All this month, I’m sharing about my journey with alopecia areata. This is in preparation for speaking at Baldie Con, which takes place in just over a week now.
Baldie Con is a truly amazing yearly event that’s intended to support and uplift the bald community. I’m really excited to have been invited to be a featured speaker at the conference this year! If you want to find out more about it, feel free to check out the Baldie Con website.
Today, I’d like to share the next part of my story. In the last two posts, I talked about what it was like to be a child and then a teen with alopecia. Now, I’ll share what it was like for me as I moved into adulthood.
Creating a false identity
Leaving home is always a crucial part of anyone’s journey. This is when we leave the protective cocoon of our childhood and move out into the world on our own. We have to decide who we want to be and how we want to shape our own journey.
Truthfully, I didn’t feel prepared to leave home. I wasn’t sure that I knew how to manage life on my own. I suspect many people feel this way, although not everyone talks about it. When I left home, I also felt like part of my emotional safety net was taken away from me. Not that my family was gone from my life – far from it – but living apart from them felt different. At times, I felt alone, and I wasn’t sure I could make it in the world.
All of this is pretty normal stuff for someone transitioning into adulthood. But at the same time, I was also dealing with alopecia – and it was getting worse. I’d started with small patches of hair loss, which were relatively easy to hide. But as I got older, the patches got larger and more frequent. By the time I was a young adult, a weave wasn’t enough to hide my hair loss anymore. I was now wearing a full wig.
So here I was, trying to develop an adult identity. But I was basing that identity around a lie. I was wearing a wig every day – and putting a ton of my energy into ensuring that no one realized it wasn’t my real hair.
Poor coping skills were destroying my health
All throughout my life, I’d set up a pattern of hiding. I was physically hiding my hair loss, using weaves and then wigs to pretend that it wasn’t happening. And I was hiding my mental health challenges too.
I never talked about difficult emotions. Where I grew up, people generally didn’t talk about their challenges. They didn’t want to burden others or bring them down by talking about something negative. They also wanted to keep up the appearance that everything was fine – many people felt ashamed of their difficulties and tried to hide them.
So I didn’t tell anyone what I was feeling. Instead, I turned my difficult feelings inward. I was constantly beating myself up for not being good enough, and wishing that things were different – that I was different.
Because of this pattern, I developed terrible coping skills. When I felt bad, I had no idea how to process it in a healthy way and move through it. My most common coping mechanism was food – usually unhealthy food, and always a lot of it.
This caused me to gain a ton of weight. By the time I was in my mid-20s, I already had prediabetes and high cholesterol. My body was also in a state of chronic inflammation, which was destroying basically every aspect of my health. If I continued along this path, I was going to end up with multiple chronic diseases, sooner rather than later.
Not to mention I was depressed.
My lack of self-awareness
I honestly didn’t even really realize what was happening to me. There’s a common belief that people who are depressed always know it – but I honestly didn’t. I’ve shared a little about this before. I was definitely depressed, but I had no idea that I was.
When people asked me how I was doing, I would always tell them that I was “fine.” That’s what we say, right? “How are you?” “I’m fine, how are you?” We often don’t think about how we really are. We’ve learned to just say that we’re fine.
At this point, I hadn’t really started my journey of self-discovery. I hadn’t yet found the techniques I now use regularly, like journaling and therapy. I didn’t know how to look inside myself, sit with any discomfort, and untangle my complicated emotions to understand myself. So I sank into depression without even realizing it.
My turning point
But then my huge wakeup call came. My son was born.
Those of you who have kids know what it’s like. As soon as you hold your baby, you start to think about the kind of life you want them to have. You also see yourself through their eyes, and think about what kind of parent you want to be.
That’s when I realized that I was absolutely not fine.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I hadn’t been fine for years. I wasn’t even really sure what fine would feel like. I was stressed out, carrying around a huge amount of anxiety, and living in a body that I was slowly destroying.
Was this really the example I wanted to set for my son? Hiding my true self, living in fear, and using food as my only coping mechanism?
I knew that things had to change.
My transformational journey
That’s when I started my journey of transformation and self-discovery. It’s a journey I’m still on today, and I’m sure that I’ll be on it for the rest of my life.
I started learning everything I could about health and well-being. I really wanted to set a good example for my son. Up to now, I’d been somewhat aware that my habits weren’t the healthiest, but I didn’t really know what healthy habits would look like. I didn’t understand things like how to choose healthy foods or how to create an exercise plan. So I dived into researching those things.
As I started learning more, I found out about how my choices were affecting my skin health. I learned about the damaging effects of chronic inflammation, and about the gut microbiome and its impact on the whole body. I realized that I had a lot more control over my health than I’d thought. As I started to make healthier choices, I found myself feeling better physically and having more energy than I used to, and my skin even improved.
I also started learning about mental health – and how strongly connected it is to physical health. I discovered that stress is a key factor in almost every chronic disease. I began trying out different stress reduction techniques. Soon, I was able to cope with stress in much better ways than by eating a ton of junk food.
And I started therapy. It actually wasn’t easy for me to make this decision. Where I grew up, there used to be somewhat of a stigma around going to therapy – it was considered to be basically an admission that you couldn’t handle your life. It took me some time to repattern my thoughts around the whole thing.
But going to therapy turned out to be crucial along my journey, because it helped me change my mindset. I became able to see the negative thought patterns that I was caught up in, and I gradually learned to shift them to develop a more positive mindset. I also began exploring my emotional landscape. I discovered journaling, which is still one of my main tools for self-discovery. I learned how to look deeply inward to untangle difficult emotions and figure out what I was really feeling – and from there, I could decide what I needed and how to move forward.
At the same time, even after I’d shifted my mental and physical health in a hugely positive way, I was still hiding my hair loss. I felt a lot better on all levels, but I was still wearing a wig every day – meaning that I hadn’t truly accepted myself.
Exploring your own transformational journey
Next week, I’ll talk more about how I managed to move into fully expressing my authentic self. For now, let’s explore where you’re at in your transformational journey. Helping women along this type of journey is now my mission in life – it’s why I founded Mind Gut Skin Academy.
As you did in the past two weeks, go ahead and grab your journal and pen. Consider the following questions, and then just write freely, whatever comes to you. Don’t stop to think about what you’re going to write – just let it flow. Eventually, insights will come, but sometimes you need to write for a while first.
How is your current physical health?
Do you have any habits that may be damaging your health, which you’d like to change? What might help you to shift these habits?
How is your current mental health? Do you notice a connection between what you’re feeling physically and mentally?
What tools do you currently use for untangling your emotions? Do you feel that you’re able to explore your inner world and understand yourself?
Is there anyone that you feel free to talk to openly about what you’re truly feeling?
Have you ever tried going to therapy? If not, is this something that you might want to try?
Are there any particular topics or areas you’d like to learn more about, in order to allow you to make better choices to protect your health on all levels?
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