5 Phases of Chronic Wellness

As I went through the process of creating the formula for the Chronic Wellness Equation™ I asked a lot of questions of a lot of people, including myself. What I realized is there are five very distinct phases that people go through on the path to healing.

Understanding these phases and where you are on the journey is vital as this will help you to focus on what’s important to you now, and help you identify what’s next on your journey. It will also help you understand how to live symptom free in the future as different change and challenges come up in your life.

If this information resonates with you, we are offering a FREE Webcast on this topic during the month of November. Click Here to find out more.

PHASE I – INFO GATHERING & DOCUMENTATION

This is the phase in traditional medicine where testing is done. Typically a LOT of testing. Blood tests, scans, MRI’s, ultrasounds, cognitive tests, neurological tests, psychological tests, genetic testing, and so on.

But there are some additional steps to consider. These are the steps that people who successfully create their Chronic Wellness Equation™ take. Some examples include:

Individual foods and/or ingredients in foods, pharmaceuticals, herbal supplements, or anything ingested or put on the outside of the body (skin, hair, etc) are written down.
All symptoms are documented, no matter how minor they may be considered. They could be physical, mental, or emotional symptoms.
Environmental factors are documented.
The time of the month, time of day, moon cycle, where a person might be at in their menstrual cycle, etc. is documented and put with the information about each symptom.
Cross referencing this information to determine if there is a correlation.

During this phase you will want to start to do online research around your symptoms so that you can begin to create hypotheses or educated guesses about what might be causing the symptoms.

No doctor lives in your shoes.

The way you can best support the process is to communicate with your doctors and healthcare practitioners as best as you can about what’s going on for you. If they don’t want to listen, you may want to consider looking for doctors who are more open minded and/or educated.

PHASE II – DIAGNOSIS

Sometimes a diagnosis is reached within a few weeks to a few months. Other times it takes several years, as was the case with me.

Some diagnoses have hard evidence behind them, like an infection, while others receive a symptom-based diagnosis because nothing else can be figured out.

The challenge with symptom-based diagnosis is that many symptoms overlap, so misdiagnosis is common. Because of this, diagnosis will sometimes change over time as a person sees different doctors.

This is why it’s critical to document as much as possible in Phase I and to do as much research as possible to create your own educated guesses about what might be going on with your health.

Being knowledgeable about what causes symptoms and being involved in the process will help you to find the right team of healthcare practitioners to work with. Be diligent, no matter how sick you are.

And only work with practitioners who you trust and have a good rapport with. If you feel like you’re going against the grain or fighting to get them to listen to you, look for someone else. The right practitioners are out there, trust me.

I went through many practitioners before putting together the right team. It’s worth the time, effort, and research and find the right people.

PHASE III – TREATMENT

Once a diagnosis is reached, traditional medicine will typically refer the person to a specialist. This is why getting a proper diagnosis is such an important piece of this process: if you are referred to the wrong person and receive the wrong treatment(s), more damage than good may be done.

Deciding which treatment(s) to go with are often one of the biggest decisions in the process. It’s right up there with choosing which doctor(s)/healthcare practitioners to work with. Don’t take this decision lightly.

Most importantly, do your research. Research online. Find online communities with people who have been diagnosed with the same thing. Read what they have to say about treatments and doctors. Find online forums and post any questions you may have there.

The biggest thing I can say here is: gather enough information so that you feel educated and then use that in combination with your intuition when choosing treatment(s). Our intuition has much more clarity than we give it credit for, and it’s helped me through many stages of my healing.

PHASE IV – HEALING

Once a person goes through the right process with the right doctors and/or practitioners — or finds the right self-healing treatments — the process of healing begins.

While people tend to think this is a steady, upward climb, it’s often more like the Stock Market with upward and downward trends. Sometimes, we actually become more sick before we begin to heal as the toxins and organisms in our body are mobilized and moved out of our system.

The best advice I can give with this phase is to have faith in the process, regardless of the form your faith resides. Remember you can heal, no matter how sick you are. The human body is inherently designed to heal when given the proper tools.

My healing process has been going on for three years and continues every day. I have 11 years’ worth of damage to reverse, so I imagine it’s going to take some time. At the same time, I know people who have “spontaneously” healed. So anything is possible!

PHASE V – MAINTENANCE

From the research I’ve done and the experts I’ve talked to, after symptoms diminish, a person either maintains the process that has gotten them better, or they go back to their old habits.

If they go back to their old habits, they are often met by the same — or sometimes even worse — symptoms. Similar to when a person goes on a temporary diet vs. making a permanent dietary change, loses weight, goes back to eating the foods they ate before and then gains back that weight and more.

You can avoid all of this by documenting the steps that get you healthy and by creating your own Chronic Wellness Equation™, which is the equation you will want to pull out anytime you begin to feel the onset of symptoms.

During the Maintenance Phase, often a person doesn’t have to be as strict as they were with things during the Healing Phase. It typically takes 1-2 adjustments of their equation to make the symptoms go away.

Some Words of Caution: One of the challenges with this model is that it can become flawed when we turn it over to people we feel are more educated and qualified to treat our disease. Doing this leaves little in the hands of the patient — the person who is actually living in the body and experiencing the symptoms and dis-ease — and instead gives all of the power to the doctors, practitioners and lab technicians who know very little about your body.

Here is a quote that really hit home for me:

People have given their health to their doctor,
their money to the banker,
their soul to the preacher,
their children to the school system,
and in doing so…
have lost the power to control their lives.”
– Rolling Thunder

I really feel like now is the time for us to take back our power and to regain control of our lives and our health. And everything I share with you on this website, via social media, and via e-mail will help you in doing just that.

I truly believe — both from the research I’ve done and from what I have personally experienced — that the best way to approach this process is to first listen to your body and your mind. Then educate yourself, get involved, and become instrumental in the decision making around your health and wellbeing.

In the beginning I gave the power to my doctors and asked them to “fix me”. There are days I still do this, and then I catch myself. The times of greatest healing have occurred when I’ve listened to my body, to my intuition, taken action, and then adjusted accordingly based on how I was feeling and the reactions I experienced.

I’m not saying don’t go to doctors and don’t work with healthcare practitioners, I’m saying work with them and contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way. If they’re not listening, find doctors and practitioners who will listen … they are out there.

In future posts you will learn how to get more involved in the process in a way that empowers you to make the right decisions with the right information and you will learn how to create the best team of practitioners to support you on your journey to healing.

For more details check out the FREE Webcast we are offering on this topic during the month of November. Click Here to find out more.

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5 Phases of Chronic Wellness