Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 199 // How to build resilience with Hashimoto's

Transcript

199 // How to build resilience with Hashimoto's · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

• 0:00
  Have you heard the term snowflake to describe people?
• 0:04
  You might have. It basically refers to somebody who can't hold up to pressure,
• 0:10
  who when anything hard happens, they just melt. They just go away.
• 0:15
  They disintegrate. You are not a snowflake.
• 0:18
  You are listening to this podcast, which means that I know that you are an overcomer.
• 0:25
  You are approaching your health with an I can do this mentality.
• 0:31
  You know something's going on and you are actively seeking solutions.
• 0:35
  You are listening to Health with Hashimoto's.
• 0:38
  That is what we do on this podcast. I help you every single week figure out
• 0:42
  simple and sustainable solutions to your health challenges.
• 0:46
  And today I want to talk about this concept of being a snowflake or being resilient.
• 0:51
  I was reading a book as a nurse.
• 0:54
  I have to get like 20-something continuing education credits every time I renew my license.
• 1:00
  And my license is up for renewal. So I have been reading a book that gets me
• 1:05
  a whole bunch of CEUs. It's called Food for Thought.
• 1:08
  And one of the chapters, it's actually about emotional eating and cravings.
• 1:13
  But what caught my attention was the topic of resilience.
• 1:20
  Because when you have Hashimoto's, or when somebody in your life has Hashimoto's,
• 1:25
  or any chronic health challenge, we have a lot to deal with.
• 1:31
  We are faced with these challenges, and resilience is the ability to confront
• 1:37
  challenges and endure even horrific situations. Like, think Holocaust.
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  The study of resilience gained steam after the Holocaust. But the resilience
• 1:49
  is that ability to confront those challenges and endure situations and emerge
• 1:54
  psychologically healthy.
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  That is resilience.
• 1:58
  And you have challenges. We all have challenges.
• 2:02
  And when we have a challenge, we have two options. We can either be passive,
• 2:07
  we can have that passive response, or we can have a challenge-oriented response.
• 2:12
  We can decide that we want to rise up and meet this challenge.
• 2:16
  Almost every single day. I have a challenge of, what do I eat?
• 2:21
  What do I feed my family? My husband and I share supper-making responsibilities,
• 2:27
  and on my days, it's probably like breakfast time.
• 2:31
  I'm already thinking, oh my goodness, what are we going to eat today?
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  I know, I could do a better job of meal planning.
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  And that is a challenge that I need to overcome.
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  But right now, when it comes to my day to cook, a lot of times at breakfast,
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  I have this situation of I need to feed my family.
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  I need to feed all six of us at suppertime, and I don't know what to make.
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  Now, I have two options. I can be passive, and the passive response is I'm assuming failure.
• 3:01
  I'm just, I don't know. I just am hoping that it's going to go away,
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  and it doesn't go away. I still have to feed the family supper.
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  Whether I prepare at breakfast time and get out the meat to thaw or even the
• 3:12
  night before, which never happens, or I am, you know, last minute scrambling
• 3:17
  at four or five o'clock trying to figure out what can I make in 20 minutes. Like.
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  No matter what, I have the situation of my family needs to eat.
• 3:25
  We don't fast. I have offered it to my boys as a suggestion.
• 3:29
  I'm like, hey, who wants to fast today?
• 3:31
  I mean, four teenage boys, none of them are ever going to fast.
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  And I don't ever say it in a serious way because everybody needs to eat.
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  We don't fast. So I know that I need to feed everybody.
• 3:45
  At the same time, sometimes I approach that situation and I'm just passive. I have no idea.
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  And I go on with my life as if suppertime is not going to come.
• 3:56
  Suppertime is going to come and I will need to feed my family.
• 3:59
  So I can be passive or I can see it as a challenge that I need to rise up and meet.
• 4:05
  And I mean, granted, making supper is not a huge challenge.
• 4:08
  We have big challenges. When you have Hashimoto's, your overwhelming fatigue
• 4:13
  or your brain fog or your metabolism, like these things might challenge you
• 4:18
  so much more than what am I going to feed my family for supper?
• 4:21
  I just wanted to give you an easy situation that we could all relate to of,
• 4:27
  you know, this, how do you react?
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  How do you react when you are faced with challenging situations,
• 4:33
  whether it's what to eat today or what am I going to do for my health?
• 4:37
  You have these two options. You can be passive, or you can have a challenge-oriented response.
• 4:44
  That is what this book refers to it as.
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  And so passive response assumes failure. It assumes that you're not going to
• 4:52
  be able to rise up and meet this. You're not going to be able to overcome it.
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  It's just going to happen no matter what. So you just freeze.
• 5:01
  It's kind of that fight and flight and freeze. you just froze.
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  Unfortunately, the passive response, because it's assuming failure, it guarantees stress.
• 5:14
  You're almost accepting of the bad outcome, and it does increase stress.
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  And one of the things that drives all health conditions, all negative health
• 5:27
  conditions, is stress. We want to lower stress.
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  So instead of having that passive response, let's figure out how we can have
• 5:36
  a challenge-oriented response.
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  Now, this involves problem solving, and it encourages a sense of control over the challenge.
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  You might not have complete control over the situation, but you do have control
• 5:50
  over how you react and your actions within the situation.
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  I cannot control that supper is going to happen every single day.
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  That is something outside of my control. The sun and the earth,
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  you know, we continue through time and space.
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  Supper time will happen, whether I am ready or not.
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  Every single day. It will be evening. My family will be hungry.
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  They will need to eat. It's going to happen every single day.
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  I get to decide, am I going to meal plan?
• 6:22
  Am I going to meal plan for the month, I know what days I'm going to cook.
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  My husband and I haven't figured out.
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  I have specific days of the week. He has specific days of the week.
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  That's not a surprise to me. I should be able to meal plan.
• 6:38
  I also, now that my chickens are laying again, you know, during the winter,
• 6:42
  the hens were not laying eggs.
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  Even though we had a light in there, they still were not laying very many eggs.
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  But now they're laying again and I can plan my meals.
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  That does throw me for a loop in like early or midwinter when all of a sudden
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  I go from having a dozen to two dozen eggs worth every single day to zero.
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  Like a lot of my meals, I plan around eggs.
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  For example, Sunday evening, Sunday is my day off.
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  I established that, oh, probably 15, 16 years ago.
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  Sunday is my day off. It's leftovers.
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  Everybody knows when you get home from church, it's leftovers for lunch.
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  And then for supper, it's usually hard-boiled eggs.
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  And people can add to that. We used to have smoothies, but not everybody drinks the smoothies.
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  So hard-boiled eggs and something else. And then the hard-boiled eggs,
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  I make extra and they sit in the fridge for quick meals, quick lunches,
• 7:40
  add to salad, whatever, quick snack.
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  So that used to be my routine. And then every early winter, mid-winter,
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  when the hens quit laying, I am completely thrown off my game because I had
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  this standard meal and now I don't know what to do. Or, you know, I make frittata a lot.
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  Again, if you have one or two dozen eggs coming in the house every single day,
• 8:00
  you're going to figure out ways to use eggs.
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  So I go from having like a lot of frittata and hard-boiled eggs to no eggs.
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  And then I'm confused. It's a challenge. I know it's going to happen.
• 8:11
  It happens every winter.
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  Like this should not be surprising. And I can either be like,
• 8:16
  oh my goodness, I have no idea what to feed everybody and be passive and assume failure,
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  and then panic at the last minute, increase my stress, or I could figure out
• 8:26
  a menu and I can figure it out a month in advance.
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  Be totally doable. Same thing with your health.
• 8:31
  You know there's certain situations going on. If you have Hashimoto's,
• 8:35
  you know that you have root causes causing it.
• 8:39
  I mean, that's in the name, root causes. You know you have triggers.
• 8:43
  You might not know what those root causes are. You might not know what the triggers are.
• 8:47
  You might not know when you're going through your life and you're unconsciously
• 8:52
  and inadvertently exacerbating your autoimmune condition.
• 8:58
  You might not know that. It's still happening. If you don't know what your root
• 9:02
  causes are, if you don't know what your triggers are, you could still be accidentally increasing those.
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  And that's a challenge that we get to approach. It's a situation and you get
• 9:14
  to decide, am I going to be passive?
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  Am I going to assume failure and just stay on my Synthroid or Levothyroxine
• 9:20
  or Armor or Cytomel, whatever, forever, let my thyroid die.
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  Let my immune system kill off my thyroid.
• 9:27
  I'll gradually increase my medication dose and someday I won't have a working thyroid.
• 9:33
  People do that. I don't think it's you because you are listening to the Health
• 9:38
  with Hashimoto's podcast.
• 9:39
  This is the podcast where I help you figure out what you can do.
• 9:43
  So I don't think that you're passive when it comes to your health.
• 9:46
  I think that you are rising up and you're saying, what can I do?
• 9:50
  And that's why you sought out this podcast. And I would encourage you,
• 9:55
  send it to somebody else. Share it on social media.
• 9:57
  You would blow your mind to know how many of your friends and family and people
• 10:03
  on social media have thyroid problems.
• 10:06
  It is like 18 million people just in the United States.
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  Levothyroxine, Asynthroid, the thyroid medications, they're one of the top prescribed
• 10:17
  medications in the world.
• 10:19
  People are suffering with thyroid problems, and they need to know about this podcast.
• 10:24
  They need to know that there is hope, that there are things they can do.
• 10:28
  They don't just have to be passive and accept that their body,
• 10:31
  their immune system, is going to attack their thyroid and kill it off.
• 10:34
  We can do things to prevent that and to turn it around.
• 10:40
  There really are things. And you know that because you've been listening.
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  All right. So you could have a passive response. You could have a challenge-oriented response.
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  So how do you switch? How do you do this?
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  It's two things. Number one is to be mindful. Just be aware of what you're thinking.
• 10:56
  When I catch myself thinking about supper and thinking, oh, I don't know.
• 11:02
  I'm just going to like wait until later to figure it out.
• 11:04
  Sometimes I do have that awareness. I'm like, oh, that's dumb, Esther.
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  Supper time is going to come. Let's figure it out now instead of at the time
• 11:14
  when everybody is hungry.
• 11:16
  Let's figure it out now. And when I have that mental awareness,
• 11:19
  it helps so much because now I can take action.
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  And now I save myself the stress because if I know that the situation that I
• 11:28
  need to address is going to happen later in the day, that niggling stress is
• 11:33
  always going to be there.
• 11:34
  It's going to invade my thoughts at random times. I'll be busy like helping
• 11:38
  my kids with homeschool and then there'll be a lull and all of a sudden my brain
• 11:43
  is like, Esther, we got to figure out what's for supper.
• 11:46
  Like that stressor is always there. If I deal with it at breakfast time or even
• 11:52
  the night before, then that Stress is less the whole day because I've already
• 11:57
  figured out, okay, here's the situation. This is the challenge.
• 12:00
  This is how I'm going to approach it instead of waiting until the last minute
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  and stressing out throughout the day about it because that is what happens. How about your health?
• 12:09
  You know that there's a situation where.
• 12:12
  And you know that you need to figure out your root causes.
• 12:16
  So have you gone through Hashimoto's Decoded Root Causes Revealed yet?
• 12:20
  It'll take you less than an hour.
• 12:22
  I have a beautiful workbook. I love the workbook that I created.
• 12:27
  I used to have just the course, the videos, and I would talk you through it
• 12:30
  and help you figure out your root causes.
• 12:32
  And now it's the workbook. So
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  it's elevated so that it's like in black and white, right in front of you.
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  You write down, you circle, you score yourself, and still it's going to take
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  you less than an hour to figure out your root causes.
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  Now, are you going to be able to send out your labs and do a whole lot of testing in that hour? No.
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  I help you figure out your root causes without all of that stuff.
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  You will, you know, when you do your labs and when you meet with a doctor or
• 12:59
  functional medicine provider, you're probably going to be able to dig deeper.
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  But in the Hashimoto's Decoded Root Causes Revealed mini course,
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  you're going to be able to figure out your primary root causes and triggers
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  so that you can take action.
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  So that's knowing the situation and saying, okay, here are the challenges I
• 13:20
  get to react to, I get to address.
• 13:23
  So if you know, you know, stress is one of your triggers, which it,
• 13:27
  you know, if you are human in today's day and age, stress is an issue.
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  It's probably a trigger.
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  So you get to decide, how am I going to mitigate my stress every day?
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  What am I going to do to lower my stress? Can I reduce my stressors?
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  Can I change the way that I approach things that are stressful?
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  And that is part of being resilient.
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  It is saying, okay, I'm going to notice my emotions. I'm going to notice my thoughts. Be mindful.
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  Mindfulness is thrown around a lot as a term, but is really helpful.
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  Mindfulness is a calm, non-judgmental way of observing your own thoughts,
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  the external things and the internal things.
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  Like what is going on? How am I reacting?
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  What emotions am I feeling? And how am I feeling physically?
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  Like I might feel stressed, but where do I feel stressed?
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  What feels different to me? How does stress appear in my body?
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  Do I feel it in my chest? Do I feel it in my stomach?
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  Do I feel a little queasy? Or do my shoulders feel tight?
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  Does my neck hurt? Am I clenching my jaw?
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  Do I have a little bit of a headache because I'm stressed? How does it show
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  up for you when you are stressed? That's mindfulness.
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  Being aware of what's going on in your body, your physical response,
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  and your emotions. and not shoulding or judging or shaming yourself.
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  You're not going to say, I should do this. You're just going to observe.
• 15:07
  Oh, okay, that's interesting.
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  And then you can replace those thoughts. So if you are worrying about something,
• 15:16
  instead of worrying, once you catch yourself, then you can replace that worried
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  thought with a new thought.
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  You get to choose those thoughts. If you have ever read the book Soundtracks
• 15:28
  by John Acuff? If you haven't, I highly recommend it.
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  But if you have, you know these thoughts as soundtracks.
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  They play in the background of your mind, like a soundtrack to your life.
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  And you get to choose, are you going to turn up the volume?
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  Are you going to turn down the volume? Are you going to change the track?
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  Are you going to change the soundtrack?
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  You know, skip ahead to the next song. You don't have to stay stuck in the same
• 15:54
  soundtrack once you realize that that is what you're thinking.
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  Your mind is so powerful. So you get to be mindful, calm, not judgmental,
• 16:06
  and just observing yourself.
• 16:08
  And then the next thing you get to do, if you really want to work on resilience,
• 16:14
  is every single day, write down your gratitudes.
• 16:18
  It's such a small thing. And you're like, Esther, really?
• 16:22
  Like, I have Hashimoto's. I'm trying to figure out my brain fog.
• 16:26
  I'm trying to figure out my fatigue.
• 16:28
  I'm trying to figure out why I can't lose weight.
• 16:31
  I'm trying to figure out why I'm cold all the time when everybody else is functioning normally.
• 16:36
  I'm trying to figure out why my hair is brittle and falling out.
• 16:40
  I have challenges, Esther, and you're telling me just to write down three things I'm thankful for?
• 16:46
  Writing down three things that you are thankful for every single day is so powerful.
• 16:51
  Number one, it tells your brain to look for things that you're thankful for.
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  It's going to tell your brain to look for the good in the day.
• 17:00
  When you are writing down what you're thankful for, your brain is going to be
• 17:05
  subconsciously observing the day to figure out what you can write down later on.
• 17:11
  You're going to start noticing good.
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  Also, when you start writing down what you are thankful for every day,
• 17:19
  like they've done so many studies. I feel like it's so many.
• 17:22
  I don't know how many it has been, but I have read about multiple different studies about this.
• 17:26
  It buffers your cortisol response. That's your stress response.
• 17:30
  When I'm talking about stress being one of the triggers for pretty much everybody
• 17:35
  with an autoimmune condition, that's a simple thing we can do.
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  We can write down what we're grateful for.
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  That buffers our cortisol response. It lowers our stress response.
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  And it's going to help your overall health.
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  Also, it's going to help you be more resilient.
• 17:51
  Because you're not stuck. You're not a snowflake. You're not going to see this
• 17:55
  hardship of your health.
• 17:57
  But, you know, Hashimoto's is a big thing. And I'm not discounting that.
• 18:01
  You're not going to see that and you're not going to melt.
• 18:03
  You're not going to just assume failure.
• 18:06
  You are listening to this podcast, so I know that you are approaching it as
• 18:11
  a challenge, as something that you can take action, you can solve, you can problem solve,
• 18:17
  you can approach different root causes, and you can diminish them,
• 18:21
  you can remove them altogether.
• 18:23
  If you've gone through Hashimoto's Decoded Root Causes Revealed,
• 18:26
  you know that some of those root causes are really easy to just be done with.
• 18:32
  Like your vitamin D level, vitamin D is a root cause for, or is a trigger for Hashimoto's.
• 18:39
  You can get your labs tested. You can even order it on Amazon.
• 18:42
  You poke your finger, put a couple drops of blood on the little card that they
• 18:46
  send to you in the mail. You send it back.
• 18:48
  You know your vitamin D level and you can fix that. So simple.
• 18:53
  Other things like stress, you're not going to be able to turn around overnight, right?
• 18:58
  You're going to have to work on different ways to approach that.
• 19:00
  And one way to do it is writing down your gratitudes every single day.
• 19:04
  So today I just want to remind you that you're not a snowflake.
• 19:07
  You're not just melting into this, like, oh no, I have Hashimoto's. I'm a victim.
• 19:12
  No, you're listening to this podcast. I know that you're an overcomer.
• 19:15
  I know that you are rising up.
• 19:18
  You're seeing this as a challenge and you are looking for ways to actively heal.
• 19:23
  And that is why you listen to the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
• 19:26
  That is why I named it Health with Hashimoto's, because we have Hashimoto's.
• 19:30
  That's not going away. We could put it into remission.
• 19:33
  We can get our antibodies down. We can get our thyroid working again,
• 19:37
  but it's always something that we're going to be aware of and cognizant of so
• 19:41
  that we can approach it and we can help our bodies have the best health possible,
• 19:47
  even when we have something like Hashimoto's. And I know you can do it.
• 19:51
  I have confidence in you. I'll see you next week. This podcast is for informational and.
• 19:57
  Music.