to discuss alternatives to medication, let me know.

Or even alternatives to the story, because there's even alternatives to the story.

Yes. And I'm like, you know, you have to decide you're going to change the story that's in your head. And so often when the medical, especially with autoimmune disorders, and it's one of those things that kills me that we are 20-plus years into the onset of chronic fatigue and we're still at that space Do we have more resources? Sure. But are we still in a space of I don't know a lot of times? Yes. Are we still in a space where people take years to get things like lupus and a lot of the digestive disorders diagnosed properly? Yes. To get like fibro— because fibro is one of those things that it's— one of my friends said to me, it's a spit chart. It's like you just— you spit and it's— Um, you know, you just kind of see where things land and pray for the best. And I said, you know, you also do elimination, you do the process of elimination. Um, and it's one of those things where you've got all these, you know, all these symptoms, this whole long list of symptoms, and you kind of try to do like the best 18 out of 24, you know, like if you have this and you have this and you have this. And, you know, what I tell people is no matter what autoimmune disorder you've been diagnosed with, If you can put yourself in a space of letting it land, number one. But once it has a chance to land, and what I mean by letting it land is we have to sit with it and let the shock wear off. I have— I've been diagnosed with this. Okay, fantastic. I have an answer. Now what— because the thing is too is a lot of times when you arrive at that, you've gone through a couple years worth of You know, either naysaying straight out, you don't know what you're talking about, you're crazy, you don't, you know, you don't have that, what have you. When people don't know, they don't know. They a lot of times skip over the step of validating. Okay, we trust that something is wrong because we don't want to be in a space of— doctors don't like to be in a space of I don't know.

Right. They want to help. They got into the profession in order to help.

Yes. And if they feel helpless, I don't know is not— is not what they would feel like is a good answer. Like, the top surgeon or the top person in the world can't just say, I don't know. And, you know, what do you do when they say, I don't know? And I've had people say that. What do you do when someone says, I don't know? I said, I keep digging.

Keep digging. Yeah, I think that's the important part. Well, we're running out of time, but I do want to, as folks are listening to your approach and how to dig deeper into traumas and letting them heal, How best can they get a hold of you, and do you have any offers for them?

Yes, they can find me on Facebook, Jillie Maria Transformational Catalyst, all one word, J-I-L-L-I-E-M-A-R-I-A Transformational Catalyst. They can also find me on my coaching page, Fire and Ice TL Coaching, and I'm the same thing on Instagram, Fire and Ice TL Coaching. And if they would like to go into my Facebook group Awakening with Grace. It's a spiritual group. We have a thread that is for people to ask a question of the Akashic Records, and there's an explanation as to what that is and what have you in the group.

Perfect. Yep. And if you're driving and you didn't get all of that, don't worry, I'm gonna have that in the show notes so you can simply click on it. But Transformational Catalyst, and then the name of the Facebook group again one more time is Awakening with Grace. Beautiful. I'm going to join myself and be a part of that conversation because I love all of that around the Akashic Records and of course traumatic events and healing them. It can all be found in, in that arena. So thank you so much. And to wrap things up, I know— I think you've answered it already, but I want to ask you one more time. What do you feel is the most important thing to remember when searching for answers?

Never be afraid to advocate for yourself.

Yay! There's no shame in it at all. Thank you so much. I so appreciate your time. and willingness to share your story here with us. You're welcome. It's been an honor. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, good. Excellent. So thank you to all of you listening to When Doctors Say We Don't Know. This has been an engaging conversation. And I'm hopeful those of you listening, if you hear the message of hope, so you too can turn your experience into pain or from pain into triumph. There we go. That's the goal. Okay. If you're driving and can't click on the links in the show notes, remember you can always hop on theelevateinstitute.com. And follow the podcast links for your today's show. I just want to talk about— tune in next week to our next episode of When Doctors Say We Don't Know. This is Eva Vennari reminding you to question everything.