A new collective experience of social anxiety has been amplified by the Covid-19 pandemic. Whether you suffered from social anxiety before or you’ve slowly developed social anxiety since being isolated and distanced from others, returning to post-pandemic “normal” life can seem more daunting than the onset of the pandemic itself for some people.

You are not alone in your concerns. Studies show that symptoms of social anxiety have increased significantly since 2020. The good news is, there are natural and effective ways to manage and cope with anxiety that will allow you to make a smoother, at-ease transition back into society.

Signs and Symptoms of Anxiety

To manage and cope with anxiety you must first understand the symptoms associated with it. If you or a loved one are experiencing any of the following symptoms, consult your healthcare provider or physician for clarification.

According to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, the signs and symptoms of can anxiety include:

• Feeling nervous, irritable, or on edge
• Having a sense of impending danger, panic, or doom
• Having an increased heart rate
• Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation), sweating, and/or trembling
• Feeling weak or tired
• Difficulty concentrating
• Having trouble sleeping
• Experiencing gastrointestinal (GI) problems

Over the last year, social anxiety has been front-row-and-center as we have trained our brains to perceive people themselves as a threat due to the risk of contracting the virus. Fear of going outdoors, interacting with strangers and even fear of the air we breathe in proximity to others has been a concern for many!

As more and more have either already contracted the virus and built up an immunity to it or have become vaccinated, the threat ratio has lowered, however, our brain may not recognize the change and continue to ignite our fight or flight response.

Get Ready to Face Society Once Again

Before the pandemic, you may not have had to deal with anxiety and fear of social settings as you are now. You may also be feeling the pressure from work responsibilities, friends, and/or family to return to your normal routines.

If the idea of re-engaging with society is causing you to worry, here are some tips to help:

• Get outside of the house every day. Go for a walk, go to the pharmacy, do the groceries rather than store pick up.
• If your workplace will soon require you to return back to the office, head to your place of work, and walk around to regain that comfort and routine. The same goes for those attending college/university or children who attend school and fear going back to the classroom.
• Start socializing with others on the phone, video calls and gradually return to seeing them in person one at a time when you can.

Start off slow, and steadily work towards the more challenging activities until you can feel comfortable engaging with others in society again.

Coping Strategies to Help Reduce Anxiety

There are many safe, effective, and natural ways to help cope with anxiety, whether you have been dealing with social anxiety for some time or if this a new onset of the pandemic.

Psychologists note that avoiding these issues can have the opposite effect than what you would want and only provide a temporary sense of relief while in the long run actually lead to an increase in anxiety. So, getting clear on what you can do to ease your anxiety and taking action right now is important.

Exercise

Exercise has long been known to benefit our overall health and no matter your age, current physical activity, weight, abilities, or size, even small amounts of exercise have been shown to reduce anxiety, improve sleep, reduce tension, and boost overall mood.

If you are unsure how to begin to increase your physical activity and are anxious about going too far from home, try these simple changes to your daily routine so you too can reap the benefits of physical activity.

• Engage in active family playtime. Any game that gets everyone up and moving counts!
• Catch up on household chores such as cleaning out the closet. Vacuuming is also physical activity.
• Mow the grass, go for a walk, or take a bike ride.
• Make television watching more active by doing jumping jacks or push-ups during the commercials.

Meditation and Mindfulness

Meditation is a form of calming your mind to increase focus, reduce stress, ease tension, and reduce anxiety levels. It has been scientifically shown to help alleviate the chaos that can crowd our minds, especially when faced with a fearful or anxious situation.

Using meditation to ease anxiety takes practice as in the beginning it may be difficult to calm our racing minds while diving deeper into our inner selves.

Try these mindfulness techniques that can help ground you when feeling anxious and out of control:

• Deep breathing exercises. Breathe in for five seconds, hold, breathe out for five seconds. Repeat 5 times or until you feel more calm.
• Visualize calming places like a beach, the lake, or somewhere you have fond memories.
• Keep a gratitude journal. Each morning or evening write down 3 things you are grateful for. Reach for this and read back on your thoughts to stay positive.

Supplements and Natural Therapies

Many people turn to medication in an effort to manage anxiety, but the reality is the side effects from medications can have their own impact on overall health. Natural supplements like adaptogens can help you cope, reduce depression, help with sleep and keep your system balanced while you are working through new and past anxieties. Speak with your natural health practitioner to find out what supplements will work best for your unique body.

Cannabidiol (CBD) is a derivative of the cannabis, or marijuana, plant and has been used as a treatment for a range of neuropsychiatric disorders including anxiety with positive results.

Unlike other forms of cannabis, CBD oil does not contain THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) which is the ‘high’ causing substance of marijuana, therefore, it is an effective anxiety reducer without affecting mental function.

Smells and aromas have a way of triggering memories and many plant oils have a calming effect on our body and mind. Lavender for example has been shown to reduce heart rate in the short term and help to ease sleep issues in the long term.

Do Things That Bring You Joy

Remind yourself of all the things that bring you joy and can help soothe your feelings of anxiety. Watch a funny movie or TV show, read a good book, or learn a new skill.

If you have pets, they can be a great comfort and you can rely on them for emotional support and calm your anxious feelings. Plus, walking a dog routinely outside can help ease you back into socializing with others.

Set Boundaries & Goals

How you choose to reintegrate into ‘normal’ life is your own personal choice. You may be comfortable visiting friends in an open area such as a park, but uncomfortable socializing indoors. Make a list of what you feel comfortable doing and express your fears and concerns with your loved ones so they can clearly understand your needs.

Go a step further and record your feelings, emotions, fears, goals, and expectations in a journal or diary. Often when we see our thoughts on paper, they are easier to face and approach with a calm mindset.

Lastly, be open-minded and allow yourself to be friendly (you never know if others are feeling the same way as you). While you need to have empathy for yourself and validate how you feel it’s important to understand that many people are dealing with this reemergence too and are equally anxious about what it all entails.

Can You Achieve an Anxiety-Free Return to Society?

Peer pressure exists in all stages of life so always remember you have the choice to say “no” when a situation makes you uncomfortable. Your optimal health and mindfulness are vital to re-engaging with society, therefore, when feeling anxious or stressed, try the methods above to calm your mind and release your body from the fight or flight mode.

There are, and always will be, stressors in your life. Re-engaging your inner peace by actively recognizing your anxiety triggers will allow you to focus on moving past them. Knowing your own values, fears, hopes, and future goals will help to set your mind on a new course allowing you to act on resolving your anxiety.

If you are finding your anxiety is increasing, affecting your relationships with others, or controlling your life, don’t hesitate to give us a call to schedule a free Mid-life Women’s Health Reset Discovery Call. There are natural ways to help manage your stress and keep your body balanced so these new stressors are not taking control of your thinking. Also, if your body has become imbalanced, you may have underlying gut or adrenal conditions that we can assess and address to restore the balance. Give us a call, or schedule online here.

We are here to help!

References

Bohlmeijer  E, Prenger  R, Taal  E, Cuijpers  P.  The effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy on mental health of adults with a chronic medical disease: a meta-analysis.  J Psychosom Res. 2010;68(6):539-544.

Hofmann  SG, Sawyer  AT, Witt  AA, Oh  D.  The effect of mindfulness-based therapy on anxiety and depression: a meta-analytic review.  J Consult Clin Psychol. 2010;78(2):169-183.

Blessing, E.M., Steenkamp, M.M., Manzanares, J. et al. Cannabidiol as a Potential Treatment for Anxiety Disorders. Neurotherapeutics 12, 825–836 (2015).

Li-Wei Chien, Su Li Cheng, Chi Feng Liu, “The Effect of Lavender Aromatherapy on Autonomic Nervous System in Midlife Women with Insomnia”, Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, vol. 2012, Article ID 740813, 8 pages, 2012.

Claire Thompson, Maria C. Mancebo, Ethan Moitra,

Changes in social anxiety symptoms and loneliness after increased isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, Psychiatry Research, Volume 298, 2021, 113834, ISSN 0165-1781.

Ignoring and repressing emotion is a part of cultural conditioning.

I eventually figured out that our fear of our feelings totally weakens and disempowers us! Who knew! Weren’t we taught to ignore them, suck them up, hide them behind a smiling face, and of course, we have all heard that, “big boys don’t cry”, right? Then there is also, “cry baby”, if signs of sensitivity are shown. Wasn’t the repression of feelings the key to being strong and powerful?

I don’t know about you, but I surely bought into this deception hook, line, and sinker at one time in my life. In fact, it was the denial and fear of my feelings and emotion that truly – almost sank me. How does this happen?

First off, from a very young age we are taught to fear our feelings. We are shamed into denying them, and we have not been taught how to self-regulate them in a healthy manner. In fact, most people have an extremely limited vocabulary in regard to feelings. I’m still in the process of expanding my own. The following list is the extent of probably the vast majority of people’s vocabulary for feelings and emotions:

1.  Happy

2.  Sad

3.  Angry

4.  Frustrated

5.  Bored

6.  Anxious

7.  Depressed

8.  Tired/fatigued

9.  Afraid

10. Worried

Occasionally I may hear emotional words like “excited” and “love” randomly, but not often in our mass media. I hear these lists of words all day long in the public world around me – online or offline when in the public purview.

I’m grateful to say that they are in general – except for happy – not common companions of my own – though they certainly were BFFs (best friends) at one time in my life – except happy. ????

It is also interesting to note the “low vibration” of most of the words on this list. What’s up with this? Do you realize that “e-motion” is referring to “energy in motion”? Why are we so stuck in such a narrow, unhealthy energetic feeling state of mind? Where is this all coming from and why don’t we hear more said about how important our emotional life is? At this point in human history, it is probably just a generationally perpetuated phenomenon.

I’ll take the health-related path approach to focus this article, because as a functional medicine trained physician, I know that our emotions are vitally important in the following ways:

1. They affect and strongly influence our susceptibility to stress

2. They affect our body’s physiologic responses to hormones, inflammation, and healing

3. They affect our mood which affects our sex life, our relationships and our motivation

In fact, if you live in a chronic emotional state such as in the above list – you most likely struggle through your day to deal with stress, burnout, and lack of passion. 

We can’t touch our inner joy and enthusiasm when they are covered over by repressed fear, anger, and stress.

I find that most people do not realize just how much emotion influences their very being as a human. If you are a mammal, a human being – then you have emotion. There is no denying it. There can be brain damage to emotional centers that downgrade our empathy or emotional intelligence – which we witness in some world leaders in our times – but in general most people have normal functioning brain centers. 

Since having emotions are a fact of life – why all of the fear around them and what can we do about it so that we can lead less fear-based, inauthentic, and unhealthy lives?

‘The mass of men (and women) lead lives of quiet desperation’

– Henry David Thoreau

Emotional resiliency is a skill set. It is not just going to happen because for one thing – we are conditioned out of it. Little children are taught language. Emotions are a type of language. We are going to have to put some effort into learning this new foreign language, and courage and an open mind are a requirement. 

Here are some of the key benefits for developing emotional resiliency.

1. Inner Guidance System: Feelings and emotion are our guidance system to our intuitive superpowers. When they are denied and repressed – we are hard pressed to utilize many of our inborn creative talents and abilities. For us to have good mental health, we need to have a sense of empowerment. Our intuition helps us with our safety in the world and decision-making which affects our stress levels.

2. Connection to Our Authentic Purpose and Expression: We are systematically shut down in expressing our truth because – we are out of touch with our own heart and spirit! When we lose the emostional side of ourselves, we cannot fully uncover and discover who we really are at our essence.

We all have a right-brain intuitive gifting that is being lost when we suppress and ignore our feelings.

3. Ability to Self-Regulate Stress Skillfully: When we are out of touch with our feelings, we become trapped in the 3-D world of the five senses that keep us focused on fear, worry, excessive competition with others, and lack. Does this sound like our current state of affairs? I think so. 

It was not until I started to have the insights that feelings were not my enemy and that I need to make friends with them – that I began to break free of the tyranny of stress and the urgent. 

We are more susceptible to the list of commonly familiar emotions listed above – which means more stress, when we cannot skillfully self-regulate. We don’t even have in our social vocabulary very often, the feelings that lift up our spirits, release feel-good health producing biochemical reactions in our bodies, and help us to tap our inner genius to thrive. Emotional vocabularies and access to such feelings such as:

• Joyful
• Peaceful
• Thriving
• Fulfilled
• Grateful
• Inspired
• Hopeful
• Trusting
• Curious
• Safe 

…. take a moment and feel how different this list makes you feel when you reflect on it than when compared to the list at the top of this article. Which way do you prefer to live your life?

4. Better Health, Less Chronic Disease: When we have less stress and more energy from emotional flexibility – our health will improve. We can make clearer decisions about what matters and is truly important to us – or not. We can get off the hamster wheel, and out of the “cult of busyness” and “shoulds” and instead tap into our feelings to turn on healthy gene expression and find the motivations to take better care of ourselves – we find a greater sense of a “future and a hope”.

5. Greater Passion and a Sense of Purpose: Here’s a little-known secret – we cannot tap into a default state of being that is joyful and inspired until we deal with the layers of “heavy” emotions that we have repressed over the years of our life. If we fear our feelings – we can’t address them. If we can’t address them – we cannot ever be free.

The path to emotional freedom and resiliency that is done in a healthy manner does require a mind-body-spirit approach. It is a lifestyle approach. It is a process and is not accomplished overnight. Some of the tools I have successfully used over the years that I taught myself by watching CD videos, listening to cassette tapes (that’s just how far back this goes for me), and reading were:

1. Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) – now called Tapping
2. Cognitive Behavioral self-awareness techniques 
3. Access those emotional parts of our self and transforming them – something I eventually learned was known as IFS Coaching/Therapy 
4. Mindfulness techniques and visualization
5. Meditation and spiritual study and experiences

… cultivating a healthy lifestyle and making time for emotional self-care also included:

6. Getting a regular good night’s sleep! – Rest and Restoration goes a long way
7. Eating low sugar, nutrient dense, wholesome food
8. Exercise that includes cardiovascular and low weight burst training
9. Confidence building self-talk and releasing self-deprecating conditioned self-talk
10. Exploring and reflection on my sense of purpose in life 

Just as we need to nourish our physical body and our mind, we need to address our emotional health.

It is powerful. It can make or break our performance in life, impact our health and energy levels, and determines the quality of our relationship to both our self and to others. Our emotions affect our mind and bodies in ways that can support mental health or destroy our well-being. They can drive us to addictive behaviors or to self-sovereignty. Make us feel like victims or victors.

They are typically left out of the conversation which is tragic because they are so important to prevention of chronic disease, vitality, and motivation. Our mood affects our immune system. Taking control of stress, requires us to take back control of our emotions, making emotional resiliency one of the most important skills to learn in the 21^st century. 

Why is stress and burnout such an important topic for busy professional women in particular? I put myself in this category also, and I’m so passionate about it because it almost sabotaged my life and professional work early on in my career. Women often take on too much trying to care for everyone else but themselves, and frankly, we are typically conditioned by the world around us to do so. This is one reason why we do not tend to our own stress. Another reason is that we do not know how to, nor understand what really causes stress and burnout.

What is stress? If you search the word online, you will likely see some scary images of people who look like they are being tormented with anxiety or severe mental distress. Some look totally overwhelmed and unable to cope. This is a common misconception and a gross exaggeration! The fact is, most people in our society are struggling with stress on a daily basis…even with a smile on their faces. When we realize what stress is and where it comes from, we are better empowered and enabled to avoid burnout.

As an MD medical doctor extensively experienced and trained in psychotherapy coaching techniques, and also functional medicine, stress is one of the most prevalent issues I see in my practice. I believe that you need to take a holistic Mind-Body-Spirit approach to resolve stress before it turns into burnout.

Fortunately, I have learned over time just how dangerous this is for our health and well-being and made it a part of my business (literally) to learn what stress really is, and to learn stress self-regulating skills. Let’s face it – the world around us is not likely to change much very soon. The sooner we learn how to better deal with it, the better!

Chronic stress leads to common symptoms for example, such as anxiety, irritability, weight gain, hormonal imbalances, food cravings, sleep disturbances, recurrent colds, cold hands and feet, hair loss, digestion issues, recurrent infections, low energy and libido, and even lack of motivation!

You can probably see how this will affect your confidence, career, and even relationships!

You can think of stress as feelings of overwhelm that connect with our sense of survival and activates our body’s ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response. Also, stress affects our adrenal-brain connection physiologically, which leads to these physical symptoms and if not treated at the root cause, can result in chronic disease. As stress becomes chronic, it can lead to burnout which causes common mental, emotional, and physical, ‘dis-eases’ which are currently plaguing our society at this time.

There are four key stressors that you want to learn about in order to begin to ‘take back control’ and live a more healthy and thriving life. One has a focus on the mental and emotional realms, and the other three have to do with our food and lifestyle habits.

When we overemphasize ‘hard work’ and struggle and do not understand the necessity of rest, restoration, and renewing our mind as well as how some foods contributes to this, we accelerate our aging.

We increase our risk for low energy and low libido due to inflammation and hormonal issues, and chronic weight gain in particular when we do not understand how food, mindset, and lifestyle are at the root causes of these symptoms. These symptoms are commonly associated with a variety of health concerns. Considering how expensive our traditional disease-care system is these days, ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a TON of cure’, not only a ‘pound’.

I can say that it is better and easier to stop a problem, illness, etc., from happening than to stop or correct it after it has started. Though now that I have also trained as a Functional Medicine specialist, I am grateful so say that we can actually reverse and prevent much of chronic disease that I was taught in traditional medical school to be ‘incurable. Our bodies are very resilient and can heal when we know what to do and why.

In the realm of Functional Medicine, you would be surprised how much capability we have to heal and reverse many chronic, common diseases. At the root cause of 90-95% of chronic disease is stress and the root causes of stress. This is why is it very important to educate yourself about prevention and reversing stress and burnout and their causes, and what you can do about it.

The 4 Key Stressors

Stress essentially is triggered by four basic pillars as shown in the photo below. I will briefly address all four. While you may be familiar with the idea that food, inflammation, and sleep could be connected to stress, very few health practitioners specifically discuss what follows.

The mental/emotional and even spiritual causes of stress (no sense of purpose or feeling disconnected) are often totally overlooked in terms of what is at the root cause of this category of the four stressors. I want to emphasize these areas in particular because hardly anyone talks about this area in the way I will share in this post.

1. Blood Sugar Imbalance

Sugar. Sugar by itself, in excessive amounts, can cause adrenal-axis dysfunction, known as Glycemic Dysregulation. Your brain and body need energy under perceived (whether real or imagined) stressful conditions. Sugar or glucose is one form of energy that is readily available. One important role of the adrenal gland and cortisol is glucose regulation.

Your adrenal glands (located on top of your kidneys) release cortisol as a response to regulate blood sugar levels by affecting insulin levels. While this can be helpful for acute ‘fight or flight’ they can be disastrous when we have chronic stimulation of this process, day in and day out. Individuals who consume a lot of sugar can become ‘insulin-resistant’ and this process starts to dysregulate or dysfunction. This can lead to a low blood sugar crash after a meal, which again, will retrigger the cortisol response. This rollercoaster response of the blood sugar can lead to a vicious circle and become difficult to control.

The macronutrients (fat, protein, or carbohydrate) content of our foods matter, particularly at breakfast time. If your first meal of the day is high in sugar (carbohydrates), over time you may accelerate problems within your hormonal and stress response systems. People who have chronic stress will likely to experience these types of dysregulation problems. Eating low-glycemic fruits and vegetables are quite important to this process to keep a good balance in blood sugar.

Read those labels! For the purpose of this discussion, let’s define high levels as more than 15-20 carbs per serving. Having been a ‘go-getter’ and over doing things for too long, I like many, have a history of being in the chronic stress category. I see a definite improvement in sugar craving and hunger since making this breakfast shift. I no longer need to carry protein bars and can go 4–5 hours between meals without any hunger during the daytime, even longer between dinner and breakfast the next day. What a difference!

There is no such thing as an overall ‘one size fits all’ best diet/food plan; this concept of the effects of breakfast sugar is based on the physiology of the stress response, particularly under chronic stress.

Having a ‘my diet is better than your diet’ argument is probably not going to be productive and may even raise our stress levels! In general, breaking your overnight fast (which is what ‘break-fast’ is), with high carbohydrates will likely cause mid-morning or afternoon brain fog or energy crash. Healthy fats and protein do not cause a sharp rise in blood glucose levels and tend to suppress hunger much better.

2. Chronic Inflammation

We are starting to hear more about inflammation, but we often do not connect the dot as to where this inflammation is coming from. It can come from our food sources, with sugar and processed foods leading the charge. It can come from toxins in our environment. It can also come from excessive ‘bootcamp’ style exercise!

What is often not considered as a source that is a very real source, are our toxic thoughts and emotions. Our mindset can ‘inflame’ our bodies. Just think about the effects of anger. While anger is a natural emotion and can inspire or energize us to take action, when we are chronically angry, anger itself is a cause of inflammation. Think about the idea that, ‘he was inflamed with anger.’ This is more than just a metaphor!!

One final cause I will mention here is lack of sleep! Sleep is our body’s chance to heal itself and to recover. When we don’t sleep enough or have restorative sleep, we are much more likely to trigger the biochemical responses of excessive inflammation in our body. Some inflammation is normal and an important part of our immune system, however when out of balance high or low end, it can lead to autoimmune problems or even lack of an ability to fight off infection.

3. Sleep

Well, you probably knew this was coming! I have personally come to realize just how dangerous lack of sleep is. Even as a physician of many years, I had no idea how deadly a lack of sleep can be for our health and well-being until I retrained in Functional Medicine in recent years.

There was a period of time of four years when my children were younger that I would routinely go to bed at midnight and wake up at 4:30am! This was during a time when I was also running a very busy medical practice and doing such a good job with spending time with my children, that at age 7, my son said to me, ‘mom, you don’t seem like you work because you are always here’. I built my schedule, planning and life around their schedules.

Little did he realize at that age and time just how much effort I was putting in to make this impression! Knowing what I know now, I would not have pushed myself this hard.

Lack of enough sleep can dysregulate not only your stress and cortisol, through this mechanism you can disrupt your thyroid, your sex hormones and even add inches to your waistline!

This is nothing to play with. When combined with lack of sleep, poor eating habits and inflammation, a perfect storm of chaos is created in the body’s system that can lead to prediabetes, hypothyroidism, autoimmune conditions, ‘leaky gut’ and gut disturbances, menopausal and peri-menopausal problems, PCOS, anxiety and more.

Hopefully, it is obvious why sleep is fundamental to ‘anti-aging’. As you can start to see by now, chronic disease is not about our age in years – even young adults are now experiencing these conditions with greater and greater frequency. HOW we age is what really matters.

One key area that is typically ignored is staying on technology devices or watching television into the evening hours. The blue-white light that is emitted can literally raise your cortisol and stress levels and disrupt your sleep quality! No joke! At the very least, use a good quality blue blocker eyewear protection, and even better, stay off of devices at least one hour before bedtime. Lifestyle medicine is an idea whose time has arrived and is greatly needed.

4. Mental and Emotional

Mental or emotional causes of stress can also be perceptual in terms of ‘how we see or feel’ about a situation. If this situation feels ‘novel’, or like a threat to our person or ego, or feels unpredictable or that we have a sense of loss of control…. it triggers our stress response of ‘fight, flight or freeze‘. This is why some people may love public speaking while others are terrified even at the thought of it! This category of stress requires special skills training to overcome.

Many people think that practicing mindfulness is a panacea that will alone,…and of course, in a short period of time (the quick fix), take care of this category. This is simply not the experience of many people, nor of my own. Mindfulness practice is an important aspect of beginning to retrain our brain to deal with this aspect of stress, but it is only the first step.

Mindfulness allows us to observe our thoughts and feelings, but we must then have tools and skills to ‘self-regulate’ our thoughts, feelings – intentions and attention – so that we are best able to take back the steering wheel of our mind. We must learn emotional resiliency.

This is more layered than it initially appears. This is where I tend to pay attention to stress management in a different way and where most physicians are not aware to do so. Remember stress management is not just about food, exercise, and sleep, though as I have already pointed out, they do matter.

For example, our own self-image and level of confidence will affect how we respond to the 4 Key Aspects of Mental/Emotional Stressors, which are:

• Novelty
• Threat to our ego (real or imagined)
• Lack of predictability
• Need for control

This is where learning how to transform our perception and ‘retrain our brain’ comes in. This is a skill set that we can all learn. As an entrepreneur, I can say that I am exposed to all four of these key aspects on a regular basis. I have observed in myself over the decades the power of these skills to bring greater confidence, fulfillment, less stress, and greater physical health and well-being when used with self-awareness. I now have greater emotional resiliency because of this.

A few words about spirituality and stress. When we do not have a sense of purpose or contribution that comes from our authentic heart, we may struggle with the meaning of our lives. Having a sense of connection with a higher power, purpose, or to nature can help us to live with more joy, inner peace and even tap into our own unique form of creativity easier. As you can imagine, this would all be stress alleviating on several levels.

You will generally not hear about these mental/emotional/spiritual aspects of stress management from your healthcare provider, whether in functional or traditional medicine. Understanding our ‘whole self’ is central to being able to live a life of thriving, not simply surviving.

Maintaining good health takes conscious effort in the world we live in now due to food quality challenges, excessive environment toxins, and a work environment and society that does not tend to honor self-care and downtime.

In order to be in control of our health, we will have to reeducate ourselves and look for alternative healthcare options and modalities that allow our body to tap into its natural healing powers. We can prevent and reverse many common chronic conditions when we understand how and have a strong enough desire to learn how to do so. This is a personal journey and the science is here now to validate many of the holistic approaches I use.

Yet, many of these approaches I used before the science substantiated it – like mindfulness of example – are now recognized quite broadly. Personally, I decided a while back not to wait on consensus from science but to trust my own experience – and it has served me well. I invite you to explore new ways of thinking about your health so that you can better empower yourself to thrive also.

Next Steps….

It’s my mission to help as many people as possible to live beyond stress and burnout. Please help me with this mission by sharing this blog post! ????????

If you’d like to learn more about how stress can lead to burnout, aging and low energy, I invite you to watch my free webinar on this exact topic.⁠ You can access it by going to the link at Taking Control of Stress and Burnout .

If you would like to learn how you can begin to transform your experience with stress, schedule your Free Discovery Session with me Here

The fact is, stress and lack of self-care are killing us. Stress is the basic core root reason for 90-95% of all disease, particularly chronic disease, which is crushing our country right now. Symptoms of low energy, low libido and chronic weight gain is typically associated with stress at a root cause level in some form as a medical condition. If we don’t learn how to manage and self-regulate how we perceive and deal with stress, if we don’t make room to unwind our own mind and nurture with compassion our own needs, we will continue to drive ourselves into sickness and disconnection from others, frankly.

Self-care is not selfish; it is the path of wisdom. Once we are in a better place mentally, emotionally and spiritually, we can be in a better place emotionally and have the clarity and energy to participate in the community in tangible and healthy ways instead of constantly seeking attention and validation from outside sources – like social media or by distracting our pain and feelings of isolation with drugs or busyness.

Where does this belief that to care for yourself is selfish coming from? The short answer is conditioning. We are conditioned to believe that we are supposed to self-sacrifice, that humility means ‘self-deprecation’, that we are supposed to focus exclusively on the happiness of others even to our own detriment. We are unconsciously taught that we are supposed to work ‘hard’ and worry about what others think of us if we are to be socially acceptable and ‘normal’. This conditioning is one reason why stress and the cult of busyness are so out of control. We are so external focused, we don’t know who we are, what we really want from our heart and soul, and what we value.

Therefore we live and breathe in survival mode. Too tired to sleep and too busy to think about how we are making ourselves ill in mind, body, and spirit. Yet, now that the clarion call is starting to go out regarding the majority (greater than 50%) of individuals in our society are suffering from such conditions as depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, obesity, chronic disease, insomnia, loneliness…on and on..and there is now a growing focus for ‘self-care’ to help people to take care of their self. Suddenly also, I’m starting to notice that there is a growing conversation that ‘self-care equals selfish’. This is just not true.

Why is self-care not selfish?

1. Self-care helps us to stop the vicious circle of imbalance and have more heart space for others – doing too much and not giving yourself a break, some quiet time, some nurturing – will only continue to feed the cycle of chronic anxiety and stress which is coming from our need to ‘survive’ which is really only a perception and separates us from others psychologically. We tend to feel isolated.
2. Self-care can turn off this chronic stimulation of the ‘fight, flight, freeze’ response that contributes not only to chronic disease development but also to narcissism and self-centeredness due to insecurity, just the opposite effect of healthy self-care.
3. It is the chronic fatigue and poor diet, lack of sleep and lack of self-care lifestyle that actually make us mentally and emotionally unstable and less likely to seek support and community than when our soul is nourished and rested. Self-care is personally and societally healing.

I submit that one of the driver’s of this wildly growing trend in poor health of mind and body is because we are so externally focused – on others, work, technology and media – that:

• We neglect our sleep and struggle with fatigue and anxiety
• We work too much and are too distracted by the external call to ‘do more’
• We don’t have time/make time to learn the truth about food and lifestyle and how important all this really is – we eat ‘fast food’
• We feel chronic insecurity because the truth is – we don’t love/accept our self in general – hence we over do things to constantly prove our self-worth
• We never make time for reflection and introspection – we are too busy striving and focusing on others to our own detriment
• We become so needy due to this lack of self-awareness and neglect – that we actually do become more selfish due to our chronic competitiveness, anxiety and craving attention from others
• We are disconnected from our soul because of all this

In fact, some people are so busy ‘serving’ to get love, security and self-esteem from external sources that they are damaging their adrenal, hormonal and digestive balance – and prematurely aging themselves. Hence, what looks on the surface like altruism is actually lack of self-compassion and workaholism to cover emotional pain of some form or to gain approval.

Then when we burnout, wake up, and attempt to find more life balance and joy for ourselves so that we can be more engaged with our own lives and feel the connection to others without worrying about what we will get out of it – when we try to take care of ourselves AS we are taking care of others – here comes the finger-pointing and shaming with the label ‘selfish’. When are we going to learn that it is a both/and proposition in order to thrive?

We can BOTH care for ourselves AND care for others. In fact, I know for sure that as I stopped overdriving myself professionally and from being a pleaser or seeking validation, I learned how to value sleep, recreation, took the time to relearn how to use food as medicine and more holistic natural approaches, dealt with my fears, anxieties and compulsive behaviors – and lo and behold, I started having better relationships!

I stopped being so focused on survival and being self-centered, feeling tired and getting mental fatigue or unfocused easily by twisting myself into a knot to fit into ‘the box’ and instead I got in contact with my own unique heart and soul expression. I found my voice…one of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn, even if it didn’t look that way to others. And, I connect with those that I feel a connection with and show them support for all the ‘right’ reasons. And, I definitely give myself some of this care also.

We can learn how to BOTH take care of our self AND take care of others. It doesn’t have to be either/or, black or white. That is the old way of thinking. Self-care is ‘personal lifestyle care’.

We are in a world that lacks joy and connection because we are so tired and burnt out, there is not enough energy to be present to the person in front of us. Instead, we seek to feel good by seeking attention, ‘likes’ on social media, and become easily distracted and addicted to our devices. We have forgotten how to ‘love the one you’re with’ as the old song goes. Frankly, this state of mind sounds more stressed and selfish to me. Making time for self-care for me has been lifesaving from a health perspective and has given me the focus, confidence, and energy to create healthy relationships and boundaries.

To attempt to shame people into submission by continuing to push them to serve others and institutions outside of their self without consideration for their own needs is ‘business as usual’.

Don’t expect to reduce the rise in chronic disease until people start to respect their own health needs for rest and restoration. Our bodies need a chance to slow down and heal. Our mind needs some silence. Our hearts need space to heal from our inner emotional wounds. Yes, we need more self-care and in doing so, we are more likely to heal our soul and thus our body, in the process…and ultimately restore healthy social bonds and community. Stressed, sick people create a stressed, sick society.

As we heal ourselves, we are in a better place to be a healing inspiration for others and also to have the time and energy to participate again in community with others.

We can learn to do this as an integrated lifestyle. As we care for our self, we also can shift the pattern of seeking attention from others and looking for love in all the wrong places. Instead, we can give it to ourselves. And as we love and care for ourselves, we make more room in our hearts to give to others. It’s just the way our mind and body works,

For those who wish to continue to neglect their own self-care, that is a personal choice as well. I do not judge this. The question I have is, can we stop interfering with the personal choices of others who are on a different path than ourselves? In so doing, maybe we can make the world less stressful and self-centered in the thinking of the collective mind. To each his/her own. Let’s us all find our own way, in our own time. Then maybe there will be more room for peace and for people to reach their own authentic expression, healthy mind and body, and their own authentic greater potential.

What are your thoughts about stress and self-care? I’d be curious to know.

Your perception can obstruct your vision through your brain as much as a literal cloudy fog can hide a huge mountain in our environment. The photo on the left is the same portion of my backyard as the photo on the right taken only about an hour apart.

Where’s the mountain and the blue sky in the one on the left? From a perceptual viewpoint, it appears there is no mountain, we can’t see it. If we didn’t know better, we would not even assume there are other possibilities than the way we are currently looking at this area of the background.

Perception is ‘how’ we see, it’s the story or the meaning we assign to a given situation or circumstance based upon our unique way of looking at life.

Sometimes we can be even looking at a situation or event right in front of our eyes and not really see that there is more than one possibility of what is before us. Like the mountain range behind the fog. Very recently, during a period of heavy rain here in Northern California, I noticed that the vast mountain range behind my home seemed to disappear as the clouds and fog descended low enough to obstruct it, so I took the photo of my backyard from my window.

If I didn’t know better, it looked like there were no mountains, that the land behind my home was flat and that I was just seeing the edge of the sky on this rainy, dreary day. In reality, things were not as they seemed. In a little while, the clouds and fog rolled away to reveal the huge, majestic mountains and the beautiful sun and blue sky.

I found this situation to be a an interesting metaphor for perception. This is important to your mind and body health and well-being. Whether we realize it or not, things really are not always the way they seem, and in fact, they are generally are the way WE see; it is subjective based upon the meaning we assign due to our perception.

It’s like a ‘Cataract of the Soul’ that blocks the Light of our soul, who we really are, and keeps us from witnessing our own intrinsic worth and beauty and from seeing this beauty also in others.

As an ex-eye surgeon, I can tell you that most people had normal, healthy eyes behind their cataract, which is simply a clouding of the lens of the eye. Once removed, their vision typically returned to 20/20. We don’t often realize that there is more to a situation, person or explanation than meets the eye. Two individuals can come to very different conclusions based upon how they have unconsciously wired their brain over time and how they expect the outcomes to evolve.

They can have different, ‘stories’ for similar circumstances. So they ‘see’ things differently. Often we are metaphorically seeing the world through a ‘cloudy lens’ of perception.

For example, we’ve been taught that chronic disease is a part of aging. Therefore, when we buy into this, we assume that there’s nothing we can do to age with good health. We don’t look for causes in our behavior, food, or toxins in our environment that harming our mind and body and destroying our health. We ignore new research. We don’t pay attention to reports that show toxic foods and pesticides are harming out gut. We don’t recognize that allowing our mind to wander into negative self-talk is actually creating disease in our body through the stress response. We continue to only look for evidence that aligns with what we believe and we therefore miss evidence right before us. It’s like there’s a cloud blocking out potential. That’s perception.

This is how perception can work. When we are not aware of how we are conditioned and have unwittingly wired our mind with a host of self-limiting beliefs, we can make assumptions that we will never see our way clear again and become full of stress, anxiety or even become depressed. When we don’t have a vision for our life we only focus on the clouds and lose sight of the potential majesty that could be hidden from our view at the present time. However, if we take the path of higher wisdom, we can make room for the possibility in our mind that perhaps there is just a mis-perception within our thoughts. That things can change, that we can change. The the ‘authorities’ are wrong and that what we once thought was true, is just not true or certainly not for everyone. That we can expand our vision and possibilities and change our perception.

Instead of thinking less of our self and allowing our fear to rob us of peace of mind and even help create disharmony in our relationships and lives, we can learn to hold the faith and courage to recognize that there are beliefs and ways of seeing life that need to evolve if we are to reach our greater potential. As we change our beliefs, we will notice new information starting to show up in our view.

Our soul’s journey is one of remembering that underneath the surface, behind the clouds in our life lies the Light of our spirit that is magnificent, like the mountains, beautiful, strong and majestic all at the same time.

It just may be temporarily covered over by confusion in our mind and heart that cloud our vision for our life. If we make time to

• feed our soul and spirit, to contemplate and reflect
• develop the trust in our inner spirit to guide us
• to apply the actions of our intuitive nudges that come from within our heart…

…we will be able to expand our vision for our lives as the circumstances shift and the clouds roll away in our perception to see the hidden beauty that was there all along. We can open our mind to new ways to heal our bodies and reverse chronic disease. This is the new science. It also requires your active belief change to participate.

The more willing we become to learn and grow and recognize that retraining our brain and mind and ‘making friends with our emotions’ is a skill that we can develop, the easier it becomes to navigate the storms and clouds that show up in our lives, including our health.

As we get to know our inner lives and the power within us to cut through the confusion and fog around us, we are better able to live with greater purpose, passion and to see the beauty that is hidden from our perception within the context of our everyday lives.

Think about how during these times of change we often have to ‘reinvent’ ourselves, meaning change our self in some way. We must become more adaptable and willing to open our mind to new ideas in order to continue to be successful. We need Science with Soul. We need to be able to change our thinking.

This applies also to  health and well-being as well as to every area of your life. My medical practice is in the area of Integrative/Functional Medicine which is a way of practicing healing and medicine that gets to the underlying cause of your symptoms. This includes your mind and your body. For me, I also have a special interest in our ability to understand how to empower our thinking. Both mind and body are essential ingredients to a happy and fulfilling life!

Traditional healthcare simply covers the symptoms by supressing them with drugs. Suppressing your mind, your bodily reactions and ultimately, often causing dangerous side effects as consequences.

I’m here to not only help you to empower yourself to health and wholeness but to also learn how to ‘optimally operate’ your brain in the process so that you are not so easily distracted, hijacked or prone to worry. So that you understand how both your thinking and your feelings impact the health of your body.

Pharmaceutical drugs generally are not healing you; you will still have the disease eating away at your body. Also, these drugs have annoying at best and fatal at worst, side effects. If you want to have optimum health, you will need to relearn what you currently believe about health and healing.

If you continue doing what you are doing, you will continue to keep getting what you have been getting. Right now in America, we have a crisis of obesity and chronic diseases as well as well as a mental health crisis. Change is challenging, but the good news is that I am here to assist you!

Healing is an art as well as a science. I am a trained physician, yes and I also know that our mind/brain is intuitive and this helps the success of our healing process when we listen to our guidance and learn how to trust our knowing for what is best for us as individuals. Healing is a collaborative relationship – a Dr. Dictator approach doesn’t work. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.

With NeuroReInvention, since the word ‘Neuro’ means relating to the brain or nervous system, NeuroReInvention is referring to changing your brain, changing the way you think and how you use your mind. It entails learning how to take a healthy attitude toward your feelings and learning how to consciously self-regulate them to live with more joyfulness. It is a scientific fact that our thoughts, feelings, and environments mold and change our brain.

This physiological ability to change our brain is called, ‘Neuroplasticity’ – I call it NeuroReInvention. And the implication is, you can learn to do it intentionally, on purpose and not simply allow the forces around you to hijack your thinking. YOU have the ability and are capable of learning new ways to empower your Self. This is good news!

This blog shares information that helps you to think differently in the way that you can choose to apply to sectors of your own life by learning the truth about the Mind-Body connection. How the mind can help you stay healthy, or totally sabotage your health and influence what dis-eases show up in your life – in general dis-ease is definitely not random! It can help you:

• By learning how food – which foods – work or do not work for you.
• By learning how we are creating dis-ease or allowing our brain to make us depressed, anxious, insecure or worried. By realizing that food affects mood and mood affects the health and functions of our body, particularly our gut, which neuroscience is finding is the center of vitality and health for our entire body.
• By learning how to find the best food plan for you that slows down or reverses aging, maintain your ideal weight and keep your brain sharp and performing at its best!

Also, did you know that your self-image will affect your choices? You are actually creating your self-image yourself, in your brain/mind, whether  you realize it or not. We are affecting our own sense of worth, value, confidence, and capabilities – without realizing how we are doing it. Hence, we are giving our power away to others in the external world that really do not have our best interests at heart.

We must learn how to internally reconnect our mind and our heart to become whole, healthy and empowered human beings.

My belief and experience has been that our mind is like a ‘supercomputer’ control center that affects our heart/feeling nature, our health, our sense of Self, our relationships, our abundance and wealth and even our spiritual understanding. As the ancient proverb says, ‘As a man (woman) thinks, so is he/she.’ This is Truth.

A part of learning how to stay healthly includes learning how to ‘retrain your brain’ and to take back the steering wheel of your mind’ from outside forces that attempt to steer you down the wrong road in regard to your health and well-being for their own profits.

Since our mind plays such a powerful role in directing our feelings, behaviors, choices, and actions, then doesn’t it just make sense that we learn practical ways to not only take more control over it but to also expose ourselves to ideas and information that helps us to live more of the life that we actually want to live? We empower ourselves when we:

• Learn how to make friends with feelings and develop an emotional set-point that feels grateful, joyful and passionate about life? Instead of anxious, stressed and worried?
• Learn how to stay healthy, how to successfully get off of the societal treadmills that run our bodies into the ground, making us sick and ineffective.
• Learn how to actually heal our mind and body so we can get off and stay off of excessively expensive and potentially dangerous medications.

We can learn the truth about the power of food as medicine – you really are what you eat to a great extent, and what we are told to eat as a ‘standard American diet’ sad enough is one of the issues actually at the root of our chronic disease epidemic.

In fact, notice that ‘Standard American Diet’ is the acronym, SAD – it’s sad alright!

NeuroReInvention will allow us to have the information and insights to help us to unplug and free our own mind from the fear, chaos, and stress that is harming our health and well-being. While we can’t control everything in our environment we can learn how to much more easily change our perception and what we allow into our mind-body system – this is for sure.

While my early medical training was in strictly traditional medicine, over time I have continued to learn ‘out of the box’ thinking and continue to evolve my worldview in all areas of life. I have continued to hone my skills and train in functional medicine and will continue to learn as long as I am practicing. Nowadays, many more people are searching for better answers, and with good reason.

The solutions we have been given are no longer working and is in fact, are a big part of the problem. Simply trying to medicate everything is only making a sector of corporate business very wealthy, while the masses of people get sicker and poorer from their expensive hospital bills and insurance premiums. Something is very, very wrong with this picture.

As I have stepped out of the indoctrination of this existing dis-ease care system that teaches sickness comes with age – when actually sickness is highly associated with foods, lifestyles, environments, emotional responses and our own belief systems – I have not only reversed aging in myself in many ways, I have reversed and healed health issues in my body that the traditional system was only aggravating.

I have witnessed several so called, ‘miracles’ of ‘incurable’ disease. Our bodies are designed to be capable of self-healing when given the right protocols, guidance and the support that is really in our best interest. You will be amazed.

In order to achieve these goals, you will first need to be willing to neuro-reinvent or change your mind. You must be willing to unlearn what no longer works that you have been told to accept as true and begin to open your mind and heart to new ideas, scientific evidence, and your own inner intuitive guidance. You will need to learn how to harness the natural healing body of your own mind and body.

To trust yourself. To stop listening to external authoritative voices that really do not have your best interests at heart. Remember, you will have to learn how to take back the steering wheel of your mind to ‘optimally operate’ your own brain, thoughts, and emotions.

Unfortunately, we know more about optimally operating our cells phones than our computer-like brain. No worries, it is much simpler to learn practical techniques to access your brain’s operating system than learning about your cell phone.

I certainly believe you can do it! And I know, like anything else, YOU have to want it and be willing to do the work. I’ve done it, mostly through trial and error…many errors over the past few decades.

This process as made me more resilient and I become wiser from my mistakes. Now, with help from neuroscience and experience, it is not only easier for me to apply these ideas and principles, it is easier for me to share what I’ve learned with you.

We hear the term, ‘Mind-Body’ but there is very little focus on the mind/brain and health beyond the new idea for many people of ‘Mindfulness’.

Mindfulness meditation is very important, yet it is simply a way to become more self-aware of your thoughts and feelings, which is an important place to begin. Meditation helps to focus the mind and to calm it and the body.

Yes, using mindfulness practices will improve your immune function, lower blood pressure and can even improve memory among other things, however, if other psychological and nutritional education are not gained alongside mindfulness, it can take you many years to transform your mind, body and reconnect to your heart/spirit.

Let’s be practical here…we can’t just meditate all day and who has ten years to wait on tiny incremental improvements? We also need to learn how our unconscious thinking is sabotaging us in ways that damage our health, our relationships, productivity, and even self-confidence.

We can access and change our self-sabotaging unconscious behaviors intentionally and on purpose when we know how. And when we are given the correct information and techniques to support this reinvention process, it becomes much easier.

As a former eye surgeon I used to help people see better with their physical eyes as I diagnosed and co-managed their underlying chronic diseases or neurological problems. Now, as an Integrative/Functional Medicine physician, I can not only be a guide for my patients/clients to heal their mind and body, but I also help people to expand the vision for their health and lives in general.

Because I see the world in terms of a holistic system, I will share my knowledge and professional training in medicine and psychotherapy in ways that interconnect mind, emotions, the physical body health, psychosocial well-being, and spiritual insight. I see people through the lens of wholeness, not in simple piecemeal terms.

As long as we see ourselves through a deterministic, mechanical lens, as if we have no choice to change, we will live lives of, ‘quiet desperation’ as Thoreau once said. We will see life piecemeal and scattered. We will struggle with ill-health, excessive stress, overwhelm, unproductive activity, relationship dysfunction, and distraction.

It is when we find the courage to open our mind that we will be able to free it.

The NeuroReInvention Prescription is the antidote for ‘dis-ease care’. It strikes at the root of dis-ease in all its forms.

Striking at the root is the foundation of Integrative/Functional Medicine. The NRI Prescription utilizes the Mind-Body connection.

It contains self-empowering ways to manage and heal depression/melancholy, anxiety, and dysfunctional insecurity that damages confidence and self-worth. It also provides knowledge and skills for improving health and well-being maintenance including nutrition, mindset changing techniques and nutritional supplements. Striking at the root means, learning how to keep your gut-brain axis nourished and healthy. Think about it – this affects the quality of your life in every way – including financially.

At the time of writing this post, the number one reason for bankruptcy in our society is related to healthcare related – disease care – expense. It is also eating up the nation’s budget and hurting the quality of life for people in this country. And – we are practically dead last in quality of healthcare when compared to other advanced countries in the world.

Healing our own mind is at the root of healing underlying causes of loneliness and experiences that limit love and connection, the drivers of lack consciousness and debt, and patterns of behaviors that are no longer serving you professionally and in your personal life.

Studies show the importance of healthy, happy relationships on Mind-Body health and well-being. While this may seem like a broad list, they are all interconnected through the Mind-Body connection. We just have not been taught how to understand ourselves in these terms.

We are a complex system of thoughts, feelings, and emotions, that drive behavior, yet at the core of this complexity is the simplicity of unification – holistic principles and applications – to help you to eat better, sleep better, feel better, relate better to your self and others, to live a higher quality of life and to take back the steering wheel of your own mind.

To reconnect to your heart and spirit. The truth about our ability to neuro-reinvent ourselves is a gift for our times that enables us to live a more abundant, whole life. I’m here to help and support those who would raise their hand to live a more authentically inspired life.

If that’s you, then I invite you to join me to learn more about The NeuroReInvention Prescription (NRI).