Andrea was 35 years old and a dedicated nurse when she came to us. Like many healthcare professionals, she was a self-proclaimed “nose to the grindstone” worker and completely burnt out.
For years, she had neglected her own health while caring for others. But unlike most patients, Andrea had little faith that anyone could actually help her. After 10 years working in the traditional medical system, she’d seen firsthand that it wasn’t working for patients, and everything she’d tried within that system had failed her too.
Understandably, she felt she was on a dangerous trajectory. In her gut, she knew that if she didn’t find and address the root causes of her declining health, she was headed toward an autoimmune disorder, stroke, or heart attack. What she didn’t know yet was that the key to her physical symptoms wasn’t just physical—it was buried in unresolved trauma she’d been carrying since childhood.
When Andrea first walked through our doors, she was struggling with severe anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts—something that’s unfortunately common in the medical industry. Her physical symptoms were equally concerning: high blood pressure, high heart rate, borderline obesity, and developing food allergies (not just sensitivities—full allergies).
But the symptom sheet told an even more complete story.
Andrea was experiencing panic attacks several times a week. She described enormous fatigue and significant bloating in her gut. Beyond the anxiety, she had developed a generalized fear that was impacting her ability to cope with daily life. Her creativity was gone. She was losing hope.
To add to her laundry list of symptoms, she also struggled with acne, reflux, difficulty sleeping, hair loss, and body tension. When she rated her symptoms on our tracking sheet, she scored an 8, 9, or 10—the worst possible range—on just about every single symptom.
Perhaps most heartbreaking was what she told us when she first arrived: “I truly want to die.” This thought hadn’t just been running through her mind recently—it had been there most of her childhood.
What made Andrea’s case particularly significant was understanding how deeply her childhood experiences were affecting her present-day health. The suicidal thoughts that plagued her as an adult hadn’t started in adulthood—they had been with her since she was a child.
Andrea had experienced early childhood sexual abuse by a babysitter—trauma she had never been able to resolve. She had also endured relentless bullying that she’d never fully processed. On top of all that, she carried the emotional burden of years spent chronically sick, searching for answers that never came and relief that always seemed just out of reach.
These weren’t just painful memories tucked away in her past; they were a constant reminder. Unprocessed emotions and unresolved trauma are among the most common root causes we see in people struggling with mental health symptoms, conditions, and often neurodegenerative diseases as well. They sit alongside physical root causes like environmental chemical toxins, heavy metals, toxic mold, and toxic additives in food—all working together to keep someone stuck in a cycle of declining health.
For Andrea, addressing these buried traumas wouldn’t just help her feel better emotionally. It would be essential to healing her panic attacks, her racing heart, her inability to sleep, and all the physical symptoms that had brought her to the edge of giving up entirely.
Through our work together, we helped her finally process the early childhood sexual abuse that had haunted her for decades. We guided her through releasing the pain from the bullying she’d endured. And we gave her the tools to work through the complex emotions of being chronically sick for so long.
Since we knew Andrea had trauma rooting back to childhood, we didn’t just address her physical symptoms or teach her coping strategies for anxiety.
First, we taught her how to actively work on re-patterning her neurology. We do this with clients who have “stuck” traumatic experiences because unresolved trauma creates patterns in the nervous system that keep the body locked in survival mode—even decades after the original event. By re-patterning her neurology, we were helping her brain learn that it was safe to let go of those old protective responses.
Still, beyond helping Andrea process her trauma, we recognize that when people struggle with mental health symptoms or conditions (and we often see this with neurodegenerative diseases as well), there are typically a handful of common root causes.
In addition to addressing trauma, we also discovered physical root causes that were contributing to her symptoms. We identified environmental chemical toxins, heavy metals, toxic mold, and toxic additives in food—all common culprits we see in clients struggling with mental health symptoms and conditions. Once we pinpointed these issues, we taught Andrea how to effectively eliminate the toxins from her body. This process allowed her brain chemistry to gradually return to normal range.
In just about five months, Andrea had massive breakthroughs.
Looking at her symptom sheet side-by-side with where she started, the difference is dramatic. The woman who had scored 8s, 9s, and 10s across the board was now experiencing life at a completely different level.
Here’s what Andrea had to say about her recovery:
“The drastic change in my ability to sleep is directly a result of the emotional work that we did. I was so keyed up and fearful of thoughts racing through my brain that I could never rest. I believed that I wouldn’t be able to handle or control anything that came up, and I believed that I would go into a panic attack and have a heart attack or a stroke or die suddenly. But now you’ve given me the tools that I can—meaning I can heal, and it does work. You gave me the mantra that I have been repeating all day, every day: By the grace of God, I have been given the tools to handle what comes my way with courage, humor, and inner strength.”
Fortunately, Andrea was very proactive with everything she was learning from us. It wasn’t too long into her work with us that she had an opportunity to put these tools to the test. One day while driving, she had a panic attack. But this time, she remembered all the tools she had learned and was able to move herself through it.
Andrea’s high blood pressure, racing heart rate, panic attacks, and even her developing food allergies weren’t just physical problems requiring physical solutions. They were her body’s way of expressing unresolved trauma and unprocessed emotions that had been stored in her system since childhood. When we addressed both the physical and emotional root causes together, her body could finally heal.
Like many nurses and practitioners who come to see us, Andrea had spent years in a system that she knew wasn’t helping people heal at the root level. She had tried the standard approaches, and they hadn’t worked for her either. If you’re a healthcare worker who’s struggling with your own health, you’re not alone, and your skepticism is valid—but there is another way.
Andrea’s suicidal thoughts had been with her since childhood. That level of unresolved trauma creates patterns in your nervous system, your stress response, your immune function, and your ability to process and eliminate toxins. You can’t separate the mind from the body—they’re one integrated system.
The moment Andrea was able to use the tools she’d learned to move herself through a panic attack while driving was a turning point. She realized she wasn’t helpless anymore. She had agency. She could heal. That shift from “this is happening to me” to “I have tools to handle this” is transformative.
Five months might sound like a long time when you’re suffering, but for someone who had been struggling with these symptoms—and the underlying trauma—for decades, it’s remarkably fast. When we started integrating emotional and trauma work more fully with the physical root cause work, we began seeing clients make these kinds of rapid turnarounds. Andrea’s case shows what’s possible when nothing is left unaddressed.
If you’re struggling with anxiety, panic attacks, depression, physical symptoms that won’t resolve, or the haunting feeling that you’re headed toward something worse—autoimmune disease, heart attack, stroke—and you’ve tried the conventional approaches without success, you’re not broken. You may just need an approach that addresses all of you: your unresolved emotions, your unprocessed trauma, and the physical root causes that are keeping you stuck.
Like Andrea, you might be closer to a breakthrough than you think.
If you recognize yourself in Andrea’s story—if you’re exhausted from trying everything, if you’ve lost hope, if you know there’s something deeper that needs to be addressed but you don’t know where to turn—there is a path forward.
Modern Holistic Health specializes in helping people heal from “unexplainable” chronic illness, unresolved trauma, anxiety, depression, autoimmune conditions, metabolic issues, and neurological disorders.
We use an evidence-based approach with data-driven solutions to help create a holistic healing plan to enhance your quality of life and give you a deeper understanding of what’s truly driving your symptoms and how to heal from the root cause.
