Episode 29: How to Alleviate Anxiety, Depression and Hopelessness DURING Alopecia

Today’s episode of the podcast is about How to Alleviate Anxiety, Depression and Hopelessness DURING Alopecia

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• To understand what your options are and what's best for you

• The bigger root cause underlying Alopecia

• How to conquer your fear of having Alopecia

• Activities you can do during Alopecia

• How to stay away from all negativity

• Negative habits to avoid

• Where to focus in your life to overcome negative emotions

HIGHLIGHTS YOU CAN'T SIMPLY MISS

• The root base of anxiety, depression and hopelessness in alopecia or in life in general is a fear, is a worry, is a situation bigger than just the anxiety or the depression 01:12

• There's a bigger root cause there underlying 01:25

• You move into an empowered state 02:53

• With empowered knowledgeable action comes confidence, comes self-esteem, comes reassurance 03:03

• So getting to that root cause is key to really cleaning the full house 03:44

• Empowering yourself with action, with knowledge allows you to move forward 04:05

• Having patience and trusting the process 04:16

• You can heal, your body is made to heal 04:48

• There's nothing better than giving back to others 04:58

• Turn off those thoughts, especially the negative ones 06:42

• Focus on the positive, focus on your blessings, focus on what you do have versus what you don't have 07:00

• Focus on the great things that will be coming to you, which includes your hair growth 07:13

• Stay away from those bad habits 07:46

• Annihilate bad habits and have self discipline 09:14

• Staying away from all the negativity is key 09:27

• Stick to the optimistic side of things, not to the negative 09:50

• You need to dominate alopecia with knowledge 10:27

• Going through alopecia yourself, gives you a wider range and perspective 11:14

• When people are negative, they place their negativity thoughts onto you 12:36

• Be mindful of what you believe in 13:15

• Alleviating anxiety and depression, you really need to get to the root cause 14:06

• When you give back, you feel better 15:01

• We have to be careful with what information we're intaking 16:41

• Life doesn't always give you happy endings 17:09

• We have to create the happy ending 17:16

• When you take action, things fall into place 17:36

• When you prepare for it, that's where opportunity is met 17:39

• If there's no action nothing's gonna happen, everything's gonna stay the same or get worse 18:36

• Once you've begun taking action, once you've started taking the steps, everything will start to alleviate 19:44

• You'll know that you're on the right path, you'll know it cuz your start to heal 19:55

• You'll know it because you will see the changes 20:00

• Being still allows you to hone into your thoughts 20:26

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Transcription

Awaken to hair growth. Awaken to hair growth because there is, possibility to get your hair back. Awaken to hair growth because we're not told that we're able to conquer and overcome alopecia. Awaken to hair growth because I want to be a positive light and beacon for you because I've healed my alopecia and now I help others do the same with different types of alopecia, men, women, children, of all ages, of all races and ethnicities.

Welcome back to the alopecia angel podcast, awaken to hair growth. I'm your host, Johanna Dahlman and today we are going to talk about alleviating anxiety, depression, and hopelessness in alopecia during this time of hair loss, during this time that you are trying to figure out what the next step is. Trying to heal, trying to take that next action step, trying to understand what's going on and for those of you who are new to alopecia, it's a process to understand where you're at, to understand what your options are and to understand what's best for you. And so please be mindful that these recommendations are just to alleviate and I'm emphasizing, alleviate depression, anxiety, hopelessness, because at the root base of anxiety, depression and hopelessness in alopecia or in life in general is a fear, is a worry, is a situation bigger than just the anxiety or the depression.

There's a bigger root cause there underlying and so A.) I'm all about getting to the root of it. So for example, if you have anxiety of heights and you work at a construction site and you have to be up on the hundredth floor while it's all open air, hard hat and you know, nothing to no guardrails in this type of thing, and you have an anxiety of heights, maybe you should look at a different department or doing a different aspect of your job, maybe in an office instead of at a construction site or maybe given the construction site work to somebody else, right? and so it's that type of thing where you want to give it a solution that's viable and sustainable. So instead of you having to climb to the hundredth floor every day, when you have a fear of heights, maybe instead of doing that opt for another position where that doesn't require you to go up to the hundredth floor, right.

Or the other side of that is to conquer your fear and to conquer it in baby steps. You know, maybe you go up to the 10th floor and then 20th and 30th and so on and so forth until you can manage the hundredth floor with no problem and that takes time, there's two routes, two options to take. When it comes to anxiety, depression, hopelessness in alopecia when I see with my clients, when I'm evaluating them, I will say within the first four weeks that all goes away. All the hopelessness goes away, all the depression, all the anxiety, all the fear, all the agony, all the struggle, it all goes away. 

It goes away because you move into an empowered state. You move into a state where there's knowledge. You move into a state where there is an opportunity for you to take action. With that action, with empowered knowledgeable action comes confidence, comes self-esteem, comes reassurance. All that comes to you through knowledge through taking action, thus enabling you to let go of the fear, letting go of the depression, letting go of the anxiety, letting go of the hopelessness, all that just goes away. It's also part of the program in how we heal you from the inside out. It's a mind, body experience not just hair. It's not just focusing on the scalp. It's everything. It's all of you, cuz all of you needs to be accounted for, right? All of you need to be accounted.

So the root cause there is a lot bigger than just the hair loss and so getting to that root cause is key to really cleaning the full house, right? It's like gutting the house, you need to gut it completely to make sure there's no termites, to make sure there's nothing there that could be damaging the house. You need to gut it completely to be able to rebuild and that's what we do. We gut the house and we rebuild from the foundation up. So empowering yourself with action, with knowledge allows you to move forward with confidence and with a greater self-esteem, with a greater knowing that you're on the right path. Trusting the process is part of it, having patience and trusting the process, trusting in the knowing that it's gonna come.

When you go shopping online, do you think that your package is gonna be lost? Do you think that your package is gonna come in a few days? You just know, right? You buy something on Amazon and you just know that the package is gonna come, right? There's a trust and there's knowing. Click, pay, done, it's gonna happen. Your package is coming, same thing with alopecia, you take the right steps, the right strategy. You need to trust that it's gonna come. You need to trust that it's all there because you can heal, your body is made to heal, we just need to support it. In the midst of trying to alleviate your anxiety and depression and hopelessness. I would recommend that there's nothing better than giving back to others. There's nothing better than doing something good for somebody else. During my time with alopecia, I actually spent more time at charities, helping out at food banks, helping at animal shelters and just doing good for others.

Doing good for others takes the worry and the 24/7 mind games and mind talk and chatter off of you and onto something else. Something else that's more productive, something else that's more positive because when you give back, even if it's just to your grandma or to your neighbor or to your local community, whether that's with a charity or without a charity or just yourself doing good, then you feel good and there's a ripple effect. You're helping somebody else. Yes, you're in need, but you also are helping others and as I was in my process of helping myself, of gaining that knowledge, of trying all the different various trials and errors that I did of figuring this out for me, for my sake, for my hair. I was also giving back and giving back, gave me an outlet to not think about me.

I was in the zone. I was helping others. I was part of a mission, whether that was at the food bank or whether that was at the animal shelter or whether that was giving blood or whatever it is. I was giving for a better cause, giving towards others and donating my time and being valuable and it made me feel good but I'm sure it helped those organizations and at the same time, it also took away from the non stop obsessive thoughts that can lurk all the time. And when your mind can't turn off, especially at night, this is problematic because we need to turn off those thoughts, especially the negative ones and so that would be my next tip would be to stay away from all negativity. All negativity, whether that's the doom and gloom of the news, whether that's the doom and gloom of the negative nancies in your life, or just negative people in your life and stick to the positive focus on the positive, focus on your blessings, focus on what you do have versus what you don't have.

Focus on the good things that are going good for you. Focus on the great things that will be coming to you, which includes your hair growth. Focus on inspirational people, focus on being inspired in general, whether that's through books and biographies and people who've overcome so many hurdles and struggles in life, or whether that's through amazing feats and technological advances or whether that's through other situations where they've overcome so many obstacles. Focus on the positive always, take away all the negativity and in the same vein, I would say stay away from those bad habits, because when we're in a place of anxiety, despair, hopelessness, and desperation and also when we're in a place of depression, we tend to binge whether that's binge eating, eating our emotions, whether that binging TV, whether that's binge drinking, whether that's doing too much of bad things and bad habits.

We tend to go overboard and I've seen this in people where let's say they, they have a bad situation arise. So the first thing they do is pull out a cigarette or they pull out, you know, something to smoke and they start chain smoking and drinking and getting drunk and doing all these things where at the end of the day it just hurts them, at the end of the day it just harms them and their health even more and if you don't know already, smoking actually causes hair loss. So if you are a smoker, it's a good time to stop smoking anything, really, anything, not just cigarettes. Smoking anything causes hair loss, even vaping, vaping causes hair loss so stop. So staying away from negativity, staying away from the negative habits, like catch yourself, don't overeat. I know people stress eat, right? When people are anxious and depressed and just like worried, they tend to overeat and they tend to overeat on like, sweets or salty things or just things that are bad for them, or they tend to overdo it on caffeine or they overdo it on alcohol or all these other vices that they might have.

I would say annihilate them all and have that self discipline because once you annihilate all those bad habits, then you can reduce and alleviate the anxiety, the depression and the hopelessness, you really can. I would also say staying away from all the negativity is key, whether that's from friends, family, the news coworkers, anyone around you, who's negative. I would say put boundaries there, put boundaries and focus on the positive, focus on people, on places that create inspiration, create positivity, that allure optimism, and evoke optimism to you. Stick to the optimistic side of things, not to the negative. Don't think of what can happen, think about what is happening.

So don't focus so much on the future, focus on the now, because now is all that we have. We only have the present so focus on now and what we can do. You may not be able to stop the hair from falling right now, but you can take action steps so that in two weeks it stops falling, so that in four weeks you can start seeing hair growth, so that you can empower yourself and feel more confident and feel more empowered, more knowledgeable towards alopecia and how to control it because alopecia is just like anything else. You need to dominate it with knowledge. You need to dominate it with education. You need to dominate it, with knowing how this works.

And looking back, I was asking a lot of doctors, a lot of dermatologists on how to heal this on what to do. What would this look like in six months? What would this look like in one year? How soon I could get my hair back, what the opportunities were and none of them had answers for me. None of 'em and mind you, I went to different various doctors, in different countries, in different states, different cities and none of 'em had an answer for me, you know why? Because they didn't know, they didn't have the answers and more importantly, they didn't walk in my shoes. They didn't know the full scope of what alopecia was. They only knew what the textbook said. Well, the textbook says only so much and can only give you so much.

Going through alopecia yourself, gives you a wider range and perspective of what this disease looks like and what can be done and how to alleviate and how to help it. Walking in the shoes is so much more of an experience than just reading about it, it's like reading about swimming. You can read about swimming all you want, how to swim laps, what kind of strokes there are, what kind of, you know, body movements, how to float, how to not drown, etcetera but until you get into the water, until you actually do it, you don't know how to swim, I'm so sorry. You can read all you want about swimming, but if you're not in the ocean, if you're not in the river or in the lake, and you don't put it into practice. If you don't experience it for yourself, you don't know anything about swimming, anything, same thing with alopecia. If you haven't gone through it, you don't know because it's much more than what the textbook says. It's much more than what we read online and that's another thing.

If you are in forums or in Facebook groups or part of organizations that have like, a negative slant to healing and reversing alopecia, that's a red flag. I would stay away, I would stay far, far away. Those organizations, forums, chats, etcetera, that aren't helping you from people who are just down in the dumps and who are projecting their feelings and their limiting beliefs onto you cause that's another thing. When people are negative, they're going to place their negativity, their thoughts, their mindset, their perspective, their beliefs onto you and you can either put a boundary up and understand that those are their beliefs, their opinions, and nothing more, or you can take it as truth in fact, when in reality it's not truth. And when in reality, it's not a fact, it's just an opinion.

When they say there's no cure for alopecia, that's just an opinion. That's just because one pill doesn't serve everybody. That's just because one size doesn't fit all, but there is healing and there is reversal, that's what I believe and that belief allowed me to heal. That belief led me to healing. So also be mindful of what you believe in. Be mindful of what you're listening to, be mindful of what you are incorporating as fact or fiction, cuz there's a lot of misinformation out there, a lot and so you want to be very weary, especially at a time that's so sensitive, especially at a time, you're just, it's a very sensitive time. I mean, I don't know how else to explain it emotionally, it's sensitive, physically it's very sensitive, mentally it's exhausting. To say the least, but it's absolutely exhausting cuz you're racking your head about what it could be, what I can do, how to see results so I get it. 

But we need to stay away from bad habits. We need to stay away from the negativity. We need to stay away from the doomsday, from the no, this is it. Accept it, be bald. No, if that's not what you want, don't accept it. Throw it away, toss it, toss those ideas out. Alleviating anxiety and depression, you really need to get to the root cause. So being in nature, giving back, having a pet, if you have pets, if you don't have pets go to an animal shelter. I never had the full capacity to have pets. I've always wanted a dog, I still want a dog, but my lifestyle does not allow me to have dogs with me right now. Just wouldn't be fair, but I do love animal shelters and I do love giving back and working and volunteering at animal shelters and I do love being around animals and you've ever been to an animal shelter or you know about them, you know, that those pets, animals, dogs, cats, turtles, and everything else that's in there just want love. They just want to be touched and held and caressed and nurtured. And these are beautiful animals who also need homes. And it's such a beautiful thing to be able to volunteer and help out because it's a wonderful deed and when you give back, you feel better.

And like I said earlier, when you give back to others, you stop thinking about yourself. You stop obsessing about alopecia. I will say though, my obsession with alopecia, with my hair got me to where I am today, but you don't need to obsess. You don't need to get desperate. You don't need to have all this anxiety wind you up. You don't need to have those sleepless insomniac nights. You don't need that and you can alleviate all that. I hear it time and time again with my clients that they entered one way and they left another way completely 360 degrees once doing the program. Alleviating the depression, the anxiety, the insomnia, the fatigue, the joint pain, the digestive, the nails, the hair loss, alleviating everything. This is all possible, but these are short steps, short remedies with alleviating anxiety and depression.

The only thing that will really alleviate it is getting to the root cause, getting to full health. Annihilating all those things that bring about the anxiety and the depression, tackling these things with knowledge, empowerment, and action because it's very easy to stay inside, wallow in your sadness, watching TV, eating Ben and Jerry's and not doing anything versus doing something for yourself, doing something for others, taking a little bit more self care, walking your friend's dog, helping out at a shelter of any sort, whether it's for humans or for animals or a food bank, it's very easy to stay home and just like be sad and be consumed by our thoughts, but you don't help anyone that way and it just leads you to more and more depression. And so we have to be mindful of our thoughts. We have to be careful with what we're thinking. We have to be careful with what information we're intaking that's feeding us.

Go towards positive, optimistic, inspirational, energy, people, information, situations, circumstances. I love happy endings and yes, I watched all the Disney movies and I continue to watch Disney movies and Pixar and I love the cartoons and I'm a child at heart. I love, love, love movies in that sense and I love happy endings and I get it life doesn't always give you happy endings. What these movies don't teach you, what I see at least is that we have to create the happy ending. It doesn't just come, the prince charming doesn't just come, the family reuniting doesn't just come, the happy ending doesn't just happen by serendipity. It can, not to say that it can't, it can absolutely but from what I see from my perspective is that a lot of times when you take action, things fall into place.

When you prepare for it, that's where opportunity is met. Preparation meets opportunity and then the magic happens and I mean, I can go on and on about this and about the subject on how this has happened in my career, you know, looking for jobs and how this has happened with meeting my husband, on how, on just so many things in life where being prepared, taking action when it meets opportunity, that's when things like fall into place, but the action part is necessary, the action part is necessary. 

You can't just think that planting seeds outside is gonna make your garden grow. You still need to tend to it. You need to make sure the weeds are not there. You need to make sure it has enough water. You need to make sure it's got the right moisture, fertilizer and nutrients in the soil. This is how a garden grows much like your health, much like your hair. It needs to grow with all these various factors incorporated and guess what? The verb here is action, we have to take action. If there's no action nothing's gonna happen, everything's gonna stay the same or get worse. I can promise you that, if you don't take action, it's gonna stay the same or get worse and more than likely it'll get worse.

So in terms of alleviating anxiety and depression, stick to positive people donate your time somewhere to a good will, to a good cause, to a neighbor, to any charity locally nearby you, to maybe, you know, there's somebody that, you know, struggles and needs a little extra help with something, whether that's homework or whether that’s keeping an eye out on their children or maybe cooking them a meal. There's so many things we can do for other people and in doing so we create positive energy. We create a trickle down effect to them and we do something good and we keep the obsessive thoughts at a minimum, right? The negative self talk at a minimum and that's key. 

I would also say spend as much time outdoors as you can. Get out of the house, being inside the house, trapped in your room, doesn't help anybody. I would also say stay away from the bad negative news and the forums and anyone else who's a negative Nancy. I would also say trust the process. Once you've begun taking action, once you've started taking the steps, everything will start to alleviate, your heart, your mind, your soul will start to alleviate with all this pressure, with all this angst, with all the agony. You'll know that you're on the right path. You'll know it cuz your start to heal. You'll know it because you will see the changes. You can start to see changes in the hair and heal program in the first week. In the first week, you start to see changes. You don't have to wait so long. In the first couple days, you start to see changes and more and more changes pile up and accumulate and this is what we want. We want to see the changes we want to see health emerge.

Remember we have to gut the house, start from scratch, rebuild from the foundation up. That's the key being still allows you to hone into your thoughts, hone into how you feel, hone into what's really going on and what's really the root cause because of course hair loss could be the aftermath of the root cause and the root cause maybe, you know it and you don't want to express it. Maybe you're in denial or maybe it's something else, or maybe it's even a blind spot and so these are things that we have to uncover and we do so in the evaluation and the evaluation is key to your healing, into your success because it's personalized and it has to be, it has to be personalized. 

So alleviating anxiety and depression is possible, but it's just alleviating. It's like having a headache and taking headache medicine. Okay my headache went away for today, but what if it comes back tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day, am I gonna keep taking medicine? No, it's not necessarily what I would recommend. I would try to see other ways, like, why are you getting a headache? Is it not enough water? Is it too much screen time? Is it too much stress from work or family pressures or what's going on? You have to get to the root cause and I think this is paramount when it comes to healing and when it comes to really uncovering all these cobwebs, this is essential to really healing, truly a hundred percent.

I hope this has helped you. If you have anxiety, depression, or hopelessness. I'm here to help, I'm here to help you and guide you if you need extra help. I know for a fact, there's outreach possibilities in every city around the world that can help you. There's hotlines that can help you, there's forums and chats that can help you but I prefer one on one and I prefer getting the help from people who've been there who walked my shoes. So if you need help, reach out, we're happy to help email us at [email protected]. Happy to help, happy to reassure you that everything's gonna be okay and that you can heal and this is possible for you. Your success is inevitable, it really is. Believe that and trust, trust the process. Thank you so much. Take care, and I'll see you next time. 

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