Latest / Anchored by the Sword / You Are Not Your Label: Finding Identity Beyond Mental Health with Erin Kerry!

Transcript

You Are Not Your Label: Finding Identity Beyond Mental Health with Erin Kerry! · Anchored by the Sword

0:00
Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Anchor by the
0:02
Sword podcast. I pray that today's episode will
0:05
leave you encouraged and also challenged in your faith.
0:08
And I pray that you would take the stories that are talked
0:13
about here today and share them with other people.
0:17
Thank you so much for joining me and enjoy today's episode.
0:23
Hey guys, welcome to this episode, the Anchor by the Sword
0:25
podcast. I'm excited today about this
0:27
conversation because if you've been around the podcast for any
0:31
length of time or if you've read my book Anchored in Freedom, you
0:35
know that mental health is a big topic.
0:39
And I'm excited to dive in today with Aaron Carey, who had a book
0:45
come out in September called Live Beyond Your Label, a
0:49
holistic approach to breaking old patterns and rediscovering a
0:53
healthy you in mind, body, and spirit.
0:55
And I'm so excited to dive into this conversation, especially
0:59
since we're now walking through Mental Health Awareness Month.
1:01
So thank you, Aaron for visiting with me today.
1:05
Yeah, thanks for having me. Absolutely.
1:07
So can you introduce yourself to my listeners?
1:10
Sure. Yeah.
1:10
So I normally start off by saying that I consider myself a
1:15
survivor of mental illness. I was diagnosed with PTSD,
1:19
depression and then bipolar disorder all by the age of 18.
1:23
And those labels really created my identity in a lot of ways,
1:28
which is kind of the back story behind my book.
1:30
But I struggled for a long time alone, not really given the
1:35
right tools or resources that I needed even to just process what
1:38
those diagnosis meant in real life in my life and how would
1:42
that show up and how would that affect me.
1:44
I found myself pregnant with my daughter my first born when I
1:48
was 22 years old and this is after a pretty self-destructive
1:51
period where I had been swinging from some hypomania symptoms.
1:56
Also self medicating with alcohol and also doing this
2:00
while I was on heavy psychiatric medications which leads to just
2:03
some really self-destructive behaviors, loss of memory, just
2:07
poor decision making in general. Got pregnant with my daughter,
2:10
it completely change my life. God used that time in my life to
2:15
bring me a lot of healing and ended up becoming a teacher.
2:19
A few years later I met my husband.
2:22
I was a single mom for five years.
2:23
Met my husband, we got married and he adopted her and now we
2:26
have two more kids together, 2 boys.
2:28
So my oldest is 21 now and she's ironically studying clinical
2:31
psychology. And then ironically my husband
2:33
is a therapist. I always say not my therapist,
2:36
but he is. He started that after we got
2:38
married, after that journey himself.
2:40
And then we've got a 12 year old and a nine year old who are
2:43
boys. And so far I don't know if they
2:45
have any interest in the mental health field.
2:47
We will see. So that is kind of the the short
2:50
form. But I work now as a start off in
2:52
in the teaching field, became a health coach because while I
2:55
started teaching because I really wanted to support
2:57
students, but their mental health needs.
2:59
As we know, teenagers, adolescents have a lot of mental
3:03
health needs and and really need to be seen.
3:05
I was that teenager who needed to be seen and validated.
3:08
And so I started in that way and then come to find out there are
3:11
so many adults who are struggling.
3:12
So now I work at the same counseling center that my
3:15
husband works at. We work together with a whole
3:18
team of counselors, practitioners, and I work as an
3:21
integrative health coach, functional nutritionist, taking
3:24
kind of a holistic approach to mental health issues, looking at
3:28
things like nutrition, lifestyle, movement, sleep.
3:31
Sleep is big. One was a big one for me.
3:33
And we have been working at our center that's been open.
3:37
We're about to celebrate our five year anniversary of working
3:39
at the holistic center where we're at.
3:41
And it's, it's been incredible to see what God has done through
3:44
this place and bringing a lot of people support and healing.
3:48
So yeah, that's that's a short summary.
3:51
I love it and I mean like I said, I've dealt with it
3:54
personally and also my mom was bipolar.
3:58
She was not able to find her course of recovery.
4:00
She passed away at 53. By the time she passed away, she
4:04
had pushed everybody out of her life.
4:05
Unfortunately did the disease completely ruled everything
4:09
about her and so her and I were estranged for three years before
4:14
she passed. So, you know, I've dealt first
4:18
hand with some of the negativity with it.
4:21
And like I said, also walking through the different issues
4:25
that I've had myself with anxiety and depression and ADHD,
4:30
which we're going to get into these labels and how they affect
4:32
us. But yeah, I've dealt with all
4:35
those things personally. And my ADHD was diagnosed later
4:37
in life, like menopausal, of course.
4:41
And even though when I did tell people that I've known for a
4:45
very long time that they diagnosed me, that they're like,
4:49
really? Duh.
4:51
We knew that a long time ago. And the only person who doesn't
4:56
say does my husband. He's like, I don't think so.
4:59
I said you're just used to me. Like, yeah, you're just used to
5:04
me literally having no brain. It's fine.
5:06
It's fine, but so you said that you were diagnosed at 18.
5:14
Was there specific events that led you to the place where you
5:18
ended up seeking help for your mental health?
5:22
Yeah, that's a great question. So with a diagnosis like bipolar
5:27
disorder, it's not one that's usually taken lightly, but it is
5:30
based on just like all of our mental illnesses or diagnosis,
5:34
it's based on a set list of criteria.
5:37
It's based on symptoms that are presenting for a period of time.
5:40
And I want to make sure listeners understand one of the
5:42
things that's often under misunderstood with bipolar
5:46
disorder is people make jokes that it's like the weather is
5:49
being bipolar, right? We make jokes like that as it
5:51
looks like some rapid switch from day-to-day.
5:54
Bipolar disorder is not a personality disorder.
5:57
It's often confused with borderline personality disorder,
5:59
which can be a rapid shift from day-to-day and that does impact
6:04
somebody's personality. For me, bipolar disorder, how it
6:07
showed up at at the time that I was diagnosed is primarily
6:11
through depression. So I started experiencing
6:13
depressive symptoms in 8th grade on through high school.
6:16
We tried all you know, I tried therapy.
6:19
They put me on SSR is I actually had really terrible reactions to
6:24
the SSRI. We know now that there's a black
6:26
box warning for teens where it can increase thoughts of self
6:29
harm and suicidality and teens. And of course we didn't know
6:32
that then. And that's absolutely what
6:34
happened to me is I didn't experience any thoughts of self
6:36
harm until or self harm itself until I started taking my SSRI.
6:40
That leveled out a little bit after I'd taken it for a while.
6:43
Well, the other thing that we know now in the research that we
6:45
didn't know then is if there is a family history of bipolar
6:49
disorder, then getting put on an SSRI could be a little bit
6:53
tricky. It could send somebody into
6:54
hypomania. And So what happened for me is
6:57
when the SSRI wasn't working for me, I got to a period, was like
6:59
I was doing OK, but I was still having depressive episodes.
7:02
They gave me more of my medication.
7:04
They upped my dose and when they upped my dose, it's almost like
7:07
I went too high and I would have these racing thoughts.
7:11
I stopped sleeping. I had these ideas, these we call
7:15
it's called grandiosity and the criteria where it's like, I just
7:19
thought I could get through College in a day.
7:21
This happened like the end of my senior year going into college.
7:24
I could get through College in a day.
7:25
I can do whatever I want to do. It's just this very like, and
7:30
even religiosity is 1, there are days and I'd be like, I want to
7:33
go be a missionary for God and I want to serve him.
7:35
I was a preacher's daughter. I'll say that.
7:37
So a lot of this was framed even from my own spiritual
7:41
perspective of like my depression.
7:42
I didn't understand why God wouldn't take it away from me.
7:44
I thought there was something wrong with me spiritually.
7:46
And then when it came to the hypomania side of things, it was
7:49
like, what can I do for God? I want to serve him and I want
7:52
to go all out and I want to do all these things.
7:54
And then it led to some recklessness, some impulsivity
7:56
and some self-destructive behaviors.
7:58
And ultimately it was a self-destructive behaviors that
8:01
my parents found out about. They took me in to see my
8:05
counselor and my psychiatrist. And they're like, yeah, this
8:08
sounds like a, this sounds like a manic episode.
8:10
This doesn't sound right. So they called it, I think the
8:12
way they phrased it at first, you know, this was 27 years ago,
8:15
they phrased it as manic depressive illness, which I
8:17
thought was a little bit, it's like a nicer way of saying
8:20
things. Bipolar disorder sounded very
8:22
cold to me. I'm very like it.
8:25
I don't know. I think it internalized that
8:27
there was something clinically wrong and broken.
8:30
Manic depressive was like, well, you know, I studied English
8:33
literature. I'm pretty sure that most of
8:35
those poets had some sort of right.
8:39
All of the greats did. And so it's like, OK, I can deal
8:41
with that. But it really wasn't.
8:43
And I will say, I think going back to some of the
8:46
misconceptions and the things that people misunderstand about
8:48
bipolar disorders, a lot of people are like, well, at least
8:51
your depression ended with a high, you know, at least you
8:53
didn't experience that depression without having the
8:57
mania afterwards. But that mania was destructive.
9:00
It really caused me to make decisions that in my right mind
9:03
I would not have made. And those were those were
9:06
damaging for me. My relationship with my parents,
9:08
my relationship with God, my relationship with myself.
9:10
It led to a lot of shame. It led to a lot of like, what's
9:14
a sin issue and what's my illness?
9:17
Huge, huge struggle. Even to this day, I still
9:19
struggle with shame understanding, like how do I
9:21
reconcile with who I am and what I did?
9:24
And it's something I've had to work through many years of
9:27
therapy and counseling and processing.
9:29
But it was. So going back to your original
9:31
question, the inciting event was the mania hypomania.
9:34
So of course they did what they could to medicate me.
9:37
Well, if anybody's familiar with bipolar disorder, the medication
9:40
that they give us when when we're going through a manic or
9:43
hypomanic episode really feels very flattening compared to the
9:48
high right? Nobody likes that.
9:50
And so I struggled to stay on my medication.
9:53
I didn't like the way it made me feel.
9:55
And so it took it went, you know, I would have these
9:58
periods. I I went away my second year at
10:00
college and I had this great period where I was really diving
10:03
into my relationship with God and I was in really good
10:05
Christian community. But then at the end of the year,
10:07
my mood crashed again, couldn't get my medication straight.
10:10
I got angry at God. I got bitter.
10:12
I was put on heavy medications again and then I started
10:16
drinking alcohol. By the time I turned 21, I was
10:18
like, ah, I have a solution for this.
10:21
If I take my medication and drink alcohol, I can check out
10:24
of my body and I don't even have to be present here.
10:27
And that led to way more self-destructive behaviors.
10:31
And I, I would even say there's a lot of episodes of sexual
10:34
assault in my story that I didn't even come to grips with
10:38
until, I mean, in my 40s. So I mean, it, these are things
10:42
that were so deeply suppressed because I didn't have conscious
10:45
memory of things that happened while I was taking my heavy,
10:49
heavy dose of psychiatric meds and alcohol, but my body
10:52
remembered. And so it's all, these are all
10:56
things that I've had to work through.
10:57
But that was a big part of that early life struggle.
11:01
And, and reconciling with this diagnosis, reconciling with what
11:05
does this mean for me? And ultimately, it made me very
11:08
angry at myself. It made me very angry with God.
11:10
It put up a huge wall with him. Yeah.
11:14
And I think that's important that you talk about that too,
11:16
because people who go through the different things with mental
11:21
health or, and they attend church and they think that just
11:25
by praying it away that it will go away.
11:28
And people will tell them if you read your Bible more, if you do
11:32
this more, if you do this more than it'll go away.
11:36
And it's not like that. Some people it does happen that
11:40
way, but the majority of us it does not.
11:43
And you know, those those things, wow, well meaning being
11:48
said, end up doing more damage to us.
11:52
And also saying that we can be angry at God.
11:54
That's another thing that I think is so I don't want to say
11:58
refreshing, but I guess it is because people need to know that
12:02
it's OK. We can be mad at God.
12:04
He's got the shoulders that extend the whole world, the
12:07
whole everything. So I think he can handle it.
12:10
And in fact, if he couldn't, then David would have been
12:14
screwed. And you know, Job, when he was
12:18
upset about his situation, he'd have been screwed.
12:20
And there have been so many other people down the line
12:23
because, you know, life ain't always Peaches and, you know,
12:28
rainbows. So.
12:29
Yeah, the grieving process really matters.
12:31
And I don't know if I realized at the time that I was grieving,
12:34
but now I can look back and go, oh, I was absolutely grieving.
12:38
Even my relationship with God and who I thought he was to me.
12:40
And it was because of my relationship with him, I from a
12:43
young, young age, I mean, I have journal entries that I wrote
12:46
when I was 7 or 8 years old where I say, Jesus, can I have a
12:48
hug? Because I had such a deep
12:51
relationship with him and I knew he was my protector.
12:53
But I will also say that the trauma that occurred when I was
12:56
nine years old, I watched my grandpa die in my front yard.
12:59
That was the first moment where I believed that that Jesus had
13:03
left me, that he was no longer there as my comfort.
13:05
And I felt very alone. And so I also think that, I
13:09
mean, as we know now, even with the concept of genetics or
13:11
something called epigenetics where genes load the gun.
13:14
So I had a predisposition, but environment pulls the trigger.
13:17
And that whether it's a traumatic experience, like
13:20
watching somebody you care about die in front of your eyes, or
13:24
chronic bullying or parents who are having relationship issues
13:28
or whatever it is, these are all just like ex outside
13:32
environmental stressors that can really 'cause that
13:36
predisposition to be triggered into full blown struggle, full
13:40
blown illness. And so, and going back to what
13:43
you said, isn't it interesting how in the church, if somebody
13:46
says that they have high blood pressure issues or if they say
13:49
that they have they're struggling with autoimmune
13:51
disease, we don't just say, all right, I'm going to pray for you
13:54
to get better. Why don't you just take those
13:57
thoughts captive? Right, right.
14:00
But we do that when it comes to our mental health because we
14:02
just assume that mental health has to do with only things that
14:05
are happening in our mind. But they're not the things that
14:08
are happening that are presenting as anxiety,
14:10
depression, bipolar disorder, and even ADHD, although that
14:12
would, I could argue that's in a different category because it's
14:14
neurobiological. These are things that are driven
14:19
by now ADHD symptoms can be worsened by physiological
14:22
imbalances for sure. And so I would say that all of
14:24
these things that are presenting as mental health issues are
14:27
still physical health issues at the root.
14:29
Correct. Yeah, absolutely.
14:31
Especially because you know, if if you test someone's levels,
14:35
their serotonin levels, all that stuff, I mean, there's stuff
14:38
that's completely out of whack and that's where that's when you
14:43
have the issues. And when my mom went through the
14:45
issues that she went through when the bipolar, she was one of
14:51
those where when she was told something, she completely
14:55
enveloped it. Like that became her entire
14:57
identity. That was everything.
14:59
And a lot of people from the church I went to back in the day
15:05
completely abandoned her. And my dad and I had already
15:09
left the church by that point. And I was on my own journey.
15:13
But the way they got treated, it really upset me.
15:18
And you know what? My dad, he, he did the best he
15:23
could with her and with everything that was going on.
15:27
But like I said, the church completely abandoned him.
15:30
And even the guys that he considered he was close with, he
15:33
played fumble ball or softball with like they left him too.
15:40
And so not only did he have to deal with what they were doing
15:44
to her, then he had to deal with the loneliness that he felt
15:47
because he felt abandoned. And it took quite a long time
15:50
before he went back to church. I believe that, yeah.
15:54
Because. Of that, and I mean, it took me
15:55
a while too. It took me 14 years.
15:57
But it's just something that I've seen so many times and I've
16:00
heard it and I've, you know, I've went through periods where
16:04
like, for instance, I was on a particular medication and I got
16:08
put on it after my mom died. And eight years later, I was
16:12
still on the medication. But it was one of those I was
16:15
kind of like, I don't know if I need to be on this anymore, but
16:18
if I'm supposed to go off of it, it's going to take quite a bit
16:21
of time to go off of it. And I am not saying everybody
16:25
needs to go off their medications at all because I'm
16:27
still on meds now. But this particular medication
16:30
it took me two months to get off of, along with a physician
16:33
watching me the whole time. Oh yeah.
16:36
And I, I was able to get off of that medication and I haven't
16:41
had to go back on it since I've been on other medications for
16:44
anxiety, but that one I could get rid of, which was really
16:47
good because addiction can be a real thing, like addictive
16:52
behaviors. And that was something that I, I
16:55
saw that was coming with this particular medication and I was
17:00
starting to use it more often than what I needed, necessarily
17:03
needed. So, you know, I was able to get
17:06
off that, but it's, it's a process of trying to figure out
17:10
your medications, trying to figure out all that different
17:12
kind of stuff. It is.
17:13
And then, you know, your body gets used to it and then you
17:17
have to either increase the dose or add something else.
17:20
And I mean, it's. Yeah.
17:23
And it's hard. And that I think that
17:25
contributed to a lot of my anger early on, is like, I just want
17:28
to be normal, right? Like whatever normal means I say
17:31
that. Exactly, exactly that's.
17:34
Not even a thing really. Nobody's normal, but I just I
17:37
felt I felt like there was something wrong with me that I
17:41
was broke with. It was about me again, it goes
17:42
back to I made it an identity issue that my label, what became
17:46
what defined me was the filter through which my I viewed my
17:50
world as somebody who has mentally ill and I I was angry
17:55
about that because I didn't want to live that way.
17:57
And so it did it take a it took a long a long amount of
18:00
processing. I have I will say one of the
18:02
things I didn't share at the beginning.
18:03
I have been symptom free. My husband jokes.
18:05
I mean, if anybody would know, he would know.
18:08
But since the time that we've been together, since time we've
18:10
been married, I have been symptom free and we'll be
18:11
married for 17 years this summer.
18:14
So he's never seen me with full blown depression.
18:17
He's never seen me manic or hypomanic.
18:19
I have, you know, trauma is one of those things that does
18:22
linger, right? PTSD, We have memories that pop
18:27
up. We have things we need to
18:28
process through. There are but nothing that has
18:30
ever been consuming to the point where it was really getting in
18:35
the middle of of our relationship or our family life
18:38
or anything like that. And that's taken a lot of hard
18:40
work and really setting up some routines and structures in my
18:45
life that I did not want to do early on.
18:47
You know, a college student doesn't want to set up routine
18:49
instruction. I had to grow up.
18:51
And in some ways I say I had to learn early to have boundaries.
18:53
I had to adult a little bit early.
18:55
Of course, I had my daughter early, so I for sure had to
18:56
adult early. But really through the structure
19:00
of figuring out how to be a parent that I had to go, wait a
19:02
minute, I have to put boundaries in place in my life that nobody,
19:05
my nobody else my age really needs to do, Which of course is
19:09
kind of annoying. But at the same time, I think
19:11
it's benefited me at least now my perimenopause journey because
19:14
I'm like, well, I've got my boundaries, so put those up now
19:19
even more. Yeah.
19:21
And I went through counseling for about 3 years and that was
19:26
even that was in my 40s and I learned about boundaries.
19:29
So it's never too late to learn about boundaries and also to
19:33
understand that there's going to be pushback when you put those
19:36
boundaries up because people in your life are not used to those
19:38
boundaries. And, and it's been really good
19:43
for me to set up certain boundaries.
19:45
Like on this day, I'm going to do this like every week without
19:48
a doubt, unless one or two things happen, then I will be
19:51
doing this. And you know, I'm still not
19:54
great at certain physical boundaries, which we'll talk
19:58
about here in a little bit. But I think that boundaries are
20:02
so important, like you were just talking about.
20:04
They're so important to set up for your own personal
20:07
well-being. Yeah, for sure.
20:10
The difficulty I think is having the self-awareness to do it,
20:14
self-awareness. And we just when we're
20:16
struggling, when we struggle with our mental health, it's
20:18
almost like we're too self aware, right?
20:19
Like that's all we think about is we're so stuck in our heads
20:22
that we don't want to have that self-awareness.
20:24
So it's definitely difficult. Well, and then on the other
20:27
side, we're also Christian women, so we think we need to
20:29
help everybody do everything. That is true too.
20:33
And it's like, no, you don't. And those were the boundaries I
20:37
started putting up. And some people didn't like
20:39
those boundaries, but that's what you have to do for your own
20:42
self. So you talk about labels, you
20:44
just started talking about that. So I want to dive more into
20:47
that. How can those labels help and
20:50
hinder us? Yeah.
20:53
I mean, it goes back to the fact that this diagnostic criteria
20:56
that we have, whether it is, you know, for a mental illness or a
21:01
mental health issue, or if it's something that's more a classic
21:05
physiological issue, chronic disease, that kind of a thing.
21:08
We get those labels in order to help us get the support that we
21:11
need, right? Ultimately, that's what they're
21:13
for, or to help us make sense of our symptoms.
21:15
Like for at the very beginning when I was first diagnosed,
21:18
especially with the bipolar disorder we have.
21:19
Well, I didn't like the word. At least it helped me go, oh,
21:21
there's a name for this, right? It's not all in my head.
21:24
This is like a real thing that I'm experiencing.
21:27
So that was validating in some way.
21:29
On the flip side is that experience of over identifying
21:33
with our labels and becoming the label and even with the label of
21:38
bipolar disorder unlike any other physical disorder we have,
21:42
we use we use it as an adjective, I am bipolar, she is
21:45
bipolar, they are bipolar as opposed to I have symptoms of a
21:51
disorder or like we don't say I am depression, we don't say I am
21:54
anxiety. We say I have symptoms of
21:57
anxiety, I struggle with anxiety.
21:59
And so so even me saying I'm a survivor of bipolar disorder
22:02
helps me to not take on that identity and make it about me
22:07
and my personality and who I am because our identity as
22:11
believers is I think back in interrupting myself for a
22:14
second, because I think even in the Bible, how if we look at how
22:18
God labels us, the only negative label that we are given is
22:23
Sinner. Like that's it.
22:25
That is the only negative label. And that's like that's, it
22:29
doesn't even matter because with Jesus, once we have accepted him
22:33
into our lives to change and transform and shape our lives,
22:37
our identities are changed and transformed and shaped through
22:40
him. And so that center one just can
22:43
fall by the wayside because now we are being transformed and
22:47
renew every day into his children, his followers.
22:51
We are loved, we are accepted, we are not condemned.
22:55
You know, all these things that the Bible says and I just think
22:58
it's so beautiful that we're never given anything, any label
23:01
that's negative once we've accepted Jesus.
23:04
And so to me, that is another area that I think is always
23:08
important to to get into. But we over identify with a lot
23:12
of our earthly labels and that's fine.
23:13
It helps make sense of the world.
23:15
I over identify with being a first born.
23:17
I over identify with being a mid 40s perimenopausal female,
23:20
right? Like I will over identify with
23:22
all those things because it helps make sense of my symptoms
23:24
and it helps feel so crazy sometimes.
23:28
Yep, that's not there's nothing wrong with that.
23:31
And so even my call to live beyond your label, it's not
23:34
saying that your label is bad. It's not saying there's
23:36
something wrong with you for even identifying with your
23:38
label. I mean, hello, ADHD.
23:39
That's another really valid one, right?
23:42
Like we can go on and on about our labels, but the where it
23:44
gets into a hindrance is when it really is impacting our
23:48
relationship with God and how we show up in our in the world and
23:50
how we live out our God-given purpose.
23:53
So how can someone start to go through the process of having
23:57
those labels redefined to where they're more of a help than a
24:00
hindrance? Yeah, I, I think the first thing
24:04
would be really to dig into God's word and, and do have like
24:08
an investigative process of what does God say about me as his
24:12
child? What, what are some things, what
24:13
are some key verses, some anchor verses that I can hold on to?
24:18
One of my big ones was Zephaniah 317.
24:20
The fact that I mean, that verse came to me the moment that I was
24:24
waiting for the doctor's office to call me to tell me that I was
24:27
pregnant with my daughter when I was 22 years old.
24:30
I was waiting, you know, by the old landline phone.
24:34
And instead of instead of the doctor's office calling me, it
24:38
was my mom's friend asking me to look up that verse.
24:40
To this day, I have no idea why she wanted me to look that up.
24:43
I guess because Google didn't exist and she couldn't just
24:45
Google it. Bible app didn't exist.
24:46
She couldn't just look it up there and she asked me to read
24:49
that verse. And that verse completely
24:50
transformed my pregnancy because I realized, wait a minute.
24:53
To me, what I translated in that moment was he's not mad at me,
24:57
He's not shaming me for what's happening in my life right now,
24:59
but he's singing over me, He's rejoicing over me and he's right
25:03
here with me. That's my errand version of the
25:06
verse. I can read the the full verse
25:08
later, but that was really helpful for me just to go, wait,
25:12
no, he is here. He really is here.
25:13
And so I think one way that we can kind of get out of the over
25:17
labeling we're identifying with with our own labels is to make
25:21
sure that we are we are rooted in God's word and understanding
25:23
his truth is the ultimate truth. We forget that sometimes, right?
25:27
Because I mean, I, I love, I love science, I love psychology,
25:31
I love reading all the other things that are out right now.
25:35
I love research papers, research studies, those kinds of things.
25:39
But I have to remember that the ultimate truth is God's word,
25:41
and what he says is, is what Trump's everything else.
25:45
And so I think that would be like I, I kind of start my book
25:48
in that direction. And that's kind of where I would
25:50
start for sure. Yeah.
25:53
So you started talking about trauma.
25:56
Yeah. And we all know that trauma can
25:59
manifest in different ways and through physical symptoms and
26:05
through mental symptoms and emotional and all that kind of
26:09
stuff. So how do we walk through trauma
26:14
and bring that faith component component into trauma without
26:19
the shame coming from it? That's good and hard and I don't
26:24
even know. But no.
26:26
We're working on it. It's working in progress.
26:28
Right, Trauma is, it's so interesting with trauma because
26:31
we do use that word a lot right now.
26:33
And I even, I mean, I've had my own, one of my children say to
26:36
me, you traumatized me with this thing.
26:38
And I'm like, oh boy, let's redefine what trauma is, right,
26:40
Right. Because that's not and a lot of
26:43
people and that's what we want to do.
26:44
And even with my own trauma that I experienced, I didn't think it
26:46
was trauma because it was just my experience.
26:49
And so the thing that makes trauma traumatic, I would say is
26:53
it's not necessarily the event, it's how your nervous system
26:57
experienced the event. Did you feel that you were
27:00
tended to after you experienced this emotional physical upheaval
27:05
in your life? Were you able to find a place of
27:08
regulation of safety? And when I say safety, I mean
27:12
like that emotional sense of safety, not like AI mean
27:15
physical safety is a need for sure.
27:17
But I mean, it's just that whole life that felt of safety, we
27:19
call it your reception in the trauma world.
27:22
Where do you feel that you can relax?
27:26
Do you feel hyper vigilant, like something else is going to
27:29
happen? I call that one in my book,
27:31
WCSB, worst case scenario brain, Worst case scenario brain, is
27:34
that like, when's the next bad thing going to happen?
27:36
Because it seems like there's always a bad thing.
27:38
We can get into that mode. And so trauma can lead us into
27:42
the ruminations, the intrusive thoughts.
27:43
I mean, you might even argue that almost all of the
27:46
diagnostic criteria that we see for depression, for anxiety, for
27:50
bipolar disorder, and even for ADHD in many cases can be rooted
27:57
back to trauma and traumatic events that occurred in many
28:01
cases, not all, but in many cases, that is a huge root issue
28:04
for people. And for me, it was absolutely a
28:07
root issue. I think even before, even before
28:11
I experienced watching the death of my grandpa when I was 9, I
28:15
had experienced medical trauma as a as a toddler.
28:19
My lungs collapsed 75%. And so one of my earliest
28:23
memories is, is being helpless, not being able to breathe.
28:25
I didn't know it was going on. People were saving my life, but
28:28
my body interpreted that as I'm dying, something's wrong.
28:32
I'm not. And so I had this belief ongoing
28:36
in my life that I'm alone, I'm unsafe, and so are sometimes
28:39
these traumatic moments for us can impact our core belief
28:42
system, can impact our identity. So not only do we have the
28:45
labels now, we also have these core beliefs that are possibly
28:50
rooted and things that aren't true.
28:52
Like was I safe? Absolutely, I was safe.
28:55
They were saving my life when my lungs collapsed.
28:58
But did my little body perceive that a safety?
29:00
No, it didn't. And so I, I, my belief system
29:02
said you are not safe. So do whatever you can to feel
29:05
safe. And so that led to the hyper
29:07
vigilance, the overthinking. I've got my sign behind me that
29:10
says, hold on, I've got to overthink it.
29:12
It's like you, if you think about every single possible
29:16
outcome that can happen with anything, right, you'll probably
29:19
be safe because the trauma that I've experienced, it always
29:22
happened when I wasn't thinking about it.
29:24
Right, right. So, so that's one of the effects
29:27
of trauma that can really impact the emotional health.
29:30
It can impact our physiological health.
29:31
I spent a lot of time in my book talking about how our thoughts
29:35
impact our physical health and just the negativity, the
29:38
ruminations, they impact our gut bacteria, our gut microbiome,
29:41
which is the ecosystem of bacteria in our digestive tract.
29:45
And so that can become imbalanced.
29:47
We can end up with things like IBS, we can end up with things
29:51
like chronic blood sugar dysregulation, Autoimmunity is
29:54
very much linked to trauma. Lots of our physical issues,
29:59
chronic disease states are linked to trauma as well.
30:02
And so yeah, we don't want to overdo it with the trauma talk,
30:06
but we also don't want to under emphasize the role that it plays
30:11
in in so much as well. And so I think you would asked,
30:14
how do we get past? Like how do we combine our
30:15
faith? One of the things I would say
30:18
this came to me, this is so funny.
30:19
In a dream, I dreamed of this statement and I was like this,
30:22
though maybe that was God. I don't know.
30:24
God doesn't speak to me in dreams or anything like that.
30:25
But like it was such a good statement that I was like, huh,
30:28
that has to mean something. And the phrase that came to me
30:32
was that trauma wires us, wires us for dysregulation, for broken
30:36
us, brokenness, but God wires us for healing.
30:39
We can find healing. And we know this with the
30:42
evidence of things like neuroplasticity and the way the
30:46
brain can change and form new neurons, new connections, and
30:49
that we're always learning more things.
30:52
And even there's the science of our nervous system, our HPA
30:55
axis, which is our hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, that is
30:58
our internal stress alert system can be regulated when we are
31:03
given tools to help support and regulate it.
31:06
So even though trauma can wire you for brokenness and for
31:13
wounding and for hurt, God does also wire us for healing and,
31:19
and he transcends that brokenness.
31:21
And we know this because the Bible says that it's true.
31:23
And that's where Scripture meets science.
31:26
But yeah, that's sorry. That's my long answer to your to
31:29
your question. No, I love it because it it
31:32
draws us right into the next spot that I'm probably going to
31:36
spend the rest of the time talking with you on because it
31:38
is an issue. I know in my own life.
31:41
And I'm sure that other people out there who have walked
31:43
through mental health issues or who have walked through trying
31:47
to figure out how to integrate everything to help our
31:53
well-being is the physical side. So let's talk about the physical
31:58
side and how the things we do physically can impact us in both
32:04
a positive and negative way. Yeah, that's where that's where
32:09
this is my favorite topic. And actually my next book that
32:12
I'm just I just finished off the final final edits is purely
32:17
going to be talking about the food mood connection.
32:19
And so one of the things that I think is often miss, I guess
32:22
I'll start here, but one of the things that was missed for me
32:26
and that's why I care about it so much is that nobody told me.
32:29
So initially I was told, well, you've got depression, you've
32:32
got this chemical imbalance in your brain and you know, you
32:35
take the medication, it's going to fix the imbalance.
32:37
Nobody told me where this imbalance came from.
32:39
Nobody told me where I created neurotransmitters.
32:42
And one of the things that we know now through all of the
32:46
research that's being done, especially in the gut brain
32:48
connection, gut brain access, is that over 90% of our
32:52
neurotransmitter, serotonin is made in our gut microbiome,
32:56
synthesized by bacteria. And if we look at how serotonin
33:00
is made, it's made of nutrients. It's made of B vitamins like
33:03
B9B12B9 being folate, and also amino acids like tryptophan.
33:09
Tryptophan is the amino acid precursor of serotonin.
33:12
Amino acids are what we find in protein.
33:14
And so I think a missing part of the conversation when it comes
33:19
to mental health especially and even stress.
33:21
We're all stressed and burned out in our world today.
33:24
We are going, if we are not getting the nutrients we need to
33:27
make our neurotransmitters or if we are so stressed we're running
33:31
through those nutrients because emotional stress absolutely
33:34
causes us to run through especially B vitamins.
33:36
We will run through those B vitamins.
33:37
They're water soluble. We don't store them.
33:39
So we're running through those. We don't have the building
33:42
blocks to make neurotransmitters like serotonin.
33:46
And if we're talking about something like ADHDADHD, for the
33:49
most part, what we know right now, and I think it's such a
33:51
complex topic that I think we're always going to be learning more
33:54
information about ADHD. But from what we know right now,
33:57
dopamine is the big neurotransmitter that helps
34:00
support serotonin plays a role too, but dopamine helps support
34:03
the ADHD brain, whether it's low dopamine levels.
34:06
And ironically enough, I think a mislabel for me was ADHD.
34:09
I have very low dopamine levels baseline, so it leads to a
34:12
complete shutdown depression. And so if you have low so
34:14
dopamine levels, it could be that your body is not getting
34:17
vitamin B6 and the amino acid tyrosine.
34:21
Those are precursors that you get from food that form
34:24
dopamine. And so just by restoring
34:27
nutrient deficiencies and giving our body more nutrients, not,
34:31
and I'm not even talking about supplements, I'm just talking
34:32
about actual food, like eating good food that's nutrient dense
34:37
can make a huge difference. That was a big turning point for
34:40
me. The other component is movement,
34:43
physical movement, physical activity.
34:44
I say that I have the zoomies. I have to be able to move my
34:49
body to sometimes get these thoughts out of my head and into
34:53
my body. And so just whether that's why
34:55
when I say zoomies, I'm not like talking about doing sprints or
34:58
anything. There's A and if you love to
35:00
run, that's great. You love to run.
35:01
And in the past I did. I will say that was the first
35:04
thing I tried. I mean, in my mid 20s was I was
35:07
like, I'm going to become a runner because runners just look
35:09
like they have it together, right?
35:11
And so I end up liking, I'm never going to be a fast runner,
35:14
super long distance runner. I enjoyed it for a time.
35:16
That time has passed. Now I'll take any form of
35:19
movement, whether it's a walk like I love, especially right
35:22
now it is spring and I'm getting outside and I'm walking with
35:24
friends and having these great conversations.
35:26
So whether it's a walk or it's weightlifting or it's like a
35:29
gentle, more of a stretching movement like Pilates, yoga
35:33
type, those kinds of things, or if it's just like just dancing
35:38
around with my kids, you know, just doing fun running around in
35:41
the backyard, like just any kind of movement.
35:44
What's interesting about movement is what we know in the
35:46
research. There are lots of cool research
35:48
articles, but one of them, it was a a review that found that
35:53
movement and just physical exercise is, I believe it said
35:57
it was, it's 1 and I can find the source for you so you can
36:00
quote it. But it's 1.5 times more
36:02
effective than talk therapy or medication for anxiety and
36:06
depression. And it has to do with a few
36:09
things, has to do with creating brain derived neurotrophic
36:11
factor. This is like the miracle grow
36:13
for our brain connections. So movement does that, it
36:16
activates BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor.
36:19
The other thing that movement does is that it releases a
36:23
really, really cool thing called myokines.
36:26
When these proteins were discovered, these myokines,
36:29
researchers call them hope molecules because what they do
36:32
when we contract our muscles and movement, these proteins cross
36:36
the blood brain barrier and they 'cause people to feel less
36:40
anxious, less depressed. They are even shown to support
36:44
memory and cognitive decline and things like that.
36:46
And so I think that's fascinating.
36:48
We were made to move, you know, and I think if we look at even
36:52
from a biblical historical perspective, humans always,
36:55
we're on the move. Move, walking, doing like really
36:58
terrible housework that I wouldn't be able to do now, you
37:00
know, like washing clothes by hand.
37:02
I'm so grateful for my dishwasher and my washing
37:05
machine. I got to find other ways to, you
37:10
know, move and not doing that, but, yeah, but just for all of
37:13
time. And I think not moving, we get
37:16
caught up in our heads when we don't have a place to move those
37:19
thoughts out of our body. So that's.
37:20
So that is. Yeah.
37:21
The nutrition, the movement, sleep is a huge one, too.
37:23
A lot of people even associate bipolar disorder with a
37:26
circadian rhythm disorder. And that when we have a
37:28
circadian rhythm that's in balance, when we're not going to
37:31
sleep when it's dark outside and we're not waking up when it's
37:34
light outside, that really throws off the rhythm in our
37:37
bodies and can cause mood disruptions.
37:39
And we see that as evidenced in a lot of the research with, I
37:43
mean, you know, from the medical side of things, working nights
37:45
can really throw off people's moods and some things like that
37:49
because circadian rhythm gets flip-flopped.
37:51
So those are a few, a few things that I talk about.
37:54
But definitely I'm really big on the nutrient portion, the gut
37:56
brain connection, and then also just learning body partnership.
38:01
We fight against ourselves. I think a lot of this is female
38:04
culture, but some of it is also Christian culture with our
38:08
shaming that we do for ourselves, whether it's
38:12
depending on, I think about some of us, the way we grow, grew up,
38:15
and the message that was drilled into our heads is that we are
38:18
sinners. You are sinners.
38:20
You are sinners. You are sinners, right?
38:21
And forgetting your sinners, but also by grace you've been saved
38:26
through faith, right? And it's not of yourself.
38:29
It's not about anything that you do.
38:30
It's about what Jesus did for you.
38:32
And we still get caught up in the condemnation side of things
38:37
that self condemnation and we beat ourselves up for, Oh, I
38:40
should have gone to work out today, but I didn't.
38:42
I should have eaten better today, but I didn't.
38:44
I have a line in my book. I say stop shooting all over
38:46
yourself because that's what we do is we fill ourselves with the
38:49
shoulds. Well, now that's creating stress
38:52
in the body. It's just another stressor we
38:54
have to battle against. So I want to make sure that
38:57
people hear that. Yeah, there's all these really
38:58
great cool things that we can do for our bodies that involve our
39:01
physical health. But also that mindset, the why
39:05
behind it is really, really powerful because you could be
39:08
eating the most perfect diet in the world.
39:11
But if you're hating yourself while you're doing it, I have a
39:14
chapter called A Body and stress won't digest because you are
39:18
creating a physiological stressor if you're freaking out
39:22
about what food you're eating, you know?
39:23
So that's kind of my brief summary there.
39:28
Yeah, I think, I think it's so fascinating.
39:30
And I personally, I'm such, I'm a very picky eater.
39:35
Like I have the palate of a 14 year old girl like.
39:39
You're not alone, I hear that a lot.
39:42
That is and it's it's not easy to break out of that when it's
39:47
been here. I'm 46 and it's a routine that
39:49
has been a part of my life forever.
39:52
And so my husband will really prefer me vegetables.
39:56
And that hasn't happened yet. But like it's, it's something
40:00
that I really want to dive more into because it's something like
40:05
personally, because it's something that I know I need to
40:08
do. Not that I should do because I
40:11
hate the word should too, but sounds very close with another
40:14
word that I just you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
40:18
So I try not to say the should word, but you know, it is things
40:22
that physiologically and physically you need to do.
40:26
So, you know, I'm. That's one of the things I'm
40:28
really looking forward to when I get your book is to really start
40:32
diving into all of those different things with the gut
40:37
because you never know what is in there.
40:40
And when you were talking about dopamine earlier, I just have to
40:44
laugh about this because I started thinking about the scene
40:46
from Legally Blonde when she's like, she kind of killed her
40:51
husband because people who do this have high mounted dopamine
40:55
and people with that don't kill their husbands.
40:58
Yeah, yeah. I just happened to think of that
41:01
scene. So so you did just in closing,
41:05
you did mention the verse out of seven Iah.
41:08
Are there any other verses that help to keep you anchored?
41:13
Yeah, I mean that one. I'll, I'll read the full version
41:16
right now. The Lord your God is in your
41:17
midst, a mighty one who will save.
41:19
He will rejoice over you with gladness.
41:21
He will quiet you by his love. He will exalt over you with loud
41:24
singing. The second one that's really
41:27
been anchoring me lately and this is interesting.
41:29
I'll try to keep this short, but it came from my 9 year old
41:32
because he if we're going to talk about dopamine and neuro
41:36
spicy children, he is my my neuro spicy one.
41:41
And he the other day he made a decision.
41:43
He got a consequence for his decision.
41:45
And I was trying to explain very gently like we do.
41:48
Well, this is remember this is what happened and this is what
41:50
it led to. He put his hands over his face,
41:53
the classic shameface move and he said stop, you're putting me
41:56
in my shame box. And I was just stunned by that
42:00
phrase first that he could articulate it right like that he
42:03
would use and then he just made it up that he was going into a
42:06
shame box and I stopped him right then and I said no, there
42:10
is Romans 81 tells us there is no condemnation for those are in
42:13
Christ Jesus. And my translation for that now
42:16
is there is no shame box for those who are in Christ Jesus.
42:19
And I've been repeating that to myself over and over again
42:22
lately because I need to hear that because there are times
42:24
where I send my myself in the shame box for whatever.
42:28
It doesn't matter what it is. I mean, everybody's got their
42:30
own shame box. And your shame box might not
42:32
make sense to me, but it sure makes sense to you, right?
42:35
We all have things that cause us to get stuck in the shame box.
42:39
And Romans 81 tells us that we don't have to go there.
42:43
We're in Christ Jesus and we can step out of the shame box.
42:47
And then if we go even and to Hebrews, I believe is it Hebrews
42:50
412 or 416? I get them confused because
42:53
they're even numbers. I struggle with that.
42:55
But it is where where we can approach.
42:58
Basically, we can because of Jesus, we can approach the
43:00
throne. We have access because of Jesus,
43:03
we have access to God And that we don't have to go through any
43:08
ritual or extended process of sacrificing and, and all the
43:13
bloody stuff they had to do in the Old Testament.
43:15
We can go straight to the throne and approach God and Jesus being
43:20
our advocate for the journey and the Holy Spirit also, they're
43:23
advocating for us. I mean, we have a whole team of
43:26
support and I think that's really cool too.
43:28
We don't think of it as a team. We think of what I mean, yeah,
43:30
he's one God, 3, three and one, but it's still a team.
43:34
And and I think that that team of support makes that access
43:37
even more accessible. So I'll I'll end on the shame
43:41
box analogy. I love that so much because I
43:44
think that there's so much of that going around these days,
43:47
and I think that people really need to hear that.
43:49
And that's why I believe that this is an important
43:51
conversation, an important book, and just keeping up this
43:56
conversation. Where can people find you?
43:59
Yeah, so the name of my book is Live Beyond your Label.
44:02
You can find that wherever books are sold.
44:04
My website is Aaron B kerry.com. So Aaron B as in boy Kerry is
44:09
Kerry got a new book that will be launching, I believe early
44:13
next year. And my podcast is called
44:16
Sparking Wholeness. You can find me.
44:18
I do a most of my interactive posting on Instagram.
44:21
That's about as much as my brain can handle right now and it's
44:24
under Sparking Wholeness. And so yeah, I believe that's
44:27
that's everything. I also also, I'm still seeing
44:30
them open for clients. I have a wait list of about a
44:32
month long, but I can see virtual clients from all over.
44:34
We do lab testing, nutrient panels, gut testing, all those
44:38
things. And so you can just find more
44:41
information about that on my website.
44:43
Awesome. I will put links to all that in
44:44
the show notes. And Erin, thank you so much for
44:46
taking the time to hang out with me today.
44:48
Yeah, thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed it.
44:50
It was fun. Absolutely.
44:51
Have a great rest of the day guys, and I'll talk to you next
44:53
episode. Thank you so much for joining me
44:57
for this episode, the Anchor by the Sore podcast.
44:59
I pray that the story that you heard today will encourage your
45:02
faith, challenge your faith, and also help you as you walk in
45:06
your daily life. If this episode has done that,
45:09
please feel free to leave a five star rating and review wherever
45:13
you listen to this podcast so that others can find it and grow
45:17
as well. Have a blessed week and I'll
45:19
talk to you next episode.