The battle with my body

Whenever there is something I feel needs to be discussed that I find highly uncomfortable to write I turn in circles until I address the big fat elephant in my mind. Yes, that still happens six years on. In this case, my body. In my first session with my therapist over a year ago, one of her first questions was, "Alex, what do you do for self-care?". I stared at her blankly. It's been a long journey since that question and something I am nowhere near to figuring out, but I thought I'd share where I'm at because it's the thing that has gotten in the way of writing this blog a lot lately. Since December of last year, I have gotten ill on average once a month. Every time, I've been sick for between two and four weeks. Let's say I've been ill pretty much six months straight with the occasional few days off in between. I have had recurrent UTIs, kidney stones, inflammation of my intestines, swollen glands, and tonsilitis on numerous occasions, which has led to me losing my voice completely three times. I have never been this sick so often, and it has royally sucked balls!

It has forced me to look at an area of my life I have avoided, like the plague, firstly because I know f*ck all about my body, I have zero relationship with it. Secondly, I just haven't had the motivation to delve into what feels like such an overwhelming and complex topic. Unfortunately (and fortunately), my body thinks it's about time I pay attention to it. Being sick has impacted me in so many ways, my energy levels, how I show up in my work, learning to stop, being consistent, and so much more. I thought I'd deep dive into some of the things that have come to the surface. As I said, this is by no means a conclusion blog; this is an "I'm sitting knee-deep in this sh*t, and I need to talk about it," not literally, obviously. For the spiritual peeps that are subscribed, I'm in thick of my Saturn return which sits in my 6th house (House of Health). Translated for the non-Astro buffs, the fantastic universe wants me to learn about my health, and until I do, I'll keep getting sick. Hooray! I remember my astrologer recently saying, "your Saturn return will be a piece of cake; all you have to do is self-care, slow down and stop." HAVE YOU MET ME! So here I am, reluctantly digging into the weird and wonderful world of my body.

Menstrual Cycles 

I began to get curious about menstrual cycles after I interviewed Becky Quicke about the Menopause for the #FromTraumatoTriumphLive series. It made me realise how out of touch I was with my menstrual cycle and how much I didn't know. I remember when I asked Becky, "when should women be starting to think about this?" as we were concentrating our conversation on Menopause, and it was evident that around my age was a good time to start learning more. This was further reinforced last week when I started working with a nutrition & hormone coach. One of the very first questions she asked was, "when is your cycle?" and there I was, staring blankly again. In the same week, I was down a TikTok rabbit hole when I watched an entrepreneur about my age talk about how she runs her business around her cycles. That's when I realised I was doing this but unintentionally. I have excruciating periods that have me bedbound with a hot water bottle and under a duvet for a day or two; I realised that given the flexibility of my work, I had the choice and luxury not to work during that period (the other period). I did this sporadically, and now I was beginning to realise I could be more intentional but not only that, I could learn about energy and when it was the right time to do what and when. *Mind blown* 

Why is no one talking about this to female entrepreneurs?!

Nutrition

After paying four hundred euros for the world's quickest doctor's appointment, exactly 7 minutes (Germans are efficient even in healthcare), and being given antibiotics that didn't quite fully heal me, I decided to try out a more natural route. I booked an appointment to see a naturopath, someone who specialises in natural medicine and looks at the body from a holistic perspective. I was diagnosed with inflammation of the intestines and swollen glands. The most amusing part of it all was that I was asked if I hadn't noticed my hoarse voice or that my face was swollen; I replied, "no, but now that you say that yes, I notice it." This is how bad I am at realising I'm not well. It has to be painstakingly apparent before I realise I'm not well, which has meant that I often end up unwell because I didn't catch it sooner. I also learned about antibiotics and how sometimes they can strip away the good stuff (why don't they teach this in school!?) I was given a few natural remedies and urged to change my diet to improve my immune system. I knew that there was no way I could do that on my own, so as synchronicity would have it, someone who had reached out to get coached by me happened to be a nutritionist, and we agreed on a swap.

Movement

This is my next body battle. I rather enthusiastically took up running at the start of the year following couchto5k. I got to about week 3 or 4, but I stopped as soon as I fell ill. When I got a few days of respite in between illnesses, I didn't want to use the little energy I had recouped, and then I was in a vicious circle, conscious that movement and exercise could probably do me good but worried I would fall sick again. I've yet to find something I love movement-wise; the closest thing has been ecstatic dance which I've mentioned in my newsletter before. I love to dance, and it doesn't feel like exercise, and I find it's good for my soul. At some point, once I have my health in order, I'll probably work with a coach on improving my movement, but for now, I'm focusing solely on nutrition first and improving my immune system. I think out of all the things health-wise that need changing, this will be the most challenging thing. I am a homebody, and the pandemic has made me very, very comfortable on my couch! So I'm opening up for suggestions of what has worked for people, especially those who have struggled with this in the past. Let me know down in the comments, pretty please!

I recently talked about Wellbeing for an EI Summit when the host and friend Sandra brought up the Wheel of Life exercise. It got me thinking, and I realised that every year since I've learned about it, I've focused on one area of my life for the whole year. I first came across the coaching wheel in 2017. It was the year I had my quarter-life crisis and had gone to see a therapist where I spent all my time talking about how toxic my work situation was, eventually deciding to leave the corporate world entirely. In 2018 I was on a mission to look for love; I went to see a hypnotherapist to do some work on healing from a past relationship that had left me scarred and single for eight years. In 2019 I was recovering from a miscarriage and healing my grief with the help of a therapist; this newsletter was birthed as a result. In 2020, I wanted to focus on getting my finances to clear my debt which I achieved, yippee! I worked with a business coach that helped me get better at tracking my money. In 2021, it's been all about my body and working with two different coaches, a nutritionist & hormonal coach and a resilience & well-being coach, to deal with the anxiety that reared its head at the start of the year and improve my gut.

Here's what I've realised from working on myself, I never do it alone. I always seek out professionals focused on the areas I'm looking to work on. Every area of my life I've worked on has some form of trauma attached; my nutrition threw up a whole bunch this week #funtimes! Often this has been the driving force of working with someone professional, usually a therapist, to help me through this. I've had to almost every single time do some form of inner child work and reparenting. There are many gaps in my education in different areas of life, by no fault of my family. Often it's a long lineage of people doing their best with the information they have and not to mention growing up in very different worlds with a lot less knowledge than we have today. All areas are about mindset and how prepared I am to create the change I seek and how much I want it; no coach or therapist can do it for you. Lastly, it's so much easier picking one area of my life and concentrating on it for a whole year than trying to work on many at the same time. Bonus, despite working on one area of my life every year, they are all interlinked. It's like a domino effect; when one improves, all the rest do; when one is out of sync, the rest suffer.

I've also explored my body through touch and pleasure but I left it out of the blog as even I have sharing boundaries on LinkedIn. Maybe one day, as I think it's a healthy thing to talk about for all the reasons mentioned in the above paragraph.

I thought I'd leave you with the Wheel Of Life exercise, and I'd love to hear if you've used one before and how often do you look at it?

With love and care,

#AuthenticAlex

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Hi there, I'm Alex. If we haven't met before, nice to meet you, and thank you for taking the time out to read my newsletter. If you enjoyed it, you could hit subscribe to be notified and if you liked it, feel free to like, share or add a comment. If you want to connect with me in other ways, you can find me on Instagram here, or you can also sign up for my Authentic Alex newsletter that covers topics such as creativity, purpose, presence, leadership, and storytelling.

About Alex: At the age of 24 Alex found herself employed as the Head of Training and Development for a Foreign Exchange Company in The City. After experiencing her very own quarter-life crisis, she decided to leave the corporate world and create her own definition of success. On the day she left that job she wrote a post that went viral on LinkedIn.

Since then she’s been named LinkedIn Top Voice UK twice for her mental health and personal growth content and has become an official LinkedIn Learning Instructor. She's also the co-founder of #LinkedInLocal, a global movement creating communities in over 100 countries and 1,000 cities.

She’s best known for blogging under the hashtag #AuhtenticAlex where she smashes one stigma at a time and writes about her therapy journey with the aim of inspiring others to transform their traumas into triumphs.

She now helps individuals and businesses grow their presence on LinkedIn, find their sense of purpose, awaken their creativity and tell their stories. You can find out more about her and the brand here: www.fromtraumatotriumph.co.