The ‘Other 20%’ to Healing Autoimmunity

It’s story time, everyone. This is a concept I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while now, but was trying to find the words to do so. I’m going to take you deeper into my journey in the following posts, but right now I just wanted to begin by giving you an overview of my story and my experience with what I’m calling “The Other 20%”. Here it goes.

When I started working with my current Dr. back in the summer of 2014, I was in really, really bad shape. I could hardly get through a workday due to fatigue, intense brain fog and stomach symptoms. I was losing weight rapidly, having heart palpitations like a boss, and was even having reactions to even simple things like chicken. I was so lost and confused, and basically on a liquid diet. He immediately got to work on me, and within even just a week I was already feeling MUCH better, but the fun was just beginning…over the next 1.5 years, I had 2 surgeries, continued working full-time, switched companies and moved homes, and even took night classes for a semester (after working a full day), all the while continuing to progress and heal in my journey.

One day while meeting with my doctor, he commented on my ability to rebound and keep my body and symptoms level after all of that – my blood work even backed it up – all of my body systems were doing great, inflammation levels and antibody markers were low, and I was even putting on some weight. He confessed that he had been scared for me because I was in such bad shape when I first came to see him, and that he wasn’t sure how my body was going to be able to handle just the surgeries alone, let alone all the other changes life was throwing at me. He was incredibly impressed and asked me what I was doing differently to rebuild my body.

While I thought it over, I remembered how, at one point in my treatment cycle, I told him that I was feeling about 80% well (a huge improvement from about 5% well at the beginning), but I still had some symptoms here and there that were holding me back. He said, “Honestly Mitch, 80% might just be your new reality.”

Well, let me tell you that I was NOT content with that answer. I had come too dang far to stop now and to settle for 80%. So, I went on a mission to find the “other 20%” that would complete the puzzle for me. If it wasn’t diet, and it wasn’t nutrition or even lifestyle, then what could it be?

One day a short time later, I was meeting with one of my spiritual teachers, and we were discussing my health issues and how I had become frustrated with not being able to surpass that 80% mark. She told me that autoimmune conditions were considered – in an emotional sense – the body’s reaction to suppressing who we really are, so that the body quite literally starts fighting itself. Well, that stopped me in my tracks! I had never heard anything like this – the body? Reacting to thoughts and to emotions so strongly that it could actually lead to some AI symptoms? What the…?

I plunged myself into research, covering medical, spiritual, emotional and mental aspects, to try to get to the truth of the matter (remember, by this time I considered myself an ‘expert’ researcher…). I ultimately found that thoughts can, and DO, have a huge impact upon your health, and I became willing to accept the idea that pain and discomfort in the body were, in part, just physical manifestations of repressed or misguided thoughts, emotions and feelings.

And with that discovery and acceptance, I knew that I had found it: my missing 20%.

But how could I heal? What did I need to do? This led me on a path to self-discovery and cultivation of a spiritual practice that – as a self-proclaimed ‘atheist’ for the majority of my life up until then –  I never could have imagined having in a million years.

So, when I answered my Dr. that day in his office about what my “secret” was to beating the odds and exceeding even his own expectations, I simply said, “Loving myself”. He smiled as if he completely understood, and I smiled because I finally knew that I had found my 20%.

Turns out my missing piece couldn’t be found in a supplement or in another blood test, and it wasn’t even found in food. It was found within me; it was found in forgiving myself, in cultivating a spiritual practice, in quieting my mind and listening to my body and a Higher Power’s guidance, and in learning to actually accept myself for who I was, instead of what everyone else (and I) expected me to be. Once I let go of my barriers, of my self-criticism, of my endless wish to be like that person or that person, and began to cut myself a little slack for not always being perfect, I was able to find a fulfilling happiness that – in my opinion – was the best form of treatment I had come across yet.