Auto-Immune Paleo Protocol.
Whole 30 Protocol.
Keto Protocol.
Anti-inflammatory Protocol.
Plant-based Protocol.
There are about 70 more, but for the sake of time, i'm going to stop here. As auto-immune disease rates have increased, so have the number of new and improved protocols and diets that all swear to have "the cure". Each one has hundreds of testimonials that claim this protocol to be the one that saved their life. And while i'm happy for those hundreds of people, i'm worried about the thousands more who are just entering this world and are getting consumed by the chaos and the conflicting messages (myself included).
If there is one thing that all of the different auto-immune diets and protocols seem to agree on, its that if you're not following every single rule every single day of whatever protocol you buy into, you probably have something to feel guilty about.
One thing I still really struggle with in navigating this journey is trying to find that balance between following the 80000 different health protocols that exist, while also trying to live a semi-normal 24-year-old lifestyle. At times, these two things seem mutually exclusive. How can I eat an organic, grass-fed diet on a student budget? How can I avoid all sugar, dairy, alcohol, and caffeine when I have a social life and an intensive grad school schedule? How could I possibly afford collagen powder and Glutamine and Vitamin D and B and Astragalus and whatever other new supplement is "essential" to healing, when I also have to buy food and pay rent and manage my student loans? And on top of that, if i'm following AIP, i'm eating a lot of animals, but what about the book that just found evidence of the inflammatory qualities of read meat? One book tells me that eggs are great, and the next tells me they're tearing apart my intestines.
The guilt is real for me. Its something I struggle with every single day, and sometimes its even more debilitating than my symptoms. There are moments where I catch myself holding up a cocktail or eating something with dairy in it, and I get this huge flood of anxiety. Am I killing myself by consuming this? Will I lose all the progress i've made if I eat this bit of sugar? Should I buy that organic $12 ground beef or that organic $16 chicken? Or should I avoid meat all together and eat legumes? But wait, aren't legumes inflammatory? Or was that nuts? Can I go out for ice cream with my friends? Can I have a piece of that cake? A sip of that wine? How dare I treat my body this way - don't I know that i'm sick?
It's exhausting. It's infuriating. And its just simply no way to live. Sometimes the guilt gets so overwhelming and so gut-wrenching that I don't even end up enjoying the cocktail or dessert or whatever. And then, in what is almost a comical example of satanic irony, my inner-anxiety picks up on whats happening and has a field day, because now not only do I have something to feel guilty about (consuming the cocktail, desert, burger,etc.), but it wasn't even something I got any joy out of! It had literally no benefit. Que the negative self-criticism loop.
Its exhausting. And i'm pretty sure it keeps us more overwhelmed and anxious and confused than any disease itself could. Ask anyone living with an autoimmune disorder, and i'm sure they can show you the laundry list of supplements and rules and guidelines they've been given, all in the name of healing. And while I do believe these guidelines and rules and supplements are necessary at times, I think we also need to cut ourselves, and the rest of the world, a bit of slack. Stop beating yourself up over that one treat, that one cocktail, that one cheat day you had.
I can promise you that you're not sick because you had that glass of champagne, or because you forgot to take your B12 injection one day. But I can pretty much guarantee you that you would be a lot sicker if you never went to your friends birthday party because you were so paralyzed by fear of what one glass of champagne would do to you, or you missed out on that girls trip to Whistler because you left your B12 injections at home and had to go back. Healing is a holistic process, and it requires both physical and emotional supports. Those B12 injections are necessary, but so are quality connections with your community. If you let your life become centered around your supplements, your guidelines, your protocols, your meds, you'll miss out on the good stuff. The real stuff.
Healing isn't just about medicine. I'm not even convinced its half about medicine. After all, what's the point in doing all that physical healing if there's no community, no social life, no relationships waiting for you on the other side? Our culture is taught to heavily prioritize medicine and drugs and physical health over everything else, and these mainstream protocols tend to prioritize these things as well. And don't get me wrong, these things are important. But they aren't the whole picture. Life is about more than just your ability to walk. It is also about who you walk with, and what you walk toward. It is about more than your ability to talk. It is also about who you talk to, and what you talk about. If we just focus on getting well enough to walk and talk, but forget about also developing and nourishing the community and the people we want to walk and talk with, we're going to find our healing journey to be an incredibly lonely one.
So cut yourself some slack. Give yourself a break. Take your health seriously and listen to your doctor, but don't let the guilt and the anxiety of following the "perfect protocol" consume your life. Healing is about getting your life and your self back, and this doesn't just mean your physical health. It means your mental and spiritual health, too. Make sure whatever healing protocol you adopt prioritizes all three equally.