This has been a hard one to write!

Photo by Laura Vinck on Unsplash

I have something to get off my chest to you lovely lot. This is one of those shares that is difficult to know how to start, so please excuse the rambling, I will get to the point of this, I’m just, you know…feeling awks.

I have been working through estrangement from my parents for that last 3 years. It’s been a weird old time even though it is the right thing to do. I have a pretty fragmented family anyways and this has really taken me to the lowest of the lows. Grief is something that will not be rushed, and is a wild ride. I fully understand that sentiment about it never ever going away, but you do learn to grow around it.

Estrangement is much more common than we think, about 1 in 5 adults in the UK are affected by estrangement but still its a massive taboo, and pretty difficult for those that have great relationships with their family to wrap their heads around. I seem to attract difficult topics and conversations into my life ha! Now I am coming out the other side of it I feel resourced enough to talk about it.

Wondering if I was struggling with ADHA, I now realise that I have been dealing with CPTSD (complex - post traumatic stress disorder) my entire life. It literally makes my skin crawl writing this because I fear the judgement of declaring this to you. I would much rather just fade away in the back ground than bother you with this. Doing it though is a big fuck you to the gremlins that live rent free within me. It also is a way to counter the bollocks that goes around and around and around. I am much kinder to myself these days, and slowly learning to not give a fuck about what others think. Its non of my business anyways.

The reason I am telling you this is because most of my clients are in the same boat as me, and the patterns that we have learnt in our childhood are influencing what we are doing in our adulthood. These maladaptive behaviours protected us when we didn’t have an escape, but now we are running our own lives they make it heavy fucking weather.

As you know I am about working with all the hormones in the body, because living with chronic stress has an impact on our health. Is it any wonder I have a collection of conditions that are part of a malfunctioning immune system? No! Looking at stress has been a long standing theme in my whole career. I am galvanised to dig deeper into this aspect of my work with you all, because it is of such great importance. It is the linchpin to everything.

Part of my CPTSD manifests in not looking after myself, deeming it a waste of time, selfish or sometimes just too overwhelming. I know what I need to do and yet I can still find that hard to do, and for a really long time I just thought I was an idiot or lazy. Turns out it was really just the conditioned patterns in me. Shaming myself into doing it wasn’t working, just making me feel worse! Yet being nice to myself also felt really bleugh. Truly WILD!

Working through this stuff is a process, one of which I am very intimate with. Managing my nervous system to stay regulated is now my life’s work, Not spinning out over something is a very big plus point. Not just because I don’t want to lose control over my emotions and be seen as an emotional mess (hello hormonal narrative that its your period or perimenopause) but because I don’t want to stress my body out.

Yes our period hormones can and do make things a bit more challenging and raw BUT this is compounded by how healthy our stress hromones are doing. If you are chronically stressed, then, you my friend are just going to be a bit all over the shop when your periods arrives. You are rinsing your stress hormones, which rinse your period hormones, which rinse your gut hormones, which rinse your metabolic hormones. You see the picture?

You don’t just get crap periods, you done’t just get chronic stress, you don’t just get insulin sensitivity, you don’t just get imbalances in your hormones. This is all part of the picture of you. If I had a pound for every person who said to me what I have been going through the last 2 years was ‘just’ my perimenopause I would be a very rich woman. Sure, I am in perimenopause it is going to play a part, but it isn’t the sole reason I was feeling the way I was feeling. It is minimising to myself as a whole to say it is just one thing or another it is a part of the WHOLE of me.

This is why looking at the whole of you is how I work. I’m not here to pigeon hole you and just look at one part I’m here to help you make sense of what is going on for you, because we are all same same but different.

So thats me, thanks for reading solidarity to you if you resonate with anything I have written about. Fucking sucks, but there is light at the end of the CPTSD tunnel, like everything it takes us loving ourselves to hard sunbeams shoot out our bums.

Gems x

P.S I have my new membership Hormonal Alchemy opening up on 7th March, there are only 5 places available for the super duper slots to work with me 1.1 so make sure you get in quick to avoid missing out. There is a price point for everyone.

Please check my website for further details here