Mystery Girl: Tanner Interviews Aoife about their Recovery from Chronic Symptoms

If you need support with your healing , you can book in for a consultation with one of our therapists at painpsychotherapyca or purchase our online course at embodycommunitycom to access in-depth education , somatic practices , recovery tools and an interactive community focused on healing . Links in the description of each episode . Hi everyone , welcome back to the podcast .

Today I'm joined by Aoife , who is a mind-body coach helping sensitive women break free from chronic pain and illness , anxiety and depression , using the tools she used to break free from 30 years of chronic symptoms , anxiety and depression . Well , thanks so much for being on the podcast . Thanks for having me .

Yeah , I was going to say you interviewed me last week , so we're going back and forth here in terms of interviews .

We were living in London at the time and I also had IBS . As a child I had I would complain of a sore stomach , so I had this sore stomach and I had these fevers of a sore stomach . So I had this sore stomach and I had these fevers .

And so for as long as I can remember , I've been doing this um , uh , maybe journey or pattern that many of your listeners probably relate to , where you're in and out of doctors offices and consultants and healers . And you know my parents were really open-minded .

They took me to all kinds of herbalists and because of IBS and the stomach pain , it's kind of like an obvious thing to blame the food , right .

So from an early age , yeah , yeah , so from a really early age , I got the message to be hyper vigilant then also of food , and I think some health care practitioners told my parents that I had candida and maybe it was a sugar thing , so that the sugar and the wheat and the gluten and all these things came in super early for me as messages .

Um , yeah , so it was a long time ago that it all started . Um , and then a particular moment in my journey was we moved , uh , from . We were living in London and England at the time and we moved back to Ireland , where my parents are from and all our extended family .

So I was six and a half years old and when we moved back to Ireland that Christmas , weirdly enough , this time of year , my fevers got worse . So I used to just get these reoccurring fevers and they spiked so high that I nearly had to be rushed into hospital . Oh , my goodness , yeah .

And then I ended up spending time in hospital , getting all these tests in Ireland with the top pediatrician in Ireland , getting all these tests in Ireland with the top pediatrician in Ireland , and I had all these routine blood tests and every part of my body scanned and examined .

And then they diagnosed me as mystery girl and it's actually written on my medical report mystery girl .

Back then it was also the thing that you kind of did , and then when I was sharing with you in our interview , when I started to , then I was blaming the drugs and alcohol for everything . Yeah , my health was not good and my skin was not good and my mental health was not good , but I was like , of course it's not good .

I'm like like , you know really , um , using these substances , substances in a very extreme way . So I'm like , okay , I get to like 24 years old .

I'm like , okay , I'm gonna sort my life out , I'm gonna get on track , I stop drinking and you know I'm using drugs in that way and um , what I found then and I started doing therapy as well and started doing psychoanalysis and what I found was that it was almost like a symptom , imperative , like I didn't have the drugs and alcohol to take the edge off

everything and actually started to get worse . Everyone kept saying to me wow , wow , you've been living like a monk and you've not been drinking . You must feel great .

You know , this journey of reducing their drug or alcohol use is , as you said , it's a way of coping .

It's not the healthiest way of coping , but it is a way that we cope essentially and all of a sudden that's pulled away and to the outside world they're like oh , it must feel great , like you know you're doing better , like everything seems to be more sorted out in your life , but internally it it just everything gets worse .

So I really relate to you there and I think it's such a common misinterpretation of what this kind of healing looks like from drug and alcohol use .

I was left with all of that tension within me and , despite doing a lot of inner work , I had a Tibetan I still have a Tibetan meditation practice that I had gotten involved with then and and I was doing therapy and I was this is also like an interesting factor I had decided to go to college , go and study and and you know , I thought that that was like

part of like getting my life together and , of course , like for a lot of people that is .

But I was coming at it from like um , let's say like maybe a slightly like an inauthentic angle , just like uh , ticking um these boxes of what I thought it meant to be a good person , a together person , a successful person , not on drugs and alcohol , you know , achieving I I poured all that energy I started to achieve conventionally yeah and I was .

I was like , and I had to get a . I went from like I didn't do well in school . I was always like in trouble in school . So I'm like , okay , now I'm gonna do school good , because I was bad before I'm gonna go do school good . And I went and I did . I got a first and then I and I was doing these things not drinking , getting a's , all these things .

I thought like I'm being a good girl now . I should feel better .

When I got the diagnosis of fibromyalgia , I weirdly enough , it was a kind of a relief or a happy day , um , because I had spent like , uh , you know , 20 something years being called mysterious and being called um complicated , and having all these very debilitating symptoms but not being told , not being validated in them and not having a language to explain that

to people . So I was living in a very isolated and tense inner world and I thought , wow , I have a word now , I can tell people things and I can find other people like me . And I did find other people like me and I did have more language , which did help in a way , but it also led nowhere .

It was also fibromyalgia was also just another word for mystery girl . It was also unexplained symptoms and I didn't find anyone , you know , until finding the mind-body connection , who had any answers or roadmaps for recovery to any of these symptoms .

There was some arguing back and forth , but I wanted , when I was lost in pain , similar to yourself , I wanted so badly to just be given some diagnosis for someone to explain . I didn't even care how bad it was , I was just like I want to know what is taking place , which makes sense as you share your story .

I think there's such an invalidation of what you were going through , coming from the medical system , and it's so common where people just feel unheard , they feel not respected , and so it makes sense . We , we want this label to to validate us and to also be part of , you know , a community , potentially of people that have a similar diagnosis .

But , as you're saying , then we realize , oh , like people following this , this pathway , like there really isn't much hope that's being drawn from it .

. I ended up finding some friends who had chronic illness and chronic symptoms and even though , um it , yeah , it was a big support I'm still really good friends with those people and and they've also found the mind body but it wasn't actually helping .

It was taking the edge off things and I was feeling less lonely but nothing was helping and I still had this really severe IBS as well and I really went down when I stopped drinking and stopped taking drugs and that whole scene . I also really went down the route of the sugar-free , gluten-free , the candida diet .

I thought , oh , this lady said that if I do this really strict diet for six months , the candida goes and then everything's going to be sorted .

So I did that and that went on for like over six years where I was , uh , more and more terrified of gluten and sugar and and oils and I would read more about all these different things and it got to a point where there was hardly any food I could really eat without having a very real , distressing , disturbing flare-up of my ibs and fibromyalgia , insomnia ,

everything . So I was . I was really stuck .

I was eating paleo for a period of time and , as you're kind of explaining , the problem is then now we have all these triggers that we're fearing and the next time we have the trigger , it's like the symptoms are even worse , almost .

I knew that I wouldn't act on those thoughts but I was like dude , like I've done everything that everyone has suggested to me .

I've even , like you know , achieved and went to school and got , you know , did well in school now , and I've been to every doctor across the globe australia , england , ireland , the top consultants , the most out there , hippie alternative people , psychiatrists , gynecologists , like anyone .

I've been to them all and I'm lucky , I'm in a privileged position that I was able to have all that access . Psychoanalysis one of the best like psychoanalysis , and here I am . I'm sicker than ever .

Was that around this period of time or was that a little bit later on ?

They would have to drive me there . So he was driving me there and he was explaining to me his night out before and he's like a man in his 60s and he'd been on a work night out and he was saying they went for dinner . This cool place described me the food .

Then they went to this cool bar and there was great music and he was dancing and he ended up staying out a bit later . And I'm like thinking to myself the , the controlled , rigid world that I was living in , and I remember in that moment just saying I don't want to live like this anymore . I want some freedom .

I want to be able to , like walk into a restaurant and order food . I want to be able to , like just last minute , decide to stay out late at a bar or whatever . And I remember just having a shift in my brain , whereas before that shift I was looking for , like something to blame that I could then control and or eliminate .

It was all like this kind of system , and I just remember having this little shift in my energy . I was like no , I want to feel free . It wasn't even like I want to be fixed . I was like I want to feel free .

And so then it was probably about a year later , after a very , very difficult year , my friend sent me like this ad on Instagram and it was the MindBodyConnection , a video explaining this pain science , and it just made complete sense to me so that's kind of how you kind of led to that , that starting place .

Like I want the pain , the IBS , the symptom gone . But I think sometimes we lose sight of why we want it gone and you have this aha moment where it's like I want the freedom , like this is , this is , I want to be able to go and do these things . You know what ?

It seems like everyone else is going and doing and then it starts with , uh , an instagram ad . This is the starting place . So how did it build from there after seeing this instagram ad ?

And so I listened to . It was like Dr Schubiner , dr Strax and these guys and they were doctors and they were describing the pain , science and how you know the nervous system and I and I had I loved biology , so I and I studied anatomy and physiology before , so just the information really landed very like immediately with me .

Yeah , and then so I , I have an obsessive and addictive tendencies and personalities and when that's channeled in the right direction , it can go really well for me . So I like brought all that energy and enthusiasm and I I bought like every book and I , from the minute I woke up in the morning , I listened to these talks .

I found Dr Sarno , like old talks by Dr Sarno on YouTube . So the minute I woke up in the morning , I like plugged in , I'm like I'm retraining my brain , I would listen and read and I was , um , whatever I was doing , cleaning , like everything , there was an like a little pod in my ear . Just listening to this new information .

I decided I was only allowing this new information in .

useful quality as well .

So then these guys were now saying basically that I didn't have that , I wasn't a mystery , I wasn't complicated it's not that complicated that I and how I interpreted it anyway that instead of having a list of like 30 mysterious symptoms , I only had one problem .

It was a dysregulated nervous system because of the stress that was being generated and I was like I can figure out how to sort that out . Let's go yeah , so yeah I did . Then I walked , so I so that relief , the new information there's , everything was bringing down the relief .

I wasn't feeling like a big , such a big burden , the weight I've been carrying around , and then I started to feel kind of good Within a few weeks . Obviously , all kinds of stuff was still going on for me , but I just felt this lightness come in . So I felt spontaneously having a bit of fun with breaking free from my restrictive diets .

So I went to my local shop and I love to be like a bit outrageous and bringing humor into things . Humor is such good medicine . So I didn't just like gradually start eating like whole seed bread again .

I walked into the shop and got guinness and mars bars , ice creams , and I um , and I didn't eat them all or drink them all in the one sitting , but yeah , I had some and there was like uh , I didn't have any symptoms and then so I continued on and went called into a friend's house that a few friends were gathered for a birthday party and they had made a

vegetarian lasagna . And I walked in and I just took out some more Mars bars that , eating them , took out a Guinness drink in front of everyone .

Everyone's like wow , like they hadn't seen me eat in years , and I'm like I'll make sure I have a plate of that lasagna and everyone's like wow'll make sure I have a plate of that lasagna and everyone's like what's going on .

So for me , just bringing that playfulness and humor into breaking through that symptom , and that night I slept and I didn't have IBS symptoms . Now I have to say , the symptoms morphed . I ended up , like you know , my anxiety got worse and there was all these other things that happened .

I wasn't just like some miracle , uh , you know , but it was still a miracle for me and and and everything had shifted . Everything had shifted within me and I knew I just had this one thing now to focus on and figure out .

And it's not like it's been an easy journey to break , like you know , to change all these different patterns that have been generating such extreme stress within me . It's been a journey , but I've only had this one thing to focus on , and and it's empowering to hear that you're you're not broken and complicated , weird and different and dismissed .

I think , first off , it's it's such an added benefit when people can get to that empowered feeling because , because I think for so long most of us we've had these chronic symptoms and we just literally thought there was nothing we could do personally , because it's like we're fully reliant on the medical system , on doctors , on specialists , on physical practitioners ,

like we're fully reliant on their advice , their you know exercises or practices or medicine or whatever it is , and I think that's a that's a great feeling , that that people want to cultivate .

It's hard to I don't want people listening and trying to force that but you want to cultivate that feeling of you know it can be empowering , a little little bit scary I think it's also normal to be like scary of like , oh yeah , this is like a personal thing , like I gotta like change things , but I think there's an empowerment in that and it's clear that the

education , like really diving into the videos , into podcasts , into the really learning about it , created that empowering feel and so much . So I love your confidence , like , so , so feeling so empowered and confident .

You just , you know , you just start going and eating some Mars bars and vegetarian lasagna and really diving into some of that , and that does take place . I think you know some people need the more gradual feel to build that confidence .

But you had such confidence and empowerment to go and to do that and I like what you said , like I think it's so important to know it's not like one moment and I was healed . It was a very vital moment .

I could see the joy in your face , even sharing it there , like it's a very key moment in the healing but it's , it's all these little moments that start to add up , to start to shift , uh , to start to change things , and so I know the listeners are probably interested outside of you know the education and um and the literature and and obviously doing some

exposure work with all these triggers . Were there other practices or areas that you focused on that you found were really beneficial in your healing process , as it kind of developed ?

? But I just think that compassion and conflict resolution have been such pillars they're pillars in my own toolbox that I was being generated within me just really just came from so many misunderstandings about myself .

You know , being scared to speak up or you know , I was like achieving all these things in school that maybe I didn't really necessarily know if I wanted to do or not .

I was just like just kind of blindly going to tick these boxes and and feeling , yeah , like disempowered in relationships , not knowing how to be like authentic or speak up , and that just caused causing me to have so many repressed emotions and and then , even with the like your body , like I just was so angry with my body and angry with the doctors and angry

with like , um , you know , felt so betrayed by the symptoms and there's so much um , there's so much uh , rigidity as well . You know , with that I had been living in .

So , yeah , like this softening into myself and compassion and even though I guess that can feel like kind of vague when you just want like some like really good , like tool , specific tool , and and I do have a specific tool I use for compassion there's the oh , oh , no prayer .

It's this very simple mantra , um , but the self-compassion is such a journey and um , it's just so many layers and I'm still . I'm still finding places where I have been scared to speak up , and now you know , or use boundaries , I'm still finding all these little nooks and crannies and it's still scary , still terrifying .

When I find another little nook and cranny , I'm like what ? And then it comes out and it's , it's still terrifying , but now I just know , I have the experience . I know , when I move through these like wounds or patterns or whatever you want to call them , I know what's on the other side .

I do know that I get feel lighter and freer and more at peace , and I feel that in my body and life around me also .

But I think there's nuance to this , like the way you're talking about it is , you know , you , you learn to cope in the world for so many years a certain way , and you clearly identified , okay , some of these ways that I was coping and being in the world were perpetuating everything , and so I think that's the the idea and you know you have have some ideas

around how people can start to cultivate compassion . But it is a journey . As you talk about so many of us . We're learning how to be authentic in the world again . We're learning how to have a voice and to express emotions so we're not pushing it down . We're learning how to have a sense of compassion and kindness for ourselves as we move forward in life .

And that's the work you know I always tell people that keeps going , even after you're pain or symptom free , like to maintain that healing , like some of that work of learning to be in the world and to be authentic and feel safe is so vital for recovery and we have to maintain that . And I also appreciate what you said there , that it's still scary .

I find that as well . Where I could be such a people pleaser , that's something that I had to really work on . But even in certain environments , all of a sudden I'll be like oh yeah , like I'm feeling like terrified to express my emotion to this person right now , and I've worked on this for a decade , like it .

Just it is scary and it takes a lot of consistent awareness and practice to shift the way that we approach life and we are in life .

How long is it going to take ? Six weeks , like , how long do I do this for ?

But our mind creates timelines , but our , you know , those layers , those parts of us , those inner child parts like , um , you know there's just layers and I know for myself it can be frustrating when you want something to be resolved now you've got life to live , you've got things to do , whatever , and I know just so , know that and um , but what I've really

come to realize is , um , these things , they have their own timeline . That's why they having this just compassion , some whatever compassionate based practice feels , resonates with you .

I like the mantra , because it's just so easy and accessible whatever , um , I just feel is going to be your go-to , because it's going to help soften and ease , um , that tension around like wanting things to change , because some things just have their own kind of timeline , I feel , and um finding a way that you can find peace and ease .

I want to give a little time at the end here just so you can share a bit about your work , services , offerings that you have and , for anyone listening , I'll also put all your links down below in the description , but can you share a little bit about your work and what that looks like ?

If you like resonate with me and you want to connect and chat , please do . You can use the link to book in a chat and we can talk about what kind of tailored process will work for you . I'm obsessed with getting people women back to like , living authentically and living free and , you know , back to work or back to their passion .

But when I do my market research , a lot of people don't say they don't actually care about work and they just want to feel peace . So I'm always trying to get people back to life and back to like work or reality and they're like no , they just want to feel peace and they want to feel free . So I really get that , because that was my big aha as well .

I just want to feel free . It's so simple . I didn't want anything big and grandiose , I just wanted to be able to walk into a bar and order some fish and chips and feel like that was my choice to make .