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The Konnection Hub
The Konnection Hub
Ep 6: The Hidden Impact of Trauma on Entrepreneurs: Why Your Past Matters with Melissa Armstrong
Have you ever found yourself at a career crossroads, yearning for a path that resonates deeply with your values and life experiences? That's exactly what happened to our inspiring guest, Melissa, a former pediatric ICU nurse who bravely transitioned to holistic healing. Join us as Melissa candidly recounts her journey from the high-stress medical world to embracing functional medicine and holistic approaches.
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Catch snippets of her work @holistichealthbymelissa
Hi and welcome to the Connection Hub podcast. My name is Cassandra and I'm so happy that you're here. This is a space where we are having real conversations with real entrepreneurs. We aren't here to sugarcoat the realities of being your own CEO. We are all about raw, uncensored conversations that dive into the triumphs, struggles and secrets of real-life business owners. I'm so happy you're here and I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Connection Hub podcast. My name is Cassandra and I am your host, a social media marketer and online business manager. This podcast is all about having real conversations with real entrepreneurs. And that brings me to our guest today, miss Melissa. She is a nurse that turned into a holistic healer, helping women overcome personal and intergenerational trauma. So, melissa, tell us more about you, what got you into this industry and, yeah, I'll hand over the mic to you.
Speaker 2:Awesome.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to chat with you today. I, like you said, I was I am a nurse by trade. I was I've been an RN for going on 14 years and I originally thought that I would work kind of in that traditional conventional medical model. I started in a pediatric ICU at a level one trauma center in Southern California, thought I would be there forever and quickly realized how difficult that job was just physically, emotionally, mentally. Once I got pregnant with my first child I just couldn't unsee the things I was seeing at work when I was going home. So I transitioned out of there, kind of worked a lot of different types of like traditional nursing in various different clinics and hospital settings and just never felt like I was doing what I was called to do. Um, I always felt like there was something more that I could give and there was a couple kind of you know experiences that happened where I was. I felt like I was not able to give the patient the best care because time, because my boss is like no, you don't have time, you need to go like get the patient out, and I'm like, no, but this patient still needs me and um, so that was about like six years ago that I really just was like this model is not really aligning with my soul and I feel like I have so much more to give.
Speaker 2:Kind of simultaneously going through like my early nursing career, I was also dealing with my own kind of health journey. I had a lot of childhood trauma, um, I was abused, my parents were addicts, we were very poor, and then my brother there I was at a school shooting when I was 15. And then my brother was killed in front of me when I was 18. So I really like in my early twenties was was really struggling with my, my mental health, just grappling with my own mortality and like where do I belong? And coupled with like long hours of nursing job you know, a hospital nursing position and feeling like my, my, my. I wasn't aligned with my work. I started having a lot of physical symptoms, and so that brought me to a place about six years ago where I was like I can't do this anymore, I have to do something different. And I really started diving into like holistic medicine.
Speaker 2:I heard about functional medicine for the first time ever. Um, and in a conventional model, functional medicine is almost kind of like shunned, like in a hospital setting. If you talk to like a hospitalist or you know a traditional pediatrician or something like, they're like oh, come on, like functional medicine, that's like like functional medicine, that's like woo to woo. You know Um and um, I re, I, I really like healed myself um by using some of those principles and like really um learning how to manage my own thoughts and emotions and get my and like learned a lot about my nervous system and how my nervous system was just on overdrive all the time.
Speaker 2:I was literally in fight or flight like a hundred percent of the time and um, yeah, so I kind of I started pursuing that. I got some certifications COVID happened, that kind of expedited my, my um exit from that model Cause it just wasn't aligned with my, with my values, and decided, um, I did a little bit of like holistic nursing, like working for various different chiropractors and other things locally. And then at the beginning of last year I was like I want to have, I want to do this my own way, and so I opened my own business and now I'm helping women who are going through kind of exactly what I was going through, you know, five, 10, 15, 20 years ago.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow, wow, wow. What a a journey, both personally and professionally, to come into this version of yourself and really know what is good for you, right? I find a lot of us end up in jobs, careers, places, people's relationships, all of these things that you know. There's something about it that just doesn't feel good. Or, like you said, you were coming home and just like this I can't do this, this is not good. I can still like, I'm still in that environment and like those are working in a hospital, being a nurse. Those are high stress environments to begin with, and so, knowing what you need in that moment and trusting yourself through that process to say you know what actually, something needs to change here and I'm the only one that can change it Right and I'm the only one that can make that move happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1:Oh, oh, my internet today is crazy. We'll block this piece out. Um, okay, we had a storm last night and so it's a little rainy and gross outside, so there's clearly something going on with the internet, but that's okay, we're here. We're here. It was like taking a minute, okay, so tell me more. Tell me more about your business and like how you started the holistic coaching journey and holistic healing, because, yes, you came out of a nursing background. You have so much education in that space. You've educated yourself in different areas and learned more about, you know, holistic healing and that type of thing, and so what made you decide that I'm going to start my own business and I'm going to just do it for myself and be in this space?
Speaker 2:Well, it really was about how I wanted to be able. I mean, I was actually kind of multifaceted, but like I want to be able to be in charge of my own life, there was a I was working for a big life.
Speaker 2:There was a I was working for a big um, the last, like most recent, traditional nursing job that I had was for a big hospital network in the area I won't name them but um, it was a horrible organization to work for because I was literally just a number, I couldn't, and they didn't care like about my personal life and things that I was going through with my children and our family. And, um, there was a time where, like my son had, my oldest had a uh recital at school and it was at like 5 p, 4 PM or something and I worked until seven. So I requested some time off and they're like, nope, sorry, there's already too many other people that have. You know, I just wanted a couple hours and I was just like man, I don't want to do this, like I don't want. I want to be able to be there for the important things that I feel are important without having to ask somebody's permission, in addition to the fact that I felt like I just wanted to be able to coach people and help people through the way that I wasn't helped through Cause, when you're like when I was going through my own health journey and struggling with.
Speaker 2:I had debilitating anxiety and panic. The panic was probably the worst part Like I would be up for days at a time, like awake for days at a time because I couldn't fall asleep because I was so panicked. And if I did like drift off to sleep, I would be jolted awake by like the nightmares and a racing heart and I started to have a lot of digestive issues because I was just in that chronic state of fight or flight and when I would go to the doctor the doctor would tell me oh, you're depressed, take these antidepressants. Or, oh, you know, you're having this problem here. Let me give you some pills. I was getting rashes on my arms. I was like breaking out and in these rashes they would just give me steroids. Take this, you know, do this steroid wean. You'll be fine. Take this for 10 days. It's, it'll go away and it would.
Speaker 2:And you know, and but it wasn't actually fixing the problem. It wasn't, and I was so young and I didn't have, like my parents around to help me like navigate it, and and I didn't really know what to do. So I kind of once I went through that journey myself and realized there's such a need for that kind of like close one-on-one coaching Cause, even if people like I know a lot of things intellectually, because I'm like about the human body and medicine and all of that like because I've been a nurse for so long but I didn't have the support, the accountability, somebody there, like when the times were hard, like helping me through it. So it took me way longer to to go through that journey and I just knew that there was an opportunity for me to be able to help people like who I used to be make this transformation and heal their body, heal their mind, heal their spirit like release that trauma and and overcomes, you know, the the hardships in their life, without having it take 20 years, like it did for me, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's huge and it says so much about who you are and how you show up right and like in this essence of quick fixes, right, we live in a world of fast move, get it done, figure it out. And when I worked at a naturopath clinic in um, when I did my internship after I'd finished the many years of school in marketing and so I was their marketing person inside of this clinic and it was such a beautiful introduction for myself to this whole other world of medicine, right, that there is this whole other solution. And their main focus was finding the root cause right. Yes, we can band-aid stuff, we can make you better, no problem, here's the steroid, here, don't worry, we'll fix you 15 days, we'll be back to new, no big deal. But the root cause was never fixed right, and so it kept coming up and kept coming up. And that is such an important part that I think that we're getting into much more now, as times have have changed, as you know, we just the culture changes and people change. But that was a huge thing is there is no, you know, um care towards the actual problems that are happening inside of our body, inside of our mind, inside of, like you said, trauma, connection, all of these pieces, and so it ends up just getting band-aided and here I hope it's better, have a great day, Get out of my office.
Speaker 1:And there is such a need for people like you, for what you do and the fact that you were like okay, there's a few different pieces to this. I want the freedom. That's huge, right. Entrepreneurs open business for likely when I hear it, two reasons Freedom of time, money, energy, location, all of those pieces and to help people. There's something innately inside of us that want to help other people and want to be of service to other people in some capacity. And so what you're doing, not only are you helping your clients in their health journey, but you're also helping people who are in this industry learn how to be in this industry and learn how to do what you're doing successfully so that, like you said, it doesn't take a million years to learn it and they don't have to fumble through everything to get there. It's like here we go, let's go together and do it as a team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I feel like I say this sometimes to my clients. You know almost just kind of what you just said. Like that model, the health care model that we have in our country, is designed to just get people in and out. It's designed for the acute um, you know issues, illnesses, things like that, but they don't have the time because they're like. The doctors and nurses who work in that model are fantastic people, right.
Speaker 2:But like the system is designed, that they are beholden to the shareholders of the hospital units or the hospital systems, who are beholden to the insurance and the pharmaceutical industry and whatever they want, whatever is going to make them the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time. So they don't have time because it's getting to the root cause. Like why do you have those rashes? Nobody ever one time in my experience of of my own health journey, nobody ever one time asked me about my childhood trauma, like and. And it wasn't until I was in my health journey multiple years that I was like, oh, wow. Like look at all this baggage that I'm carrying and my nervous system is just so heightened all the time. Of course I'm a wreck. Of course I'm not sleeping. Of course my digestion is crap. No pun intended.
Speaker 2:Literally Like because I can't my my. My nervous system is working overdrive because it's looking for, like how to keep me alive. It's not worried about digesting my food properly, you know.
Speaker 1:Right, it's like we'll worry about that later.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah. And so I always just like that model, like don't get me wrong, I try not to knock this system, thank God for modern medicine, and like ERs, ors, icus, like if I'm in a car accident, take me to the nearest hospital, don't you dare bring me to my house, like I just you know. But like, as far as true root cause, what is really going on? Looking at an individual person as a unique specimen and like trying to look at their body chemistry and their history and their symptoms and their experiences and their traumas and their surgeries and everything all together to kind of like help them through that process. That model just sucks, frankly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's huge. Right, it's not against the people, it's not against the doctors, like that's not the problem, it's the system that's the problem, and it's the same across so many different places. Right, it's the system that's broken. And so I completely agree Break my leg. We're going to the hospital, don't break, I'm not about to heal that. That's not a root problem. We broke my leg Right.
Speaker 1:But, like you said, there's pieces to this that the long term, the long term struggle there are. Like you said, no one ever asked you about your trauma. And then we wonder why all these things are coming up, why my nervous system can't calm down where those things are coming from, and I would love to chat a little bit more about how trauma can show up in our business. So, yes, we, most of us not all of us, but most of us have some capacity of trauma throughout our lives, if we haven't yet, but you know there's there's lots of different aspects of trauma that come up, and so, without those being dealt with or without those, you know, being looked at and being a part of our healing journey, how does that start to maybe show up in business? That we wouldn't necessarily think to equate that to trauma.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the trauma just kind of you get into these. You get these trauma responses where, like your nervous system, when you're whatever the trauma is your nervous system is're in a car accident, you're most people or um, did you know that if you, if you, if somebody goes to like touch a stove or touch a fire or something, if you actually record that and you slow it down into like the microseconds, they actually move their hand before they make any like facial um expressions or yell or anything like that. So that's interesting.
Speaker 2:That's a, that's your nervous system. Your nervous system knows, like, instantaneously, like before your brain can even compute, what's happening, your nervous system knows that. That's that, um, uh, surface is hot and will. You'll move your hand back, um, before you ever scream. So, like, think about that as far as like, if you're, if you're in a abusive household as a child, so they say. Research shows that, like, the most important time in a kid's life is the first seven years of their life. That's when they are making healthy attachments, they kind of understand their place in the world. They need to have healthy adults around them to encourage them to know where their boundaries are, know what's safe, what's not safe. They learn, like, social etiquette, all of those things Right. So, if you have, if you're in an abusive household where, like I'll use myself as an example so, like my dad, my parents were addicts, um, my dad was very physically abusive to my mom and my older brother who had a different dad.
Speaker 2:Um, as a result, my mom was very verbally abusive to me and my brother was very physically abusive to me. Um, so, like the, when you're in that sort of like constant state of where I would I never knew. When I was like really little, I never knew when I was safe. I was kind of always looking over my shoulder Is dad in a bad mood? Like, is my mom going to rip me apart? Like what you know? Um, when you're in that kind of constant state or state of fight or flight, that becomes your baseline. So then, even when I grew up and I was no longer in that environment, I moved out of my mom's house when I was 16. I was never. I was no longer in her house, her. My parents divorced when I was about six or seven. Um, but I still lived with my mom. My dad passed away from drugs but, um, when I was, when I moved out of my mom's house, I wasn't in that environment anymore.
Speaker 2:So it wasn't necessarily like an immediate threat of my safety, but my nervous system kept me at that level because that was my baseline. So then I started having these responses where, even if something wasn't dangerous or I wasn't like at any risk. That's how I responded. So it became a trauma response where I was just like instantly, like heightened and my muscles would be really tense and all of my blood would shunt to my you know, even if it was just something minimal. So I think when, as far as business is concerned, like those trauma responses, without having the awareness of knowing where that's coming from, your most people are are acting from a state of like subconscious, or just habit, like that's. That's what your baseline is, that's where, that's where you react instead of like consciously think about your decisions. So that can be anything like. Sometimes it's regarding money, or it's regarding, um, uh, if somebody says no like to you or somebody you know you've people.
Speaker 2:Rejection is is a huge trigger for people, can throw people into you know a spiral or throw you off the deep end If, if somebody is saying no because you feel like that's a sense of you know, an attack on your worth, or but a lot of people don't consciously think of it that way. They just react oh, she said no to me, like. And then most people will go on the defensive as an adult, or I shouldn't say most people. Some people will go on the defensive as an adult, or I shouldn't say most people, some people will go on the defensive.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's such an important piece to be aware of, especially as adults, especially as business owners, because these traumas that are coming up inside of us, these trauma responses that are coming up inside of us, kind of, you know, tint everything else that happens. So, like you said, if you have a client come to you and you've done this proposal, and you're all excited, you think it went well, and they say, no, it's not the right time, I don't have the money for this, whatever the reason is, like a lot of times it really has nothing to do with you. But here's the reason that they're proposing to you and you, like you said, you bring that internally Right and you're like, oh, it's me, it's a rejection on me, it's my character, it's who I am, I'm not good enough, my business is never going to succeed. And you go on and on and you spiral into this place of someone said, no, it's not the right time for me, and that must mean that I'm not good enough, right. And so I love how you shared that, whether it's money rejection, like there's so many different pieces in business and you know, oftentimes we say that business is really a huge self discovery journey, like if you want to learn more about yourself. Open a business right.
Speaker 1:There's about to be a whole experience and I think that there's something to be said about that where these trauma responses can show up in your business and if you're not aware of them, it's, it's harming you and your business and your mental state and all of these things more over than you might even be aware of, right, and that you might even realize it's happening. So I love how you shared that. Can we talk about our mind body connection, because we talked about it a little bit here and so oftentimes, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we are in our mind right, we are thinking, we're analyzing, we're moving, we're. There's a lot of mind how can I make this better? How can I be better? All of these things and our body just kind of lives there, and so I would love to chat a little bit more around your thoughts on the body mind connection and what that really means to have both of them working and be active and be aware of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that, I love talking about it. It's because it's been such a like integral part in my own healing. I feel like I was so in my head through my, you know, early healing journey and and to be clear, like I don't ever claim like healing is a lifelong journey, um, like I'm not perfect. I these, these are just the things that I've learned along the way. Um, there are certainly days where I I have anxiety still that I have to keep in check.
Speaker 2:There's things that I need to keep myself grounded and keep my anxiety in check, but there are days where um that are worse than others.
Speaker 2:You know Um, but yeah, so the mind body connection.
Speaker 2:So your mind and your body are so closely related, um, and I feel like you know, referencing the conventional medical model or the traditional medical healthcare system in our country, like they don't, that model doesn't do a very good job at recognizing how important your um mind and body, how important the connection that connection is. So there's a thing called allostatic load, so that's like the, the cumulative stress on your body from um stress, or a cumulative stress on your body from traumatic events. So like you can um experience like one stressful thing, like, say, a car accident, or your boyfriend breaks up with you or something else, but like if you are in a car accident and then your boyfriend breaks up with you the next week and then you get fired from your job and then your mom dies, and then so like that's the allostatic load, right, like all of those events will, if you don't process um those emotions that come along with those stressors. So, uh, I forget the first thing I said. Like your boyfriend breaks up with you. So like if you're like my boyfriend broke up with me and you just stuff that emotion down. Well, emotion is energy in motion, so it's actually like energy.
Speaker 2:If you're just stuffing it down inside of you, then you're you get fired from your job and then that energy is still there and then you stuff some more energy on top of it. Then now you've got all you know more energy in there and then your mom dies, but then you have more energy inside of there and eventually all of that energy just creates havoc on the inside of your body and that's when physical symptoms start to manifest. So for different people it's different. So it's like for me it was digestive issues and then skin issues.
Speaker 2:I started getting those rashes all over my body, on my arms a lot, and my legs, um, but other people it's migraines or, uh, joint pain or, you know, back pain, other things like that. Um, so like, until you, until you process those emotions that come along with those stressors, it's going to store inside of your body and then come out in some way, like either by through your mental health, with like anxiety, depression, panic, insomnia, those kinds of things, or physical manifestations, like I already just said. So it's so important to really recognize that and know that, like um, I always tell my clients this too like your body is inherently designed to heal, like think about it when you cut your hand, like, do you ever think about, you know, if you have a big cut?
Speaker 2:if you have a cut on your hand, like you don't think about anything to heal that? Like it just heals. Don't think about anything to to heal that, like it just heals. After a couple of days you'll get a scab and then slowly you'll watch that scab, you know, close up, and then before you know it it's gone. After you know a week, 10 days, 14 days. So it's your, the inside is is no different when you're having other symptoms, like on a larger scale. Your, your body is inherently designed to heal. You have to recognize that connection, process the emotions that are associated with stress, manage your stress for day to day and um ground yourself so you can overcome those things.
Speaker 1:Such an important piece and just like a good reminder to people, right, like a lot of times we think, oh, I keep getting migraines, or I keep getting X, y and Z and I don't know where this is coming from. And talking back from that very first conversation around like what is the core problem here? What is the root of this, rather than band-aiding it with Advil or hoping it goes away, what is actually going on here? Why does this keep coming up? And I think that that's such an important piece that you mentioned that you know it might not just be X, y and Z.
Speaker 1:It could be trauma that's living in your body. It could be something that like the emotion piece that you've pushed down and pushed and pushed and pushed, and now it's like, hey, hi, I'm here, I still need to be processed, I still need to, you know, be I don't want to say dealt with, but I need to be acknowledged and I need to work through this piece. And so I love just that message around. It's not that physical symptom is coming there often for a reason. It's telling us something about our body and it's telling us something about what's going on and it's not always trauma, but also just paying attention to that mind body connection and realizing. You know well, how has the week been? Has it been a stressful week? What's been going on? What? What recently have I gone through that maybe I'm just kind of holding on to, that I'm not really consciously aware of in the moment. So I think that's super important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's important to know, like when I'm, when, when you're talking about trauma is like I think I'm of the belief that we all have trauma and there's a difference in trauma as far as, like what we call in this kind of space, we call like big T traumas or little T traumas so like it doesn't, your life doesn't have to be I mean, this isn't, this isn't a whose life was worse than whose but like you don't have to have like abusive parents and have your brother die in front of you. To like say, like I've had trauma, like we've all had, like a friend who betrayed us or lost a job that we really liked and weren't expecting to lose, or had a loved one die, maybe not traumatically right in front of you, but like that's still something that needs to be processed and if you don't process it, you're just going to hold on to that emotion and that's when it causes problems.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, so good. Melissa, thank you so much for this conversation. I think it's something that needs to be brought to light and open up our world and open up our eyes for sure. I have a few fast action questions, if you're open for it.
Speaker 2:Totally, let's do it.
Speaker 1:Okay, what's your favorite book or podcast?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, my favorite book is probably Carol Dweck's mindset.
Speaker 1:Ooh Okay, google it everyone.
Speaker 2:Or the body keeps score and I can't remember his name. Uh, doctor or something, I can't remember his name.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. Another another good one. Are you a morning person or a night owl?
Speaker 2:Morning person.
Speaker 1:Love the mornings. And then your advice to those who are working through their healing process. Like you said, it is a lifelong journey, healing. There's always something to be done, something to be focused on, and so is there any advice on or towards somebody who's on that healing journey.
Speaker 2:I would just encourage you to reach out to somebody who you trust and talk about things. It's okay to be vulnerable and it's okay to say I'm struggling with this, I need help. And talking about things, the awareness is a hundred percent the first step, and I always tell people healing is possible. I don't care what it is, no matter what. If the doctor says this is a lifelong incurable disease, I think I call BS, I think it is Healing is always possible.
Speaker 1:I love that. What a beautiful, beautiful message to close out on. Melissa, tell us more about what you're up to, how people can work with you, and I will drop all your links in the show notes as well.
Speaker 2:Sure you can my website's holistichealthbymelissacom, and then I'm on every social media platform Holistic Health by Melissa. You can fill out an application link on my website to schedule a free discovery call to chat about what your goals are, what your symptoms are and how we can get you healed.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Thank you so much for being here today. I appreciate this conversation and I know it's an important one for everyone and for those who are listening. Definitely stay tuned, subscribe, rate all of the things. Thank you again for a beautiful podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
