Episode 15: Emotional Toll of Alopecia and What You Can Do About It

Today’s episode of the podcast is about the Emotional Toll of Alopecia and What You Can Do About It

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

The effects of Alopecia may lead us to a rollercoaster ride of mixed emotions. This can take a toll on our mind, body, and spirit.

With a lot of things going on within ourselves and the negativity surrounding us, take responsibility to control your situation.

Find the positive support you need. Do not settle with regrets, denial, and disbelief because it is never too late to get the health you deserve.

Join me and learn these life-changing lessons from this episode:

• Alopecia may affect a lot of areas in your life, but you can still be in control.

• Have the right mindset, perspective, and grit to heal inside out.

• Prioritizing your health can bring you happiness and limitless opportunities.

• Do not suppress your emotions; feel and but do not hold on too long.

• The attitude of regrets and settling for less hinders you from moving forward.

• Stick to positive support.

• Take baby steps if you must.

• Be grateful to be able to see better outcomes.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU CAN'T SIMPLY MISS

• We have much more control on how we feel. We have much more control on what we think and how we think 02:29

• Having the right mindset, perspective and grit to truly heal 02:38

• Healing alopecia is a mind, body, spirit connection 04:10

• Two emotions are regretting and settling and regret is something that holds you back 06:25

• When you settle, you've given up 07:16

• If we prioritize our health, we would be empowered to find happiness 09:13

• Feel the negative emotions, but give yourself a time limit 11:02

• As long as you have a will and a desire you can make that happen 11:43

• What we feed our mind, body, and spirit has the power to limit or expands us 11:48

• Stay away from all the negativity 12:48

• We need to pick ourselves up and get back 15:38

• Feel the emotions, don't suppress them Feel the emotions, but release them 15:43

• Promoting hair growth starts with promoting health 17:31

• Only you are in control of your emotions 18:56

• Our journey to healing is individual 20:20

• Understand that you are in full control of your emotions 25:09

• If you have any regrets, forgive yourself and forgive others 25:39

• The more gratitude we have, the better outcomes we have 27:16

HELP IS WITHIN YOUR REACH!

Alopecia Angel is here to support you in your journey to find encouragement and healing to regain your hair and health.

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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 everybody to the alopecia angel podcast, awaken to hair growth. I am your host, Johanna Dahlman and today we are going to be talking about the emotional roller coaster of alopecia. And for many, this is a sensitive topic and it's definitely a sensitive topic to me. And I know I'm talking to clients and then even being in those shoes of losing hair, it can definitely trigger lots of emotions and the roller coaster itself about alopecia is one with a lot of ups and downs.

And depending for how long that you've had alopecia or how long that, you know, those cycles come back or even if you're completely universalis involved, those roller coasters are still there haunting us. And so I wanted to take today to talk about the emotional rollercoaster of alopecia and what we can do about it.

The emotions that we tend to experience range from agony to sadness, depression, and certainty, being scared and having fear, doubt, hopefulness, skepticism, belief, and discipline, confusion, extreme anger and bitterness. And then in a minute or two, it can go straight to happy, joyful, carefree, grateful, blissful, back to lonely, depressed, sad, worried and pain.

And the emotions that go along with alopecia are also very individual. And I know with many people who've contacted me, many of my clients as well, even there's times of suicidal thoughts, there's even times of feeling so lonely. So down in the dumps. So not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting to do more, not feeling motivated, not being able to tackle the day to day.

Because losing your hair, because alopecia affects every area of your life and in one sense, we allow it to affect every area of our lives. And in the other sense, I'm here to tell you that it doesn't have to affect every area of your life. You know, we have much more control on how we feel. We have much more control on what we think and how we think.

And, you know, that goes along with mindset. It goes along with having a perspective for that, but then also having the grit to want to truly heal from the inside out and taking the steps forward as needed. There are, those some emotions that I did want to address here when I first discovered that I had alopecia.

You know, I went straight to the forums. I went to doctors, you know, my story. If you don't know my story, you can go back to episode one and listen to that. But in these forums, I never found any aspect of positivity. It was just a kaleidoscope of negativity and anywhere from suicidal to bitterness, anger to hate a disbelief for anything that would be a cure. And also on the flip side, there would also be this insatiable hunger for the latest drug or medicine trial or medication. 

And first off, if you have alopecia, if you have hair loss, if you've been through the gamut of what that looks like, or maybe, or maybe you're just brand new to it and you don't know where to start and you're listening to this medication is not the answer.

It's not an answer not because I'm anti-medication, no, just the opposite because it doesn't work. If you start to do your research, if you start to grab that, download that free PDF that I have on my website, you'll see that the ramifications and the side effects do not outweigh that less than 10% chance that the medication's gonna work.

Cause it doesn't work and it doesn't work long-term and you know, little by little, if you've been listening to this, or if you go onto my website, you'll see and understand why, because healing alopecia is a mind, body, spirit connection. It's a mind, body spirit approach, and it needs a holistic approach is completely required in order to heal this, you can't do one without the other because it's all connected.

And in regards to alopecia, this is definitely the truth. It's not a mere headache where you can take an aspirin or you can take an over the counter, uh, solution, and then your headache is gone. No, there's many more layers to this. There's many more root causes. And, uh, for each of us, it's a little bit different.

And so this is why we're on this emotional roller coaster, but I'm here to alleviate this emotional roller coaster a little bit and say that you are in control. And you are in control because yes, you have the control over your feelings, over your thoughts, over your beliefs, over your actions, over what you do and what you don't do over what you subscribe to and what you don't subscribe to.

And so this in turn gives you more power than what you allow yourself to know and believe. And in the same token, if you were to listen a little bit, maybe more to your intuition and allow more positive thoughts to come in, more positive beliefs to come in, you would see that they like to grow and bunch up and add on to each other.

So the more positivity we incorporate into our lives, the more we're going to see it around us. And the more we put up borders to all this negativity, the less we'll allow it to atagonized us. The less we'll allow it to ruin our day. The less we'll allow it to allow us to suffer and suffering was something that I experienced firsthand with alopecia.

And it's something that I want to avoid as much as possible for you and for anyone else who wants to work with me because suffering is really not needed. It's not essential and you can truly heal this so much faster than you allow yourself to believe. Now there are two emotions that I want to talk about specifically and these two emotions, not only go with alopecia, but with anything in our lives, which in turn could affect our alopecia one way or another.

And these two emotions are regretting and settling and regret is something that holds you back Regret is something that anchors you into the past, anchors you into not being able to change the past and the other is settling, and settling. Settling,  wow, I mean, settling for being bald, settling for having to wear a wig, settling for not taking actions, settling for forcing yourself to embrace a life without hair that maybe you don't want to embrace.

There's no need to settle as well. You can overcome this and the journey looks a little bit different for everybody, but settling is something that is on the same page, almost as regret because when you settle, you've given up, you've given up on yourself, you've given up on opportunities. You've given up on everything.

And the thing is it's like our bodies are made to heal. Our bodies are wonderful, magical machines that can do so much for us. And they do so much for us on a 24 hour basis, 365 days of the year. They'd never take a break. They never take vacation. They're always working on our behalf. Now it's up to us to support it in the way that it's required so that this machine can continue to work for us. That continues to be an optimal levels so that we benefit and reap the benefits on a daily basis.

And that goes day by day. And it's just like maintaining a car, just maybe even a little bit more dedication, you know, with cars. I know you have to do the oil change. You have to make sure the fluids are filled. You have to make sure there's gas, you want to clean it. You want to make sure the upholstery has no stains. Uh, the tires have air in it, et cetera, et cetera.

The same thing goes for our bodies and a lot of times we neglect our bodies much more than we do our car, much more than we do our things whether that's the latest phone or gadget or gizmo, we have all these protectors for our phones and our laptops, and we have all these covers for it. All these things on how we can dazzle it and dress it up. And yet with our bodies, many times we neglect it. Many times we don't support it. Many times we don't feed it what it needs to be fed.

Many times we don't take care of it. And then we see the side effects of that, right? And maybe it's alopecia and something else. And maybe it's alopecia and a couple other nagging things, or maybe it's like another, a second or a third autoimmune disease. It just all depends. Again, we're all different but at the same time, if we were to start to focus on ourselves, start to focus on our health and keep that a priority, then we can say goodbye to all this. We would be much more empowered to live a life filled with happiness, with health, with hair, with endless opportunities, endless possibilities, and with a different mindset and perspective.

And many times when my clients do my program, the hair and heal program, there is a switch. There is a life transformation component. There is an aha moment in every week or every category because it's not just about the hair, the result is the hair, but there is some steps before in order to obtain hair.

And this is why your topical lotions and potions and creams and serums oils and shampoos don't work because it's not a topical situation. It seems topical, but it's not, there's no way to encourage it until you go within and within is where you have all the keys to success, within is where we take control and let go of the negative emotions.

Change them into the positive ones. This is where we're able to see the light with every action step that we take, because that's the other thing I, I do realize that it's good to feel emotions good, bad, and ugly, but it's not healthy to stay there, so to speak. So for example, if you're sad, okay, feel it, feel the sadness, feel the anger, feel the pain.

Even feel the sorrow of the suffering. If you need to, if you want to grief, et cetera, feel it, but then give yourself a time limit because if you let it go on and go on and go on for days, months, and years, it will affect. Your relationships, it will affect your work. It will affect all areas of life.

There's a time and a place for everything. Just like there's a season for spring, winter, fall, and summer. There's a summer, there's a winter, there's a season for everything. I get it and even for those of you, who've been dealing for alopecia for 20 years, 30 years, it's never too late to heal. It's never too late to want to get your hair back. It's never too late to get healthy as long as you're breathing and you have a will and a desire you can make that happen, I truly believe that.

And many times I do say that that's the first step is to believe, believe that that's possible because that's another thing. What we tell ourselves, what we feed ourselves, mind, body, and spirit limits us, or expands us, holds you back or propels you forward and in terms of hair loss, in terms of anything else that you want to achieve in life, you can either hold yourself back by saying, oh no, I can't do that. Oh, no, that's not for me. Oh, no, that's impossible. I can't, I'm this I'm that but at the same time, that's holding you hostage to your limitations.

That's holding you hostage to your negative beliefs, to your limiting beliefs and that doesn't serve you. That, that does you no good and so going back to the emotional rollercoaster, there are tons of emotions and if there was one thing I would say is to stay away from all the negativity, stay away from all the naysayers, stay away from the people who are so bitter that they're so deep in their pain, that they can't even be happy for others when others are seeing hair growth or that others are seeing results or others are getting help.

These are the people that are in such pain and I have a tremendous compassion for them, a tremendous heart for them because I see their pain and it's self-inflicted, it really is self-inflicted because 90% of what happens to us really all depends on that 10% of how we react to it. When I was very, very, firstly, diagnosed with alopecia, I was, I shrugged it off.

I was like, no big deal. I have lots of hair. This is not going to affect me. Well, months later it started affecting me hugely. I started, you know, clogging up the drains, the pipes in my shower. I started seeing hair on the floor, on my yoga mat. I started seeing hair everywhere, which is something that for someone with curly hair, Uh, for those of you who know or who don't know curly hair, just kind of waddles up in your own hair and knots, and it'd be just becomes like nappy and it creates like bigger knots.

This is why I actually had my hair up today because I have a lot of knots that I need to get through because curly hair is not like straight hair where it just falls and you just see it on the ground. It's not like that but with alopecia when I shrugged it off and didn't do anything about it. That's what happened for the first few months. I saw tons of hair everywhere and I was in denial and in disbelief, I was like, yeah, I can't be mine.

I'm the only one living in the place and it was definitely mine. The disbelief that denial happens. And then it just moves forward to noticing bigger bald spots and losing the eyebrows and the eyelashes and the receding hairline. And it just continued. And there was no way to be in denial and then fear set in and the uncertainty and the worry and the doubt, and of course, more pain and more suffering.

And then the more things I tried, the more trial and error I tried and let's say I failed because I did fail, I failed many times, you know, that's when you would see me crouched in the bathroom, alone crying my eyes out and those were painful moments that I remember and at the same time, there was still a little voice in me, always telling me, you're not going to go bald.

You're going to get your hair back. You're going to overcome this and I held onto that just so tightly and it just kept moving forward. And yes, I gave myself time to cry. I gave myself time to be in pain and even if it was for the afternoon or the night, and then the next morning, guess what I was back at it.

I was back at it and that's what we need to do. We need to pick ourselves up and get back on the horse, pick ourselves up and get back at it. Feel the emotions. Don't suppress them, feel the emotions, but release them too cause holding onto those negative emotions actually is like swallowing poison. You don't want to do that.

So feel the emotions, be aware of them, be conscious about them and let them go realize that you're feeling the depression, the sadness, the agony, the anger, the skepticism, the hopefulness, the belief, the disbelief, the confusion, the bitterness, being scared of fear, all these things, feel it and let it go feel it and release it.

And then once you compose yourself, once the afternoon has passed, once the evening has passed and it's a new day, wake up with a better intention, wake up and set your eyes. I'm going to do this. I'm going to take these steps to move towards my alopecia goals. I'm going to take this next step towards that.

And once you have a goal in mind, in this case, it's hair growth, you need to make an intention. So everything you do in life, everything you do in the day, everything you do in the week at work, at home at school, at play with friends, with family, et cetera, we'll have an intention behind it. That intention should bring you towards hair growth. That intention should bring you more closely towards your goal. 

So for example, if you're saving up for a house and let's say, you're, you're saving up little by little, you're not going to go to Las Vegas and go gambling for the weekend, are you? and then, you know, take your savings that you have for the house to go gambling, right?

That wouldn't be responsible. So in the same token, if you want the hair growth, there are certain things that you would need to not do and need to do in order to move the needle in order to see and promote hair growth, because promoting hair growth starts with promoting health. And once we do that, once we understand how to support the body, how to support ourselves, how to support every facet of health internally, externally then we're able to see results. Then we're able to see the fruits of our labor.

And the same thing goes for plants. You know, if you've ever planted an avocado tree, if you ever planted flowers or shrubs, there's a season for everything. And at the same time, there's optimal soil, optimal water to intake, optimal sunshine that this plant needs, whatever the plant is and the same thing goes for you. You are more complex than a plant, but in the same vein, you also need certain things in every category to create the hair growth you want and desire. 

What can you do about these emotions? Well, I said earlier that, feel the emotions go through it, release them, and there's many ways to release emotions. You can go work out, you can take a nap, you can punch a pillow, you can journal, you can be out in nature. You can scream, you can cook, you can do so many things to get those emotions out. Even crying is a nice, good, healthy release. Crying is a natural emotion. And if you need to feel it, feel it. If you need to go through it, go through it, but then pick yourself back up.

And only you are in control of your emotions. Only you are in control of how you feel, what you allow to feel and how you're able to go through those emotions. If you need support, there's tons of support there. I'm here to support you as well and again, stick to positive support, stick to people and, you know, friends and family and just people in general, who will support you in a positive way, because going into those forums, going into groups where it's just nothing but negativity, nothing but pointing fingers and doing, you know, stay away, absolutely stay away.

I, those are just toxic, they really are. Anyone who is completely angry and  bitter, these are the people you want to stay away from. And many times I don't want to work with these people and I don't want to, they're not ready. You know, they're just not ready to hear something else to believe something else they're not ready.

And everyone needs their own time. When you're ready the teacher appears, when you're ready things align and many, many times some clients aren't ready to do the program now, sometimes they're not ready to take that next step and that's okay. You can take baby steps. You can take as long as you need because healing and that journey to healing is individual. 

And so if right now you just want to dip your toe, dip your toe. If another person wants to go diving and, you know, go in head first, go for it. I encourage both processes, whether that's the baby steps or whether it's full on head-on, but to wallow in the negative emotions, to wallow in the depression and to be a woe is me and play the victim that's not healthy and you won't get out of there and it won't be easy for someone even a loved one to pull you out as well. It won't, you have to pull yourself back up.

And a lot of times it's our responsibility as individuals, as adults to pull ourselves. To brush ourselves off. It's really nice when a loved one or a friend or a family member does this, or even a stranger because strangers are really good at giving sometimes not all the time feedback or words of encouragement or just something nice that just kind of resonates with you.

And those are all wonderful, but we can't expect it yet either. It's like the self-discipline that we need to take that next step. If you don't like where you are, then we need to make a plan to change. We need to make a plan to take control of those emotions, to release them, to let them go and to take those next action steps so that you can not have regret and not settle because having here is your birthright, having health is your birthright too.

It's just that many times we don't know how to go about, to obtain it. We don't know how to take care of ourselves. We don't know how to support ourselves. You know, when you're born, the baby doesn't come with a manual. When you buy a car seat and when you buy a car and when you buy a TV or an iPhone or anything else, it all comes with the manual.

But not the baby. The baby does not come with a manual. It doesn't, you're not given or told how to parent it, how to raise it, how to feed it, how to do anything. And so by the time you're an adult, there also is no manual for ourselves. And many times we could be neglecting certain areas of health and we don't know.

And this is potentially part of the puzzle piece of alopecia for you. In today's podcast, in closing I wanted to just recap about the emotional roller coaster of alopecia, how it has highs and lows, how we're able to control it, how we're able to feel it and release it and how that's the best option for you to feel it and release it and let it go and then take your time, sleep on it, journal it, push it out through exercise or through punching the pillow or being in nature.

And get back on the horse, dust yourself off, keep going. and don't settle. Don't live in regret. Regretting and settling are two emotions are two states of being that will only hold you back and will only keep you from achieving your goals in any area of life, including hair loss.

In closing, sticking to people, different family support groups that encourage positivity that encourage you to move along in your journey in a positive manner, with positive healing options and opportunities, and even guiding you. If you need baby steps and you're aware of this, take those baby steps. If you know, again, if you want to go full, full throttle, do it. And many times we do need those baby steps. 

Many times we do need to take it at our own pace and that's okay. I actually have clients who want to continue on my hair and heal program for more months. Let's say they signed up and they have access to the program for the duration of the program. And then they want to grab on extra months and there is a month-to-month membership and you can add on more months and so if you want to refer back to it, if you want to see the new information that comes out or be in tuned with the PDFs and, you know, create your binder as many clients have, and all of this information and just refer back to it on a continuous basis as support, it's there for you.

I know in college for the classes that I really, really enjoyed, I would keep the books. I would keep the books and my note for the class, for the classes that I didn't like, you know, I'd be really quick to sell those books back at the library or wherever at the student center, but for anywhere else of the books that I really found valuable, I keep them, I keep them in and now it keeps my notes and all my information there because it was something that I really wanted to refer back to and in the same vein, you can do that.

Stick to the guiding light, stick to positive aspects, understand that you are in full control. You are in full control of your emotions. You don't have to let the emotions run you and at the same time, understand that the regret and the settling do nothing but harm.

So for example, if you've been feeling regret or if you feel like you've settled, the beautiful thing about this is that you can change this in an instant. You can go from settling to taking action that you can do in less than 30 seconds with regret. If you have any regrets, forgive yourself and forgive others, whether that's in regards to the alopecia or something else in life, and you can also rectify it.

And even if the person, place or thing is no longer within your reach, maybe physical or other, you can still make peace with the past and making peace with the past is a big part too. I know many clients have times where the recent past or past also plays a factor and this is also necessary to heal.

It's all part of it. Having regrets is something we all need to let go of and forgiveness is the key to that. And settling, if you've ever said you don't have to anymore, you can change that. Whether you've settled with your hair loss or whether you've settled in other areas of life, you can change that.

If you settled with your, with your job and you don't like it, change your job. If you've settled with where you live, look for a new place to live. If you settled with your relationships, have those open discussions and see where you can upgrade them and see where both parties can create a better outcome for everyone.

There's no need to settle and there's no need to have regrets and the emotions that we experienced with alopecia, feel them and release them the bad ones, especially feel them and release them and the ones that bring happiness and joy and the feeling of gratitude and carefree and back to bliss and all these wonderful, beautiful, emotions, keep it going.

If there's anything that I've learned is that the more gratitude we have, the better outcomes we have, the more we're grateful for everything that we have, the more positive abundance comes our way. Maybe some of you are scratching your heads and are thinking like, how does this move along towards alopecia? and I would say even outside of alopecia, those with a positive outlook, those with a positive mindset, those with a positive demeanor have more success in what they do than people with the negative.

And so keep that in mind because there's actual research that goes along with this and so being positive, have a positive mindset, know that everything is happening for you and not to you, understanding that we have full control over our emotions and over those next steps where we can do better and choose to do better. I look forward to hearing more from you. I'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the alopecia angel podcast.

Thank you for listening to the alopecia angel podcast, a positive light and healing alopecia. You can do this and we can help. Spread the word that reversing alopecia is possible by telling your friends and family.