How to Find Yourself Again After Trauma

The AHA! Team — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 08:24:02 +0000

Dr. Caroline Leaf – In this podcast (episode #471) and blog, I talk to holistic psychologist and best-selling author Nicole LePera about finding your authentic self after trauma, identifying and unlearning harmful habits, and so much more! In her first book, How to Do the Work, Dr. Nicole offered readers a revolutionary, holistic framework for self-healing. Now, in How to Meet Your Self, she shares an interactive workbook designed to help every reader uncover their Authentic Self. By objectively and compassionately observing the physical, mental, and emotional patterns that fill our days and create our current selves, we can more clearly see what we do not wish to carry into the future. Why is this important? As Nicole points out, we all fall into conditioned habits and patterns—products of our past—that lead to cycles of pain, “stuckness,” and self-destruction. But we also have the innate ability to awaken to and change the behaviors and habits that no longer serve us, allowing us to step into the highest versions of ourselves, which is why Nicole wrote How to Meet Your Self: to help the reader radically transform their inner and outer world. We all struggle and we all have unique healing journeys. This is a universal aspect of the human experience. No matter who we are or where we come from, we cannot escape the fact that our past experiences color our present realities. For many of us, these patterns go unnoticed; we live our lives unaware of how these habits shape our thinking and actions. How to Meet Your Self, Nicole helps us become more aware and conscious of how the past is affecting our present and gives us practical tips and tools to change and heal the mind, brain and body. Awareness is the first step. When we see these aspects of our lives as habits and not intrinsic parts of ourselves, we can work on changing these patterns in our lives and reconnecting with our authentic self—that deep inner knowing of ourselves. We can’t heal what we are not aware of. But this change doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and effort to do the work. As mentioned above, awareness is just the first step, which then allows us to start our healing journey and discover our true, authentic selves. This change is often hard and difficult, and other things will come to the surface, which is why it takes consistent daily effort to shift our thinking and habits, especially if we have been living a certain way for decades. Learning habits and patterns often begins in childhood. Indeed, childhood is a very vulnerable period in our lives; we are growing, developing and learning how to see ourselves and the world around us. Unfortunately, the adults in the room are often dealing with their own trauma and issues, which can affect how they relate to us as children. This, in turn, can affect how we function as adults through the habits and patterns we learn—soon, a negative, generational cycle can be set up. Thankfully, it is never too late to heal. The brain is neuroplastic, which means that it can change. This is why it is so important that we learn how to connect with and trust ourselves—to reach that authentic self. We need to put on our own oxygen mask first by working through our past and what we need to heal before it starts impacting our wellbeing and our relationships. We need to learn how to embrace, process and reconceptualize what we go through, not push it down, or we may start to resent putting other people’s needs before our own. We need to learn how to process our experiences and feelings, not feel ashamed that we have emotions like frustration, anger and so on. When we do this, we are better able to connect with ourselves and the people in our lives on a deeper level, instead of using boundaries to put up walls around ourselves and keep people out. It is not selfish to work on ourselves and take the time to heal and connect with our authentic self. Rather, doing so promotes interdependence: the ability to truly thrive and connect with others in meaningful ways. This kind of autonomy is not the freedom to do whatever we want without consequences; it is the recognition that we are part of a larger whole, and that we as individuals do not have to do it all by ourselves. Our relationship with ourselves is the foundation of any relationship we will have. For more on finding your authentic self, listen to my podcast with Nicole (episode #471) and check out her amazing work. Podcast Highlights 1:54 Nicole’s amazing work 4:19 Social media & therapy 6:28 Nicole’s new book How to Meet Your Self 8:00 How the past affects our present 10:14 Why it takes time to change past patterns & habits 14:00 The power of the conscious mind 19:33 Getting out of “auto-pilot mode” 26:10 Learning habits starts in childhood 35:17 Healing religious trauma 36:28 How healing ourselves helps us connect with others 41:50 Why we need to allow ourselves to acknowledge our emotions 45:00 What our need for boundaries tells us about ourselves 50:00 Autonomy versus selfishness This podcast and blog are for educational purposes only and are not intended as medical advice. We always encourage each person to make the decision that seems best for their situation with the guidance of a medical professional. To read the original article click here.

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Western High-Fat Diet Can Cause Chronic Pain, According to UT Health San Antonio-Led Team

AHA Publisher — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 07:00:13 +0000

University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio via EurekAlert – SAN ANTONIO, June 23, 2021 – A typical Western high-fat diet can increase the risk of painful disorders common in people with conditions such as diabetes or obesity, according to a groundbreaking paper authored by a team led by The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, also referred to as UT Health San Antonio. Moreover, changes in diet may significantly reduce or even reverse pain from conditions causing either inflammatory pain – such as arthritis, trauma or surgery – or neuropathic pain, such as diabetes. The novel finding could help treat chronic-pain patients by simply altering diet or developing drugs that block release of certain fatty acids in the body. The paper, more than five years in the making, was published in the June edition of the journal Nature Metabolism by a collaborative team of 15 local researchers, headed by first co-authors Jacob T. Boyd, MD, PhD, and Peter M. LoCoco, PhD, of the Department of Endodontics at UT Health San Antonio. In all, 11 of the co-authors are from UT Health San Antonio, including seven current or former students of its Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences; three represent the Department of Chemistry at the University of Texas at San Antonio; and one is from the Department of Neurology with the South Texas Veterans Health Care System. “This study exemplifies team science at its best – multiple scientists and clinicians with complementary expertise working together to make lives better,” said Kenneth M. Hargreaves, DDS, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Endodontics at UT Health San Antonio, and senior author of the paper. Fatty Acids and Pain Chronic pain is a major cause of disability around the world. But although fat-reduction often is advised to manage diabetes, auto-immune disorders and cardiovascular diseases, the role of dietary lipids, or fatty acids, in pain conditions has been relatively unknown. In the new paper, Dr. Boyd and his colleagues used multiple methods in both mice and humans to study the role of polyunsaturated fatty acids in pain conditions. They found that typical Western diets high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats served as a significant risk factor for both inflammatory and neuropathic pain. Omega-6 fats, mainly found in foods with vegetable oils, have their benefits. But Western diets associated with obesity are characterized by much-higher levels of those acids in foods from corn chips to onion rings, than healthy omega-3 fats, which are found in fish and sources like flaxseed and walnuts. Generally, unhealthy foods high in omega-6 fats include processed snacks, fast foods, cakes, and fatty and cured meats, among others. Reversal of this diet, especially by lowering omega-6 and increasing omega-3 lipids, greatly reduced these pain conditions, the researchers found. Also, the authors demonstrated that skin levels of omega-6 lipids in patients with Type 2 diabetic neuropathic pain were strongly associated with reported pain levels and the need for taking analgesic drugs. “This paper is a high-profile contribution for a huge unmet translational need as there are no treatments altering the nature of this neurological disease,” said José E. Cavazos, MD, PhD, professor of neurology, assistant dean and director of the National Institutes of Health-designated South Texas Medical Scientist Training Program at UT Health San Antonio. In an editorial accompanying the paper, Duke University researchers Aidan McGinnis and Ru-Rong Ji wrote, “This comprehensive and elegant study from Boyd et al. may serve as a foundation for new clinical trials and ultimately provide new avenues for the clinical treatment of neuropathies.” To read the original article click here.

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How to Find Yourself Again After Trauma

Western High-Fat Diet Can Cause Chronic Pain, According to UT Health San Antonio-Led Team