Are you second-guessing your decisions, feeling terrified of making mistakes, or trying to control everything around you? You're not alone. As high-achieving women, we often bear the brunt of repeated negative messaging from emotionally immature or narcissistic influences, causing us to distrust ourselves. Together, we'll dissect these harmful patterns, learn to identify the signs and take steps toward shifting these disempowering beliefs.
Also in the episode, I share my own story about leaning into trusting my intuition and I share my recent journey into hormone testing with the help of functional medicine practitioner Lori Aikman.
In this episode, I talk about the following: 1. Coming back to trusting your instincts and honoring your feelings. 2. Some common signs that you are not trusting yourself. 3. The importance of hormone testing and my personal hormone journey.
Are you second-guessing your decisions, feeling terrified of making mistakes, or trying to control everything around you? You're not alone. As high-achieving women, we often bear the brunt of repeated negative messaging from emotionally immature or narcissistic influences, causing us to distrust ourselves. Together, we'll dissect these harmful patterns, learn to identify the signs and take steps toward shifting these disempowering beliefs.
Also in the episode, I share my own story about leaning into trusting my intuition and I share my recent journey into hormone testing with the help of functional medicine practitioner Lori Aikman.
In this episode, I talk about the following: 1. Coming back to trusting your instincts and honoring your feelings. 2. Some common signs that you are not trusting yourself. 3. The importance of hormone testing and my personal hormone journey.
Hi, I'm Dr Steph and I'm here to guide you on your journey to healing from a difficult relationship with your mother, whether she was narcissistic, emotionally immature or just plain toxic. I want you to know that you are, in fact, not broken and you do not have to suffer from anxiety or explosive emotional reactions like lashing out. You can break the cycle. You are a strong, capable woman who can handle any challenge that comes your way, and I'm going to show you how to have the ultimate control over your reactions so that you are unstoppable. Welcome to the Broken to Brave podcast. Welcome back. I hope you had a wonderful weekend and I hope that your week is off to a great start. Thank you for tuning in. I appreciate you for listening. What did I want to share with you? Any personal updates? Well, we locked in some holiday plans. I'm taking off several weeks. We're spending lots of time with the girls and I'm looking forward to it. I'm curious if you have any fun plans. I hope that, no matter what you're doing, you do something that your soul is craving. I hope you just take some time to really honor yourself this holiday season. We're going to take a bit of a left turn today.
Speaker 1:
If you follow me on Instagram or on Facebook, then you probably saw my stories sometime in September that I decided to work with Lori Aikman to have my hormones tested. I got my results back the end of October it was early November, I can't remember for sure. I was going to go ahead and share the results on Instagram, but I decided to share them here as well, which, to be completely honest, feels a bit more vulnerable because stories are gone in 24 hours. However, I think possibly perhaps more useful and beneficial to have it here, because you may be struggling with some of the same things that I was. There we are. I decided I'm stepping into that bold, brave, badass mindset which, if you've listened to previous episodes, you know what I'm referring to. Let's just give it a go and dive in. Although I wasn't having hormone issues related to mood or emotions, which is common for people you bet your bottom dollar. I'm going to figure out how to link this back so it's relevant to the podcast as well as topics that I work with clients on. I'm just going to come out and say it.
Speaker 1:
I think every high achieving woman needs to have her hormones tested, especially those of you who are moms, because of the constant demand you experience. Whether you're a stay-at-home mom, and really 24 hours a day, there's the constant demand or you work a full-time job or you own your own business. It's just a lot. It is a lot. Yeah, I don't know If you would have asked me this a few weeks ago, I probably wouldn't have said this, but after getting my hormones tested, I see the value. I just wanted to throw that out there, first and foremost, before I dive into signs that you may need to get your hormones tested, signs that I was experiencing what I tried, what my results were and, ultimately, what I'm doing now.
Speaker 1:
I want to talk through messaging that most receive when growing up and one way that it impacts us that usually people don't realize. Once you do realize it, then you can take steps to shift that. What I'm about to share is especially true if you are raised by an emotionally immature or narcissistic mother. Many of us receive messaging in childhood to disconnect from ourselves. Let me explain, for instance, with your emotions. Most as an infant, as a young child, as a teenager, are taught to. Their parents are probably trying to teach them to regulate their emotions, but basically they're being taught to cut off their emotions. You may have been shushed, hushed, sent to your room if you are feeling emotional, told to get over it, told to let it go, anything like that that begins to send a message of what I'm experiencing internally shouldn't be happening. I can't trust this. I need to be trusting what's being told to me externally.
Speaker 1:
Another example is when you get hurt as a child. Many children are told oh, you're fine. I get why people do that, because if I tell a child they're fine, they'll get over it quicker. It gives an immediate result. Long-term impact of being told over and over and over and over again when I get hurt that I'm fine is children start to believe what is external to them and not internal. I don't feel like I'm fine External. I'm being told by a caregiver that I am, so I must not be able to trust this.
Speaker 1:
Okay, what else? We're told what we should do when we grow up, what careers we should have, what jobs we should or shouldn't have, what's realistic and not realistic and what's the right way to do things. What's the wrong way to do these things? And I get all of this and why it happens and it makes sense. And at the same time, there are negative impacts. And so if we look at these things, what is the common result?
Speaker 1:
Over time, with this repeated messaging, we often learn not to trust ourselves. So when you heard me say that not to trust ourselves it did that feel true. And I want to be clear. It's not like you don't trust yourself across any situation, but do you find yourself in specific situations where you don't trust yourself? I'm going to give you a few examples of what I mean so you can see does this feel true for me?
Speaker 1:
Some common signs that you don't trust yourself, and you can just think. It is one or more true. Okay, you are terrified of making a mistake. You try to control everything around you, including yourself. Maybe you put yourself down internally or in front of other people. Maybe you make decisions you believe others will agree with you, second guess your decisions. You don't set clear boundaries. You are unsure if you've made a good decision unless you get that external validation. You ruminate on what could have been if you made a different choice. You feel disconnected from what you want. You don't know what you want. You feel disconnected from your intuition, and the list goes on and on and on. But I'll stop there Now pause and ask yourself.
Speaker 1:
Do any of these feel true? Is this my reoccurring experience? Most that I come across have encountered at least one of these, but oftentimes many of them. To be completely honest, most of these felt true for me before doing the inner work. Now that I'm doing the inner work and I've done a ton of inner work I guide clients through overcoming each of these. That's essentially rebuilding trust for yourself.
Speaker 1:
Why am I bringing this up when I told you that I was going to be talking about hormones? Well, because I had a situation where I didn't completely honor myself. What if the goal is to come back to yourself, one of the main goals of life? What if it's to come back to yourself and to honor what you just kind of know to be true, what you kind of know to be right, even if everybody else is like, oh Steph, these are normal symptoms, this happens to all moms, but it doesn't feel quite right to me. So let's go into more of my story. Actually, I had my second baby March 2020 and I worked full time at NASA at the time, and then I also decided that I was going to start my business when she was about three months old, and the few months after she was born were some of the lowest times of my life, but that's a story for another day Now, over the next two years. So again, that was March 2020,.
Speaker 1:
I struggled with sleep more than I had before, and I also struggled to lose weight, and I had never struggled to lose weight in the past, and at the time I didn't realize that that was related to my hormones. But now I do realize that those were two additional signs. But I did notice. That was that my libido wasn't what it once was. So at first I thought, well, maybe it's because I'm on this birth control, or maybe it's because I'm breastfeeding, but I went off birth control and I weaned her at a year and I continued to have issues with libido.
Speaker 1:
And when I brought it up to others, I'd hear things like, oh, that's normal. Or I'd hear like, oh, just pretend. Or you know all kinds of things about what other people do, and that did not sit well with me. I'm like I'm not just going to pretend that everything is fine if it's not fine. So in my heart I had this knowing in 2021 that it was a hormone issue. Just something in me was like I think that my hormones are not quite right Now, may 2021, I started eating in a way that has been shown to balance hormones and I immediately noticed a change in my period where nearly all of my symptoms disappeared, which, honestly, more than two years later, utterly fantastic, like everyone needs to know.
Speaker 1:
So, if you don't know, when you eat in a way that balances your hormones, your period symptoms largely go away and prove like I'm not experiencing cramps and back pain, and that your ability is like way, way down, like amazing. So I'm just going to go on that tangent for a minute. So, yeah, like talking to a bunch of women and I'm like this is a public service announcement. Folks I went to I guess it was, I don't know yeah, 2021 or 2022. I went to the OB for an annual checkup and she asked like how my cycle was and I like started telling her how many days between periods and she's like no, no, no. I mean like how is it? And then I told her how fantastic it was and that that started happening when I was eating balanced meals and she was like oh my gosh, like I've heard this from other women but, honestly, we don't learn this in school and, to be honest with you, that is an issue. That is an issue, folks, because how many of you? I'm going to ask you listening right now, what are you dealing with on a monthly basis? And what I'm telling you is I didn't believe it at first. I was like maybe this is a coincidence, like the first cycle I had after changing up my eating habits. It's like magical Okay, off, let's come back off that tangent. I was like gotta do that PSA anyways. So now that point. So we're in 2021.
Speaker 1:
I noticed some increase in my libido, but things didn't seem right still. And even though I made, like these changes to my diet or lifestyle I'll just say lifestyle changes, because I didn't put myself on a diet, I just changed the way that I ate. So, even though I did that in mid 2021, I struggled to lose weight or to keep it off. So I might like lose 10 pounds and then I gained it back. And I think that happened twice, where I lost 10 pounds and then gained it back. So it wasn't until March of this year March 2023, when I made a few additional changes to my, the way that I was eating, that I was able to lose it and sustain it.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so I'm happy to dive into any of that more if you all are curious, but for now, just leave it at that. Now, does anything that I'm describing sound alarming? Probably not, unless you're a dietitian or in functional medicine, because I don't know what you do for work, but I've heard so many women describe issues like this. Right, they have libido issues, they struggle to lose weight after kids, all kinds of stuff like that, lube issues. Yeah, like nothing really sounds too alarming.
Speaker 1:
Well, fast forward to July of this year July 2023, and I had this inner pool again, like get your hormones tested. So why am I sharing this somewhat drawn out story? Well, one, what if I said this at the beginning, but I'm going to say it again. What if one of the major purposes and major points of life is to honor yourself? What if one of the major points of life is to come back to yourself, to let go of what they say is normal, what you should do, what they think is the right way, and just to tune into that inner pool rather than to ignore it? You have this inner knowing. For a reason and I'm vulnerably going to say this I somewhat ignored that inner pool. I mean, did I take steps with changing the way I was eating, yes, but I didn't get the hormones tested, even though I had this, knowing that I had a hormone issue, and ignored it largely for years.
Speaker 1:
Now let's fast forward to the hormone testing that I just did with Lori Aikman. My results are back and across the board. My sex hormones are all low Estrogen is not in the normal range. Progesterone it's on the low side of the normal range. Testosterone not in the normal range. So, one do I feel validated? Yes, two do I realize? Like, oh yeah, you should probably listen to your intuition stuff. This is a good reminder. Thank you, universe. And here's the thing. It is all connected to my adrenal gland not working properly. Everything's all connected, and so when the adrenal gland is not working properly, there's negative impacts on the sex hormones as well as many other hormones.
Speaker 1:
I'm not a pro in this, so I'm not even going to attempt to describe that piece. So very likely, my adrenal gland experience dysfunction Not sure if I'm saying that quite in the right way, but you know what I mean. Due to the ongoing demand that my body was under from 2020 to 2021, maybe 2022, with working full time, having my business, having a baby during COVID just lots of fears coming up around COVID trying to work with her home for a while. It was just like bananas. We'll just keep saying that.
Speaker 1:
So let's pause and I just want to talk about the signs of hormone issues, because I'm sharing this. I'm telling you I think everybody should get tested and I just want to be clear about what are some of the signs. You know some that I shared, but there's others. I'm going to give eight of the most common ones. So one is energy issues or experiencing fatigue. Another is just not feeling well or right, even though you are a very healthy person. So Lori said, like most of her clients will say I'm the healthiest person I know, but I don't feel well. Another thing is struggling to lose weight. Maybe the things that you were doing before are not working anymore Low libido, sleep issues, maybe experiencing anxiety or depression when you didn't have those issues before. You might be having mood swings, feeling irritable all the time and just feeling like it's not you. Maybe experiencing infertility or abnormal periods, whether they are irregular or heavy.
Speaker 1:
So let's pause and really look at this. When I look at this list, I had three for sure Okay, the struggling to lose weight, the low libido and some sleep issues and what I didn't realize until, honestly as I'm talking because I was talking to a friend earlier about this and I was like, yeah, you know, lori said the most common issue that she hears is like energy issues, but I don't have energy issues and then, boom, I just saw light bulb went off. I was drinking coffee every day, every day, and I never used to I mean, this is years ago now, but I didn't used to and I definitely got addicted to it, probably starting in 2020, but I don't. Was it before that? Who knows for sure in 2020. And I hadn't even realized that I was covering up an energy issue by drastically increasing my caffeine intake. Okay, so now that the source of the issue has been identified, lori put me on a three-part protocol for three months, and then we are going to do a check-in at the three-month point and see if an additional three months is needed or not. So you're probably thinking, okay, what is the protocol? Tell me stuff. So here we go.
Speaker 1:
First is supplementation with targeted herbs and nutrients to turn my adrenal back on. I'm not going to get into the specifics because I think it probably depends on what your hormone levels are. You would probably have different supplements, so I think it may be a little bit irrelevant. Second is eating balanced meals, which, as I mentioned, I was already doing. We are making a few tweaks, including reducing my caffeine intake and integrating carb cycling, and I decided, you know, I'm going to take this opportunity to wean myself off of coffee, because over the years I have become addicted to coffee and I don't want to live like that anymore, so I'm just going to take this as an opportunity just to totally wean off. In fact, I have a headache right now because I'm already starting that process. So, first, supplementation, second, eating balanced meals, and then third is breath work for continued nervous system regulation. And she was thrilled that I was already doing breath work, and I've got to say that, even though my hormones are off and they have been off I believe that this plays a large part in why I wasn't struggling with mood issues.
Speaker 1:
I follow my own 12 week Brave Breathwork program, which is backed by loads of research and essentially designed to walk you through a specific series of breathwork audios where you recalibrate your nervous system. So that means that you can basically, by the end, come out of fight or flight on demand. And I was actually just talking to a couple of clients last week who are almost at the end of the Brave Breathwork program, and one of them said that she did a talk the previous week, like a presentation, and she said normally she would have been so anxious and she's like stuff, I wasn't anxious at all and she kept on going. She said I usually wear a jacket because I sweat so bad during presentations and she's like, I didn't sweat and that felt like an amazing feat for me. So of course, we all have different things that we struggle with, but if you knew that in 12 weeks or less, you could literally bring yourself into such a sense of calm that you have never experienced before and be able to do that on demand, wouldn't you want to do that? So if you'd like more information about my Brave Breathwork program, just send me a DM at Dr Stephanie Lopez and I will send you more information.
Speaker 1:
So in hindsight I'm just going to be honest here I just wish that I would have honored myself faster and sought out hormone testing back in 2021 when I first like had, like suspected that I needed to, and I'm happy that I did, because I was able to see that all of these things that people say are normal. You know, oh you're, you're a mom, you're a new mom, like you're going to be tired, you know you're going to have these issues. Well, like, nah, what your? That does not have to be true and that's probably common, but not normal Meaning. There's a cause that is creating these issues for people and like, if you go to the regular doctor, they're not doing these tests. They're not. So some of you might be listening and you might be thinking well, I've, I've gone to the doctor and I've asked my doctor and they even did labs and they told me everything looked normal. Like they took my blood, they said everything was normal. Well, lori is also a nurse practitioner and she worked in a I think she said a hospital setting and either that or a doctor's office, but I think it was a hospital setting and she said that this happens all the time. And now many of her clients will say that they were dismissed by their doctors and it's not because their doctors are like bad people, it's because the standard testing that they do is not comprehensive. So everything from their viewpoint does look normal in some cases, like the blood work, but the comprehensive hormone testing hadn't been done, so that doesn't show.
Speaker 1:
So here's my question for you what are you dealing with on a daily basis and just accepting as your reality? This could be hormone related, but it might not be hormone related. Like, allow yourself some some time to pause and to reflect today, tonight, sometime within this week, and really reflect on what's coming up for me and does anything seem off? And maybe you've been dealing with it for years and you kind of didn't realize until hearing this podcast episode. What if you honored yourself enough to seek help in solving those issues? Again, they might be related to hormones, but they might not. Like, maybe you're struggling with your kid being a picky eater and you just haven't taken action and sought help in solving the issue and you kind of just deal with it. Where is that happening in your life?
Speaker 1:
And and then on the flip side, if you are experiencing any of these hormone issues, I highly recommend again that you get your hormones tested. Like, if you have any of those signs, just get them tested so you can have the hardcore data and know for sure. That's how I was approaching it. I was like I don't know if it's a hormone issue, but I just want to see the data and to know for sure, and sure enough, it was. So also because I want to mention something, because I was noticing positive changes in myself after I changed my the way that I was eating. Those lifestyle changes.
Speaker 1:
I asked Lori, I asked her so eventually, would the libido issues have been fixed? Would it have turned back on my adrenal gland? And she said in her experience, those lifestyle changes absolutely work and it could have restored the function in my adrenal gland. And with the added supplements and she made a couple more tweaks to the way that I'm eating the process will be sped up drastically, essentially because it's targeted nutritional therapy. So, whereas it might take years for some, the, with the protocol with from Lori, it would take months. So that is worth it to me. So I'm really happy that I signed up to work with her.
Speaker 1:
But anyways, if you have any questions about my story or the process, just feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, send me a DM. I'm happy to talk about any of it. And if you want to get your hormones tested, I recommend working with Lori Aikman, who is a functional medicine practitioner, and I'll drop her link in the show notes. And yeah, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. That's it for today. Thank you for listening and I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening today. If you're ready to heal so that triggering situations no longer control you and so that you can feel empowered, brave and thrive in any situation, dm me the word brave on Instagram and I'll send you a training where you will learn three of the most common mistakes driven women are making that are keeping them stuck in negative emotions, and what you can do instead.