Today’s Hashimoment: Loving Your Story
We all have an inner narrative.
And one thing I’ve observed in myself and in many of the people I’ve worked with is a tendency to go to that default story.
It takes various forms, but what I noticed is that when I’m struggling it’s all about what’s wrong rather than what’s right.
And if you’re like many of the people I’ve worked with, you’ve struggled with Hashimoto’s and maybe felt defeated at times.
You’d have to be a super hero to not feel that way once in while.
But the truth is always nuanced.
It contains elements of comedy, things to celebrate and things to be grateful for.
As well as a fair share of tragedy, hardship and suffering.
So, what it comes down to is your perception of it, really.
The way you narrate the story.
It can be all about the tragedy and hardship and defeat.
Or all about the things to celebrate and what you’re grateful for.
But in order to heal, we need to try and use everything to our advantage.
And I know it has served me to focus on the things I can celebrate and what I’m grateful for.
Even when things are hard and there seems to be a lot of disappointment and difficulty, there’s always a way to be your own spin doctor and tell the story differently.
And like anything, the more you do this, the easier it becomes and the better you become at it.
So I encourage you to work on this.
Craft a story you love and make it more about the things you can celebrate and be grateful for.
This will make it easier to love yourself and that’s something that can never hurt.
Shares, comments and insights welcome!
Today’s Hashimoment: Your Healing Might Be Right In Front of You
Hey people!
Today, I wanted to discuss how much of the process of healing is really anchored in the way you choose to experience it.
Hashimoto’s, like many chronic diseases, is not just a physical problem. It’s also an emotional, psychological, and (dare I say it) spiritual challenge.
And a good deal of our progress or lack of progress really depends on our perception of what is happening.
To badly paraphrase Henry Ford, whether you think you can get better or you don’t think you can get better, you’re right.
The other day I was experiencing something that was a bit challenging and I was feeling discouraged and I shared it with a friend and he said, “What if you are closer than you think?”
And I had to stop and pause. And admit he was right.
What if what I was, in that moment, perceiving as failure or disappointment or a set back was actually moving me closer to where I wanted to be?
What if it was actually within reach but I couldn’t see it because I was so focused on that fact that I hadn’t gotten it yet?
Or to put it another way, what if I was actually sitting in the middle of an answered prayer, but I was too preoccupied with everything I didn’t have to notice?
And of course this begs the question, what if I instead stopped to take inventory of all the progress and blessings that I did have and recognize and celebrate them?
All of a sudden my entire perception had changed and the glass became half full (more than half full).
So, I challenge you today to ask yourself, “What if I’m closer than I think…?”
To healing your Hashimoto’s, to having abundant energy, to feeling happy, healthy and loving life again?
“What if I am sitting in the middle of an answered prayer and I actually stopped to appreciate it?”
Just ask yourself those questions and you might find your perception changing too.
Thoughts, comments, shares, likes and more are always welcomed.
Have a great day! Unless you have other plans. 🙂
Hey people!
I want to be totally honest with you.
I had a really rough week.
As you may or may not know I have Hashimoto’s and another autoimmune disease called ankylosing spondylitis.
And this week I had a flare up of the ankylosing spondylitis.
I feel a lot better today and I seem to have things under control.
And the reality is, I didn’t really deviate a great deal from my normal routine, but I had a flare up anyway.
And what this meant for me was a lot of low back and sacral pain. (It made it difficult to stand in one place for too long and even to sit comfortably for extended periods of time.)
And the worse part of it was that it set off a chain reaction of negative thinking that had me feeling pretty discouraged.
I felt like this was evidence that I had failed.
The good news for me is that this used to be a regular part of my life and now it’s a rare occurrence.
And this is the hard reality of autoimmunity.
Sometimes, even when you do all the right things, you can still, out of nowhere, have flare ups.
But, here’s the thing, the other side of this reality is that sometimes these things happen.
And it doesn’t make all the hard work and sacrifice you’ve put in meaningless.
It shouldn’t have any more significance than the periods of feeling great (which are far more numerous for me these days).
It was just a few days of a storm, which passed.
If I’m totally honest, there were moments when I let that storm over shadow everything else.
Here’s what helped me get back on track.
I keep a journal and I dug it out and read it and what I was reminded of was long term steady improvement and many more good than bad days.
So, with the help of that record, I was able to right the ship and reorient my thinking and realize that while I felt like crap, in the bigger picture, I have made some tremendous progress.
So, there are a couple of big takeaways here, I think.
First, this is one of the important uses for a journal that is sometimes overlooked.
It can provide balance so that you don’t get overly discouraged or overly excited about things.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes bad or unpleasant things seem to occupy more space in my head than good things.
Even though in relative terms, they are fewer and farther between, they can somehow get inflated and seem bigger than they are.
So I was able to check that and see clearly how feelings aren’t facts.
Secondly, I’m going back over the things I did that were different to try and determine if any of them could have been responsible for this flare up.
And I found a few things that, while apparently relatively minor, could be factors. (Like some slip ups in my diet, some things I’ve reintroduced recently, some slip ups in my routine – meditation, exercise, etc.)
So I am also able to recreate the lead up to this flare up and possibly learn how to better navigate it in the future.
Lastly, the biggest takeaway is that I’m here for the long haul and set backs are inevitable parts of life.
The key is to not make them bigger than they are and to learn and grow from them.
Because whether you think you are succeeding or failing on this journey towards remission, you are right.
As much as anything, a lot of the impact of autoimmunity happens between our ears (both literally and figuratively).
The part you can control is the perception of what’s happening.
The judgement about what it means and how you respond to that adversity.
Thoughts, comments, likes and shares are, as always welcome and encouraged.
Today’s Hashimoment: Are You Making Enough Time for You?
Hey, people!
In today’s post I’d like to address the issue of taking care of yourself.
I was speaking with a colleague yesterday and he observed that a common theme he has seen with those of us with Hashimoto’s (and I had to admit this described me to a “T”, as well).
And that recurrent theme is that we are generally type A people who tend towards being workaholics and we often devote most of our time to helping and serving others and have very little left over for ourselves.
This was a narrative he saw coming up over and over again.
And this really plays nicely into the stress problem we have, as well. We tend to operate under an enormous amount of stress even though stress is the main villain in our stories.
Right? So many people have had had a major stressful event or series of stressful events that preceded and/or led to them getting sick and diagnosed with Hashimoto’s.
Yet, so many of us don’t really learn this lesson.
We just adapt and power on and we put ourselves at the bottom of our “to do” lists.
Well, I want to invite you to change this.
Let’s all commit to getting free of this vicious cycle.
It’s ok to put yourself at the top of your “to do” list and to make the rest of the list read “nothing but things I love to do and fun”.
Another thing my colleague observed was that a casualty of this way of behaving was that some of us have forgotten the things we love to do and the things that are really fun for us.
So this week, focus on making yourself a priority and on dusting off those things that you love to do.
Dig them out of the garage or the attic.
Take them for a spin again and allow yourself what you deserve. Time and space to breathe, laugh and heal.
For me, it’s playing my ukulele. It’s a blast. I actually schedule time to play it a little every day.
Please share with us some of things you love to do that you haven’t done for a while.
Just to give us some good ideas!
Have a great day! (Unless you have other plans. 🙂 )
TODAY’S HASHIMOMENT: GIVING UP TO GET THINGS BACK
In the phone conversations I had last week, I was reminded,
once again, of one of the ironies of dealing with Hashimoto’s.
That is the fact that for many of us, we have to give things up to get things back.
And also for many of us, this is not something that we do willingly.
We fight, kicking and screaming.
And often, we don’t get to that place of surrender until we’ve been forced to our knees.
I know this is true of my own struggle with Hashimoto’s.
I basically lost my life as I knew it: my business, my health, my ability to function like a regular human being.
And then I hit ROCK BOTTOM.
And once I did, I had no choice but to start giving things up.
I gave up gluten, dairy and soy. Then I gave up all the other grains, beans, most nuts and seeds and nightshades. (Some of those foods I’ve since added back into my diet.)
I gave up a stress driven life and created a real daily stress strategy.
I gave up drinking so much caffeine and not sleeping enough.
I gave up all the drama.
I gave up alcohol.
Then something amazing happened.
Through all that giving up I started to get things back.
I got my energy back, I got my thinking and memory back.
I got hope back.
I went whole days and then the better part of weeks without pain.
I got a new, simpler life.
I felt joy again.
A life that I am truly grateful for today.
My favorite analogy about all of this is that some of the greatest paintings in the history of art were painted with very few colors.
There is an amazing freedom and abundance in doing and having less.
If you spend all day long thinking about everything you can’t have, you’ll be miserable.
If, instead, you can see that you literally have a universe of abundance open up to you by having less, then you open yourself up to receive it.
And you create space for healing. 🙂
Please share your thoughts, comments, observations.
Are you at peace with giving things up to get your life back or are you still fighting it?
As many of you who follow this page know, I believe it’s really important to stay positive.
And in order to do this, we really need to say “yes” to things.
“Yes” to commitment.
“Yes” to loving and forgiving ourselves.
“Yes” to being kind and compassionate to everyone (including ourselves).
“Yes” to our highest good.
But today I want to you to think about the importance of saying “yes” to “no”. ?
When you are struggling with Hashimoto’s, stress is not your friend. It is a major trigger of autoimmunity.
Virtually everyone I have spoken to (and this is also true of my own journey) went through a major stressful event that happened just before their health crashed.
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back and it ushered in autoimmunity or it was the final insult that led to major flare up and downward spiral.
So we really have to be extra careful about where we decide to put our time and energy. With Hashimoto’s these are super valuable commodities.
And sometimes, we need to build up our reserves and save them.
Any type of savings requires some discipline and some restraint.
I was speaking with someone this morning and she remarked how living with Hashimoto’s requires us to kind of be permanently on “island time”.
I love that!
It’s ok to say “no”.
Say “no” to your kids. Some people feel like they can never say no to their kids. In the real world they will experience an abundance of “no”.
It won’t hurt them for you to say “no” every so often. In fact, it’s better off if you do.
Say “no” to to that personal trainer or yoga teacher who is pushing you to do 10 more minutes or to go farther than you know you should.
They’ll get over it.
Say “no” to other relatives or spouses who are being too demanding or too needy. In the long run, they need you feeling better.
They also need to understand that an important part of you getting there is giving you time and space to heal.
Say “no” to the part of you that says you’re not good enough if you don’t push harder and get less sleep.
Say “no” to the guilt that surges into your mind when you embrace these “no”s. There’s a good chance that voice is not coming from you.
Healing requires us to learn how to still love ourselves even when we say “no”.
Comments, thoughts, ideas likes and shares with anyone you think might benefit are encouraged.
Think Like A Fox
Not Like A Hedgehog
I recently read a book called the Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver.
It’s an in depth look at how to use data and other information to make better predictions.
What does that have to do with Hashimoto’s?
Well, Hashimoto’s is very complex and there is an extraordinary amount of noise, that is information and advice that may or may not be helpful.
And as someone who is trying to solve problems and help others with this complex problem, I thought that learning how to better interpret the data and the information might give all of us some clues about how to get better results.
Ultimately, solving this problem requires that you be a detective and to be a good detective you have to look at the available information and be able to make predictions about whether or not what you are going to do will work.
Because if you are wrong, there are consequences.
And sometimes those consequences can result in you feeling a whole lot worse.
And pushing this thing in the wrong direction.
Our recent look at people’s experience with iodine is a perfect example of this (see our last post).
In the book there is a reference to a professor of psychology and political science named Philip Tetlock.
He identifies 2 distinct types of writers and thinkers: Foxes and Hedgehogs.
Hedgehogs are type A personalities who believe in Big Ideas – in governing principles about the world that behave as though they were physical laws and they are the foundation of everything.
Like Karl Marx and class struggle or Sigmund Freud and the subconscious. Or many MDs and Synthroid.
Foxes, on the other hand are scrappy creatures who believe in lots of little ideas and in taking a multitude of approaches toward a problem.
They tend to be more tolerant of nuance, uncertainty, complexity, and dissenting opinion.
If hedgehogs are looking for that one big meal, while foxes are gatherers.
Well, it turns out that foxes are a lot better at making accurate predictions.
And better predictions usually means better results.
So, to get better results with your Hashimoto’s, think like a fox.
How Foxes think:
They are multidisciplinary: They incorporate ideas from different places regardless of their origin on the ideological spectrum.
(Both doctors and alternative care practitioners are right about some things and wrong about others. Evaluate the message regardless of the messenger.)
They are adaptable: They find a new approach – or pursue multiple approaches at the same time – if they aren’t sure the original one is working.
(If lab tests show your TSH and antibodies going up as a result of a treatment, this is not necessarily a good thing. No matter how it is rationalized or justified.)
They are self-critical: They are sometimes willing (if rarely happy) to acknowledge their mistakes and accept responsibility for them. (Can your doctor admit when he or she is wrong or stumped?)
They are tolerant of complexity: They see the universe as complicated, perhaps to the point of seeing many problems being unpredictable.
(Hashimoto’s is the very definition of complexity.)
They are cautious: They express their predictions in terms of what will probably happen and qualify their opinions.
(There are no absolutely certain outcomes.)
They are empirical: They rely on observation and real data rather than theory.
(They use what exists, not what they want it to be or what will sell more of the products they created or endorse.)
Foxes are better forecasters and, therefore, get better results.
How Hedgehogs think:
They focus on one or 2 things that are the answer or the solution. They may view the opinions of “outsiders” skeptically.
(Synthroid is the only answer.)
They are stalwart: they stick to the same “all-in” approach – new data is used to refine their original model. To confirm their bias.
(See? You didn’t do well on Armour, Synthroid is the only answer.)
They are stubborn: Mistakes or bad decisions are blamed on bad luck or weird circumstances – a good theory had a bad day.
(Removing the thyroid removes the disease. And Synthroid is the only answer, you just need to increase the dosage.)
They are order seeking: They expect that the world will be found to follow a relatively simple set of rules.
(It’s just a thyroid problem. Synthroid is the only answer.)
They are confident: They rarely hedge their predictions and are reluctant to change them.
(You read too much on the internet. Synthroid is the only answer.)
They are ideological: The expect that solutions to many problems are manifestations of some grander theory or struggle.
(Sythroid is the only answer. It was the #1 prescribed drug in the US in 2013. I rest my case.)
Hedgehogs are weaker forecasters and, therefore, don’t get great results.
Here are 3 broad principles to be more fox-like:
1. Think probabilistically. In other words, think about a range of possible outcomes. Don’t make broad assumptions.
For example, take the theory that everyone needs more T3. Reality is more nuanced: Some people need more T3, others don’t and some people get worse with the addition of T3.
The same is obviously true of iodine and a number of other things. You may fall anywhere on that continuum. Find out what is true for you.
2. When the facts change, change your mind.
There’s nothing worse than stubbornly holding onto a belief that has been proven to be untrue.
This is why I’m opposed to protocols. They force you into a pre-existing solution.
There are so many variables, so many moving parts.
Let the facts on the ground dictate your approach.
3. Look for consensus.
Time and experience generally has a way of revealing the truth.
Sometimes there are big innovations, but these events are pretty rare.
Lastly, beware of magic bullet solutions.
With Hashimoto’s, after working with and talking to hundreds of people with this disease, I can tell you that there is nothing that works for everyone.
NOTHING.
You just need to learn to be like a fox and accept that.
One of the biggest challenges about living with Hashimoto’s is that there can be many set backs.
And if you do not have the ability to bounce back quickly and be resilient, then this may compound your suffering.
Because if you have multiple setbacks, one after the other, and you are still having trouble getting over the first, then you can become mired in gloom, despair and defeat.
One of the best ways to develop resilience is to practice mindfulness and detachment. The more you strengthen your detachment muscles, the easier it is to bounce back.
Detachment allows you to view your emotions from a bit of a distance.
This way you can see that feelings are not facts and emotions are not emergencies. They are just feelings and emotions and they come and go.
And you have a choice about how much importance you are going to give them. It’s all about your perception of them.
A great practice for developing detachment is meditation. Simply sitting, breathing and observing your thoughts.
Even as little as 5 minutes per day can help you develop the ability to observe your mind.
And as you watch it, you will observe thoughts and emotions rush in. Instead of holding onto them, return to your breath or to observing something in your physical body and let those thoughts and emotions go.
It can be challenging at first, but it gets easier.
And once you get a glimpse of the world outside of attachment to these feelings, thoughts and emotions you realize what a prisoner you can be to them.
Getting some degree of freedom from them can have a big impact on our ability to heal.
Sit, breathe and let go.
Please share with us your thoughts, experiences or tricks for finding detachment.
Hashimoments are affirmations and positive thoughts for people with Hashimoto’s. I started to write them because after reading research on the role of stress and emotions on the immune system, I realized how important what you think about and how you feel can be for your health.
I think one of the most challenging things about having Hashimoto’s is having to accept that there is no end point in dealing with this disease.
We can make tremendous progress in getting it under control or, hopefully, in remission. However, keeping it there requires daily commitment, discipline and vigilance.
And when you slip up, you pay.
And (forgive my language) sometimes the payment puts you on your ass and you are reminded, painfully, of what you can not do.
The point I’m trying to make is that this is a journey and while you make stops along the way, like any trip, you’ll never arrive at that place with no consequences.
Everything You Do Has Consequences
This is true of regular life, but it is especially true with Hashimoto’s.
What you do has special importance because of the challenges your body already faces.
What you eat, what you think, how much stress you have, what you drink, you name it, it all matters.
So, we’re faced with how we experience this.
It’s All About the Way You Look at It
Is it a crushing defeat or an incredible blessing?
This is the very definition of living in the moment.
This is what many saints and mystics strive for. Something to keep them present. What they often add is the element of detachment. That is their goal, to be present in every moment but to not be attached to that moment.
Be conscious of the decisions you make. Live in the now. Make those decisions count.
Because whether you like it or not, they will anyway.
Don’t loose sight of the forest because of the big trees.
With Hashimoto’s, its easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. And some of the trees can feel like redwoods that take a lot of time and effort to deal with.
You work on your thyroid, then you have to deal with digestive problems. You clean up the diet, then you have to fix the adrenals. You work on the adrenals and then you have work on your liver and gall bladder, then you have to deal with stress and all the emotional issues.
Jeez Louise! When will it ever be over?
I think we all know the answer. If you focus on this process as being a destination, you will be continually frustrated because you will never arrive. There is no destination.
A better way to look at this is that this is a journey. And that journey involves a committed approach to developing a lifestyle that leads you towards healing. We are in this for the long haul.
It gets better, at first it’s all bad days. Then, when we accept that this is more than a thyroid issue and we start seeing and working on healing the whole forest, we start to have some good days.
Once we deal with a few problem trees, we start to realize they aren’t as huge as we had feared and then we start having more good days than bad ones. But the reality is, we’re going of have to revisit some of those things again as things progress.
So don’t be discouraged that you haven’t arrived at the destination yet. Enjoy the journey! There’s a lot to appreciate about simplifying your life and discarding old things that weren’t good for you in the first place.
It’s a beautiful forest, full of beautiful trees. I know some days it doesn’t seem that way, but it really is.
Thoughts, comments?