#spfpp holistic healing

[somethingpositive4positivepeople]

HSV-2 Holistic Healing

I chose the blue pill…Nope. Not the blissed-out blue pill from the Matrix. The generic antiviral, Valacyclovir. Wonky sleep, Uber Eats, cycles of physical stagnation, and the continuous flow of panini press stress sent me back to popping pills. I felt frustrated by the familiar tingle in my right butt cheek. 

My awareness heightened to the presence of a stress-related sore on my ass. I constantly shifted in bed at night and shuffled my weight in my seat during the day to alleviate my pain. I asked for a script to go back to what I knew during a recent long overdue trip to the OBGYN. Cue the genital herpes storytime chime…

MY HSV HISTORY

My first foray with daily antivirals was when I had my first genital herpes outbreak in 2006. 

After a quick exam, my doctor casually diagnosed me, “Yea, that looks like a herpetic lesion.” He gave me a topical ointment out of the office pharmaceutical sample supply cabinet and wrote me a script for Valtrex. In a way, the daily antivirals were like the blissed-out blue pills helping me to easily disassociate from the virus that took root in my nerves leading to my left labia and right glute.  

Fast forward a few years to 2009. I started practicing yoga and other mindfulness techniques and learned to integrate the parts of me to make me whole. I cultivated a sense of curiosity about my mind and body. Living with Lupus since I was 12 years old, I had always questioned the long-term effects of western pharmaceuticals on my body. My mindfulness practices took me a step further to challenge myself to sit with the discomfort of experiencing an outbreak. I weaned myself off daily antivirals and reduced my consumption to only when I felt the common quivers of an early outbreak. 

HERPES HOME REMEDIES

And then manipulating my dosages was not an option. I was laid off from my corporate gig and lost access to affordable health insurance. I leaned on herpes home remedies like tea tree and coconut oil salves. I found even more resources listening to Dr. Lacey Chittle’s functional healing episode of SPFPP. I booked a consultation with her and learned more about the ways that I could boost my immune system to ease the impact of my outbreak symptoms. I intentionally began to incorporate lysine supplements and natural sources of Vitamin D3 into my diet, which worked well enough until a traumatic event preceding the panda express stress caused all kinds of dis-ease in my body.

           Weirdly, I can thank Panasonic for my renewed access to health insurance; new laws made it so that small business owners could collect unemployment and apply for Obamacare. I jumped at the chance to seek medical attention for my laundry list of long-neglected chronic illnesses and subsequently made the decision to return to antivirals to help alleviate my anxiety around outbreaks. Although I probably did not need to take meds again. Turns out when I was reviewing my Flo App notes I had done a better job of managing my stress in 2020 than I thought. I only had an outbreak 61 out of 366 days! 🤗

HEALING HOLISTICALLY

I am grateful to have access to affordable healthcare and multiple medical treatment options. I know everyone does not have the same privilege, so I want to share some self-care practices that have helped me to think differently about my HSV-2 outbreaks. Having the awareness of the frequency, intensity, duration, and location of my outbreaks has been transformative in how I think of my body and the illnesses that cohabit it. Below are two tips to help you mentally manage your STI.

WITNESS & WRITE

Observing and being witness to changes in your body is the first step towards overall well-being. The path to wellness starts with understanding the unique baseline of our bodies, curiously observing any changes, and then making an informed decision about the best care plan. In practice that could look like daily body scans when you wake up. Once you get into the habit of doing this daily, body scans can also be a really powerful practice to try while you’re experiencing an outbreak.

HOW TO DO A BODY SCAN:

Inhale Deeply. Exhale Fully.

Mentally scan from your head to toes and notice: 

What emotions do you feel? Inhale. Exhale.

What physical sensations are in your body? Inhale. Exhale.

Where you are experiencing the outbreak. Inhale. Exhale.

How does that area feel? Inhale. Exhale.

What’s the temperature? Cool? Warm? Hot? Inhale. Exhale.

Describe the intensity of the tingle or the outbreak pain Inhale. Exhale.

What emotions come up for you? Frustration, shame, grief, guilt? Inhale. Exhale.

Leave space between questions. Instead of providing an answer just observe what comes up for you and how you feel. The next step in the process is to write it down. Write down all the feelings, sensations, emotions that came up for you during your body scans, note the location and frequency of your outbreaks. As you document these changes during outbreaks, notice emotional and physical patterns in your body. Research and my lived experience show that the more curious we are about the changes in our bodies the more we easeful acceptance of ourselves and create a path to well-being.

Jewell Singletary

[somethingpositive4positivepeople]

Episode 81: Casual Disclosure

There’s a range of emotions that come with dating. While it starts often with physical attraction, it’s common to decide to look at the more important things once the person has you by the eyes. From there, you choose to have a written exchange if you’re on a dating site like Dating Positives, or a verbal exchange if you’re in a social setting. From there you’re deciding whether or not this person is compatible with you. What’s amazing about this process is that you are naturally empowered as the chooser. “Are they a fit for me?” is the question we’re answering during the exchange with the potential partner. By the end of the exchange, we know if we want another one or if there’s no need for doing it again. If not, we move on and repeat this process with the next potential partner.

And then there’s those of us who can’t relate to the luxury of being able to decide based on appearance if someone is a fit for us. Physical attraction, conversation, lifestyle, etc. tends to carry a much lighter load when you seek partners based on whether or not you’re a fit for them. I struggled with this after my positive herpes diagnosis for years. I began to look at prospective partners based on how they viewed me. Am I a right fit for you? What can I do to be a better fit? And then there was always the lingering covert expectation of “if I’m everything else they need in a partner, then they won’t mind that I have herpes”. Where did these thoughts come from between the time I likely contracted herpes and when I actually found out I had herpes? Nothing changed except for the fact that I was now aware of something that just lived in my body. I let its coming out of hiding completely change the way I did dating and relationships.

I found someone who was able to elaborate almost parallel to my experience around this time and decided to have a conversation with her on the Something Positive for Positive People Podcast where I interviewed her about dating with herpes. Our guest for this episode talks about making dating decisions from this space of being chosen rather than being the chooser and just how it can mess with your head to have to potentially deal with that rejection, especially in a casual dating environment. Living in Bali, she shares the experiences she’s had disclosing her positive status to partners and the various responses she’s gotten from partners still not wanting to use condoms, changing their mind from accepting her status to not accepting it, the importance of disclosing to casual partners or not disclosing, and then of course being flat out rejected.

Check out this episode to hear about Adrienne’s experience casual dating and disclosing and not disclosing to partners in this casual atmosphere. What we learned from these experiences and what her audience on Instagram surprisingly thinks about whether or not to disclose to casual sexual partners.

About the guest:

Adrienne Rommel, is a Certified Nutritional Practitioner, Yoga Teacher and Mindfulness Coach from Toronto, Canada has a passion for women’s sexual health and wellness. As a 37-year young woman, she’s struggled with her own Yoni and sexual health issues since she was a teenager. For her, it was the lack of sexual education and increased antibiotic use as a child, long-term birth control pill use, lack of STI awareness, bad diet, high stress lifestyle and unresolved emotional trauma that contributed to her own personal sexual health issues. Having struggled with her own sexual health for half her life, she’s lived with HSV-2 genitally for 16 years and is prone to yeast infections, but has healed herself through diet and natural holistic wellness and healing practices. Experiencing it first-hand and having the knowledge as a Certified Holistic Nutritionist, she helps women who are struggling with their own personal Yoni and sexual health issues, heal their bodies and Yoni’s from the inside out, just like she healed her own. She is also a new member of the Herpes Activist Network Dismantling Stigma, HANDS! Adrienne can be connected with on: Instagram, Facebook, Youtube @YoniNutritionist and her website is www.yoninutritionist.com

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