Celiac Disease and Mental Health Ep. 109

With the extra mental load and stress that comes with a Celiac Disease diagnosis, it's important to take care of our Mental Health.

Previous Episodes Mentioned:
Ep. 27 - What if You're Not Ok with Celiac Disease?
Ep. 28 - My Story with Depression and Celiac Disease
Ep. 29 - How to Boost Your Happy Hormones
Ep. 42 - Self Care for Celiacs
Want to know how I've nailed living with Celiac Disease? Ultimate Celiac System has all my exclusive tips, secrets and insights.
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Music Credit bensound.com 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

Alrighty, welcome back to this week's episode of the Healthy Celiac Podcast. Now, as you know, my name is Belinda Willin and I am a certified health coach, and I specialize in working with women with celiac disease to help them live their best life possible. So if you aren't already following me over on Instagram, please head to Instagram and follow me at the Healthy Celiac. And if you've been enjoying the show, please do me a solid and go to Apple Podcast and leave me a review and a rating that would really help me out and help spread the word of the show, because Apple loves it when we get reviews and they like to push out the podcast to people that are enjoying them. So yeah, if you could do that, that would be amazing. So now onto the show. So I wanted to talk with you today about mental health because it is Mental Health Awareness month. It's also Celiac Disease Awareness Month. So I'm gonna combine those two together and talk with you today about mental health. Now, if you have gone back through and listened to my other episodes, one of my very early on episodes of the show, I talked about my story with postnatal depression and shared quite openly and raw about my journey and, and how that kind of came about. So if you haven't had listen to that, go back and listen. Um, I've also got some other episodes that I recommend you listen to. So episode 27, 28 and 29 of the show kind of tie in with today's show. But what I wanted to talk about with you, uh, to do with mental health is basically so that you keep on top of your mental health and so that you are, I guess, doing the best for you when it comes to your health, your lifestyle, because as you are probably very well aware by now, celiac disease does play its toll on us. It does add so many extra layers to our stress and our life and anxiety. So if, I guess we take care of our life in other areas, it can help us keep on track with our mental health. And for me,<laugh>, it's very, it's very raw. It's very, I guess it's one of those topics that's very close to home. Um, we recently lost a family friend to suicide. Um, it, it was a friend of my father's, his, his best mate. It was his son. So, you know, it's horrible. It's, it's something that people shouldn't have to go through. You know, he suffered from depression for many, many years and he'd soughted help and he obviously hadn't been able to get what he needed to prevent that from happening. So I guess by sharing this episode, I hope that I can help you if this is something that you're struggling with and maybe there's someone in your life that, that doesn't even have celiac disease, that you can see that they're struggling with their mental health and you can support them. So I won't go into too much about my story because you can go back and listen to that episode if you want to learn more about how I was diagnosed with postnatal depression and kind of how that affected me. But from everything that we know,<laugh>, there's so many things that can contribute to depression and your mental health. And that's what I wanna share with you today because I wanna help you be at a positive place in your life and, and know that there's ways that you can look after your mental health. The first one is always, always going to be food. For me, food is life. Food is such an important part of you and what makes you happy. And unfortunately, we have to eat gluten-free. There's no if spots, maybe we have to eat gluten-free a hundred percent of the time. There's no, a little bit of gluten here or a little bit of gluten there. I'll just have a cheat day. We have to eat gluten-free all the time. But it's not just that simple. It's not just focusing on gluten free. We do need to look after our body and eat as well as possible. And that's eating as much real food as possible, that's eating the least amount of processed crap that we possibly can and focusing on the food that nourishes our body and the food that makes us thrive and feel alive. So if that's something that you need support in, then I urge you to seek help with getting help with eating better and learning what works for your body. If you need help with meals, then go check out meal plans made easy. I'll pop a link to that below as well. But if you just need simple, easy recipes, I can help you with that. It's an absolute not an issue at all, because this whole meal plan has got like a stupid amount of recipes in there. It's insane. So yeah, go check that one out. But yeah, it's food, it's just everything to me. When I eat well, I feel so much better. I know for me, when I, I'm nourishing my body, my mental health is so much more positive. And then the next one is exercising. Without a shadow of a doubt. As soon as I started going back to the gym after I'd been diagnosed with depression and I was on medication and I was able to start getting, you know, getting back into the swing of things and starting to feel a little bit better about myself, as soon as I started going back to the gym, it was a game changer for me. It was releasing all of these amazing endorphins and, and making me feel so much better. Not only on the inside, but on the outside. I could see that I was improving the way that I looked and felt that it just, it, it was a game changer. So if you are not exercising, that can be a huge part of your mental health. It can just make you feel so much better. And it's not about, it's not about doing things that you don't enjoy. It's always about doing things that you do enjoy. And I work with my clients on this, that if you are exercising and it's something that you don't want to do, you'll put it off. So you need to find things that you enjoy doing. One of my clients recently, she told me in one of our sessions that she was gonna get up at six 30 in the morning and she was gonna go into her shed where she's got a setup of gym equipment and she was gonna do a workout in there every morning. And I was like, fantastic. And then she came back to our next session, she was like, oh, I didn't do it. And she was really down on herself,<laugh>. And I'm like, it's okay. There's clearly a reason why you haven't done this. So what is that reason? Why do you think you haven't gone into your shed and done the workout that you said you were going to do? She goes, I hate it. It's so boring. I hate being in there on my own. It's lonely. I, I just, I just don't wanna do it. So I was like, perfect. Don't do that. What would you like to do? What type of exercise do you enjoy doing? And so we were able to sit there and write out an actual list of things that she enjoys doing, and now she's doing those things. She's enjoying exercising, she's enjoying moving her body. So work out what you do enjoy, because so many people think that they have to do certain things as exercise, when in fact certain things that you wouldn't even think of exercise actually are. So write down all the things that are movement that you enjoy doing and add that into your lifestyle. Make that part of your routine and build up to it because that can make a massive difference to your mental health and the way that you feel. Alright, the next one is sleep. So restorative sleep is a big one. And when we talk about restorative sleep, we're not talking about, you know, a little bit of sleep here and there, or you know, a short amount of sleep. You need a certain amount of sleep for your body, and it needs to be deep sleep. So if you're not sleeping well, then you need to figure out why you aren't sleeping well. Are you stressed? Are you worrying about things at night? Do you have a room that's not serving you as far as getting enough sleep and getting the right sleep so you can delve into that as well and figure out how to get more sleep. That's important if you have young children. I get it.<laugh>, I'm still in the thick of a, i I swear every time I talk about this on one of my episodes, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm coming out the other side of this now. And my daughter's start, oh my God, no<laugh>, I'm still getting woken up at night. So, you know, I've got a four year old, a six year old, and a teenager, and it's either my four year old and my six year old waking me up every night. So I totally get it. I totally get the whole children ruining your sleep thing. It's, it's a stage and I know it comes to an end, but if, if it's not one of those reasons then and it's something else and you can make changes towards that, then please work on how you can do that now. Stress plays a massive part in our mental health. So again, it's, it's really looking at what causes you stress, what is it that causes you that, that feeling of stress. Is it, is it your commute to work? Is it your home life? Is it friendship circles that you have? Is it your family? What is it that causes you stress? It could be money, it could be, it could be your workplace. There's so many things that cause us stress and sometimes we need to eliminate certain things from our lives to be able to lower that stress. So what is it for you that can help lower that stress? So for me, I hate being in a rush. I hate feeling rushed and that I've gotta be a certain place at a certain time. So I was finding that even just the simple thing of getting up in the morning and getting the kids ready for school and trying to get them out the door, I was feeling so triggered and anxious and stressed out by the time I'd even got them to the school in the morning. So what I started doing was setting my alarm earlier so that I had more time to get ready so that I was ready before they'd get up for school. I could get them ready, get them out the door, and I wasn't feeling so stressed and anxious. So that was just one thing that I was noticing in my life. I was also noticing that when there's too much stuff around me, if there's nest, it stresses me out. And my husband's recently admitted that he's the same, he's very<laugh>, he's very happy-go-lucky. He's, you know, he takes things very much in his stride. If, if you were to compare us, I'd say he's like the polar opposite to me. That's probably why we work so well together. But he has recently admitted that he gets stressed when there's mess and there's clutter and there's stuff lying around. So we've been able to work together on how to eliminate some clutter and how to make sure that our house is more functional and tidy and things like that. So that's really, I, I feel like that's really helped us as a team lower our stress levels together. So, you know, work out what is causing you stress and work out how you can change that and, and work on that bit by bit. I guess sometimes it's not just a matter of, okay, this is driving me crazy and I need to fix this today. It could be a process, it could be putting some steps into place to make that happen. So that can help as well. Now, self-care, this is my, this is my big thing for my mental health. I am very big on, I need downtime. I need time to myself. I am, I would say I'm between an introvert and an extrovert. I'm kind of in the middle. It depends on the day. So one minute I'm extroverted, the next minute I'm introverted. If you were to meet me, you would think that I'm an extrovert, but I'd be very happy to just stand back and let everyone chit chat and I'll just absorb everything. But I make myself get out there because it's just something that I know that I'm, I'm better off doing. And the days that I do that do feel better, but sometimes if I put too much, I guess if I have too much going on, more, more than anything, if I have too much happening, I feel very drained. So what I was getting at is if too much is happening, I feel drained and I need to refill my cup, if that makes sense. So I need to recharge my batteries and I do that by having some downtime and having self care. And very often when my husband gets away from, uh, gets home from being away with work rather, so he works away, he works in the mines. When he comes home, it's like, oh my God, I've got another person to kind of help me and support me. And when he is not here, it's like I am on, I, it is game time and I am on that whole time and there's no one else to do it. It's just me and the kids. And when he walks in the door, it's like a way off my shoulders. So usually that night is the night that I jump in the bath. I have a good stoke, I give myself a facial, I do all the pampering stuff and it just recharges my batteries. So that's my thing, that's my self-care thing and I just, I love it. I just absolutely love it. And you know, on my set up, my phone in there that I'll watch a bit of Netflix and I'll just relax or I'll read a book. Sometimes I'll have a glass of wine or a cup of tea. It just depends on how I'm feeling. But I find that that self-care time is so, so important and it's not much, it's easy to squeeze into my life. And I find that self-care is a big, big part of looking after your mental health. So self-care is in many forms, it depends on you as a person. You might be cringing at the idea of a bath and thinking yuck<laugh>, or you might be like, ah, that sounds like heaven. So depending on where you're at, what, what floats your boat, I guess then, you know, you might like to start doing something similar or even like, this sounds crazy, but my daughter, my youngest daughter, she loves coloring in and every time she asks me to color in with her, I actually enjoy doing it because if you've ever sat down and done coloring in, you're concentrating so much on just coloring in that your brain just has time to rest. You are not thinking about the day-to-day, you're not thinking about all the other stuff, that it's actually quite rejuvenating. So that could be something you could try as well. I'm usually just doing it in kids coloring in books, but there are adult coloring in books. I know my best friend loves doing that. She absolutely loves coloring in. So it's not just for kids. That could be something that could help you as well. So something to try. But yeah, there's so many self-care ideas. I've done an I, I've actually done an episode on self-care as well, so that could be something you might wanna go back and have a listen to as well.<laugh>, I'll link that below too. So yeah, check that episode out. Now this is probably one of the hardest steps to take and that's talking to people, it's sharing how you're feeling and you might not have depression, but you might have, I guess the onset of it. You might start to feel weighed down or you might start to be feeling so bogged down with all the stuff that you've gotta think about and process and do and focus on that. Sometimes it helps just to talk to someone and just to share what you're going through. You might talk, might like to talk to someone else that's got celiac disease so they understand what you're going through. Or you might like to talk to someone that's a loved one, or you might like to talk to someone who's a complete stranger that is not gonna judge you. They don't know you, they don't know anything about you. And you know, it could be a counselor, it could be a psychologist, it could be anyone, just someone to share what's going on and, and kind of lift some of that mental load. But talking is very, very important. And I think if I'd shared some of the stuff that was going on for me, it might not have got that bad. It might, it might have been able to be dealt with a little bit sooner, but it kind of just, it just spiraled for me very quickly. Um, it, it, it sort of started<laugh> and I took myself out of it and then things just got progressively worse. And I do blame sleep deprivation for sure. I definitely blame sleep deprivation and I do blame the stress of my life as well. And yeah, there was just like a whole heap of stuff that just kind of compounded. So it's important to look at these areas and, and get on top of it before it happens. And now I know when, when sort of the crappy stuff is, if for lack of a better of word, the crappy stuff's kind of creeps in, I deal with it straight away. I'll talk to my husband, I'll talk to my mom, I'll talk to my best friend and they're able to help me overcome things and, and help me see that, you know, that's not actually true or you know, I was having stupid self-doubt last night with things with my husband over my business. And he is like my business coach, he's amazing and he is just able to help me see that what I'm doing is helping people and make a difference because, you know, we all, we all get in our heads and we all have self doubt. And he was just able to pull me back out and it was like a snap moment. It was like,

Speaker 2: 18:13

Belinda, stopping ridiculous. Like, you know, I get messages from people all the time telling me how much I'm helping them and I appreciate that so much. So, you know, it sometimes you just need a reminder from someone else on the outside to just just let you know that it's okay and you're doing well. And you know, I appreciate that from my husband. So he's my number one supporter and I'm grateful for that. So look for someone in your life who can support you and be there for you and that you can bounce off of and share with. So yeah, I hope that helps. I really hope that this episode is going to make a difference. And like I said, go back and listen to my other episodes where I talk about these issues. And yeah, if you wanna hear more about my story, I'll pop a link to that below as well. So yeah, I hope this episode has helped you and will help you in the near future. If any of these issues arise, you can get on top of it very quickly rather than letting it linger and go on too long. So thanks so much for checking out this episode and I look forward to talking with you again very, very soon. Take care.