I will give you a second to clean the coffee off your screens......

Those of you that know me well probably just had one of two reactions; you either slapped the person beside you and said “I knew she wasn’t really all clean and sober.” OR you are sitting there with your mouth wide open trying to figure out if I’ve been hacked.

Let me assure you, I have not been hacked, and I am not eating mushrooms and getting high either. That’s not what this is. It’s plant based, earth based medicine that has been my lifesaver.

If you would join me for a moment here, I will to start to share my story,,,,,,

My body experienced anxiety, panic attacks and PTSD from being an empath raised in a narcissistic environment. I have spent my entire life being the fixer, the people pleaser, the mediator and the mender. It’s exhausting work really.

In January of this year my body started to be triggered by lord only knows into these panic attacks at all hours of the day, for no apparent reasons at all. I started to feel darkness, I started to feel peoples REAL truths (not the bullshit fake smiles they show the world), I started to feel MY real truths and darkness. I started to see the shadow work my soul so desperately wanted me to work through. It overwhelmed me so much that I pulled away from the outside world completely, put up my “masking” defences (I will get into that more in a later post), and dug my heels in. I just had to find a way out, or continue to fake it through.

The panic attacks where coming so fast and uncontrollably that in the middle of a client session, after seeing a tattoo on this person that triggered lords knows what I ended up in a full panic attack and had to cut the session short by a couple mins. It was embarrassing to say the least.

Then March happened. A tragic event in our family was the finally thing. I couldn’t handle being fake anymore. I couldn’t keep it together. I couldn’t stop the panic, the night terrors, the insomnia. I couldn’t handle how fake the world is, how distracted my marriage and family life had become, how ridiculously hateful people have become.

A couple days after the accident I sat completely broken on a hospital chair distracted from life by social media. That’s when Sasha popped into my news feed with a video, she was sharing how she had finally felt like she had gotten a handle on her ptsd. I started to cry. I had been watching her story unfold for a couple months now. She was openly sharing that she was using the power of plant magic to heal. I sent her a message. I don’t remember what I said, but I feel like I wrote the message to her in such sheer desperation that she could physically feel it. I needed help! (Step one to healing from being under narcissistic control is finally getting to place where you can ask for help)

This is where my story begins. With a sample pack of capsules of some brown mushroom 🍄 powder (that to be honest I didn’t fully understand what I was getting into, cause the Netflix doc I watched didn’t fully prepare me) that I desperately wanted to be able to stop the anxiety, the fear based panic attacks and the night terrors. I wanted help, I realized that to move through this it would require hard, painful, dark and deep soul work. My soul wanted to heal generational trauma, my soul was telling me “enough is enough” this stops here!! I finally listened, and microdoses of 🍄 magic was a catalyst towards my healing.

I hope you will join me with an open mind and open heart as I share with you my journey through the shadows.

So do you wanna know what happened. At first- NOTHING!! I have been asked a couple times now, what happened when you started taking them, did you get high? The short answer? No I didn’t. The dose is so micro that the average person won’t even feel it.

I had picked up the samples from Sasha in the middle of the afternoon while doing errands. The entire drive home I remember having a full on debate in my head. When do I take it? What happens if I have a reaction? What if I get super high? Will I even get high? My head was all over the place. I did finally decide that once I was safely at home I would try the micro and the lions mane....... I did not get high, I did however become hyper focused on getting my old dresser refinished, and did so in record time after taking my first capsule.
To be honest I was a little disappointed, I was so overwhelmed with life that I thought it might be nice to get high and escape a little bit. But in the long run had they actually fucked me up I most likely would have stopped taking them. Reality is, I like to be in control of my body and my mind, and being high isn’t great for me.

Yes microdosing is a form of mushroom 🍄 derived from “magic” mushrooms, but it would be like taking a grain of sugar and expecting to get a sugar buzz. It’s not going to happen (at least not for me anyways)

I decided that night that it would be best to journal what I was thinking and feeling. I wanted to be able to look back and see if I was making any progress.

Day 2 I wrote;
“The biggest thing I noticed today is that I felt calm. I had an anxiety / panic attack come over me and instead of it sweeping me into a complete state of panic, I felt like I was able to watch it as an outside observer, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER.”

I was already noticing my ability to find logical thoughts and replace the anxiety and overdrive my brain had been living in for years. I had been stuck in survival mode since I was a child. This ment that I was always on guard and ready for the next fight, the next blow up, the next moment I had to step in and read the situation to dismantle it. I hadn’t realize it yet, but when you are under the pressure of narcissistic control you are always ON and ready. You are stuck in survival. The more I was able able to organize and “file” my thoughts, the clearer things became. The clearer things became the harder it got to face them. I am not going to lie and say it was all just a beautiful magic trip. This shit is hard. When you clear the fog, you start to see the why behind your triggers. You start to see how you yourself have been ( or maybe continue to be) a narcissistic asshole. Seeing with clarity doesn’t mean that the storm
Clears and the rainbows and butterflies come. It means that you see your shit, you feel your intuition and hear your inner souls screams. It’s hard as fuck! I am literally tearing down the walls I built to protect myself. I was starting to see that the person I had created was just an illusion. Like Sasha said to me “We portrayed an identity that wasn’t our true self to protect our hearts”.

I had spent decades shoving childhood trauma and pain down into the deepest parts of my soul. (If you think you don’t have childhood trauma you will be in for a RUDE WAKE UP CALL). Memories started to surface, they wanted to be healed and release. I had no clue how to do this. I remembered a good friend, Rhonda, talking about how she had been able to heal her childhood trauma and demons with inner child work. I reached out to her. We sat together in a small taco diner for a couple hours, she taught me how to work through the events that come up (I still use her technique a lot) and helped me find love and compassion for that beautiful little girl I used to be.

If you decide to head out in this journey you need to be ready and open to asking for help. Be ready to access the people and resources around you that will help you process what comes up. And be ready to allow your soul the rest as it needs. You will find yourself energized and completely depleted all at the same time.

I have so much more to share, but for now this is where I need to stop.

See you next week.

When you talk about the side effects of the medications you have to take, it usually isn’t a warm and fuzzy feeling; Dry mouth, racing heart, dry eyes, rash, cyclic pain, gastric issues just to name a couple of the fun ones I have experienced over the years. These side effects are some of the reasons that I went back to school to learn how to approach health from a more natural and holistic mindset.

But this isn’t about those. I wanted to share with you things that I started to notice as “side effects” to the micro-dosing. These are the things that I have noticed for me. You will have your own experiences, and I encourage you to take note and journal. It really does help.

Happy Side Effect # 1 - Focus
I have an ongoing battle with ADHD that was greatly exacerbated after my concussion in 2018. If you have read any of my blogs (www.treepose.online) you know how much I have struggled. I rely heavily on my supplements, essential oils and nutrition to get me through the day. Turning to plant based healing approaches provides huge relief and enables me the opportunity to sit and actually write these blogs out. Here’s where the micro-dosing comes into the picture. I didn’t expect my ADHD to improve, I had just hoped that I would get a little relief (if you haven’t yet, watch the Fungi documentary on Netflix. They cover this a bit). About a week and a half into the dosing pattern I started to notice that I was able to complete a task, start to finish without 5 other tasks being thrown in the mix. I was able to remember what I was supposed to be doing, and actually did it!! A couple times! This is new and foreign to me, as I am a “100 tasks in the go at all times” kinda person. Even when I am focusing, I am not fully focused. I will do the paperwork for our business while washing dishes or something stupid like that. Like I said in my other post, day one I was hyper focused on finishing my old dresser.

Here is the really cool thing about this “side effect”. It isn’t wearing off! I half expected that as I tapered down on the micro🍄 the benefits of focusing would go along with it. But they haven’t. I feel like my brain is rewired for focus now. I am able to complete things, in a timely manor, without having 1000 open browsers running in my mind (or my computer) at the same time.

Happy Side Effect # 2 - Chill the Fuck Out

Post concussion panic attacks are a real and HUGE thing for many of us. One of my biggest triggers has been rain or any kind of weather since driving through the middle of the Tornados in 2019. On raining days I used to get into a panic and would spend hours checking the weather network and watching the sky. I was no longer able to think rationally about rain, or any kind of weather other than clear blue skys. I actually canceled a full days worth of clients one time because it was really overcast and I knew I would have a panic attack driving to work. I knew I would end up in a fill blow PTSD episode, so it just wasn’t worth going. This kind of PCS (post concussion syndrome) or PTSD anxiety is completely irrational to the outside observer, but to us it literally consumes you, and feeds on itself to become a huge overblown monster. With micro 🍄I noticed that I was able to step out of the episode and become the observer. I was able to see how irrational and not logical my responses where. I was able to see the storms and weather in a way that I used to. Be prepared NOT panicked. Which has proven to be a really good thing lately with the tornados and huge storms we have been experiencing. I would be a lier if I said I was “cured” of the anxiety and PTSD, but I can say I am able to be more logical about it all. And now more than not I can calm the panic to a manageable level.

These are two of the biggest things I have noticed so far. There are a lot more, but I don’t want to keep you here all day. I will definitely write more about these little happy side effects in the future, but for now this is where I sign off.

Thanks for following my journey.