Christina’s story, as unique to her as there are individuals on the planet, is so resonant of the collective voices who #Emerge Proud. Discovering profound meaning in our pain; light in the darkness – this is something that echoes throughout the reported learnings of all NOTEs experiencers and Empaths.

We are so grateful to Christina for sharing her story of self- empowerment, and we couldn’t agree more when she says;

“As a “healer” my job is to hold space, channeling energy to help you understand the ‘why’ in order for you to heal your wounds”… As Christina discovered, we can only heal ourselves when we make the decision to no longer be a victim to the challenges that life throws at us to help us grow…

My name is Christina and my story goes something like this…

Proof that anything is possible if you believe.

I was born on an island called Cyprus and at birth, both my hips were dislocated but the doctors missed it. It was not until I was four years old, thanks to a persistent and determined mother who knew there was something wrong, that they realised what had happened and why I was unable to walk.

The doctors told my mum that if I were to ever walk, she would have to take me to England for the surgery I needed, and urgently, or I would be in a wheel chair for the rest of my life. My mother took me to England for the surgery. They placed screws in both my hips and I spent six months in plaster from the chest to the toes. I still remember when they finally cut the plaster off and I was able to stand up for the very first time. The freedom to be able to move again after feeling suffocated and unable to move for so long was incredible.

A year later I returned to hospital for more surgery to take the screws out. I was encased in plaster once more. History was repeating itself. The surgery was a success on the left hip but not on the right hip. I was experiencing pain. The following year there was a war in my country and my family fled to Australia.

The pain continued and at the age of twelve, my mum was told that I needed to have further surgery. It was decided that putting a screw in my hip would relieve the pain.

I spent my twelfth birthday in a hospital having my fifth surgery and was bed ridden for six weeks with my legs tied up in straps. This was followed by two months on crutches. During that hospital stay I saw my mum crying in the corridor next to my room and I made the conscious decision that I would never enter a hospital again or complain about the pain. The surgery was not a success. It only made the pain worse. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered that they should never had put that screw in.

By my early twenty’s the pain became unbearable at times. It felt like someone was stabbing me in the hip. The pain would shoot down my leg. It didn’t help that I was studying to be a helicopter pilot. The vibrations of the helicopter irritated it even more. I decided to go see a doctor as I loved flying. It was my escape from reality. I was told that the only way to alleviate the pain was to get a plastic hip. I was also told that the pain would get worse as I got older until I would be unable to walk.

That was the last time I saw a doctor. I had tried everything. I spent a small fortune on physiotherapists, healers, chiropractors etc but nothing really worked, not long term anyway. I used to think that physical pain was far worse than emotional pain. At least with emotional pain you could cry yourself to sleep and have a rest.

None of this was helped by the fact that I am an empath – something I didn’t realise about myself until I went looking for answers. What that means is, I can feel other people’s pain. I am very sensitive to the suffering on this planet. This, in turn, would make my own pain worse. There was a time when it became so bad that I began to think I was going mad. Certainly, growing up I thought my sensitivity was a curse.

However, on my journey through this life I have come to see being an empath as the great gift it is. I realised that it was up to me to heal my hip. My body, my responsibility. I refused to believe that I was sent to this world to suffer. I questioned what sort of “God” (grew up in a christian home) would create me in their image just to suffer, especially since I considered myself to be a “good” person.

In 2000 at the age of 32 I went backpacking around the world, not only to try and make sense of this existence, but also to find ways to heal myself. I was very fortunate to be invited to stay with medicine women in New Mexico and this was where I found my first genuine teacher, a Navaho. My healing journey began. I had always had a thing for native Indians, even as a little girl. I wanted to meet them, so this was a dream come true. It was an awakening. They helped me to remember who I am and to make peace with a world that seemed incredibly cruel and unjust.

As fate would have it, after my sojourn with these medicine women, I ended up in Guatemala where I spent six months studying with three shamans who showed me ways to heal my body. To my surprise it worked! I was able to release the pain! So I continued to pursue more studies, spending more and more time with Indigenous medicine people and shamans. You can check out my journey www.alkehela.com

This was the catalyst for my becoming a “healer”. I say “healer” but it’s not really a word I like to use, as only you can heal yourself. As a “healer” my job is to hold space, channeling energy to help you understand the ‘why’ in order for you to heal your wounds. I share the tools that helped me heal my body physically, mentally and spiritually.

A word of caution; if you find a “healer” who promises to heal you, they are talking out of their ass, so run. Only you can heal yourself.

The mind is a powerful tool. If you don’t believe you can heal it doesn’t matter what anyone does, you won’t heal because you have free will. Playing the victim does not serve. What you are going through is merely a lesson that you have chosen to experience. I learnt that you can use your experiences and wounds as the reason to be a victim and play the blaming game, or you can use them as an inspiration to become all that you can be and more. The choice is yours.

I am now 50 years old. My pain did not get worse. In fact, I am rarely in pain these days. I do not have a plastic hip and I’ve been able to trek through the Amazon, climb Machu Picchu, scale mountains and can walk for hours without pain. I actually feel better and am fitter now then I was in my 20’s. The things we take for granted! To be able to walk and not be in pain is truly the most incredible gift. I am so grateful. As a child I thought I was being punished, that I had done something terribly wrong. Now I know that it was the greatest gift. My hips, my pain were my inspiration to go out there and do all the things I dreamt of doing. Things I was told I could never do. To search for and find the answers and tools I needed to heal myself. Tools I now take great joy in sharing with others for use in their own healing.

 “Live every moment as if it’s your last for tomorrow may never come.”

Find Christina’s website here:   www.alkehela.com

Shanon from Wisconsin, USA, recognises that she needed to feel safe in order to begin her painful journey to healing. It’s little recognised, but so common for experiencers of childhood trauma to adapt to a life living in dissociated survival mode. The FREEZE RESPONSE can help us to ‘get on with life’, but until the trauma is faced and processed, we live, as Shanon so beautifully describes, in a ‘disconnected’ state of being.

We are so grateful to Shanon for sharing her story here so powerfully authentically, in order to help others who may be facing similar struggles…

As an adult survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse and incest, I have found through my recovery that I have very little memory of my childhood, and when I take a big picture look at the entirety of my life to this point – that there is no sense of continuity.

I often tell people that I have lived three lives. In my first life, I was a child who was terrified and alone. Unsure how to grieve the loss of my mother because my father never spoke of her, sexually abused by my grandfather for the majority of my childhood, emotionally abused and neglected by my father, and taught by my family that I was not worthy of protection or love. Multiple times I spoke up about my abuse as a child, my family did ‘damage control’ rather than save me.

When I was 14 my father and I became homeless, living with a relative. At this time, I reached out to my mom’s parent who lived in a different state to see if they would help me. Soon after that, I asked my father to give them legal custody of me which he eventually did, but only after protesting his loss of welfare benefits when I left. My moving was the beginning of an eight-year estrangement from my father.

Shortly after I arrived at my new home, my grandma on my mother’s side became the first person to do anything about my abuse. I don’t remember what prompted my sudden disclosure after nearly two years of no abuse and subsequent silence, but within a year my abuser was arrested, charged, and taken to trial – and my family got one final swing at me. I soon found out that my father was a sworn witness for the defense, followed by one final grab at control by my grandfather who killed himself on the second day of the trial, which happened to be the day I was scheduled to testify. All of this reinforced my feelings and perceptions of betrayal, shame, and self-blame. The people I loved most didn’t love me back.

After this traumatic ending, I flew home and celebrated my 16th birthday five days later and went on with life.

Unable to handle my rebellious outbursts in the weeks that followed, my legal guardianship was transferred again. Within two months of the trial, my grandparents signed me over to another relative thousands of miles away. Off I went.

Through my childhood I had three different legal guardians, I went to four high schools, and I lived in 5 different states before meeting my first husband and getting married and pregnant. I don’t ever remember a time I felt safe, secure, or stable. My second life began after the birth of my first child, when I was 18. After my young marriage ended, I found myself a single mother with no choice but to get my act together, get to work, and provide a home, food, and protection for my child. I was determined to make sure my child’s life was nothing like mine. So, I transitioned comfortably into a completely dissociated survival mode. My childhood traumas never crossed my mind, minus the occasional fleeting moment. I had no time for break downs or big emotions. I spent the next 20 or so years in a dissociated and isolating bubble of controlled interactions.

The hardest part of recovery for me is reconciling this section of my life and accepting how I managed to talk about my childhood in passing but never feel it. How I pushed family that does love me and is on my side away to protect myself because of fear and deep-seated beliefs about how family can hurt me – thus robbing myself of decades of memories. How was I so disconnected?

Over the course of this middle part of my life as a survivor I did find myself in a therapist’s office a couple times, but it never stuck. Good thing I kept trying. The third life I have lived, is the life I am living now. A life after abuse, with full awareness of how it feels and how it is affecting me in my daily life.

Now, I am remarried and have a second child. A couple years ago, as my life began to calm down and become safe and stable; once I found someone who accepted me and allowed me to be who I am, I realized I had no idea who that was. Couple that sudden realization with some external life stressors and bam! Delayed Onset PTSD was triggered. Suddenly life was full of flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, body memories, angry outbursts, nightmares, insomnia, panic attacks, anxiety, and depression as the tidal waves of post-traumatic stress swept over me. Over the last two years, I have been in intensive therapy, shouldering up to the realities of my childhood, learning how to recognize and manage the symptoms of PTSD, and rewiring all the negative things I believe about myself and the world.

Through talk therapy, goals, self-care practices, coping techniques and EMDR therapy I am regaining control of my life again, and lessening the grip that my childhood has on me.

EMDR therapy has been a life changing experience for me. It continues to help me reconnect to my body, develop new awareness, process big emotions, and learn to trust myself and my ability to persevere.

I am not fully ‘healed’, and sometimes I wonder if I ever will be. I’ve been in therapy for two years and I don’t see an end date in sight at this point; I believe that some of the wounds left by childhood sexual abuse don’t go away, we just learn to integrate that part of us into who we are and figure out how to manage.

I sometimes feel like it will always take a little bit extra from me when it comes to certain high stress situations, I believe some emotional obstacles may always trip me up no matter how good I get at feeling and processing my feelings. And I think accepting all of this is key to healing.

“The best way out is always through.” Robert Frost

Healing happens every day, it has no end date – it is a choice we make every day as trauma survivors struggling with ‘reactional’ mental distress.

Every day I chose to heal.

“Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.” ~Wayne Dyer

Here are the links to two poems that I have written on my blog (there are many more):

The Child & The Woman

The Throes of Battle

This links to my collection of poetry on my blog.

Jeannet, a Social Worker from Cambridge in the UK has had a multitude of NOTEs experiences. In this brave account, Jeannet explains how these, often inexplicable by logic experiences, have changed her forever. Like so many Experiencers recount, they have taken away her ‘existential angst’ and the common fear of death. We are so grateful to Jeannet for #EmergingProud once again to tell us more about her extensive ‘non- ordinary’ journey…

It is the night of 30 December, 1998. I am lying on the floor of a side-room in the star shaped church of a Santo Daime community in the Amazon rainforest. I am lost in terror, beyond words, whimpering. This is the first of two NOTEs, 20 years apart, which involved a sense of possession by what felt like a dark ‘entity’, wanting to take me over.

This is what I wrote after the experience, which occurred during an Ayahuasca ceremony:

“I started shaking badly […] so I went to lie down. I got terrified. It felt like an entity was trying to take over my body. It came in different ways, contorting my face and body. I mostly remember it like octopus-like tentacles, engulfing me. After some time, it got to my heart. It felt like it was trying to take my soul away. […] Inwardly I seemed to be told I should accept it, take it into myself. I was scared to, but said ‘I accept, for the love of God’, and for a while kept repeating ‘I accept’. At some point, I felt I needed to see what it was/look behind it. I really tried, and to hold love in my heart and remember everything is Light and terrors are fear of the light, but I couldn’t do it. This thing felt different […]. For a while I felt like it was strangling me, and I had a sharp pain in my heart. […] I started choking […]. There was […] a period when I felt myself sinking, going from rapid shallow breathing (like a bird that’s dying) to not breathing at all, every so often remembering to breathe again with a gasp. I wanted to go to the Light, and caught glimpses of it, but I couldn’t let myself go, as I felt this thing was trying to get back in, and so I couldn’t leave myself unguarded.”

Gradually the experience dissipated. As it was happening, I wondered if this was a split off part of myself, some part of my Shadow (as Carl Jung talks of it) that I should try to integrate, or if it was something bad with an independent existence that I should fight. I didn’t know. This thing felt external and evil, or at least very toxic/dangerous – like it would kill me to get my body.

Afterwards people told me I was facing my worst fears as often happens with Ayahuasca. They reminded me it’s part of a process, a death/rebirth struggle. I would get to a better place …

But how did I get here in the first place? I’d had an uneventful childhood. I did have a serious operation as a three-year-old which I can’t remember, but which I think has left me with a fear of fully being present in my body. I was a shy and awkward only child, often retreating into books. I remember the inner crisis I felt when reading a book about Taoism in our loft, which in one swoop destroyed the image of the Christian God I had been taught. Later in my teens I wondered if I should just kill myself – if there wasn’t more than material reality, I didn’t want to live!

I had some experiences early on which may have been small NOTEs – there was for instance a powerful dream which may have warned me of my father’s death (I didn’t know he was ill), and later heard a voice inside my head that wasn’t mine asking me if I could cope if he died. The first time the answer that welled up in me was ‘no’. The second time, 6 months later, it was ‘yes’.  My father died within the year. I shelved those experiences, as they didn’t ‘fit’ with the materialist view of reality I grew up with.

There followed many years of longing to know there was ‘more’. There were periods of searching (reading, meditation, attending groups, etc.), and periods of feeling numb to it all. Once during a meditation I saw the lower half of my body as a dragon, which scared me and stopped me meditating for a long time.

I went through a range of life experiences – work, marriage and divorce, a complex, inappropriate relationship, bulimia, years of therapy, training as a counsellor and eventually training to be a social worker.

Then, in the summer of ’97, I tried Holotropic Breathwork (HB; Stan Grof) and had my first experience of full-blown NOTEs, including inner visions, a powerful heart opening and kundalini energy flowing through my body. I trained as an HB facilitator and experimented with psychedelics (or entheogens – substances which open you up to the transcendent). The main substances that expanded me inside were Ayahuasca and Psilocybin. Both of these, together with changes in perception at times when Kundalini was active, have completely changed my view of who we are as human beings. I now know we are infinitely more than most of us in Western cultures think we are!

Those words in ’98 that I would get to a better place came true. Some months later, in a mushroom journey, I had a NOTE that is hard to put into words. I experienced myself as a disembodied consciousness in a field of Consciousness, Love, Wisdom and infinite Compassion. I was part of it yet distinct, like a refraction in a crystal.  I saw that there is nothing that is not that Light. I also found, to my surprise, that we are all completely known and deeply loved.

This experience has changed me forever. It’s taken away my ‘existential angst’ and the fear I had of death. The message I was given was that we are all this Light and we should reflect it back to one another, so we can come to know it in ourselves. This is now the touch-stone in my life.

That was the end of this phase of inner work, although over the following 20 years there were periods that Kundalini energy was spontaneously activated in me, perhaps triggered by challenging life events. These episodes, usually lasting 1-2 months, also gave rise to NOTEs, some terrifying and some blissful, mostly during the night.

In the last 2-3 years I have felt called to seek out further settings in which to experience NOTEs. I have done an Ayahuasca ceremony and a series of Holotropic Breathwork sessions. I would always hit on inner terror but couldn’t quite see what it was. Then came my most recent HB session…

Suddenly, there was the entity I had faced in Mapia. I felt terrified, but without thinking said “Okay, show yourself!”. I felt it enter my body and I had to fight my fear to not block it. Bit by bit it took me over until it reached my heart, causing sharp pain, and then my throat. I felt strangled and started wheezing badly. Finally, it took the whole of me. I was no longer thinking and just lived the experience as it took over my body. I felt my face contort into (what felt like) a daemonic expression as my eyes rolled back and my voice sounded unrecognizable. I heard myself growling loudly. Gradually my terror turned to deep grief. Eventually the experience dissipated, and I came back to the room to listen to the music.

I don’t fully understand what happened in that session, but I now trust more fully that (in a safe setting!) it is helpful to let a process run its course, even if you don’t understand it and can’t control what is happening. I have not felt anything ‘bad’ has lingered from it. I have felt more grounded and present in my body, and I have felt released from the sense, which had remained since that first experience, that there was something dangerous out there I couldn’t see.

Perhaps the question of whether something like that ‘entity’ is real or not cannot be answered – it was real for me. If it did have a degree of independent existence, it was also inextricably connected to me. We have both changed through this NOTE – maybe it’s fair to say we have both been set free … 

Jeannet’s conclusions from her experiences of things perhaps being unanswerable seems to be a great guide to what helps us get through these ‘not- so- anomolous’ experiences… Sitting with uncertainty, not trying to analyse them, and trusting and accepting the process.

This is no easy task, but perhaps freedom comes when we learn to stop fighting and accept the darkness as an integral part of our human wholeness?

For more information on Holotropic Breathwork events in the UK: www.holotropicuk.co.uk.
For more information on the Holotropic Breathwork facilitator training programme: www.holotropic.com.

If you have a personal NOTE story that you’d like to share forNicole’s KindaProud book, #EmergingProud through NOTEs

Please contact us here 

Today is ‘Blue Monday’, which has been characterized as the most depressing day of the year in the Northern hemisphere due to the number of dark and wet days… we aim to re- frame this time as an opportunity for new beginnings. It was through ‘going within’ our own dark times that Sean and I were able to find our own light; our life purpose and what we now offer in the world…

I am ‘beyond thrilled!’ to introduce you to our Kinda Proud Ambassador Sean; together we will be offering YOU the opportunity to write your own autobiographies through #Emerging Proud Press. Here’s Sean to explain…

PRESS RELEASE

21.1.19

From Break-Down to Break-Through

New publishing partnership forms to create a ‘KindaProud Pocket Books of Transformation’ series, aiming to bring a new perspective to mental health, acceptance and recovery.

An exciting new publishing partnership between a human rights activist and an independent publisher will see the launch of a new ‘KindaProud Pocket Books of Hope’ series this year, designed to illustrate how ‘re-thinking mental distress can act as a potential catalyst for positive change.’

Blue Monday (January 21st) is widely cited as the most depressing day of the year, yet Katie Mottram and Sean Patrick are keen for people to see such days as an opportunity to re-frame their negative thinking and turn it into an opportunity for transformation. “Depression is an indicator that something in our life needs to change. It gives us the opportunity to ‘emerge’ as our true selves, someone we are proud to be,” explains Katie.

Katie, an author and human rights activist, and Sean, owner of publishing company That Guy’s House, have joined forces to launch the KindaProud Pocket Books of Hope series, a collection of inspiring personal stories designed to decrease stigma, improve wellbeing and influence the saving of lives through providing a more compassionate and positive conceptual framework for emotional distress.

The series publications launch on the 12th May 2019, starting with the release of #Emerging Proud through NOTES (Non- Ordinary Transcendent Experiences). Further books will be published throughout the year including, #Emerging Proud through disordered eating, body image and low-self-esteem, #Emerging Proud through Suicide and #Emerging Proud through trauma and abuse.

Each Pocket Book of Transformation has its own KindaProud Rep leading the campaign; a Peer who has personal experience of the theme of that specific book in which they tell their own story and encourage others to join them in doing the same.

“KindaProud empowers passionate Peers to tell their stories and be validated in doing so by a growing community that values authenticity, vulnerability and reduces stigma and shame. This helps build confidence and connection. Our project is empowering Peers to bravely speak out, proudly owning their story, and letting their voices be heard, in many cases for the first time.” explains Katie.

Katie and Sean’s long-term goal is to use all proceeds from book sales to provide free books to hospital wards and mental health facilities throughout the UK and Internationally, in order to inject much needed hope for people during their most difficult times. And although having never met in person, with Katie living in Norfolk and Sean in Liverpool, they regularly meet to discuss the project online. “The online world can be a cold and lonely place, with lots of negativity and hate, but it is important to acknowledge that social media can help people make valuable connections and can support recovery. It’s all about perspective and how we choose to use it,” explains Sean.

The underlying motivation for the new book series comes from the personal experience of both Sean and Katie, who have battled with mental health issues and recovery in the past.

Katie’s Story

Katie’s younger years were troubled, with her mother making two serious suicide attempts, including just after her birth and again when she was 17 years old. Katie lacked confidence and found herself battling with a heavy sense of ‘searching for more’. She embarked on a career in mental health in part to try and understand her mother’s experience, but this process purely acted as a mask for her own emotional baggage. After relocating to Spain to ‘start again’, Katie spiralled into depression and also attempted suicide in 2008. She returned to the UK the following year and took up yoga, meditation and self-development work, keen to avoid being medicated. Several years later, she experienced a spontaneous spiritual awakening during a meditation, at which point her life changed and she felt a revived sense of purpose and life mission.

As part of her recovery process, Katie went on to publish her memoir; Mend the Gap in 2014 and in 2016 set up the international human rights campaign; #Emerging Proud, allowing people all over the world to tell their transformation stories of having ‘emerged proud’ through a crisis. She also started to interview people about their ‘breakdown to breakthrough’ journeys, leading her to make and release a film on the subject in 2017, across 14 countries. Furthermore, the 12th May is now International #Emerging Proud Day around the world, helping to celebrate this perspective and to raise awareness.

Sean’s Story

Unlike Katie, Sean Patrick was a typical Millennial/ Gen Y, living life on the ‘ordinary’ path; going from High School to College to University to first job in the city. However, feelings of anxiety and depression became present in his 20s, with social anxiety leading on to more serious depression. “Like many people I didn’t know where I fitted into the world and despite having the things I was ‘supposed to’ I felt unhappy, anxious and unfulfilled.  I felt like I was on a treadmill and scared by the world,” explains Sean.

Sean’s ‘crisis point’ hit when he started to experience severe panic attacks at 22 years old. He had no option to but admit he had ‘mental health’ issues and begin to focus on fixing it. He started by reading books, gaining better understanding of his own mind and ultimately to a more spiritual outlook on life through daily meditation and adopting spiritual beliefs. After accepting an expat job in Hong Kong and spending half a year away from his ‘ordinary life’, he had the chance to recalibrate, explore meditation and mindfulness and let go of damaging old patterns and beliefs.

On returning home, Sean set up a blog called That Guy Who Loves The Universe and began to share ideas about spirituality and positive mental health with his following which grew to over 15K. He began to speak at conferences and wellness events all over the world and released an Amazon bestseller in July 2016. In 2017, Sean developed his own wellness company, That Guy’s House, with a main focus on wellness books and mental health projects.

After being introduced to Katie and finding out more about her #Emerging Proud campaign, Sean knew that bringing their skills together to launch the KindaProud series of books would be the perfect collaboration.

“The KindaProud Pocket Book of Transformation series is our way of helping to reduce the stigma associated with mental health and to reframe mental illness as a portal into self- actualisation – it is only labelled as an illness due to what we have been conditioned to believe in Western culture.  By sharing personal stories from a truly inspirational group of people, we hope many others will feel more able to speak out about how they are feeling and to start making positive steps towards fulfilment, acceptance and where needed, recovery,” explains Katie.

ENDS

Press Enquiries:

For further information, or to speak with Katie or Sean, please contact Jenna Owen on

01603 743 363 or email jenna@mediajems.co.uk

Will you be #Emerging Proud and shining your light with us? 

A common misunderstanding is that disordered eating only affects women, but the pressures to ‘look’ or ‘perform’ a certain way are just as likely to affect men. We are so grateful to Ari for sharing his difficult journey with us in order to raise awareness around this issue, and to give hope to other boys or men who might be in a similar situation and in need of support…

From bodybuilding to body-loving: My struggle through, and recovery from, Binge-Eating Disorder

TW: Numbers, ED behaviors

When I was 17, I competed in my first bodybuilding show.  I worked my way down to a pretty low energy intake pretty early on in the process, and for the last 5-6 weeks of prep, (which was an 18 week ordeal), my life had become completely consumed by restriction and over- exercising.  I was eating only “clean” foods at certain hours, a schedule I wouldn’t let anything else get in the way of (including friends and family). I was doing way too much cardio, I was using absurd amounts of stimulants to muster up just enough energy to not pass out in class, I obsessed over my weigh-ins and letting numbers on a scale turn into emotional events, and I had successfully isolated myself completely.

My sex drive, energy, and mood for the last 5 weeks were all in the tank.  To put it one way, I was not a pleasant person to be around.  But the worst part was the hunger.  It was like nothing I’d ever experienced, and yet the thought of “letting” myself eat was almost equally disgusting to me.  In class, I would scroll through pictures of “food porn” and write lists of foods I’d binge on and in what order after the show.

I used to watch classmates eating and become sincerely angry.  I would sometimes, after a long and emotional day, sneak into the pantry and “pig out” on literally one squeeze of honey, which would freak me out and cause me to compensate with an impromptu cardio session.

THE SHOW AND THE AFTERMATH

Immediately after stepping off stage at my show, I began eating.  It started with some “fit pizzas” one of the booths at the venue was offering.  We then hit a Hardee’s, where I got one of the “monster” double quarter pounder burgers, cheesy fries, and a large soda.  On the way back to the hotel, I distinctly remember virtually inhaling these cheesy fries and beginning to feel the most unnerving of sensations: my stomach was pleading for me to stop while my brain was yelling at me to keep eating.  The mismatch between my biological satiety cues and brain-derived reward and taste demands was a scary feeling to have, as I was constantly unsure of which excruciating sensation to respond to.

Back at the hotel, I began binge-eating all the foods I had stocked up on for this purpose.  This included Oreos, Reese’s pieces, a half-gallon of chocolate milk, marshmallow peeps, peanut butter, protein bars, Fiber One brownies, moon pies, Gatorade, and more.  As I continued to shovel this food into my mouth, my fullness turned into unbearable physical pain.  I was incredibly nauseous and tried to sleep it off.  But about two hours of sleep later, I was up and immediately began craving these foods again, so what did I do? Eat. And eat. And keep eating.

The night carried on like this: eating until I was in too much pain to keep going, trying to sleep, waking up to keep eating, etc.  By the time the morning rolled around, I was binge eating all of the free breakfast I could get.  We then stopped at a pizza place before heading back home, where I proceeded to eat an entire pan pizza.  This pattern persisted for a week straight.  I was more depressed than I’d ever been at any point in my life prior.

HOW LOOKING AT MYSELF IN A HOTEL MIRROR CHANGED MY ENTIRE LIFE

Exactly one week after the show, I was getting out of the shower and saw myself in the full-length mirror in the bathroom.  Though I had been taking “progress photos” of myself habitually since starting prep, and therefore had technically seen myself shirtless quite a few times after starting this binge, this was the first time I really saw myself and how “bad” I’d let things get.  I had devoted 18 weeks of my life to extreme obsession centered around getting as lean as humanly possible, which involved cutting off friends and alienating family, letting myself fall into deep pits of depression, abusing stimulants, hours and hours and hours of cardio, and constant restriction.  And so seeing myself literally right back to where I was when I started was difficult to swallow.

I distinctly remember this moment, almost six years ago now, as I started sobbing profusely and could think of nothing to do other than go to bed and hope the pain could go away.  I felt trapped and alone and like I’d never be able to express these worries to anyone. 

MY RECOVERY

My recovery was not a formal, nor linear, process.  In fact, I competed one more time, 3 years later, and went through a similar ordeal.  But over time I was able to get to the point where I’m at now: no longer valuing myself based on how much I weigh, how much food I ate today, or even how well my workout went. 

Since I hadn’t even understood that what I went through was an eating disorder, the approaches I used that got me to this point were hardly the typical “ED recovery” techniques.  Nonetheless, I learned that some general principles and practices were essential for my growth towards true intuitive eating and unconditional love of my body.  These included a period of fundamental self-discovery, mindfulness meditation, learning to mindfully eat, improving my ability to see the bigger picture, focusing more on self- compassion than ‘self-improvement’, and some other various elements (all of which guided the instructions I give in my book on ED recovery, 100 Days of Food Freedom).

And so that is why I’m here, writing this story.  Whilst the diet industry grows more and more, and cons people who just want to love the bodies they’re in out of their money and out of their sense of security, there is a void in the nutrition field that needs to be filled.  Food freedom means not defining ourselves by how “good” we did today in terms of diet or exercise, and it means not letting the scale control our lives.  More accurately, food freedom involves loving the eating experience, separating our thoughts and emotions from our actions and beliefs, and ultimately treating our bodies with the respect they deserve.

Ari Snaevarsson is a nutrition coach who works primarily with clients who suffer from disordered eating patterns. He also works as a counselor, dietetic technician, and on-call facilities manager at a residential eating disorder treatment center. In both capacities, he helps clients develop positive relationships with food and their bodies. His book, 100 Days of Food Freedom: A Day-by-Day Journey to Self-Discover, Freedom from Dieting, and Recovery From Your Eating Disorder, outlines a simple, day-by-day process to recovery from one’s eating disorder.

Links:

Ari’s website: www.100doff.com

Follow him on Instagram: @100daysoffoodfreedom

and Facebook: www.facebook.com/100doff/

Does Ari’s story resonate with your own experience? 

Would you like to share your story for Amy’s KindaProud book, #EmergingProud through disordered eating, body image and low self-esteem? 

Please contact Amy to find out how by contacting her at: info@soul-shine.org.uk

Sabine Obermayr-Adamzek, from Switzerland, currently living in the region Arnhem, The Netherlands, graciously tells us how her shamanic calling to be a healer manifested through what the western world calls ‘psychosis’. We see more and more proof that is is high time we ‘Re- think mental illness’ through these stories. Thank you Sabine, we are Kinda Proud of your journey…

Shamanism, my key to mental sanity

Writing this blog was inspired by the documentary “CRAZYWISE” by Phil Borges and Kevin Tomlinson.

I dare to state that shamanism saved my mental sanity. By now I am living with a worldview that is strongly based on knowledge and tools from indigenous people.

Burkina Faso

A few months after my 28th birthday I found myself breathing deeply, for the first time in my life the nocturnal air of Africa. I was standing on a platform on top of the stairs that lead down onto the tarmac of the airport  of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, a small country in West -Africa.

Little did I know that this visit would change my life fundamentally and irreversibly.

I was invited as one of the members of an international group of people who were invited by Sotigui Kouyaté (19 July 1936 – 17 April 2010, the head of a clan of griots and griottes, that are part of the Mandinka ethnic group. Griots and griottes  are keepers of  the oral tradition, storytellers, singers, performers, dancers and actors.

A number of westerners, including me, from a variety of countries, we were scheduled to travel around with several members of the Kouyaté family to do research for a theater project. I was a professional actress at that time.

To make a long story short: during this trip I started to have, what a professional would call, psychotic episodes. I saw things that others didn’t see, I heard strange voices in my head and I generally felt out of sorts, especially in the countryside. I remember a very strong physical sensation  of dissolving into the earth, not being able to breathe anymore, it felt like being under water, drowning in the earth. It seemed that I had senses, that weren’t there before I went to Africa, feeling things happening miles away, hearing rock formations talking to me in my head….

I can assure you it felt absolutely terrifying. I lost my sense of self, my identity of who I was. On the other hand I had experiences of being part of something much larger than mankind, that infused my mind and my body with a sense of wellbeing that I hadn’t encountered before and left me totally confused. I convinced myself there and then that these feelings and sensations were related to my extended stay in Africa.

They would vanish as soon as I was back in Switzerland, where I lived and worked at that time.

Guess what? They didn’t.

Back in Zürich

After having returned  to Zürich (Switzerland) a number of weeks later, these feelings, sensations and voices in my head still kept me awake various nights and made my daily life and functioning, the way I used to function, very difficult.

I remember one morning where I found myself sitting at the base of a big tree in a forest nearby the town center, soaked with rainwater to my skin and disoriented, gazing confused into the friendly face of a forest worker who asked me if I was alright. I answered more automatically than consciously : “Yes, of course” but obviously I wasn’t.

I had absolutely no recollection of how I ended up here. I had a vague memory of incredibly complicated energetic structures and deep friendly voices in my head.If anyone would have asked me then : What do you remember? I would have stared at them blankly and would have answered: Nothing.

At that point in time I was terrified, shaken to my core by the feeling of absolute powerlessness. Being in the grip of something so much bigger than me, that had taken over my consciousness. I wept for the woman, that I have been and wasn’t looking forward to the person I was becoming. Losing my memory, my sense of self and not knowing, where all these weird experiences would bring me, I decided that it was time to seek out a psychiatrist.

In the years that followed this episode, the knowledge that was dropped in my head that night, started to surface at appropriate times and gave me a lot of insight about the mechanics of the universe and the interconnection of all living systems.

A few weeks later my psychiatrist told me that I should take medication to control my ongoing psychotic episodes. I was afraid of what these chemicals would do to me and my brain, and decided to look for an alternative solution.

Synchronistically I came into contact with a Dutch man who was practicing Shamanism in France. After our initial contact on the phone, he told me, that he was expecting me.  That his Spirits had already informed him, that a Swiss lady would seek his help and  he recognized me, as this person. He invited me to participate in his upcoming workshop, where we would find the time  to consult the spirit world concerning my problems.

Shamanism and shamanic illness

In the first workshop I attended he taught me several techniques to regain control over what was happening to my mind. He promised me ongoing teaching and mentoring to follow my calling. “What calling”?  I asked him.

He explained to me that  from a shamanic point of view certain types of “mental illness” maybe nothing more than a strong calling to develop and research certain abilities that would be beneficial not only for the person who is experiencing this “illness”, but for everybody and everything this person would encounter later in life. That this experience, this “illness” is an inherent part of the training to become a shaman, a mediator between worlds. This training would not only involve himself as a teacher, but more importantly, that there would be other teachers from unseen realms that would guide me in my search.

He would teach me how to reach out to these teachers, to learn how to integrate the messages from the other worlds and train me to balance what was going on in my life in a good, healthy way. That I would embark on a journey with him to become a shamanic practitioner, he told me. For 15 years, I worked with Daan van Kampenhout as his student and co-teacher.

I was reading, studying and practicing all kind of indigenous and tribal worldviews from Lakota to Sami, from real people, healers and medicine people to knowledge that continues to be  passed on to me in dreams and trance journeys, since 1995.

Interconnectedness

Praying, like traditional medicine people do, accepting my “gift” of being able to communicate with everything that lives and generally embracing the idea that we all are interconnected with everything that has a spirit, the visible and unseen world around us, all coming from a common source, the creator, confirmed a lot of what I  experienced in my ‘psychotic’ episodes.

Humility, deep felt gratitude and compassion are since then a constant factor in my life. They form the base of my work as a shamanic practitioner and systemic facilitator.

In #Emerging Proud, we like to call this the ‘positive domino effect’ – with every person who is brave enough to step up, accept their calling and work on personal healing, they become able to offer support to others on the same path. It’s thanks to Sabine’s bravery, intense study and self- work that she is now able to do just that… ❤

Sabine says; “Feel free to contact me for a shamanic consult (from a distance as I live in The Netherlands)”

CLICK HERE TO FIND SABINE ON HER WEBSITE

Sabine Obermayr – Adamzek phone: ++31618275619

Does this subject resonate with your own experience? 

Would you like to share your story for Nicole’s KindaProud book, #EmergingProud through NOTES? 

Please contact us here to find out how.