My Foundation: Sugar, Soda, and Survival

I need to start at the beginning, because The Whole Therapist wasn't born from some grand vision. It emerged from a sequence of events in my own life that led me to one firm conclusion: my lifestyle is directly related to my mood, my functioning, and my ability to be present day to day.

Growing up, we were very poor. Our countertops were lined with Little Debbie snacks, Lay's potato chips, crackers, and ice cream. My mom would buy fruit, but it stood no chance against the processed foods surrounding it. I watched that fruit turn brown and mushy until she stopped buying it altogether. Looking back, I think if she had cut it up and removed the sugar from the house, I probably would have gravitated toward it. But given the abundance of processed foods, I was clearly on a sugar addiction cycle.

I don't remember drinking water when I was younger. Just soda and Kool-Aid. Upon reflection, I really think I was struggling with low energy, fatigue, inertia, and maybe even depression from this combination of poor nutrition and lack of movement. Life is complicated, but that foundation shaped everything that followed.

The Anxiety Years: When Running Was My Only Therapy

Fast forward to grad school in 2005 through 2006. I was debilitatingly anxious about everything. One of my supervisors noted how large my coffee was. At first it felt judgmental, but now I understand she was reaching out, trying to support me with my worry and anxiety.

I was fueling myself on caffeine and sugar while barely sleeping because I was always studying. Running was my only therapy. Actually, this was before I saw a therapist. All I did was study and run, sometimes 40 to 50 miles a week during my peak training. I was training for marathons, never fast, always steady. Running was how I managed the imposter syndrome and overwhelming anxiety of graduate school.

Then everything changed when I threw my back out putting on my underwear one morning. Yes, you read that right. My underwear. My spine shifted forever that day. What I learned from several specialists was that my hamstrings and glutes were incredibly tight from all that running, and the front of my body was tight from sitting and studying. At 25, I had degenerative disc disease and my back was completely out of alignment.

Running had been my lifeline, and suddenly it was gone.

The First Breakthrough: Understanding Food as Medicine

Desperate for relief, I tried medication. It made everything worse. Someone mentioned yoga, which in 2005 wasn't the widespread practice it is today. There was one studio in our college town, tucked away in an attic above a business. I went trembling with anxiety, feeling completely out of place.

But it was also during this time that I saw my first real therapist. A cognitive behavioral therapist who also practiced EMDR. She was the first person to ever talk to me about food and sugar, explaining how sugar causes swings in insulin, increased heart rate, jitteriness, energy spikes followed by slumps that create fatigue and lack of focus.

She didn't give me a dietary plan, but she recommended a book called "The South Beach Diet." Not for weight loss, but to understand the research on how sugar affects mood and energy. I became obsessed with understanding how food affected my performance and mental state.

I started noticing everything. If I had sugar in the morning or a high-carb breakfast, my entire day was spent drinking more caffeine trying to get my energy up. My runs were terrible. But if I needed to function late into the night studying, I learned not to have sugar in the evening. These weren't abstract concepts anymore. They were lived experiences I could feel in my body.

The Three Year Pain Journey: Finding Wholeness Through Crisis

When my running injury persisted, I tried everything. Massage therapists, chiropractors, physical therapists, running specialists. I even did barefoot running for six months in Pennsylvania, partially through winter. Nothing worked. I couldn't run more than a mile without pain. It hurt every time I went from sitting to standing. Some days I couldn't rotate my torso to look over my shoulder while driving. The pain would fluctuate from mild to very severe over those three years.

I focused on walking my dog and doing yoga when I could afford it. Classes were $10, which was about a third of my $25 weekly social budget. That fellowship award of $5,000? The first thing I did was buy a road bike for $1,000 so I could move my body. Later I got a treadmill so I could walk indoors during Pennsylvania winters.

I wasn't interested in self actualization during this time. I was interested in survival.

The Holistic Physical Therapist: Everything Changes

At Vanderbilt during my predoctoral internship, I met a holistic physical therapist who changed my life. In addition to giving me exercises, she literally gave me a specific high antioxidant tea. Green gunpowder tea. She told me exactly which store to buy it from. She had me increase my daily antioxidant intake while also doing cognitive therapy with me during my actual runs.

Within two months, I was running three miles without pain.

This was after three years of chronic back pain, three years of not being able to run more than a mile. I ran my first half marathon again in 2009. I had gone three full years unable to do what had been my primary coping mechanism.

The Yoga Teacher Training Years: Mind Body Integration

At the VA in Arkansas, I met my dear friend Mary Horn, who was connected to the yoga community. We started co facilitating yoga classes. She handled instruction while I led meditation. I eventually completed my 200 hour and then 500 hour yoga teacher training, studying with Matt and Holly Kreps from Circle Sha Yoga and Stacy Faught, who became my home studio teacher.

Through these experiences, my awareness of mind body connection grew exponentially. I was teaching two yoga classes a week at the VA, serving on the whole health committee, and training psychologists, psychiatrists, primary care doctors, and nurses in whole health interventions. I even got trained in battlefield acupuncture, though my state licensure wouldn't let me practice it.

The Professional Awakening: What My Peers Were Missing

As I worked alongside my peers and trained interns and postdocs, I realized something crucial: we don't get formal training in how lifestyle interventions impact mental health outcomes. My interns and postdocs weren't getting this education, and my peers certainly weren't talking about it in sessions.

But I was. I felt comfortable incorporating in session meditation and mindfulness. I talked with clients about reducing sugar intake, especially if they weren't diabetic. I explored with them how they felt when they walked, ran, weight lifted, hiked, or kayaked. I noticed that hunters in Montana who did a lot of hiking in tough terrain were getting huge cardiovascular benefits that were both values based and enjoyable.

I started connecting these dots: the more clients were rooted in better lifestyle practices, the easier mental health treatment became and the quicker gains occurred. I wasn't sacrificing mental health treatment for lifestyle changes. They were symbiotic, facilitating each other.

The Walk That Started Everything

The Whole Therapist concept came to me during one of my daily walks with my dog. About an hour total, 25 to 30 minutes in the morning and afternoon, sometimes an evening walk in summer. I had a lot of time to think and reflect on what I'd learned after 20 years of providing clinical care, mapping that onto my own awareness and journey.

I realized that when I went to the Montana VA, I was trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Chronic Pain (CBT CP), and everything I had learned on my own was actually part of this evidence based model. I think that's why I have minimal chronic pain with minimal flare ups to this day, 20 years later. I had naturally discovered this approach through necessity.

The Gap I Couldn't Ignore

Walking with my dog, I thought about what I do in therapy that feels unique and important. I don't think I'm the only one integrating lifestyle and mental health, but I don't think mental health providers get the structure, organization, or permission to talk about it authentically.

The research is abundant. It's kind of ridiculous how much evidence we have that lifestyle interventions impact mental health outcomes. Yet there's this massive gap between knowing this intellectually and being able to integrate it ethically and effectively into practice.

Why "The Whole Therapist" Had to Exist

The Whole Therapist emerged because I realized that when therapists embody these principles themselves, when they understand the mind body connection from the inside out, they become more effective healers. Not because they're perfect, but because they're authentic.

This isn't about therapists having it all figured out. It's about recognizing that we're human beings who benefit from the same nervous system regulation, movement, nutrition awareness, and holistic care that we recommend to our clients.

I created The Whole Therapist to bridge the gap between what we know about holistic healing and how we can ethically, authentically integrate it into practice while maintaining appropriate scope and boundaries.

After 20 years in this field, I've learned that your own healing and wholeness isn't separate from your professional effectiveness. It's the foundation of it.

Ready to explore what this integration looks like in your own practice? The Whole Therapist online course launches this fall, offering a comprehensive approach to bridging somatic wisdom, nervous system regulation, and holistic care with trauma therapy practice.