The 5 Traps Keeping You Stuck on Your Healing Journey
The 5 Traps Keeping You Stuck on Your Healing Journey
Clients often come to me feeling really overwhelmed about all of the conflicting health advice out there. They feel frustrated and like they've jumped around from intervention to intervention with only minimal success. They feel confused about what step to take next and feel like nothing has worked for them despite big efforts. Many begin to feel like supporting their health has come to feel like a full-time job and the pressure of putting the puzzle together all on their own begins to mount.
Over the last 9 years working in healthcare I’ve seen time and again places where people tend to get stuck when embarking on any healing journey. There are five “traps” I commonly see people get stuck in (sometimes for years!) keeping them from where they want to go. By shedding light on these five common traps, my hope is that you’ll know what to look out for and avoid getting stuck!
1. Information overload
We have a plethora of information available these days about how we can support our body using things like nutrition and lifestyle shifts. Information is power and it’s amazing to feel like we can take some control ourselves! But the flip side of this readily available information is that there’s so much of it, and a lot of times it can be conflicting depending on what source you’re reading.
When we are constantly receiving and taking in information we can get ourselves into a state of information overload where we feel overwhelmed and confused. I’ve seen a lot of people get stuck in this place and have been there myself early on in my journey with autoimmune disease and it doesn't feel good!
The antidote to information overload (or the information trap) is to make sure that you are not just consuming information all the time but are also taking the right action. And I totally get it - we want to consume information cause we want to learn and do everything we can to feel better. It's wonderful to learn all of these empowering things about our health! In order to get results and figure out what works for our own unique bodies, however, It’s important to make sure that we are also putting things we’re learning into action and assessing how things affect us. If you feel like you are constantly taking in information and don’t have a clear sense of what actually works for your body, a conscious break from consuming information and focusing more inwards on what information, cues, signals and insight your own body is giving you is a great idea!
2. Focusing on food as the sole pillar of health
Food is information. Food is fuel. Food has the undeniable power to support our bodies, but when it comes to healing, food is not everything. What often happens when we start to delve into a healing journey is we start with food as the main pillar of health.
If we continue to only focus on food as the single pillar of health, then when our life and health don’t improve as we want them to, we feel like the only option is to restrict more and more foods.
We may then wind up feeling like we only have five foods that we can eat without having symptoms! Focusing on food as the sole pillar of health can sometimes bring us to a place that feels really frustrating and restrictive and strains our relationship with food and nourishment.
Food is a very important pillar of health, but it is not the only one. Take a quick inventory and see if you feel stuck in that place. If you do, try “zooming out” a little bit and looking at all of the other pieces of nourishment in our lives and things that determine our health such as stress, sleep, our relationships, our mindset and our beliefs about ourselves and our health to name a few.
3. Ignoring digestive health
We’ve all heard the saying that we are what we eat, but really we are what our bodies can do with what we eat. So, really, we are what we digest, assimilate, and absorb.
Like I described earlier, food is typically the first entry point into healing and takes a lot of focus for a good reason. You might be eating a beautiful diet, but finding that digestion is off, you’re not breaking down and absorbing food or you’re still having a lot of other downstream health issues despite eating well for your body.
In addition to what you’re eating, it’s also important to consider how your body breaking down and absorbing that food. That has a lot to do with just the health of the digestive tract and the digestive tract is so important because it's where food meets our physiology.
I talk a lot about digestive health because it’s so key to overall health and any healing journey. I have an online program I created specifically for people getting stuck in this trap because I see it so often. The Love Your Gut Program is a self-paced online program that really helps you move through this and understand not just what you're eating, but how is your body using that fuel and how can you support a healthy digestive system from top to bottom!
If you feel like you’re eating really well but you’re still feeling stuck, make sure you’re also tuning into your digestion and how your body is utilizing that fuel.
4. Skipping over the foundational elements of health
The fourth trap that keeps many of us stuck is not spending enough time in foundational areas of health before moving on. We tend to look towards “higher-level” interventions which might be things like herbs, supplements or protocols to treat a virus or an infection. The trap I see people fall into is trying some of these higher-level interventions without feeling like they've really got a strong foundation or baseline.
Make sure you check in on some of those foundational elements. What's your stress like on a daily basis? Are you going to the bathroom regularly? Are you sleeping regularly? Do you have afternoon energy crashes? And do you feel like the foods you’re consuming work for you on a daily basis? Are they being broken down and absorbed well into your body?
You have probably done so much good work in those areas and learned a lot about yourself, but they’re things that we will have to continue to tend to through our entire life. Sometimes you might spend more energy on one than another, but these foundational pieces of health are never pieces we’re completely done with. Remember to keep asking yourself some of the basic foundational questions and building physiological resilience before skipping over them and considering higher-level interventions.
5. Jumping around between different protocols
The fifth and final trap that I see a lot of people get stuck in is jumping around from different protocol to different protocol. And again, I've done this one myself too! You might try something like a gluten-free diet, and while it helps with your digestion, you still have joint pain. So you think, “Okay, well someone told me about Keto, I'm going to try a Keto diet!” And then that might make you feel a little bit better in your body, but it doesn't feel sustainable. So then you might try an Autoimmune Paleo Diet or GAPS or any other number of protocols looking for the one to resolve all of your issues.
Have you ever felt like this? I find that this is a really frustrating place to be! You’re always switching gears. You feel like nothing's working. It seems like you’re trying everything and you feel like you’re just throwing things at the wall and hoping they stick.
To avoid and move out of this trap it’s helpful to instead ask yourself about any intervention or protocol, “What did this tell me about my specific body? What did I learn in this experiment?” Ask yourself what you’ve learned and how you can use that information to move forward from a more informed and empowered place rather than jumping to another protocol or strict template.
The foundation of everything is tuning in to your body and learning from the information you gather from it along the way. I want to tell you that no matter where you are at and how many times you’ve gotten stuck, it is possible to be healthy, to have energy, to feel good in your body, and be able to do the things you want to do!
I hope this helps you get clarity around what to look out for along the way to avoid these common traps and start putting the pieces together for sustainable and vibrant health!
PREFER TO LISTEN? TUNE INTO THE LIVE WELL PODCAST BELOW (AND DON'T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE SO YOU'LL NEVER MISS OUT!)
Click here to listen in iTunes
Click here to listen in Stitcher
If we haven't met before, I'm Christina Tidwell and I'm so excited that you're here! I am a RN & Functional Nutrition Practitioner that helps those with autoimmune disease, hormone imbalance and gut issues heal without overwhelm so you can feel better in your body in a way that honors your unique needs and feels sustainable for the rest of your life.
If you suffer from:
Fatigue and energy crashes
Brain fog
Poor digestion
Painful periods and PMS
Symptoms of autoimmunity
Stress and overwhelm
...and aren't getting the support you need, I’m here to help guide you! My job is to clear the overwhelm, help you put the pieces of the puzzle together and co-create a sustainable path forward to help you reach your goals and feel better in your amazing body. When we work together you can’t fail.
In my health & nutrition coaching programs I support you in the quest to get back into balance by listening to your story, understanding your needs, getting to the roots of imbalance in the body and co-creating a sustainable path to healing together. These sessions weave together functional nutrition and science, lived experience, mindset shifts, and intuitive guidance for a unique and full-spectrum approach to nutrition counseling and holistic health.
I always offer free 20-minute discovery sessions to get clear on your major health concerns and identify what’s standing in your way. Click the button below to set up your free consultation and we can create a plan of action specifically for you.
