A gifted, in-demand inspirational speaker, teacher and podcast guest, Dr Chris is recognized as a ‘top ND to follow’ by two independent organizations. Her book, Beyond the Label, is a comprehensive guide to mental health. Her other books, retreat, individual- and clinician-oriented courses guide people to wholeness through her integrated physical, mental, emotional and spiritual approach to health.
This short edited excerpt of Dr Chris’ interview explores her experiences overcoming multiple mental health challenges, and mind-body medicine’s potential. Hear her full interview on The Gifts of Trauma.
Photo Credit: Rana Keen-Zandbeek
Psychoneuroimmunology focuses on how our thoughts affect our physiology (how our bodies function). Our brains are not fixed entities, they have a plastic quality. Psychoneuroimmunology leans into this concept of neuroplasticity, our brains and bodies pliable qualities, which offers opportunity and hope.
My intention is to share a message of mental health. So no matter how dark, deep, difficult, challenging the circumstances are or have been in your life, it’s possible to get to a place of healing by integrating a mind, body, spirit (holistic) approach. It’s not game over… until it is.
As a young adult, I was diagnosed with bulimia, depression, anxiety and type 1 bipolar disorder. Several years later, a failed suicide attempt left me in a coma with kidney failure. When I came out of that coma, I was even more depressed because I had failed. I was still here when I didn’t want to be and I didn’t aim to be handicapped with dialysis. There was so much to reconcile. “Why am I still here? How am I going to move forward?”
Every day at work I wore the, ‘everything is okay on the outside, but I’m dying on the inside mask.’ I believed I had to hide who I was, to be more like a man, suppress my emotions, vulnerability, struggles and instability. This belief was validated by my psychiatrist who said, “Chris, don’t tell anybody about your bipolar diagnosis.” In saying this, his intention was to be protective, as one symptom in mania can be excessive spending. As I worked in high net worth private money management, I certainly didn’t want to be seen as a risk to our clients’ life savings. But his words made me think my condition was a deep dark secret. Fortunately, while I held that role, I never had a manic episode. There was only depression, which made me doubt my bipolar diagnosis. Eventually I found the courage to leave my job, a very sought after high level corporate banking role. Everyone I spoke to about quitting asked, “Why would you leave?” My eventual response was, “It’s literally sucking the life out of me, why would I stay?”
After the failed suicide attempt I mentioned earlier, a friend gave me a book called Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson. When I read its message about surrender, something shifted. I pondered, ‘What does surrender mean? And what does love mean?’ Thanks to that same friend—a nutritionist who always encouraged me to look into nutrition and naturopathic medicine—I found new avenues to explore. Coming from a Western model family, these were foreign concepts. Even the word depression…when I was a commerce student, I only understood depression from an economic perspective.
Thanks to my nutritionist friend, I found and consulted with a nutritionally oriented psychiatrist and a naturopathic doctor. I took their prescriptions, along with the Western prescriptions that I had been taking, even when I was not well, and for the first time in over a decade, I experienced a year free from depression and anxiety. Encouraged, I continued my inquiry into naturopathic medicine. I felt depression free, so I tapered off most of my medications and remained well until I experienced another depressive episode, and another suicide attempt. That caused me to pursue additional training in mental, emotional, spiritual, and mind-body medicine.
When Gabor Maté interviewed me for his book, The Myth of Normal, he inquired, “Why so much depression, Chris? What emotion might you have depressed?” When I mentioned my adoption, he asked, “How do you think you would have felt right coming out of the womb?” When anger came up, I told him firmly, “I don’t do anger.” So he suggested that what we ignore or refuse to look at can flag something to explore. We talked about my adoption wound, and how my wiring was shaped by that experience. It was a powerful connection, as from a very early age, I believed I wasn’t wanted. This belief had nothing to do with either my adoptive parents or my upbringing, it was the way I had processed it in my brain, as a child. So what was I to do with that?
I have since done a lot of mental health training, but I was attracted to Compassion Inquiry® by its two co-founders; Gabor Maté, who I’d been following after learning about his work in my naturopathic training, through his book When the Body Says No, and Sat Dharam Kaur, a naturopathic doctor who I studied with in her Healthy Breast Teacher Training. My husband also did a retreat with Gabor in 2006, when he was writing In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. These two teachers really impacted my life. Also… I was attracted to this training to further my search for healing for both myself and my patients.
In naturopathic medicine, we’re taught that everything is about the patient. Especially in homeopathy, where we are charged to be keen observers of everything the patient does, their movements, hand gestures, tone of voice, cadence of speech, etc. This means that as a clinician, you’re taking in a lot. But there was not an emphasis on what’s rising within you, the activation or triggering that can happen when you bump up against yourself, or when your limitations meet your patients’. Compassionate Inquiry really helped me notice what was rising within me. It helped me clear those wounds, so I can truly be a vessel of presence with another and hold that space for them. My experience in the Compassionate Inquiry® training was incredible. We were asked to bring a trigger to class every week. Initially, I thought that was going to be really challenging, but found I could not wait to get to class each week because there were always so many things I had bumped up against since the last class. And when you can deepen the inquiry into yourself, your spirit, your soul, and your journey, you can make sense of your thoughts and the connection to that emotional realm that happens within this container that is your body. You learn to lean into the space between the stimulus and the response and allow stillness to lead the way… ultimately to love. That is what the Compassion Inquiry training taught me. All parts of me were welcome there. And as someone who was used to wearing a mask in an environment where many of my parts weren’t accepted, a place where I wasn’t whole, this was a very welcome experience.
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, transformation, healing, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the interview, and if you like it, please subscribe, leave a rating or review, and share it with others in your community.
