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I remember one night when I was living in Chicago back in 2016 my parents were in town visiting so we went out to eat at the restaurant a few blocks over from my apartment.

We got to talking about my current obsession with health and my diet.

At the end of the conversation my mom says “why are you so scared of dying?”

Of course she did not mean that in the literal sense but more so

Why am I so scared to feel

Why am I so scared to have symptoms when it’s a natural part of life and healing

Why am I catering and revolving my entire life around my symptoms

That statement has always stuck with me and it took me a long time to realize I had stopped living my life because I was afraid of dying. I was scared to death of stressing out my body that I catered my entire world around it and began living in a bubble. A bubble that became very lonely and un-relatable except to the dieting, holistic online culture I was following.

At the time I thought it made sense and I was just being healthy. I thought you had to be strict with your diet and lifestyle to be healthy and symptom free or else you have no willpower and you are always going to be sick and weak.

I thought I was doing the “right” thing to heal.

You see, it’s really hard as a practitioner. I want my clients to feel better.

We are taught to help people feel better by putting them in a bubble, giving them strict diets, eliminate the “bad” foods to give their bodies a break, give them supplements to help with their symptoms. BUT I have never seen more growth in my clients than by having them to step out of their comfort zone and actually do the exact opposite. The more I have learned is this is all a bandaid.

Get scared, expose yourself to stressors, do the hard things, don’t take the convenient and easy route, get uncomfortable that is when real growth happens on a physical and mental level and your nervous system will adapt and get stronger.

We can support our bodies while also adapting and exposing ourselves to stressors and fears. Those two things do coexist and should coexist. You should not be living in a bubble catering to your discomfort.

You can take supplements to support your body when needed, you can do breath-work and have a diet that supports your physiology and nervous system but you can not live in fear of doing things that give you joy because you think it will stress your body further.

You do not need to eliminate every stressor, every food, and have a crazy strict diet to heal.

Is it true most of us are living in stressed state, yes. We are stressed about the mundane that we no longer are living and engaging in stressors that might give us joy and growth.

Change your mindset around stress, if you think you are going to be stressed out you will be.

Instead consider the stressor as a form of growth and watch magic happen.

Stress will only impact your health if you let it.