The Double-Edged Sword of a Diagnosis

summary

In this episode, Katie Wrigley explores the complexities of receiving a diagnosis, discussing both its validating aspects and potential pitfalls. She shares her personal experiences with sleep disorders and emphasizes the importance of focusing on what can be done rather than succumbing to a victim mentality. The episode encourages listeners to reflect on the implications of their diagnoses and to seek empowerment in their healing journeys.

takeaways

• Diagnosis can validate your experiences but can also lead to victim mentality.
• It's important to focus on what you can do after a diagnosis.
• Not all diagnoses are necessary for healing; some may hinder progress.
• You can rewire your mindset around your health conditions.
• Use tools and strategies to move forward after a diagnosis.

Resources

• Website
• Learn more about Cognomovement
• Try Cognomovement for yourself!
• Book a call with Katie

Credit: Tom Giovingo, Intro & Outro, Random Voice Guy, Professional ‘Cat‘ Herder

Mixed & Managed: JohnRavenscraft.com

Disclaimer: Katie is not a medical professional and she is not qualified to diagnose any conditions. The advice and information she gives is based on her own experience and research. It does not take the place of medical advice. Always consult a medical professional first before you try anything new.

Transcript

Katie Wrigley (00:01.23)
Welcome back to another episode of the Catapult Effect. You may have noticed I haven't been posting weekly and that is due to a lot of things and thank you for your patience and for choosing to listen to this podcast. I know you have your choice of so many things to listen to out there and I am really psyched that you decided to join me today and listen to something that you can implement into your life. I am your host Katie Wrigley and today I want to talk to you

about the double-edged sword of a diagnosis and I'm going to explain what I mean by that. There are pros and cons but this is a big part of our society and I really want to let you in on a few things for you to consider. That is coming up next.

Thank you again for joining me today. So I know I have a disclaimer in each one of my episodes, but I want to verbally give one today. I am not medical. When I work with clients, I'm not working with any named medical conditions at all. I am working with their nervous systems. So just want to make sure I put it out there. This podcast is for entertainment and educational purposes only. And now if you had listened to last episode I did with Dr. Fred,

He talks about how diagnoses can get us stuck and how it may be better to not get them because there isn't anything wrong with you. And I absolutely love that mindset and I fully agree with it. There isn't anything wrong with you. There may be things that are less than optimal that you can potentially change, but there's nothing wrong with you. Now, I also don't fully disagree with not getting a diagnosis.

And here's why. Sometimes that diagnosis can be really validating. And I'm going to share with you towards the end of the episode, a recent story from my own life to help really bring this point home. When you've noticed that you're functioning differently than someone else, it can be frustrating and sometimes really depressing to think that there's something quote unquote wrong with you. Maybe you don't sleep well.

Katie Wrigley (02:14.062)
Maybe you're really battling some demons that are making you feel depressed. Maybe you have physical pain that no doctor has been able to explain yet. Maybe you have all of the above. One of the doctors that I was working with, a chiropractor actually in Colorado, had said something really insightful when I was still going down the diagnosis path. And this is when I was getting crappy diagnosis after crappy diagnosis every time I went to the doctor. It was really starting to get kind of scary for a while.

And he said something to me that took me a few years to really implement. He said, go get the diagnosis because it will help you understand what's going on. And then I want you to release it and I want you to focus on what you can do. And so I'm going to then to this episode with that in mind. And so I encourage you to follow this doctor's advice, Dr. Blackwood, Dr. Lee Blackwood to be more specific practicing in Black Forest, Colorado. Thank you for that advice. And

let it go after you get the diagnosis. So what are some of the pros to getting the diagnosis? It validates your experience and validation is very important to us as human beings. That's one of the biggest pros. It also helps you have a deeper understanding of yourself to understand, this is what's going on. Like a diagnosis that I hear that gives people a lot of relief is the diagnosis of ADD or ADHD. my gosh.

My brain doesn't work like everybody else's. This is so good to know. And of course it's validating. Of course it feels good to know that you're functioning differently. But here's where it slips directly into the cons. And this is where I want you to be careful. It is very easy, slippery slope to go from that validation and that thank you for acknowledging that I'm wired differently to being stuck in victim mode.

and starting to use those diagnoses as an excuse to do different things, to do things differently, or to stop participating in some parts of life. Like I see posts like this all over social media all the time where a doctor has said, this is what's going on with you and these are the things you can no longer do. And there's probably a lot of truth to that, but there is a ripple effect that comes from that. There's a level of fear that starts to get developed. There's a level of resistance and those are limiting beliefs.

Katie Wrigley (04:42.836)
And it may be good advice to pause on certain activities for a certain amount of time as your body is going through physical, mental, emotional, spiritual healing, but it doesn't mean that they're off limits forever. You know, we had Anita on the show earlier this year and we were giggling about how we actually are thrilled to be able to shovel snow now because that wasn't something either of us could do for a few years due to the health conditions we had.

My first year in Maine, I had my plow guy shoveling my walk because it wasn't an option for me. My back had not healed enough to be able to do that. I haven't needed him to shovel my walk for years. And while it's not my most favorite thing, it's wonderful that I have the ability to do that again. So I'm just using that as an example. You really want to be careful and noticing what is coming up for you when you start to...

Really lean into this diagnosis that's giving you this extra information and watch yourself and notice, I starting to feel sorry for myself? Am I using this as an excuse? Am I maybe holding on to this for some reason? And get really honest with yourself. What is making you hold on to that? What is important about that diagnosis? What is it giving you? And what is it limiting for you to? Really take a moment and journal on that.

And now I want to share the story from my own life that really highlights this. So I have a very long history. I'm 50 years old. I have a very long history of having struggles with sleep. And recently I started working with someone to help finally undo those struggles. With that help came a long standing or long coming diagnosis of a sleep disorder.

And now I've had two sleep studies in the past. I had one in 2006 and they let me take my sleeping pill and told me I was fine. I said, well, how do know I'm fine if you still have me take my sleeping pill? You sleep fine, don't worry about it. But I'm sleeping fine on medication. How do I sleep without it? I don't even know why they had me take the pill. But that's what I did. And then the next time I did a sleeping study, I was taking...

Katie Wrigley (07:08.098)
pharmaceutical called Cymbalta to help with anxiety and depression and unbeknownst to me I was waking up every 36 seconds. No wonder I was so tired and in so much pain. Literally every 36 seconds so I had no energy. If I tried to do something as simple as a Pilates class it took three or four days until my body recovered because I wasn't getting that restorative sleep. They called it fibromyalgia.

and no one was looking deeper at what suddenly caused this fibromyalgia, which as it turned out was created from the Cymbalta. And it also made the sleeping disorder that had been undiagnosed much worse. And it was much harder to sleep again after that. This all built into a heavy dependence on cannabis, which I am now in the process of breaking. First I used it, kind of abused it.

And then I started to use it medically, stopped abusing it, and now I just use it for sleep at a fraction of the dose that I was taking. And within the next couple of months, I'm going to be able to stop taking it completely. That validation that I got from that doctor who finally said, hey, Katie, you know what? You don't have a normal sleep pattern. The evidence is clear from when I was a baby and then a young girl when the trauma was happening.

to the night terrors that I had into my teen years and early twenties where I would wake up screaming, just super fun to explain when you have roommates by the way, said no one ever. All of that, it finally gave me an explanation. It was finally someone telling me, hey, your wiring is preventing normal sleep. Now it doesn't mean that I can't do something about it and I absolutely am and I'm benefiting from it. I also noticed that I wanted to feel sorry for myself.

and I did for a quick second and then I worked through that and continued to move on. What was really cool as I embarked on this journey is I've seen client after client with Cognitive Movement get better sleep. Every single one better sleep except for me. However, what I wasn't looking at was the fact that my own dependence on cannabis was masking

Katie Wrigley (09:29.538)
the changes that cognitive movement had already made. Now as I am down on very low dose cannabis that, and I'm talking a dose lower than what I used to take to, actually a dose higher than what I used to take to get high, but this is a different kind of cannabis. It is completely bioavailable and there's no psychoactive effect to this because when you take it as directed and in ways that are bioavailable, you don't actually get high.

That is a whole other conversation that I'm learning as I'm working with this expert. But the point of me sharing that is I had actually done a lot more to rewire that sleep and my ability to sleep than I had realized. And this is one of the things that I clung to as I started to feel sorry for myself. was like, hey, wait, it's no longer true that I can't sleep. It's no longer true that I struggle to sleep. If I have a solid sleep,

hygiene routine which I absolutely do, I sleep and I sleep well and I'm in such a great sleep routine at this point. I go to bed around 930 or 10 I wake up between 630 and 7 every single day of the week and if I don't go to bed at 930 or 10 guess what I still wake up between 630 and 7. So if I want my eight hours of sleep I better start early right? Focusing on what you can do.

And what may no longer be true are some of the more empowering things that you can do as you're looking at this diagnosis, as some of these negative feelings come up around it, as you may feel sorry for yourself. And I'm a big fan of feeling everything. I truly believe you need to feel what is there to be able to release it, including self-pity. It is important to have that stage and it is just as important to move past it and not get stuck in victim mode and self-pity.

and no part of me wanted to be there. So I allowed it for an hour or two. I let myself process it. Didn't even have to use my ball. It was pretty ready to leave my system. And I focused on what was no longer true. And then I did some cognitive movement and I reinforced what is true, that I have the ability to sleep, to fall asleep quickly, to stay asleep, and to have a good night's sleep without needing to be overly medicated.

Katie Wrigley (11:52.802)
These are my truths and it isn't as hard to fall asleep. And now, to copy it with that, life is gonna keep happening. And whatever your diagnosis is, it may feel worse at sometimes than others. And right now, I'm embarking on a much deeper level of healing than I done before because I've got no point it is available. But there is a lot that is going on in my nervous system right now.

So what that means is it's taking me a little bit more time to fall asleep. And I can fight it, I can get frustrated, and I can keep myself awake a lot longer. Or I can just be like, okay, this is what's happening in my body, and as I process it out, sleep's gonna get better again. I'm gonna keep using my tools that I have to continue to help me move.

And so as I wrap, I want you to look at whatever diagnosis you have or you are looking for and ask yourself, what is it going to give you to have this diagnosis? Is it going to help or is it going to hurt? And there's some diagnoses that I am not going to go for for myself because there's no benefit to them. They may benefit me, but chances are it's going to be harder for me to move forward. You know, and especially if it's a diagnosis with pain.

I remember when I was still getting a lot of imaging and I've had 16 MRIs. I can't even count how many x-rays but every time one of those tests came back with proof that I should hurt no matter how much work I did around it my pain levels went up every single time. So that is one thing to be aware of if you get quote-unquote proof that something should hurt. Chances are it's gonna hurt worse and your mind isn't gonna take in the fact that there's tons of science around multiple images.

and two people can have the exact same damage. One person has no pain, the other person has excruciating pain. Exact same problems. The mindset around that is what is making the difference. And so be cautious as you get those diagnoses. Do you really need to know what it is or do you just need help to navigate around it and you don't actually have to know? And that validation piece is important. Please don't overlook that in your decisions.

Katie Wrigley (14:11.234)
Having that validation gave me so much peace to have a professional say, no, you were not wired normally for sleep, Katie. And I still had work, even as aware as I am, I still had a little work to do to keep myself from going into victim mode around it. And now it's easy to go into those tools that I have and continue to use them if my brain wants to take me back into that victim mode again. So as you're going for these diagnoses, first ask, is this going to help me or hurt me to get up?

Put a plan in place. Let yourself process that pity party. Give yourself however much time. Use whatever tools you're already using to help process that out. Let yourself have that pity party and make a plan to put on your big girl or boy panties the next day and start to take action against that. Against that victim mode. And see what tools do you have that can help you move forward. Get out of that victim mode.

and allow you to continue to live your life. Thank you again for joining me today. Again, my name is Katie, and until next time, please be well.