 There's a really interesting phenomenon I've observed with people who end up developing let's just call it a chronic illness and whenever they tell the story about how the illness began they always describe it the same way and they'll say things like you know before this event or before this time I was always fine or even I was always very healthy and very strong and I never got sick and since that time they say those words since that time since that event sometimes the event is they took antibiotics a few times sometimes the event is a divorce or a postpartum but they say the same words and ever since then and they're never the same and I want to share why I've observed this is often happening and some personal thoughts on this because I find that people very often get obsessed with the event without fully understanding why that happened in the first place and that it may not be related to the event at all. Hey guys Dr. Alex Hine author of the health book master of the day doctor of Chinese medicine now before we jump into this video two very important links right below it the first is if you'd like to get my free weekly video newsletter and a free guide for daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine it's right below the video and the second is if you'd like to become a patient with mine locally or online via telemedicine the contact info for my private practice and what I'm seeing patients is right below as well. Let's talk about this idea of the healing crisis versus the breakdown you know I had this patient once and she was telling me the story this was in school years ago she was telling you the story of how her main complaint was panic attacks and she said that she went to an amusement park and while she was on a roller coaster she ended up effectively having a panic attack at the peak of this roller coaster so it's building it's building it's building she felt like she freaked out and since then she had been having real panic attacks true panic attacks regularly and had developed anxiety and sleep problems and she said that before that time she was pretty good and had never had a panic attack in her life so all of us the students we all thought this was very interesting right how could a roller coaster trigger a panic attack and then permanently alter her physiology in a way that gave her panic attacks was she just reacting to that initial panic attack over again was there something else going on what was really happening here and I see this a lot in many many different kinds of illnesses not just panic attacks and anxiety obviously that's a telltale example because once you have a panic attack you become scared of the next one but in other illnesses as well even just depression in general and people will often say things like after that time I've never been the same and I wanted to take a second to point out a distinction between what led up to the event and the actual event and that what often happens is that we ascribe the problem to the event not knowing that what came before was really the build-up the susceptibility to that event happening and that's very important to distinguish so let's talk about recognizing the crisis right this is the event the event was the roller coaster ride the event was the divorce the event was becoming an entrepreneur and exhausting yourself from stress and worry and anxiety and being up all night the event was a breakup the event was moving to a new city alone whatever it was we often ascribe the commencement of our illness to that event but it is not the event that caused that it's the event that is merely the trigger what we almost always see behind the scenes if you look at the preceding year or preceding years is that there has been an underlying pattern of long-term exposure to stress or long-term something that leads to in Chinese medicine a depletion of your resources that then makes you more susceptible to that event being catastrophic so for many of us if the resources are healthy we maintain good health regular exercise good sleep we're careful of our stress then when those events happen they will often not lead to catastrophic illness that lingers for years but when we are already depleted and run down more Chinese medicine perspective one thing I see is that that event just kicks off you know it is the straw that broke the camel's back when I see someone and they're saying ever since I've been an entrepreneur since that stressful period ever since that postpartum ever since that divorce whatever that event is when they come in and I feel their pulses the pulses are almost always so deep and so weak they're not going to happen like that from something that just happened a month ago unless the person hasn't slept in a week the pulses are very unlikely to be that depleted so that is a significant amount of resource depletion over months or years and so what happens is let's just say this let's just say these are vital resources right I'm creating a concept not a not a tangible thing these are resources and your the last three years been killing it going through grad school working you get divorced when your parents get sick or dies your resources are like this they're at 20% and then suddenly the divorce hits your health goes to crap you haven't slept well in years anxiety and depression that started three years ago is still there today how could that be how could that event have kicked that off and you've never gone back to feeling normal again because all of this was never fixed all of this deep resource depletion has not been restored and so this pattern of where people are experiencing the symptoms years later they come to see me it's as if the pulse has not regained any of the volume or the quality or the strength and this is why these things become chronic so let's talk about recognizing the breakdown because the breakdown remember is this this is the event that you attribute to the beginning of this illness and some I'm sure do start that way but a higher percentage that I see the events just to trigger and the event because it's big is what we focus on because we did not have a good job or it's difficult to observe all of the breakdown before because it's subtle you know it's sleeping poorly every now and then to well I generally am not a good sleeper or yeah I've had digestive problems a little bit low grade for a while or a little bit of anxiety and every now and then a night where I don't feel like I slept at all recognizing these little canaries in the coal mine is essential to understand how susceptible am I to a trigger an event derailing me potentially for years and there's even interesting research that I was reading that people who experience depression and anxiety who have for example no close social ties or they have a 75% chance of developing depression in the years following that difficult event and the majority of them the preceding years to developing depression anxiety were very stressful high stress years and I know we can't always control the stress in our lives but understanding that there is almost always a preceding sequence before that leads to a susceptibility to that event being catastrophic and that was my point of this video today even though it's a bit long-winded understanding that the event you attribute to why you develop depression anxiety panic attacks postpartum whatever it is is often years before that time and that the event most likely did not cause that unless it is very linear easy correlation to observe most likely didn't cause that but we had been depleting those resources and creating these dysfunctions in the body baby little pathologies were building right the flywheel was spinning in the wrong direction already and so very unbalanced on one leg on one toe it's easy for something to push you off and to go down hard and to stay that way for a long time so I thought I would talk about this today because it's something I see a lot it's very very important to understand and it's also important to understand why after that event healing hasn't happened in a year why it feels incremental and years later you may not feel the same that's where you have to intervene and dedicate your life towards more aggressively healing if that makes sense all right guys that's all I have for today something very important to observe again before you go I have that free download below this video for daily rituals that can possibly help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine and if you'd like to become a patient of my locally online via telemedicine the link to my private practice is right below this video