How childhood trauma impacts your health

In this talk, I explore several dimensions of health beyond just the physical. 

Let me reflect on my background growing up in a violent household and how it affected my health-related behaviors. 
I want to highlighting the interconnection between our biological, psychological, and social aspects. 

Let me share what I know about emotional eating, body dysmorphia, addiction, stress,
and inflammation of the brain and gut. 
I cannot over emphasise the significance of practicing mindful eating, establishing strong personal boundaries, and nurturing oneself. 

How do you achieve radical self-responsibility? 
Start with minor changes that lead to a healthier you and overall well-being.

The information shared in this podcast does not substitute working with your primary health care provider; it is general in nature and not considered personalised advice.

Visit us online for more information or if you wish to work with Dr Holland.
thehollandclinic.com

For your daily dose of women's health related info and ideas on how to gracefully live through health and wellbeing transitions your body experiences, visit our Instagram
instagram.com/thehollandclinic

Transcript

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Good morning, gorgeous. Oh, just had a very emotionally charged consultation with one of my overseas patients. And I wanted to share with you this morning, if you're a woman and you are over the age of 35, And you have decided that you're drawing that line in the sand. You are sick and tired of your old systems, your old paradigms, your old ways of thinking, your old ways of living. Yeah. And you're wanting to take care of yourself. I'm here to tell you that health is bio psycho social. So as somebody that grew up in an extremely violent household with an abusive father, high functioning alcoholic parents my dad was a military man. He was trained in the the special forces in the British army. He had massive amounts of PTSD. My mother was not his first wife. He'd been through a number of relationships previous. He'd had other children. He'd run away from Europe and he'd started a family in Africa. But unfortunately, he was extremely... He must have been in so much pain because he created an environment where it was very unsafe for my nervous system as a little girl growing up in that home. I absolutely loved my father. But he certainly was a Jekyll and Hyde there would be one moment where he'd take you by the hand and he'd be talking about the fairies in the garden and the next minute you'd be doing drown training in the pool and I know that he thought that he was doing the best thing for us, but it was extremely, it was a crazy environment to have grown up in needless to say, if he didn't get the piece of chicken, That he wanted at the dinner table, he would behave like a three year old and suddenly, my mother, my sister and I would find ourselves underneath the dining room table and there'd be plates and knives and forks and dishes crashing against the walls and windows would be broken. So it was quite a traumatic, violent household to grow up in. But that's what my nervous system got used to. And this is the point that I'm trying to make. Health is biopsychosocial. So I see hundreds of women in my clinic in Melbourne, Australia, I'm in my third decade of clinical practice, so it's safe to say that I've seen thousands and I'm here to tell you that if you are using your food or your booze or your glass of wine as medicine, if you are going to it driven by an emotion other than true hunger, you are using your food and your wine as medicine and that is a problem. But I'm not here to judge you. I'm a recovering food addict and I completely understand. We are so clever. Our bodies are so clever. They know how to use these mechanisms. Sugar is as good as a cocaine hit. Sugar addiction is as difficult to break as cocaine, right? They've said that in the literature. So we go for the foods that are going to give us that hit. We go for those drug like food substances. So things like baked goods, sugar. Alcohol dairy, they're all, they all give us those dopamine hits. They give us that hit. So please be very mindful of the fact that your nervous system may be needing a little love and a little care. And it is the simplest things that are the hardest things to do, right? But they are so easy to integrate into your life when you know how to do them. So I'm encouraging you to do the breath work. I'm encouraging you to breathe. You can do something as simple as lie down on your back and watch your belly rise and fall on the in and the out breath. In clinical practice. This is what I tell my patients. I lie them down on the bed. Once we've discussed all of the psycho bio social impacts on their health, we do the somatic work. So they lie down on the bed. I pop the acupuncture needles in and it's about breathing in and breathing out and bringing that awareness to a belly rising and your belly falling. And when those thoughts come in, you use a mood, moving meditation, whatever works for you. But basically I love to say, attach those thoughts to that cloud and let them float on out of here. It is a really interesting phenomenon that women over the age of 35, from this point onwards, perimenopausally and menopausally, our ACE score comes back to tap us on the shoulder and it asks us to do the work. And I cannot tell you how many times in clinical practice this comes out in terms of women Not necessarily having strong personal boundaries due to their original wiring due to their original nervous system wiring. So I grew up in a home that was unsafe. There was so much abuse. There was so much trauma. And like I said to you, I loved my daddy, as a little girl, I absolutely loved him. Despite the fact that one moment he'd be holding my hand and taking care of me. And the next moment, he'd be using a cattle whip on me and beating me to a pulp and doing the same to my mom in front of me. So traumatic, very traumatic. So very high a score. So my family of origin teachings taught me that I needed to be with a man that created that same environment for me. So unfortunately what happened is that I was attracted to men that were. Emotionally unavailable and abusive, so not necessarily physically abusive, but very psycho, emotionally abusive things like, Oh honey, you better not wear those jeans, your bum actually doesn't look big in that without being asked the question, baby, does my bum look big in this? Cause I know we've all asked it whether it's to ourselves or to the other, right? So yeah, emotionally unavailable, abusive, manipulative men. However, that is not very obvious to a young woman when she leaves the family of origin with those sorts of beginnings. But there came a day and time in my life where I was like, what is my role to play? In this experience, right? What is my role to play in this experience? I had to take radical responsibility for myself and radical action. I needed to do the work I needed to go in and I needed to see what it was. I was trying to do, I was trying to fix my dad. I was trying to save my dad. So of course I was attracted to, men that were like my father, thank goodness. None of them beat me to a pulp, but I've already had enough of that in my childhood. But my nervous system felt safe in a relationship that wasn't good for me, right? So I needed to come to that awareness first. So again, health is bio psychosocial. And now as a recovered food addict. Of course, it wasn't, I wasn't cognizant of what I was doing at the time. It wasn't conscious. So I would sit on the bed and overeat things like raisin bran. Do you know how hard it is to overeat raisin bran? That stuff hurts, right? But listen to this. In traditional Chinese medicine, we talk about the fact that our earth element is our gut. So one of the ways that we earth ourselves is to fill that earth element. So this is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about using your food as medicine. So if you are using your food as medicine to feel grounded or to feel earthed, there is absolutely no shame. I'm not here to shame you. I'm just here to say Bring the awareness to the behavior, because if you're using your food and particularly the foods that are deleterious for your health long term sugar, white flour, alcohol, too much dairy, then I want you to become mindful of how you eat, sleep, move, think, supplement or other, right? And I want you to think about it, ask yourself that question before you put anything in your mouth. For the next day, for the next hour, for the next week, ask yourself, am I hungry? Am I truly hungry? Is this true hunger? And if you're not sure, have a glass of water, have a glass of water with some salt in it and a little squeeze of lemon and a teaspoon of maple syrup. Make a beautiful electrolyte drink. We know that women over the age of 35 don't have enough electrolytes and that impacts our energy level. So ask yourself, am I truly hungry? And if you're not, ask yourself the other questions. Ask yourself, am I hungry? Am I angry? Am I lonely? Am I tired? Am I bored? Am I frustrated? Other, right? We are meant to eat, and I know this is a killjoy, right? Nobody wants to hear this. We are meant to eat in order to live. We don't live to eat and don't get me wrong. I absolutely love food, right? I absolutely love food and yes, it is a celebration, but I want you to use every single meal as a beautiful nourishing opportunity. I want you to have a nutrient dense, rich blood supply. I want you to be getting. One gram of net protein per kilogram of ideal body weight. I want you to eat all your grains and I want you to eat all of your vegetables, and after you've done that, then you can have your treat. But don't go to your food as medicine please. I am your wellness advocate, and I'm here to say to you that once you get a grip on your bio, your biochemical inflammation, after thorough testing, your psycho psychoemotional impact on your health. After doing the work, after going to counseling, after taking radical responsibility for your choices and understanding where they come from and how you make the choices you do, whether they are conscious or subconscious choices, whether they are nervous system related choices. We know that if we have an inflammation in our gut, we have an inflammation in our mood and our mind. And we know that if we have an inflammation in our mood and our mind. We have an inflammation in our gastrointestinal tract and believe it or not, there are a couple of things that can actually drive your hunger. If you have that inflammation in your gastrointestinal tract, that can cause stomach heat and it can cause excessive hunger. If you've been addicted to sugar and you've been using it as medicine for a really long time, Unbeneficial bacteria feed on sugar. So the unbeneficial bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract are in control. They are other than you. Believe it or not, there are more other cells in your body than there are you cells. So the unbeneficial bacteria are so clever, they can actually call out for their food source. So they call out for more sugar and they call out for white flour. So sometimes I'd like you to... I'd like you to take a bird's eye view and just ask yourself, is this craving me, or is this craving other quite often? We crave things because we have a trace mineral nutrient deficiency or a macro or a micro nutrient deficiency. So it is so important to nourish your beautiful incubator. This is your incredible human incubator that houses that incredible soul that houses that incredible nervous system that learned all of those ways in the world from your family of origin. The way you think about yourself. Creates your reality and the reality that you came from to begin with, you were potentially not in control of because you were a little girl, right? Or a little boy. So you didn't have the control over that environment and your nervous system got used to it. So just because you learned certain things in your family of origin, it doesn't necessarily mean that they are good for you or that you choose them. So my personal example, my father was abusive. He was in pain. I don't blame him at all. I absolutely forgive him. Nobody wants to be the deficient donkey, right? Nobody. If they could really see their behavior, they would not choose to be that human being. They wouldn't because they would have the ability to see, they would have the enlightenment, they would have the understanding. It's just not on their radar. But what I encourage you to do today as a woman over the age of 35 is I want to encourage you To bring into your awareness the choices you're making and how your personal reality is creating your personality and therefore your experience of life. And I'm also here to tell you that you can change it. You can start to make choices that are better for you. You can start to bring the awareness to why it is you make the choices you do, and you can change those. In the meantime, focus on your nutrition, focus on taking care of yourself. Think very carefully about What you eat, how you sleep, how you think, how you move, how you supplement, your self talk. Every single cell in your body is listening, right? So every time you look at your body, and I'm somebody, recovered food addict now, I'm so delighted to say, but I still have extreme body dysmorphia. So every time I look in the mirror, if I say, Oh, I can't stand my knees, or Oh, I can't stand my elbow, whatever it is, Because that body dysmorphia comes up, I try to catch myself and I say, thank you so much for my beautiful functional body. I'm not in a wheelchair. I can do all of the things. So I am so grateful that I have this incredible functional body that allows me to have this beautiful human experience. So many people talk about self love. And as a practitioner in her third decade of clinical practice, I can often tell you that when women come to me, that concept is too far away. It feels too far away. And I can tell you that from my own experience, when I was obese and I had cystic acne and I was a food addict and I was trying to numb my feelings of pain because I'd come from an extremely dysfunctional, violent, traumatic household and been dumped. In a boarding school and left my own devices because my parents didn't have any other option to them at that point in time with the information that they had at the time. And again, no judgment and lots of forgiveness and lots of love. The thing that we forget about with regards to our parents and, we've got kids too, is that it's their first time around perhaps, like this is the first time they're here and making these decisions too. Absolutely no judgment. And as Eckhart Tolle talks about the fact that, the addict is just trying to move away from pain. So when you see an addict, whether they're a food addict or a shopping addict or a, an alcoholic, I want you to think about that person's inner child. I want you to think about yourself at five or six or seven years of age. Doing the best that she could with the nervous system that she had and the personal reality that was handed to her by her traumatic experiences. That's the little girl that needs you to be kind and to be gentle and to re mother. She needs you to nurture her. She needs you to take in a nutrient dense rich blood supply so that her energy levels are there for her. So that her mind and her mood and her gut and her brain and all of her hormones are working abundantly. And she's not in a depressed state because she's using food like substances to numb painful emotions. Emotions are extremely overwhelming at times, but they are incredible messengers. They're incredible pieces of information. I encourage you to sit with, experience, view, welcome, love, all of your emotions. And in actual fact, I'd like to leave you with something else today. There are only two emotions. I think in my opinion, every single emotion either falls into the love category or into the fear category. So think about it. If you're doing something that, if you're making decisions that aren't great for yourself, stop yourself and ask yourself, what would love do? And then before you self medicate. If it's too far away to, drop that vice entirely, if it feels too difficult to drop the alcohol entirely, if it feels too difficult to drop the sugar entirely first, nourish your body, your mind, your soul, your microbiome first eat three cups of green, one cup of color, and then 200 grams of high quality protein, or one gram of net protein per ideal body weight. First do that, right? If you actually have a little treat after your meal, Your blood glucose levels won't rise as much and you won't spike that insulin. So you won't get yourself into that metabolic resistance or that fat store state as opposed to fat burn. A fat burn state is the state where we are able to maintain our beautiful ideal body weight, where we are able to create all of the energy that we need for our brains and our bodies all day long to fire. At 150 miles an hour, if we need to. Okay. So like I said, I am your wellness advocate. I am not here to judge you. I'm here to love you into wellness. I am here to help you with the micro changes, right? Health is bio psycho social. And what else did I want to say? Yeah. Make sure that before you eat, you ask yourself, am I truly hungry or am I using food like substances? Because I am angry, lonely, tired, frustrated. Bored other right nourish your beautiful body and your beautiful mind Remember that if you have an inflammation in the brain So if you're stressed out if you haven't been sleeping if you're stressed out by a family member if you're stressed out by something that happened in your family of origin, you're going to have an inflammation in your gut too, because through your nervous system and the vasovagal nerve, the two are absolutely connected. So the grounding exercises like taking your shoes off and going for a walk outside in the grass, the breathing, all of those things will help bring your nervous system back online. And then once you are, once you have the awareness, you can start to make better choices and you can start to make those changes. So that you can truly live a life of freedom and you can truly live a life where you are not bound by or controlled by anyone, a substance, your mother, your father, your sister, your lover, your narcissistic partner, your inappropriate relationship, whatever it may be. Don't necessarily judge it. Forgive yourself for being human, right? And start to bring the awareness and then take radical responsibility for yourself. I'm talking about absolutely radical responsibility and be completely aware of the part that you play in your life and think about how you think. So I want you to be really mindful about. What you eat, how you sleep, how you think, how you move, how you supplement and then ask yourself those questions. Am I truly hungry or am I bored? Am I tired? Am I lonely? Am I frustrated? Am I using my food as medicine or am I using my food to fuel this incredible body? And please remember that nothing is everything is connected. Absolutely everything is connected. So your. Your relationship with your partner impacts your health. Your relationship with food impacts your health. Your relationship with yourself impacts your health. Your relationship with your job impacts your health. I see women that come into my clinic that hate their jobs, and I'm here to tell you that their hormones are a mess, and could potentially be that way just because of that. And I'm not... Oh, there goes the baby schnautzy. Lulu, that's enough. That's okay, baby. And yeah, so all of those goodies I've been ranting on. I'm your wellness advocate. I'm here for you. If any of this resonated for you today, and you know that you need to do the work and you need a cheerleader that's going to help you with those micro changes and support you gently through the process without judgment and with love as a recovering food addict. And as somebody that has to practice this every single day of her life. You can't fail. I'm here to tell you that you cannot fail. 80, 20 baby, according to the basic mathematics, you're going to win. So 80 percent of the time make those incredibly beautiful choices have the three cups of green, the one cup of color, the 200 grams of high quality protein, right? And then 20 percent of the time, your body can handle those party substances and those party foods. I also live a very practical life. I'm here to tell you. I have a love of my life now, finally, because I took radical responsibility about my part to play in attracting narcissistic assholes into my life. So that's a thing of the past. Hallelujah. I'm now engaged to be married in February, 2024 to the love of my life, who is the kindest, most beautiful man on the planet. And even when he annoys me and drives me crazy, I still love him. And we have three teenagers, 16, 17, 18. It's a busy household, two dogs, I've got the practical tools and tricks to help you, and I've got the understanding of not only my own personal experience, I have absolutely lived this, but I understand the theoretical constructs behind it. My name is Dr. Kirstey Holland. I'm the founder and principal practitioner of the Holland Clinic in Melbourne, Australia. I'm a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine with a double degree of acupuncture and herbal med. I'm a naturopath. I'm a practitioner of environmental and nutritional medicine. I'm a functional medical practitioner and I have been nominated as health and wellness coach of the decade. And my program rescuing you from the rollercoaster of perimenopause has been nominated as program of the year 2023, 2024. So if you need help, book your free clarity call today, let's get this happening, take it easy, have a beautiful day.