Resolving Trauma Leads to Better Healing Outcomes
When you hear the word trauma, what comes to mind? Many people classify trauma as abuse of some sort – whether that’s physical abuse, sexual abuse, or intense emotional abuse brought on by another person. But what if I told you there are many other things that could be classified as ‘abuse’ that causes trauma to the body – things like chemical toxin exposures, eating toxic foods long term, being stuck in a negative mindset, even the words we say to ourselves in our inner dialogue, all of these things can cause trauma.
Last month we released our much anticipated Mastering Trauma Masterclass, a five part video series where we dove deep into the underlying root causes of trauma in the body, and how this trauma can become trapped in our cells, over time manifesting as physical symptoms and even disease. In our masterclass, we touched on the five major underlying root causes of chronic disease, mental health disorders, and neurodegenerative diseases. Those root causes that we have narrowed down after working with thousands of clients, are foods, environmental toxins like chemicals, heavy metals and even EMFs, MycoToxins or toxic mold exposure, infections and leaky gut, and the final root cause being trauma, unprocessed emotions and mindset.
Our goal in holistic healing and functional medicine is to help our clients discover and address the root causes of their symptoms and diagnosis. When you address the root causes of symptoms, instead of using a ‘band-aid’ like long-term medication, you can often find resolution or at minimum, big improvements in symptoms. After all, the body is amazing! Our bodies, if given what they need, are designed to and can miraculously heal themselves.
Over the years, our team of coaches here at Modern Holistic Health, has noticed how important the trauma aspect is, when it comes to full mind and body healing. I can recall many clients who were doing all the right things – eating an anti-inflammatory diet of whole organic foods, getting great sleep, taking their supplements, exercising, addressing their toxic loads through detoxification. Lab work over time would improve greatly, and infections would clear, their guts would begin to heal – but still symptoms persisted. More times than not, these clients were avoiding or perhaps didn’t realize that one or more traumas or past heightened emotional experiences, were ‘stuck’ in their bodies, and remained a barrier to healing or something that was keeping their bodies in a state of dis-ease. Even if these clients thought they were “over” their trauma, had put it behind them, or hadn’t thought about it for years, the effect of the trauma on a cellular level persisted.
I want to share the story of one of our clients, who we love dearly, Abby. Abby started working with us earlier this year. She’s a busy college student, in her 20’s, with a history of being overweight, having struggled with emotional eating for many years. Abby’s symptoms included anxiety, rashes on her hands, hormone imbalance, gut issues like bloating and loose stools, feeling overwhelmed, intense food cravings, the inability to get a good night’s sleep, low energy, and acne.
We started working with Abby by first doing a lot of lab work to see what was going on with Abby’s physical body. Lab results found a very large amount of mycotoxins, or toxic mold, in Abby’s body. Mycotoxins are known for causing gut dysbiosis or leaky gut, brain fog, joint pain and stiffness, memory loss, anxiety, and depression, among other symptoms. Abby’s lab results also showed a host of chemical toxins, including large amounts of BPA, which is a toxin found in plastics. BPA is what’s called a xenoestrogen, so it mimics estrogen in the body — labs showed Abby’s estrogen was sky high, which was throwing off the balance of all of her other hormones. We also found a toxin called PGO, which is known as styrene, and is a chemical found in food packaging materials. PGO can impact the central nervous system, cause concentration problems, fatigue, muscle weakness, and can irritate the mucus membranes – many of which were symptoms Abby was experiencing. Abby also had high levels of several pesticides and herbicides in her body, all of which are found on commercial produce, including glyphosate – and can cause gut dysbiosis or leaky gut, along with symptoms like food sensitivities, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, and compromised immunity – also many symptoms Abby was experiencing.
Our coaches walked Abby through diet and lifestyle changes, to help lower inflammation in her body and help her body start detoxing all of the toxins we found. We did specialized food labs to help Abby learn which foods were contributing to her dis-ease, and taught Abby how to make lasting changes in what she was eating. We also taught Abby how to figure out where her mycotoxin and chemical exposures were coming from, and how to stop her exposure to these toxins. We set Abby up with a customized supplement protocol for her body — to deeply detox her body on a cellular level, and support her immune system, gut balance, brain chemistry, and hormones while she detoxed.
To really get to the root cause of Abby’s emotional eating — we knew we needed to address trauma as a root cause, so we put Abby through what we call a One-Day Intensive. This is a full day of one-on-one work with one of our Trauma and Mindset Coaches, that helps a client get to the root causes of trauma in the body, and how that trauma is manifesting itself in the physical body. What’s fascinating about this work is that you don’t even have to know what traumatic event or events are causing the body to stay stuck – it’s all uncovered during the One-Day Intensive. What we helped Abby uncover over the course of this work was life changing for her.
Something a teacher said to Abby when she was a young girl, led her to believe that she couldn’t be herself in front of others, that she needed to hide who she was, which caused her to feel disconnected from her true self at a very early age. Combine this with feeling controlled by her father, witnessing her parents go through a rough patch in their marriage and fearing divorce, along with a negative self image (she didn’t like her body and didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin) — we were able to see that trauma was certainly a barrier to healing for Abby and was keeping her stuck in a cycle of self destructive eating habits.
The trauma and mindset work we did with Abby helped her release these long-held negative emotions in her body, changed her beliefs about herself, and helped her focus on who she wanted to become instead of focusing on all the things she didn’t want to be.
In three short months, Abby has lost more than 25 pounds, she’s changed her relationship with food, and her food cravings are practically gone! Abby still has work to do — we are focused on detoxing all of the mycotoxins and chemical toxins from her body, which can take upwards of a year for many people, and then we will focus on balancing her hormones, healing her gut, and helping her optimize her health with a lifestyle plan moving forward. Our team is so excited to see where Abby will be a year from now!
Abby’s case is an example of how you can see faster and more thorough healing, when you are addressing all of the root causes of dis-ease, including the trauma aspect. If the work we do resonates with you, we’d love to help guide you on your own healing journey — just reach out and schedule a call with one of our health coaches today!
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