Episode 140: Introducing the Self Healing Series: Improve Your Stress and Anxiety and Heal Chronic Pain
Happy New Year, improve it! peeps! Erin here. I am taking a new approach to this year: today's episode and what follows may be one of the most important episodes to date on this show. Get ready to hear some new content around these parts. If you are new here, welcome. But if you have been an improve it! peep and have stuck around for 139 episodes, you're in for a treat. I've got some content that serves you, that moves you, that drives you to take action. Not on your to-do list or your planner checklist, but on your internal list. Press play now for the start of a series that will help with your self healing!
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Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award.
This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre.
When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl.
You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online!
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Episode 140 Transcription
Are you a leader searching for new and innovative ways to drive employee engagement and team morale through the roof? Do you wanna create a company culture where everyone feels seen, heard, and valued? Hi, I'm Erin Diehl, business Improv edutainer, failfluencer, and Professional Zoombie who is ready to help you improve your it, your IT being the thing that makes you, you think of me as your keeping it real. Professional development bestie who is here to help you learn from your failures, stand tall in your power and improve yourself so you can improve the lives of others. Oh, and did I mention that we are improving your IT through play? That's right. I am an improvisational comedy expert who uses experiential learning to help you have your aha haha moments. Those are the moments when the light bulb goes off and you're laughing at the same time. So grab your chicken hat, your notebook, and your inner child because I'm gonna take you on a journey that is both fun and transformative. Welcome to the improve it! Podcast!
Erin (01:25):
improve it! peeps. Welcome to 2023. I am so thrilled that you are here. I hope that your year is filled with goals. Goals and more goals. I'm just kidding. I am taking a new approach to this year and today's episode and what follows may be one of the most important episodes to date on this show. You are gonna hear some new content around these parts. If you're a longtime listener, first time caller, I never know what that means. If you are new here, welcome. But if you have been an improve it! peep and have stuck around for 139 episodes, you're in for a treat. I've got some content that serves you, that moves you, that drives you to take action. Not on your to-do list or your planner checklist, but on your internal list. That internal guide, that internal guidance system that makes you, you friends.
Erin (02:41):
I have been through a self-healing journey of my own and I wanna share it with you. I think it makes sense to start in the form of storytelling because if you have listened to this show, especially in the past, you, you have heard me talk about the chronic pain that I have been going through, which I thought was in relation to my posture, which is horrible, like a croissant sitting at a desk. But I actually have found the culprit and would love to share this journey. So earlier in 2021, and then later in 2022, I found massive pain in my back. And I'm talking about like my LA muscles. So think about your spine and then your LA muscles on either side of your spine. It was in that area and I bought the standing desk, I bought the ergonomic chair. I got a footrest, I got a laptop riser.
Erin (03:47):
I bought the neck pillow. I saw the general practitioner, I saw the chiropractor, I saw another chiropractor, and then I saw an acupuncturist and no one could tell me or identify why I had this pain. So it was so painful. I would go to bed at night and I would be so tense. I would literally have my, my fists clench as I was in bed. And I would literally go to bed hoping and praying that the next day I would wake up and be better. I actually decided over this past time of dealing with the pain, cuz there was actually two different spurts of the pain. I decided to stop lifting my three-year-old, which is a feet in itself. So we would bring a stool with us every time I had to put 'em on the bathroom, every time we had to go to the sink.
Erin (04:38):
And I actually stopped running and doing things that I usually did to be physically active because I was certain that those things were the cause. Now this pain lasted for months. I'm talking about two different periods of six months with intense excruciatingly painful pain. And I will tell you that the thought of this pain consumed me day in and day out. It was always in the back of my mind, am I gonna be good today? Am I gonna have a flare up? Am I gonna feel pain? And what's gonna happen? So I would go to bed a lot of nights crying am my, my body would just hurt so bad. And I'll say that with a job that makes me focus and sit for extended periods of time. This wasn't helping the situation because I was literally sitting for eight hours. So, and I, like I mentioned, I did get the standing desk would did, which, you know, I would fluctuate between the two, but the majority of my day, I'm sedentary.
Erin (05:47):
I'm sitting, I'm focused in zoom meetings, or if I'm facilitating, I'm up and moving. But I majority of the time am sitting. So I went to my general practitioner and after X-rays, actually two sets of x-rays and extensive blood work, they ruled out that it was not anything autoimmune or any type of disease. And I actually had one chiropractor who I went to for about seven adjustments against, seven adjustments, and decided this chiropractor wasn't for me. So I found a new one. And this new chiropractor was amazing. I actually love him. And he actually, I will say, facilitated the start of this journey. So in our first meeting together, he asked me, how's it going? What's been going on in your life? How's your mental health? And he asked me a very point-blank question, what's happened in your life in the past three years as he is, you know, correcting my spine, breaking me in half basically.
Erin (06:48):
And I gave him the low down of what was going down over here. And he said, do you have a therapist? My answer was, no. I used to. And he said, I appreciate you coming here, but you also need to work on your mental health. Find a therapist. So I quickly called a friend slash intuitive coach Michael Frontier. This started this journey my first time sitting with Michael, and I've known Michael for a long time and he has helped me before, but it was really interesting. In our first session together, he asked me to do an intake forum and asked me, you know, what, what I wanna get out of this, what's my purpose? And he guided me to read a book called When the Body Says No. So I bought the book immediately. I was on a trip to do a keynote, and I said to myself, all right, on the way there, and on the way back, I'm reading this book, and I'll never forget where I was when I was reading it.
Erin (07:55):
It was about 11:00 PM on a flight back from Boston. I've finished the last chapter of this book, and this book talks about how our body produces pain from unprocessed emotions. As I finished the last page of this book, I shut the final, I shut the book itself, and I just started bawling on this plane and I realized that I had repressed emotions. I had repressed anger. I had not processed many of the quote unquote failures that had happened in my life over the past five years. I had completely disassociated from them by throwing myself into work, by being a perfectionist in everything, and then by trying to be everything to everyone. So this book led me to another book, which led me to another book, which furthered my hypothesis that the pain in my body was caused by chronic stress and unprocessed emotions.
Erin (09:16):
The five years prior to feeling this pain, I had gone from multiple rounds of I V F and infertility treatments and failed attempts at having a child to having a miracle baby to a global pandemic, causing my entire business to shut down and go from a completely in-person business to a completely virtual business overnight. Now, during this exact time, my mom, my rock, had a stroke and almost died, and I was keeping a less than one year old alive as my family and I moved across the country to start a new life. All of this compounded felt like failure after failure after failure. And I had not processed any of it. And I just wanna share this. I'm a type A perfectionist. I'm a three on the Enneagram. I was determined during this time to achieve, to move forward, to get things done. And by throwing myself into this work, by disassociating myself and trying to complete project after project in my new home, I was distracting myself from all of the emotions that were sitting there.
Erin (10:35):
So I want you to do this. I want you to think of your brain like a closet right now. Okay? And inside of this closet in my brain, let's talk about my closet. I want you to think about your own closet. But inside of my closet, there were multiple drawers of disorganized thoughts and demotions. And each individual drawer was just a chaotic, jumbled mess of anger, hurt, frustration, sadness. And I had just left these drawers open and left them a mess for years. This mental closet was a madhouse. It was the home at its dream and my own personal welcome mat for pain.
Erin (11:24):
So all of these drawers, all of these failures and experiences were begging me to organize them, to process, to clean up, to make sense of what happened. But just being the overachiever, the achiever I am, I shut the door to that closet and I buried that key way down deep. Now, these drawers started to bust at the seams as new pressures and anxieties came up, these drawers started screaming. These screams manifested into physical pain. And as I mentioned, this is very specific areas of my body. It was on my right and on my left lap muscles, the pain was so severe, so tight that it literally made my shoulders tense. So imagine sitting at your desk with your shoulders, by your ears. That's what I did all day. So after I read that book, when the Body Says No by Gaber Tate, and I'll put all of this in the show notes for you, and listening to a podcast called The Self Healer Soundboard, which is based off of a book called How to Do the Work, and we'll put those in the show notes for you.
Erin (12:40):
I realized that these trapped emotions had to be organized. Finally, like I mentioned, this led me to another book, which is called Healing Back Pain, the Mind Body Connection by Dr. John Sarno. Now, this book talks about a very specific, what he diagnoses as TMS, okay? And TMS is what is, is recognized as a program and support that you need for life. Tension might my sos, my, so my Sosus pain. I think that's how you say that, see not a doctor here. So take again what I am saying as my own personal journey. I'm not a doctor, but I'm just giving you the information that helped me. So this is a physical condition that causes phy, sorry, let me say this again. Tension Myosis syndrome is a physical condition that causes physical symptoms such as chronic back pain, fibromyalgia, and gastrointestinal problems. The symptoms are not caused by any other medical conditions and are often unexplainable.
Erin (13:59):
When I read this book, this is the the third thing that I found in this journey. I knew, I knew that this was my call, that this was exactly what was happening to me. There was no other explanation I'd had the test, I'd had the x-rays. And so I got to work. I looked at this mental closet, Marie Kdo style. If you've ever seen the show with Marie Kdo on Netflix, it's amazing. She talks about taking unorganized rooms and she gives you all these different methods to tidy them up and make them extremely organized. So I took each drawer in my mental closet and I opened it up. I looked at everything in those drawers, and I removed what was no longer serving me. Let me be extremely clear that this was a long process, and that doing this was extremely painful mentally and physically. I had many drawers that were filled with things that I had not looked at in years.
Erin (15:18):
One of those drawers being my infertility struggles. And what this meant for me as a woman, the anger I felt towards my husband, who got to go back to work immediately while I was stuck at home, trying to figure out how to make all of this work while going through many, many rounds of mastitis while still being hormonal and coming off of a pregnancy and years of I V F medications. And I wanna let it be known that my husband is my best friend and he's the most empathetic partner I know, but these were my thoughts. These were the emotions that I felt. And so they're true emotions, and he was there for me in the best way that he knew how to beat. But because I was the person having to go through all of this, I still felt alone. And let me say this, he gave me every shot.
Erin (16:16):
He created playlists for me as we were going through the shots and the treatment, and was there holding my hand through every single moment of every procedure. And while giving birth to our beautiful miracle baby boy. But I still, as a human being, had these emotions that I could not hide from. And I did. I hit them. I had to grapple with another drawer that was filled with my own insecurities of losing our business. During the pandemic. We didn't necessarily lose our business, but we had to completely transform. And I put a lot of my own identity around my career. And when that was taken away from me, I had to really look at who I was and who I am as being enough. And then there was this giant drawer filled with years, years, 39 years of people pleasing.
Erin (17:23):
I wanted so badly for people to like me, and I moved a lot during my childhood and had to quickly adapt to new environments. And so in order to keep the peace and to make what was already a very stressful situation, less stressful, I would do anything to be liked. And I had to realize where this stemmed from. And as I moved into my adulthood, realized that I could no, no longer allow this to rule my world, that I could not give and give and give to everyone because in the end, I was giving to no one, most importantly myself. Now, at first, opening these drawers made me extremely angry. I placed the blame on everybody, my husband, my parents, my friends, my business. But then I realized that these people were not the problem, the problem with me. And if you were a swifty, a Taylor Swift fan, you know, hi, I'm the problem.
Erin (18:36):
It's me. It's me. It was me. I was the only one who did not communicate. I was the one who over gave, who overexerted, who said yes to all the things, and then drove herself to burnout and physical pain. I was the one who was so stubborn, so achievement oriented that I didn't take the time to look at what I was going through and process in real time. I was and I threw myself into this healing cocoon. Opening those drawers was hard. It made me face who I was and who I have become. And in that healing cocoon, I desperately wanted to be left alone. I didn't wanna talk. I didn't wanna do anything for anyone because I was done giving. I was done. I could only do my day-to-day functions as a mother, as a leader, as a mentor, as a wife, as a daughter, as a sister.
Erin (19:38):
And those things alone are exhausting as time we on. And as time does your emotions start to go from anger to a different emotion, which for me was sadness. And I'll never forget this day, I had just finished reading, healing back pain. I had been opening those drawers revealing to me what I needed to look at to heal. And in the book, it talks about how we can resume normal life, how we can get back to doing things like exercise and how to not let the pain be the thing that you think about all the time. And I'll tell you this, my new chiropractor, who I loved and was obsessed with, told me I should never run again. That my hips one is, one is up, one is down. It's not a great idea. And I love running. I love throwing on a podcast, embracing the outdoors and escaping my own little world, and just being in this world of my earbuds and me and the road for 30 minutes.
Erin (20:53):
And I had not run in three months because the pain was so bad, I was willing to try anything. So I said, screw it. Today's the day I'm going running. I threw on my gym shoes, I hit the pavement. And what came next is a Taurus, which is my astrology sign, which is a bowl which is stubborn in a nutshell, problems it. I was so stubborn, I was so mad, I was so angry, and I was so sad while running that day, I got home and I bent over to pick something up off the floor. And then I heard pop. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, my lower back went out. I could not move. I screamed in pain and I cried the ugliest Kim Kardashian tears you've ever seen. And my husband John ran into the bedroom to find me in my bathrobe on the floor in a puddle of tears screaming, I'm broken.
Erin (22:02):
Not only was I for real, physically broken <laugh>, but I was cracked. Cracked from the inside. I was exposed. I was naked on the floor in my bathroom, in my bathrobe, and I felt like the entire world was watching. And that afternoon, I went to my chiropractor and he was like, wow, wasn't expecting to see this today. You've sprained your lower back, it'll take you five days. Today's Wednesday, it'll heal by Sunday. And guess what? He was right by Sunday, it was gone. It was a sprain. It was an injury. My brain didn't make it up and it was healed. On that same day. I also had a call scheduled, luckily with my intuitive coach, Michael, and he just gave me space to cry, to cry and yell and point fingers and just be, and I will always be so grateful to him for that. I had to take the day off.
Erin (23:07):
I had to tell my team, sorry, I'm sick. And then I finally told them what was going on. But I just couldn't do it. I was done. I was done giving. I was sad. I was angry. I was cracked. So finally, after many weeks of Marie coning my mind, I had garbage bags filled with emotions and experiences that no longer served me. I needed to drop those off, donate. Nobody wanted these donations, okay? But my mind was organized, it was clearer and it was a brighter place. I vacuumed up the dust bunnies, I swiffered the floors, I cleaned out the mess, get the metaphor. I had this organized closet, and I was no longer letting in things that don't fit me anymore. This includes people pleasing and trying to control every situation with perfectionism. Let me be clear that during these weeks, I was still doing things to help me physically. I was getting cupping done, which is an awesome Chinese medicine technique that I really love. I was going to get acupuncture. I was continuing to exercise. I wasn't running at this point, and I was meditating daily. So I was also just saying no to almost everything, staying in that healing cocoon and checking in with myself on what I really wanted and what I really needed. And after many weeks when I realized, okay, these straws feel good, a miraculous thing happened.
Erin (24:49):
My pain went away. One day, I thought it came back after I did a really hard arm workout, and I went to my massage ball, which I had been using now for over two years. And I would always try to massage the pain away. And I went to those exact spots where the pain was and had been, and there was no pain. There was no knot. It was actually in my arms. The places where I had actually worked the muscles, not the place that was disguising my emotional problems and screaming at me to take a look. Now, funny enough, as I mentioned, that pain spot were my lap muscles and the lats are used for almost everything in the back, right? You pick things up like picking up my son, picking up heavy objects. It was so ironic to me that five different doctors could not identify the source of this pain.
Erin (25:54):
I'm like, there's definitely something in there. Take a take another look, right? So one day while I was on one of my beloved runs, which I did get back to very slowly, it hit me. My lap muscles were screaming because I was picking up too much. I was trying to pick up being the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect daughter, the perfect leader, the perfect speaker, the perfect facilitator, the perfect friend, neighbor, sister, you name it. I could not pick up more than I can handle anymore. I was done carrying too many loads at a time, and it was my time to focus on my self-care and my friends is not selfish. And in turn, that self-care helps me be way more present, way more efficient, way more effective to all of those roles. Because when I filled myself up first, I can give to the people who need me to pick up just a little bit of their load.
Erin (27:10):
But I was way down for far too long. I feel lighter. I feel free. I feel as me as I have ever felt and know I was given this journey to share with you today. I know that because I am connected to myself and that inner guide within me, it was a return to love. It was a return to love to me. And I know that you listening today, were meant to hear this story. So I'm gonna give you more of this story and let you hear from people who've helped me along the way. You'll hear from my intuitive coach who I talked about. You'll hear from a colleague of mine who is a phenomenal keynote speaker who speaks about people pleasing. You're gonna hear from the documentarian and the director of the film All The Rage, which is a book with Dr. John Sarno and, or I'm sorry, which is a documentary about the book, healing Back Pain with Dr.
Erin (28:16):
John Sarno. And unfortunately, Dr. Sarno passed away at 94. We no longer have him on this earth, but this film is such a incredible, just memorable moment to reflect on how Dr. Sarno helps so many people heal. So we're going to hear from the director and the creator of this film. You're also going to hear from the founder of Laughter Yoga. This is a mini-series within this podcast and just the beginning of the mental wellness journey. I wanna take you on this year. My intention is inner peace. I've never had it before. And now that I'm here, I don't want it to go away. I want to help you achieve it on your own, on your own terms. Your journey is going to look so different than mine, but it is my hope that by sharing my journey, you can pull bits and pieces to incorporate into your own life. And maybe you don't have physical pain, but maybe there are some things, some drawers that you can take a look at, peek inside and reorganize to make your mind a better place. A place that you call home in a place that you want to go to every single day. I hope you'll join me on this journey. Welcome my friends to the Self-Healing series within the Improve It Podcast. I am so glad you're here.
Erin (29:52):
Hey, friend, did you enjoy today's show? If so, head on over to iTunes to rate and subscribe. So you never miss an episode. Now, did I mention that when you leave a five star review of the improve it! Podcast, an actual team of humans does a happy dance? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. That's right. So leave a review for us on iTunes, screenshot it, and send me an email at info learn to improve it.com. I'll send you a personalized video back as a thank you. Thanks so much for listening. improve it! peeps. I'll see you next Wednesday.