Holistic Hell

January 2024 update: 

This post largely holds up, but it includes a reference to a medication that I believed was "about 100% better for you than antidepressants." Not only did this medication not particularly work for me, but the FNP who prescribed it turned out to be almost as harmful in the long term for my overall mental and physical health as the "clinical nutritionist interested in holistic healing," who my providers of the past several years have been horrified by.

Today I would never dream of implying that someone should avoid antidepressants if they need them. Antidepressants are truly life-saving. 

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Original post:

A new year is upon us, so I thought I should tell the other half of the story I started in my last post. That way this one will live in the 2013 archives (of the blog and of my memory) where it belongs.

So there I was, feeling tortured by food, feeling orthorexic (that is, paralyzed by an obsession with "healthy" eating). I found a local clinical nutritionist interested in holistic healing. She doubles as a therapist—exactly what I wanted! She agreed to meet with me.

What I was hoping for was a diet that worked and help escaping the mental prison I kept building myself into. Unfortunately, though, it's apparently not possible to separate me from my Crohn's disease when prescribing an ideal healing diet. It seems obvious, I know. But it meant that little of the time in our meetings over the next several months was spent sorting through mental issues.

Blood tests. Thousands of dollars in supplements. Diet change after diet change after diet change. And it turns out that orthorexia is a nasty issue to deal with when people are trying to heal you through diet. My nutritionist tried to tell me that there's no such thing as perfect eating, that her recommendations were guidelines and not strict rules, that my Crohn's symptoms were not my fault. But accepting that you have the power to heal your disease through diet necessitates accepting that you have the power to worsen it through diet as well. Crippling perfectionism: up a notch.

Indulging in a strawberry on Easter. Gorgeous.

I stuck with it as long as I did because I felt like I'd be failing myself otherwise. Despite researchers' current official stance that diet, though it can worsen symptoms, does not worsen the disease—it is, after all, an autoimmune disease and affects more than just the digestive tract—mountains of anecdotes tell a different story, that so-and-so was "healed" by juicing or being gluten-free or being vegan or eating SCD or GAPS or low-FODMAPs. One of the worst things about having a disease like this one is that just about everyone around you will insist that you can cure yourself if you only did SOMETHING ELSE.

After my time ran out with the nutritionist, I decided I was too deep in debt and too destroyed emotionally for it to be worth continuing. I started seeing a local FNP, and she prescribed an opiate-blocker that essentially prompts the body to pump out extra endorphins (the idea being that endorphins have an effect on immune system function). I felt a little better physically, and probably fifty times happier, taking it. Fortunately it's about 100% better for you than antidepressants. And in terms of diet, she recommended slowly adding things back into my diet and seeing what causes a reaction.

Unrelated cat picture to lighten the mood.

Trusting my own body? A completely foreign concept. My body gets confused and attacks itself. What the heck does it know? But I broke down in tears, as I do every time people try to make me talk about food, at the idea that I can maybe heal something in myself by not following a strict prescribed regimen.

This (along with the aforementioned opiate-blocker and another supplement that immensely reduces my anxiety) is the most valuable thing I gleaned from the trials of the past several months. When my nutritionist was in therapist mode, she pointed out what seems to be the core of my mental issues.

Elementary school vocabulary. My drawing has not improved.

I'm a dictator in my own head. I can't relax until everything on my list is done, and done perfectly. The list is never finished. Nothing is ever perfect, least of all food. I will never be healed in any aspect until I can release some control. "Get a B" is what she said. At the time, the sentence struck chills down my back, and my stomach seized up in revolt.  Now I use it as a guiding principle. 

My mom's farm is a peaceful place. Can I live in this photo, please?

I'm not healed yet.