What Chronic Illness Has To Do With Spiritual Crises: The Role Of Functional Psychiatry
What Chronic Illness Has To Do With Spiritual Crises
The Role Of Functional Psychiatry
Why do so many people who struggle with trauma and emotional pain also suffer from some pretty severe chronic health issues? Modern medicine would say: because those that are chronically ill are also depressed about it. Or, conversely, that stress makes you sick. Yet many of the folks I've seen for counseling either had no idea they had an underlying physical illness or had seen all their symptoms: mental, emotional, and physical, rise up together.
Our linear thinking about health stipulates that the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind, as though they are completely separate systems. But in my experience, there is infinitely more to the story.
My Healing Crisis: When The Body Says "No"
Back in 2015, I was going through what one might call a "complete mental breakdown", an existential/spiritual crisis, or a healing crisis. For 3 months I went in and out of altered states of consciousness, was so depressed I couldn't function, and my body was falling apart. I relived painful memories, purged old belief systems, and became much more sensitive to sights, sounds, smells, and energy. Having already worked in the mental health crisis field, I knew I wouldn't find the answers I wanted there, so I cobbled together a small and strained support team of friends, roommates, and spiritual counselors. The belief that kept me alive most days, was the feeling that this experience was profound (albeit terrifying) and had something to teach me. Something in me knew I had to reach this point for me to live the life I was meant to live.
The life I had been living before this crisis was making me sick. I never slept, I worked an emotionally taxing job that left me feeling guilty and complicit in a system I fundamentally disagreed with. I ate food that didn't nourish me one bit. I was stuffing down years of trauma and pain. As I've come to learn, the body always gives us the loudest wake-up call.
Among the many ways this crisis changed my life, one of the starkest was finding out a host of ways my body was suffering and how to make it better. I discovered I had an auto-immune disease, food allergies, a number of vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and a host of diagnoses. To heal my body required a very different way of living, eating, resting, and nourishing myself. My sensitivities were indeed a gift that led me to a way of caring for myself that I couldn't fathom before. And as I began to heal my gut, immune system, and nervous system, my mental health got immensely better too.
It is, of course, overly simplistic to consider health crises a "blessing" when often, most of us struggle to get the help we need and deserve. Our medical system rarely validates our pain and often doesn't have the tools needed to treat long-term "mysterious" illnesses or auto-immune conditions, many of which can be life-threatening. Yet, there's no doubt that when our bodies give us a signal like this, we are forced to come into a different way of relating to ourselves and the world. I've talked to countless people who pinpoint a chronic illness as the start of their awakening and, through trial and error, eventually a more fulfilling life.
One Condition, Many Causes. One Cause, Many Conditions
My health crisis didn't end with a simple diagnosis and a gluten-free diet. It's six years later, and even with a massive shift in the way I see myself, my body, and the world, I'm still far from fully "healed". Brain fog, panic, anxiety, insomnia, ulcerative colitis, and uncontrolled altered states are well in my past, but I still struggle with a few remaining symptoms that western medicine and many specialist couldn't crack a dent in.
Eventually I found my way to Functional Medicine.
“Functional Medicine is a systems biology–based approach that focuses on identifying and addressing the root cause of disease. Each symptom or differential diagnosis may be one of many contributing to an individual’s illness.”
“As the graphic illustrates, a diagnosis can be the result of more than one cause. For example, depression can be caused by many different factors, including inflammation. Likewise, a cause such as inflammation may lead to a number of different diagnoses, including depression. The precise manifestation of each cause depends on the individual’s genes, environment, and lifestyle, and only treatments that address the right cause will have lasting benefit beyond symptom suppression.”
Through the years of revolving doors between specialists, who had no idea or desire to know how my symptoms (mental, emotional and physical) related to one another, I finally found a framework that made sense. After years of seeing clients and struggling myself, it was always widely apparent to me that every single issue we have is caused by multiple factors and are all interconnected.
New emerging research reflects this.
Inflammation, Trauma, and Disease
According to the head of the department of psychiatry at Cambridge, who studies the role of the immune system in mental health, Dr. Edward Bullmore explains in his book The Inflamed Mind:
"These days it is difficult to think of a disease that isn't caused or complicated by inflammation or autoimmunity. And it is equally difficult to think of a disease that isn't associated with depression, fatigue, anxiety, or some other mental symptom. If you have diabetes, your risk of depression is at least double. People living with multiple sclerosis are three times more likely than normal to suffer a major depressive episode and there is an increased risk of suicide. The list goes on and on: HIV, cancer, stroke, chronic bronchitis, you name it."
Emerging wisdom stipulates that what's traditionally considered mental health conditions and physical health conditions both have a common cause of inflammation. Inflammation wreaks all kinds of havoc on the body and inflammation itself can be caused by anything from environmental toxins, viruses, or even trauma.
“There are fascinating new insights into how high levels of social stress can increase bodily inflammation. And there is growing evidence that people who have experienced adversity or abuse in childhood are more likely to be inflamed as children and adults.”
While much of psychiatry is still seeking to find biomarkers for mental illness solely in the neurotransmitters in our brain, there is more reason than ever to look at the many intersecting biological systems, especially as they are impacted by our lived experiences of trauma, adversity, our spiritual lives, and so much more.
So, does that mean all of my emotional pain is being caused by a physical illness or imbalance? I get this question quite a bit from clients and colleagues. In my experience: no. To go back to the core tenant of Functional Medicine - one condition, many causes. One cause, many conditions. In other words, we all have a personal pie chart of factors that influence the body-mind. Everything from trauma, to genetics, to our unique spiritual gifts, to our ancestors, to the food we eat all co-create our experience of wellness and disease. It's our job to develop the most complete understanding as possible of what makes us feel whole.
Much love,
Jaz