The Silent Burnout: My Journey to Healing

Have you ever felt "fine" while your body was silently screaming for help? That was my reality – the calm, high-functioning massage therapist whose world came crashing down with a debilitating gallbladder attack on Thanksgiving Day.

Chapters

• 0:00 My Unexpected Health Crisis
• 3:36 Revenge Bedtime Procrastination
• 7:41 The Thanksgiving Gallbladder Attack
• 10:40 Finding Healing Through Eastern Medicine
• 14:36 The Vagus Nerve Reset Solution
• 19:32 Taking Control of Stress Response

Transcript

Emily : 0:00

I was the calm one. I thought I'm fine, I'm functioning and I'm happy. So why did I end up in pain, feeling exhausted and sensitive to foods that I liked to eat? Today, I'm going to share with you my personal story about why I need and use Vagus Nerve Resets.

Emily : 0:21

Welcome to it Starts at Vagus, where holistic health meets modern living through the lens of a massage therapist and that's me.

Emily : 0:29

I'm Emily, and I am a neuromuscular massage therapist who works directly with the nervous system to help people relax their muscles and calm their minds. I'm here to guide you in unlocking the philosophy of the vagus nerve, the body's ultimate key to calm, connection and overall well-being. If stress, anxiety or burnout have you feeling stuck, you're in the right place. Before we start, if you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button. It encourages me to continue to make podcast episodes and I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that like and subscribe button. We currently have listeners in over 130 cities and as the show gets bigger, we can expand the podcast, bring in guests and continue to support your wellness, because I want this podcast to continue to be worth listening to and help people all over the world get stress and anxiety relief, naturally. Thank you to everyone who has already subscribed. I truly appreciate it. Now take a deep breath and let's explore how we can use our nervous system to support our bodies.

Emily : 1:42

Back in mid 2022, I scheduled an iridology appointment. Now, iridology is just a non-invasive method to look at your eyes to determine whether there are any health issues that may exist. And I know that some people are a little skeptical or even feel like it's nonsense. But hear me out, our bodies gives us signs and symptoms all the time. We often just don't know how to read them or what they mean. For example, a symptom for diabetes can be having a velvety neck. The back of your neck can kind of feel thick, the skin is or bulging eyes are an example for hyperthyroidism. So there are things that we can visually see that helps say, oh, this is a common sign or symptom for this condition or that one. So with iridology, they don't look at just one thing and say, oh, you've got it. No, they do look at a variety of things, and that's what my appointment did. She looked in my eyes and at the end, she helped me determine, based off of this, this and this is what, what everything is.

Emily : 2:57

At the end, what it came down to, what it all was stemming from, was stress and it just, it just didn't make any sense. I just I didn't understand how I could be so stressed out, because I love my kids, my husband and I were doing great. We had homeschooling was just fine, and my job was great. Like I am a massage therapist, I work in a calm room with soothing music and dimmed lights. It just it didn't add up to me. I'm like I don't think it's stress, I really didn't. But then I took a moment and I thought about it and I'm like well, maybe you know, maybe that's true. So a little bit of a backstory Back in 2020, my family and I moved from South Dakota down to Arkansas and I didn't know anybody.

Emily : 3:56

I didn't have a single friend that I knew down there and I was starting a new business. Well, it wasn't a new business. I had been practicing massage therapy for many years before that, but it was a new business in a new business. Well, it wasn't a new business. I had been practicing massage therapy for many years before that, but it was a new business in a different state and states, away from other people that I knew. So that was stressful, but I enjoyed it. My husband he was also starting his own business, plus we homeschooled. I was with a variety of business groups and I had my friends. That eventually made.

Emily : 4:27

But, needless to say, looking back, I was busy, I was consistently busy and I tried shoving all the things that I loved in one day. It was that I enjoyed all the things that I was doing. So it wasn't just one thing, or even two things, that was impacting my daily stress level. It was a variety of things With that. Because I was cramming everything into one day, sleep took a backseat. It just wasn't a priority of mine because I thought, well, I'm fine, I'm functioning, I'm doing okay, I'm happy and I feel like, because I could do something, I did do it because nothing was holding me back. So it just it took its toll out of the time of the amount of sleep I took.

Emily : 5:24

Now, looking back, I had what's called revenge, bedtime procrastination, and I feel like this happens to a lot of moms, especially because we are doing so many different things and we get used to not having enough sleep and still kind of functioning and I do say kind of functioning because we can do better. But I was a classic example of revenge bedtime, procrastination. And here are just those, just so that you can know about them. It's staying up late doing things that aren't urgent. It's feeling a burst of energy or freedom once everybody else is asleep, and regretting it in the next morning, but doing it again that very same night and then telling myself it's just one more hour or that I deserved this quiet time and that I was going to use it. So that is the basic examples of revenge bedtime, because I was reclaiming that time throughout the day, that I didn't have time to pause and I felt like that time was stolen from me during the day by either like work or caregiving or just the nonstop demands. It just built up and I would think. I know I should sleep. But this is my time, this is my time to be alone and have the peace or whatever I want to do. So I would, I would scroll, I would watch TV or a movie and I would just zone out. For no reason, I would just sit there and just enjoy that quiet time at the expense of sleep. And that, I think, was my biggest stressor, because my body didn't have time to rejuvenate, it didn't have time to process what had been going on the day before and it would just build up, build up, build up, build up. So I felt, quote, unquote, fine, but internally my body was going like you need to rest. But I would just push through because I could and I thought, because I could, I was fine.

Emily : 7:37

Now let's jump to Thanksgiving of 2022. This is when I had my first gallbladder attack. From what I believe was a gallbladder attack, it yeah, it was Thanksgiving. I had made all of this delicious food and I started eating it, as we do at a Thanksgiving, and nope, it did not stay down. Nothing stayed down. So I spent a good chunk of time. Whenever I ate something, it would just come right back up, which was not fun. I didn't feel well enough to eat anything for about a week. So, as silly as it sounds, I ate just sauerkraut for almost an entire week, because that is something that did settle my tummy down. So that's what I just. I just ate a variety of sauerkraut for about a week, and that's just how I survived the day of that attack.

Emily : 8:35

So Thanksgiving day, I was just in a lot of pain and nothing subsided it. It was. I took a hot bath. I had a heating pack on me. I stayed hydrated as well as I could with water, but it just it took a lot. It took all day. It took all day because we had our Thanksgiving meal more of around you know, like that 1112 time, so it took all day. It took all day because we had our Thanksgiving meal more of around you know, like that 11, 12 time. So it took the rest of the day of me just feeling icky and awful and it was just. It was a terrible feeling, but I didn't. You know, that's just. I'm like, well, here I go, I'm just going to go through this.

Emily : 9:14

But because I realized that some of those foods would make me vomit, I started looking into foods that would make me feel better, which is how I found sauerkraut, and there were just there were some that just didn't make sense to me because even if they were nutrient dense, that didn't necessarily mean that it would stay down and I was no longer able to eat some foods that I would have often. So, for example, there's a powder called butterfly pea flower powder. That's a tough word to say, but it is something that I would make in my drinks because it makes a really pretty blue drink and it helps your hair and your nails and all that good stuff. That was a triggering food. Couldn't have it. It was just the end of it. I couldn't have chicken, or sometimes it was beef. It really just it had no rhyme or reason and it was really really frustrating. So I'm like, okay, stress, we got to get this down Because remember the, the iridology appointment told me, hey, you're stressed out. And I'm like, am I? And then boom, bladder attack, gallbladder attack. So like, okay, yes, there is something to this.

Emily : 10:28

So I started doing more. I started getting more massages for myself, I started rebounding to help with lymphatic drainage, and rebounding is just a little mini trampoline. I just started doing that throughout the day and then I also started doing acupuncture. That really did help. That. That helped get a lot of things working better.

Emily : 10:56

And going back to the food, I also looked into herbs. I love herbs. I think they're super flavorful and nutrient dense in ways that we don't necessarily get from supplements, in my opinion. So that was started incorporating more herbs, and my son also likes herbs. And there was this day where we got a Chinese herb book and in that book there were just like two pages, two or three pages about the Chinese medicine form of helping people stay healthy and I was like that's really interesting Cause.

Emily : 11:37

Then I started going into a deep dive of Chinese medicine. I started making and so many connections it was really fun to see because I was like, okay, because I work with so many people, they tell me you know all the things that are ailments or that are hindering their health. A lot of the times the doctors are like, nope, there's no connection. And with Chinese medicine I was thinking of people that I was like, oh, my goodness, this would make sense and this would make sense and that makes sense. And it's just started all just forming in my head. I'm like, okay, this one seems solid. It's not talked about a lot, or at least in my circle, but it really does seem to have the answers on how to help people feel better. So I'm like, okay, we're going to do that. So I started including some more of their herbs and again, the Chinese also support acupuncture and massage. So I was like, yay, win, I'm already doing that.

Emily : 12:37

And I started sometimes I forget when I started doing something, when, because again, it was just over a year and a half, two years, of figuring all this out over a year and a half two years of figuring all this out. So there was a time where I started using castor oil packs and I would just wear that overnight. But when I started using essential oils to help certain organs in myself, based off of my acupuncture readings or how I was feeling, then I would use certain essential oils on my castor oil packs and that was great. I really did like that and I still do. Whenever I use the castor oil packs with the essential oils, I wear it overnight and I wake up in the morning feeling so good and where I can visually see inflammation leaving my body Like if I knew that a certain area was inflamed. It was so much softer that next morning I'm like okay, that works too, let's keep doing that.

Emily : 13:42

So I was trying to incorporate the Chinese medicine protocols acupuncture massage but a big one was again trying to fix my sleep patterns, cause again remember before I had that procrastination of going to bed. So I'm like okay, I really know I need to sleep and I didn't want to. I wanted to throw a fit like a three-year-old. I just didn't want to go to bed. I just it wasn't something I desired. But I'm like, okay, how can I help myself prepare for bedtime? As I read I really read that a lot of morning sun helps change your circadian rhythm to where you want to go to bed at the appropriate times. So I tried it and it worked for me. It really did.

Emily : 14:33

And I started to incorporate waking up I don't know 15 minutes earlier, just so I could go outside and soak up the morning sun, and I really did enjoy it, and I still do. It is a great practice for me. Sometimes my littlest kiddo will come out with me and we'll just have our talk time. I make a note not to bring out my phone and that I just listen to the birds and soak up that sun on my warm face. And it warms my face, I should say. And I just I just take moments to be present in that morning and I found it's a great way to start a day. It really does. And guess what? By the end of the night I was falling asleep in my chair.

Emily : 15:20

That first week that I started incorporating morning sun, it really did work on my body. I was going to bed, naturally, just I don't know, it was like 1030, 11 o'clock. At the beginning it was so wonderful because I didn't have that temper tantrum because I was already falling asleep. Now there were also times where I would incorporate certain teas to help calm nerves down so that I would get ready for bed. It became part of my nighttime routine to tell my brain hey, it's time we're doing our bedtime routine, it's time to sleep. So a vagus nerve reset that I like to incorporate is gargling After I brush my teeth, I gargle salt water and that helps vibrate the vagus nerve to say, hey, it's safe enough to calm down Again.

Emily : 16:13

Just little, simple, simple things. And it might sound overwhelming of all these things that I do, but it's again, it's just spread throughout this this. You know almost two years timeline that I started implementing all these things and you just choose what you want to start with. You can just practice, like I'm going to choose this, see how it goes, see how my body feels with it, and decide if I want to incorporate it into my daily life, and that's all it is. It's very simple, it's easy. Is it a little work? Yeah, at the beginning it is because you're discovering who you are, and it's so much fun when you start realizing what your body likes and what you enjoy. It's like discovering a piece of yourself that you didn't know was there and I loved it. It starts becoming addicting to figuring out what your body likes and what it doesn't, and because of it, now I am able to be more sensitive to when my body gets overloaded with stress, which is great.

Emily : 17:21

You want to be able to recognize when your body is like oh, is this just becoming too much? You need to be able to recognize that, to say, okay, how can I take care of my body today so that I start feeling better, so that the bad habits don't creep in? We want to keep all the good habits, and paying attention to how we feel is one way, how we can keep those good habits going. And that's when I started looking into the vagus nerve. I'm like holy cow. There's a nerve that we can impact again pain-free, easy, super fast. That keeps our body healthy from stress. It keeps the anxiety away. It makes me feel physically better, emotionally better, I can think clearer. It was just like holy cow. This is such a key to overall wellbeing and it's so, so simple. It's so simple.

Emily : 18:19

So I'm like people need to know about this, because I couldn't believe how fast stress snuck up on me Because, again, I liked all my stress. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that I liked it and now I had to become sensitive so that I can counteract it, because stress is always going to happen. We are living, so there's going to be good days, there's going to be bad days, and we need to be able to counteract that, because stress should not compromise our health. It is a factor of life, but it should not take our life, and that is what I want to share. I want to share it because even the ones who look like they've got it all under control, like I thought, I thought I had it all under control, but I was quietly burning out and it started affecting me until I couldn't avoid it any longer. So that is what I wanted to share with you is this is just my journey. It's going to be changing throughout, how my body changes and life. One day my kids won't, you know they'll become adults and life will change again and I'll be able to readjust because I'll know what my body likes, and that's all it is.

Emily : 19:37

It's learning how to support yourself. Well, thank you for spending your time with me. It's learning how to support yourself. Well, thank you for spending your time with me. Breathe and start a habit that makes you feel better tomorrow. So anything that makes it easier so that you can have. Thank you for spending your time with me. Breathe and start a habit that makes tomorrow easier. Thanks for listening to. It Starts at Vagus. New episodes are released every Tuesday. If you liked this episode, go ahead and give it a subscribe button so that you get notifications and don't miss out on what's coming next. If you'd like a step-by-step video on how to do a pain-free and easy vagus nerve exercise, grab my free vagus nerve reset video in the show notes. It's what I do when I feel like I just not like myself. Until next time, remember, wellness starts at vagus.