I was referred to Dan and the lifestyle first Medicine after I was struggling with my mental health. I was finding that I was so anxious, that I couldn’t actually manage myself, or see the bark from the trees – a really challenging time. Sadly, I was bringing it home, and Meg was struggling with managing me too.
So I was referred to Dan by our leadership team.
I would have a weekly meeting with Dan, and we spoke about the 5 pillars of health… I cant remember what they were, but we established from a questionnaire and some experience from him that I probably needed to look after my health better in terms of fitness and activity, eating, and then managing my own expectations of myself.
The first thing that we looked at was managing anxiety. He encouraged me to keep a daily journal or when I was feeling overwhelmed, and what was triggering it etc so I could recognise it happening in the moment… and then he taught me a bunch of breathing techniques to activate my parasympathetic nervous system when I was feeling very anxious. Just someone who would suggest a technique, and then follow up with me about whether it worked was really impactful – kind of the coaching approach but to make me not feel like the sky was going to fall on my head the whole time!
Afterwards, we started with diet an exercise. I was up for changing some of my priorities and got out and did a bit more exercise and tracked it, as well as eating a healthy diet – all ‘normal’ things, but it was nice to have someone to reflect on whether it had been a good or a bad week with. Dan was really keen to get me into fermented foods, but I still haven’t really managed to do this! but he was never disappointed in me, or made me feel bad – he just explained the science and encouraged me to try it!
Eventually, when we had an established trust etc and Dan knew me really well, we began to explore some meditation and he encouraged me to take a deeper look at what some of the main causes of the anxiety were – and I won’t go into the details, as I will start crying here and now, but we did a meditation thing on a Thursday morning last summer, and afterwards, I felt 30kg lighter, and it might sound like a clique, but i really did feel like I was seeing the world in HD afterwards!
All this time, Dan was suggesting and signposting me to podcasts, books, articles and the like to make sure that I was able to keep up, and one for the best recommendations that he has suggested is a book called ‘No Bad Parts’.
So, I cant tell you how much I have learned and gained from this intervention, and I am thankful to Dan for everything he did for me, as well as our SLT for recognising that I needed it.