If you’ve been living with a chronic condition, understanding the role of adversity can help make better sense of your symptoms, flare-ups and why it started when it did.
This new lens explains why having a chronic illness is not your fault, not in your head, and not because of what you did or didn’t do. The science recognizes that chronic illness is about what happened to you. It also means there is a whole new set of tools you can use for working with, stabilizing and even improving symptoms.
In Tuesday’s live webinar I’ll be sharing the science through 3 stories:
- Wren’s type 2 diabetes story (she works with her T2D from a trauma lens) and which is also relevant if you have symptoms such as a bigger body, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety and insulin resistance
- Chrissy’s asthma story, which is one of the most exciting examples I have yet to come across for how much we can heal by working with effects of trauma. Her story is about the unexpected impacts of adversity during pregnancy and birth (and what can be done to repair these effects)
- My own story with disabling chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and some of the clues that led me to research the role of trauma and that have been helping me heal
You’ll learn a few tips for working with the effects of adversity on your own and why such seemingly simple tips can make a difference. It’s a powerful new lens for finding a slew of new options for working with your health. It also helps recognize old tools you might have thought weren’t important (like I once did when I was a doctor because we aren’t trained about this in medical school).
I’ll share some of my favorite books and resources to give you a place to go for next steps, whether this is new to you or if you’ve been working this way for a while.
Join me for a live webinar
Tuesday 6pm -7:30 Pacific Time
9pm Eastern Time in the USA
11am Wednesday, Sydney time in Australia
We’ll have a live Q&A
Join me! (it’s free) <<
You’ll also get to meet Dr. Wayne Dysinger, who invited me because he sees how adversity and trauma underlie risk for so many chronic conditions, chronic illnesses and other kinds of symptoms in his community of patients.
Wayne and I became friends 25 years ago when we shared an office, working and teaching together at the New Hampshire-Dartmouth family practice residency training program. We’ve had a shared connection and a belief in working with the whole person.
Wayne has since founded a clinic in Whole Health and Lifestyle Medicine, which will be hosting this webinar. He teaches at Loma Linda University in the Las Angeles area, where he was Chair of Preventive Medicine at one time. Wayne believes the body is always trying to heal itself, and works to support that process as naturally as possible.
PS If you can’t make it to the live event there will be recording made available on the website and you’ll get a link in your email about 24 hours later
PPS Do you have ONE person in your life who’d benefit from this? If yes, then do them a favor and forward this email to them. You might find it interesting to compare notes after the talk!
My parents failed to get rid of our family cat when it was discovered I was allergic. Later I developed asthma, and still they kept the cat. For seven long years–age 11 to 18–I struggled to breath, never slept much at night (I slept at school), and my asthma destroyed my concentration, which destroyed my reading skills (and with them my education and my only escape from my living hell). To this day I have bad asthma, I barely survived suicidal depression in my mid-20s, and I was diagnosed with cancer four years ago. (I can’t say my parents never gave me anything.) I’m sure this neglect, and having to endure it alone, caused my health problems, but I need someone to show me the details of those connections.
Hi Megan,
I’m so sorry to hear of what you’ve been through. Having parents who choose the cat over their daughter – and your mention of neglect and living hell – all suggest what I refer to as “adverse childhood relationship experiences” or ACREs, which is one of the important and least recognized forms of trauma because it influences our nervous systems, immune systems, respiratory systems, guts and more throughout the years when these systems are developing and learning how to be in the environment they are in. Here’s a blog post on that. ACREs are also part of ACEs, which is a whole other category of adversity known to influence these same things and to affect risk for cancer and other health conditions.
I also have a blog post on asthma, which speaks to a 3rd category of adversity that happens before 3 years of age.
Each of these posts may help you see the connections more clearly. That means tools like these can therefore be of use to support healing. I hope that helps and wish you well on this major journey you are on xoxo