The Missing Link: What Conventional Care Can't Do — and Lifestyle Coaching Can

Waiting to speak, waiting to receive, waiting to be told what to do next. It’s an all too familiar dynamic in places where we talk about our health.

Living in a world with labs, scans, diagnostics of all sorts is so valuable for early detection just as much as identifying our source of distress. We can learn a lot from our many microorganisms, our biorhythms, and blood samples. We also have to ask: at what point has it served its usefulness?

Arguably, there are times when we need to source, solicit and ask someone close to the evidence. Someone with more training and experience on the complexities of our human anatomy and physiology. However...

The more time I spend supporting individuals with their health, the question I frequently find myself asking is, “Is the (western) system of care that identified it always equipped to heal it?”

Knowing Can Hurt

I’m reminded of studies like this one on spinal degeneration from the American Journal of Neuroradiology or this study on lumbar MRI’s from The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery that compare abnormalities found on MRI’s with the presence of symptoms, pain specifically. The common-denominator conclusion? Age-related, often incidental findings, neither causally related and nor predictive of the development or duration of pain. A prime example of creating undue hypervigilance and concern for something otherwise unrelated or asymptomatic, possibly misattributed, and perfectly ok.

I spend a good deal of time in the coaching world offering the support that the conventional care system isn’t set up in time or design to help after diagnosis. I remember sitting in a grad school lecture on complementary care, the value of it, the professor's personal dream that someday, every medical practice has a coaching team working alongside to support the lifestyle changes –  it made so much sense from day 1. We need each other. 

When Life Gives You Lemons

Whether you have a chronic condition on your hands or you just know something needs to shift in your life, what you do next matters most. Do you bounce around from one expensive product to the next hoping it will be the answer? Or, do you pause, consult yourself and map out a game plan?

It’s less about making one system of care right and wrong and more about knowing who solves for what, what resources are available, and choosing in full integrity from there. 

Lifestyle Coaching

Coaching conversation works because its process over product. It allows two things to be true, and removes the barriers blocking intuition from discerning the next right step. It’s the cool, level-headed bridge from problem to solution.

At the end of the day, we don’t need to know more advice or articles on newfangled self-care, we need the know-how to sit in the gray and support ourselves there. A psychotherapist friend and colleague said, in reference to navigating the covid pandemic, “the greatest predictor of resilience seemed to be their “tolerance for ambiguity”. It was the capacity itself to be with something that was cloudy and fear-filled, and wade in murky waters, until the sediment of life settles.

We need the confidence to pursue the path and the discernment to walk it to the end of your goal. We need more of you, learning and living from your intuition, equipped with truth to navigate this info-saturated, chaotic and confusing world with clarity.

Lifestyle Coaching is a blend of health coaching and life coaching that builds structure, accountability, autonomy and nervous system support around your most important decisions. 

Let’s source from within.