Transforming Depression into Grace with Kathryn Fiske

On today's episode, we talk to a very special person to me, Kathryn Fiske, as she shares transforming a lifetime of depression.

References from the Show

• Karla McLaren “Language of Emotions” karlamclaren.com

• Morley Safer: amazon.com

Kathryn's Bio

Kathryn was born in upstate New York, but grew up all over the coastal United States having the distinction of being a “Navy Brat” and never living in any one place for more than two years, often far less. What she loves about having had that kind of childhood is that she has a decided curiosity about her surroundings, and getting to know the people who live in them. Kathryn will say “hello” to anyone, and if given half an invitation, will engage in a conversation. She truly wants to know “who you are” and not just “what you do.” Inside of Kathryn’s desire to know YOU, it brings her infinitely closer to knowing who she is, in any given moment. Moment to moment, it is never the same. It is the ongoing inquiry of a lifetime.

Full Transcript

Sarah Marshall, ND: Welcome to heal. On today's episode, we talk to a very special person to me, Kathryn Fiske, as she shares transforming a lifetime of depression. I'm your host, Dr. Sarah Marshall.

Okay. I pushed the button we're, we're live. It's happening! 

Kathryn Fiske: We're live!. Three, Two, One: Live. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Awesome. 

So first of all, thank you for being here and being willing to do this. And who you are is Kathryn Fiske, and you've got a pretty, you've multifaceted, different angles to have this conversation, right? Like here we are, the healing project where the general premise, my big philosophy, the whatever we want to call this is that healing healed to heal is a four letter word in our medical community right now, and that it's not talked about enough. It's not discussed enough. It's not presented as part of the treatment plan. And that I really am excited to get to talk to you about what your healing journey has been like, and also you've been partner to people going through some pretty extraordinary circumstances that some of which ended their life. And some of them we didn't know and then they came through it. So I'm really going to give you free reign to talk about whatever resonates, you know, in the, in your experience, through your life journey of what is healing, what does healing mean to you, and what have you seen for yourself and others.

You know, and, and mostly I'll pipe in with a question here or two or when we need to, but yeah. So, welcome. Thanks for being here. 

Kathryn Fiske: Thanks. Thanks, Sarah. And I'm really. I feel really honored that you invited me to participate in this, a lot, you know? And so spontaneously it turns out, 

Sarah Marshall, ND: right? Yeah, exactly. So where would you like to start?

Kathryn Fiske: Well, I want to start, I just want to reference for just a second, something you just said about healing is a four letter word in our typical what we understand as our cultural medical community and healing gets equated with fix and stop symptoms or alleviate symptoms or reduce symptoms, but not with many doctors, I don't get that conversation of healing. Like truly, transforming what your body's currently doing. And I see healing as a transformation. So, so that's kind of the place I want to speak from is, is healing as a transformative journey, because that's what it's been for me. And I have stuff I'm still working on and I have stuff I've totally transformed and I'm going to focus on, you know, for purposes of the healing journey, I really want to talk about something that I've transformed in a way in my life that I was told was untransformable.  And, and that's a lifetime of dealing a lifetime until it was no longer part of my lifetime. And it's important to say that.

From the time I was very young, and, and, and confirmed, if you want to say that from the time I was 14, of of having depression and anxiety disorders and panic attacks.  And it ran my life. I mean, I had long stretches in the earlier parts of my life where it actually, I had breaks from it. I had big breaks.

And then it would, from my perspective, arise like a big surprise, like, like a storm that blew in, not one that had been building, but you know, like, like a Gale storm on a, on the ocean. And all of a sudden there would be this storm going on in me. And my description when people would ask me is like, I always had a gray cloud over my head that no matter what happened, no matter where I went, no matter what I did, even if it was sort of joyful, it was still a gray cloud hanging out over my head that I could not get out from under.

And sometimes it was a thunder cloud and sometimes it was more like a fog. And for those of your listeners out there that are that deal with this kinds of thing, yeah, they really know. You know, it's like you just feel like you can never get away from it. And I use you on purpose in this case because that's the occurring for people out there. And for many years, I would not do therapy. I sure as hell would not take medications. I didn't want it on my medical record for fear that it would, that I could never get free of it.  And, so, so the, the life of depression and anxiety was even if I weren't in depression and anxiety in the moment, I was always afraid it was going to raise its head, which causes its own kind of anxiety, and 

Sarah Marshall, ND: actually there you are living in it, even when the symptoms weren't present. Now there was a different set of circumstances that still kept it present. 

Kathryn Fiske: and then it could trigger it. The fear of it would trigger it. And, and I'm not going to go go into all the whole psychological journey because I did do therapy. Ultimately, I found a, an incredible therapist after a while who was, shared my fundamental view of the universe.

She did transformational psychology and, and it was something that she journeyed with herself. So, even if we came up to a place where she'd say, Kathryn, I, I've never had that experience, so I'm not sure how to be with you on that. She would go off and do her own work for two weeks so that by the time next time I came back, the next time I came back, she'd say, ah, I get it.

I was willing to go there. And I will say this to people out there, your therapist can't go anywhere with you, that they're not willing to go themselves. and 

Sarah Marshall, ND: it's not just therapy. I mean, that's sort of what I'm out to transform in the medical community is that one of the integral pieces that I see we can make a difference is with practitioners being able to, because of their schedules and their lifestyles, even nurses, you know, that are working three tens overnight and how that impacts their own health and wellbeing and like, you know, all of the things that happen, like what would it be like if all of our nurses and our doctors and our healthcare practitioners were actually all really healthy in their own lives? And how would that alter, I don't know.

Right. But like, like that same thing of walking the path yourself for yourself for your own self and also with your patients. 

Kathryn Fiske: Yeah. Yeah. It's not different. So part of my healing journey was, was doing therapy. There's no question about that. It was an important part of my personal inquiry into why does my body keep doing this thing?

Why does my, and I, you know, for a long time I'd say my and my, my head, I now understand it has a whole lot to do with my body. actually, and, and I ultimately became extremely clinically depressed, in a way that was not good for my family. Certainly not good for me, but it was not good for my family.

It wasn't good for my relationships and it and it became destructive in many ways. I did find ultimately decide not knowing any other options at the moment, I did decide to do medi…. medications. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: How old were you or like how far along in your process was that? 

Kathryn Fiske: Oh my God. Well, I'd been dealing with depression since I was 14 but, but this phase of it had really where it was chronic.

 It started in my mid twenties and I was… I might've already been in well into my fifties.  Yeah. Yeah. I think I was well into my fifties before I actually agreed to take medication because I would just like I’d go into therapy or whatever I did until I felt better, and then I'd stop, you know? And then I'd go into therapy until I felt better and then I'd stop, you know?

And that went on for, for 20 years. Until my therapist finally said, if you don't agree to keep coming, even when you feel better, I'm not going to work with you anymore. Cause that's when you can actually do the work is when you're grounded again. So 

Sarah Marshall, ND: yeah, we have the resiliency to actually dive into some of that other stuff 

Kathryn Fiske: works that way with my health, when I'm dealing with health issues, like you know, there's, there's the acute phase where, you know, we've got to deal with what's acute, but once you acute phase is over, that's when the healing happens.

That's when the deep dive comes. And if we're not willing to do that, if I'm not willing to do that, nothing's going to change, can keep fixing the acute stuff. Nothing's going to change. And I don't care whether that's your mental state, whether it's your physical state. I don't care. You know, you can clean up the house, but if you don't change how you take care of things, it's always going to be a mess.It's not. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: So what was the, I got where you, you took a big step to actually get on medications, but then on the other side of things, what would you say was the tipping point when it shifted towards like, I could be done with this or I'm going to heal this, like all the way. 

Kathryn Fiske: That's, that's good. Well, the tipping point came several years once I got on medication. And it took, I will I will say again, for people listening, it wasn't a magic bullet. It took two years to find the right combination of meds for me to quit having chronic panic attacks. For me to be able to sleep at night, for me to begin to feel more leveled out without the just the roller coaster of emotions that I never knew when they were coming.

Once it had started to level out. And then I was kind of on a plateau, let's say for another, some number of years, and a lot of deep emotional work was able to get done then. I really began to think, huh. I don't, I don't like how these medications make me feel. They're effective. They keep me from jumping off the deep end and being crazy and not being able to function in my life really being truly dysfunctional.

But they flatten they they flatten the emotions. They flatten. world awareness. Yeah. and I just felt like there was an alternative, so I began to work with, With you.

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah… I think I you started with Tanda first...

Kathryn Fiske: I did with Tanda first. And, who was also a naturopathic practitioner. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: my partner in crime, for the first eight years. 

Kathryn Fiske: yeah, Sarah’s first year, first business partner and went to school together and all that stuff.

I started to work with Tanda and she actually suggested to me that there's something called the amino acid protocol. And, and you could reference this, maybe I don't remember the name of the book or the 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Alia Ross mood care. Yeah. I mean, you can even buy it on Amazon and she's got a full protocol in there.

Kathryn Fiske: Yeah. And so we began to work very intensively with that as a, as a way to see what the possibility was. To get off of medications. I was extremely fortunate to have a psychiatrist who managed my medications to support me. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: So that's really good that you said that, cause I kind of wanted to put a little caveat in here, just in that world of like.

You know, it can be dangerous for people's, particularly on antidepressants to start screwing around with their dosages or, or coming off of meds too fast. Like there's, there's some pretty serious ramifications to not doing it with guidance, with a trained, certified licensed healthcare practitioner. And, and like for me as a naturopath, I actually never take anyone off of drugs.

I build their health up to the point where the drugs start to become obsolete. And I say. Well, let's go talk to your prescribing doctor and see what they say and work in that partnership with them. 

Kathryn Fiske: Yeah. I'm glad you said that because it, it was. I had tried a couple of times in the early years of being on meds, like I couldn't stand how they made me feel and I, and I, and then I, it was awful.

And my doctor said, you can't do this. You just can't.  But he, he did support me in what I wanted to do. And I was very fortunate because I, many, many, many people find themselves in a situation where their doctor or their practitioner will say, you'll never be able to get off the meds. That was certainly what others of my healthcare team were saying at the time.

And seeing them, now that you're on, 

Sarah Marshall, ND: I'm heard like, you know, it's unsafe to ever come off. Right. You know? 

Kathryn Fiske: Right. And I need to stop them cold Turkey. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. And, and each. And there's probably people out there, depending on their circumstances, where it might be that that whole, you got to work with a practitioner around it.

Right. You know, this is my, my insert of the medical disclaimer around all of this.

Kathryn Fiske:  you know it’s important, and, and I didn't have a psychosis.  You know, it was, it was mental, emotional, and, and great imbalances in my body, my Neurontin and serotonin and all of that. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: But that's what I was going to say too. Like, I think. I'll let you answer it, it’s  like, I’ll have you discovered that, you know, it wasn't just all all in your head, right?

Like was there, was there an experience where you started to get, wait a minute, this isn't, because for some people it's circumstantial. And there's just life circumstances. And then they move through those circumstances, and that might really be the end of it. And they're on utilize a medication. I will say sometimes, you know, if you broke your leg, you would put a cast on for six weeks and you've let it heal and then do what's next.

And there are times and some, some of our lives we’re going on an antidepressant or an anti-anxiety for six months or a year to work through some really tough stuff in our life and create That stability, that's all that needs to be. And then there's also like, what was your experience of recognizing. Like, how did you know it was your body or your mind, or like I think a lot of people wrestling with, is it all in my head? That's always their concern... 

Kathryn Fiske: or how did I know? Right. Yeah. Certainly early on that was part of what I hated about it. I thought it was all in my head. That I was weak. I just couldn't make myself stop being depressed, you know?

And that's a self fulfilling negative prophecy in and of itself. Yeah. But I really, for one thing I discovered early on, is I absolutely cannot drink alcohol. That was an exploration for me. Not that I drank a ton of alcohol, but I was an average social drinker for the time of my life. You know, a drink or two a day and socially, maybe a couple of drinks. I was never a heavy drinker, but I did discover a very small amount of alcohol left me depressed for three days. That was my clue that it could be food or drink or whatever related. I didn't explore that much in the early days other than when I was 25 or 26 years old by like, no kidding, quit drinking.

Cause that was intolerable how it left me feeling. But it became the basis for an inquiry later on, especially once I started working with Tanda. So are there foods that triggered this? Are there sleep issues that trigger this? I was also, as part of this whole the syndrome of symptoms that I had, I would also have sleep disorder for many, many, many years.

There's no question that lack of sleep will make you crazier than being bad. Probably anxious. Your body, just my body, one's body cannot produce what it needs to be saying, with lack of sleep. So there began to be this body of evidence that I love to ignore, but, but the evidence was getting overwhelming.

And it was like, Oh, well, maybe if I cut back on whatever. So I began to see, especially the sleep thing. That was once, once I'd had some medication, began to work with the sleep thing. Getting my sleep in order made a huge difference as to how stable I could feel.

Sarah Marshall, ND: like in the beginning did you use sleep medication? 

Kathryn Fiske: I did for a while, I used Ambien for a while off and on for about two years, two or three years. I did not every night. It was more of an as needed, you know, when I simply could not sleep for days. Literally days on end, I would take Ambien for three or four days and just try to get my, my brain felt rested.

Sarah Marshall, ND: Did you go days without sleep?

Kathryn Fiske: Yes. I can Literally,  I….

Sarah Marshall, ND: It wasn't just kinda like, Oh, I had a rough night last night. I was like up for a little bit?

Kathryn Fiske: No, no.. I actually, my, my practitioner I was working with at the time actually had me chart it and sometimes in four days I would have had a total of 90 minutes of sleep.

Not too good for you. And I knew that wasn't okay, but I really thought if I could just get four hours a night, I'd be fine. And cause I, that's…

Sarah Marshall, ND: that would've been a big upgrade. 

Kathryn Fiske: Well, it would have at that point. but, but I rarely slept more than five hours a night for years and years and years.

So it's no wonder, literally... what I began to understand is my brain was sick the way, like, the way your body gets sick. And your body gets sick because you're, you let your immune system get low or because you're, I’m not eating right or whatever. I simply didn't make the association with my brain function health.Being just as affected by how I was taking care of my body. So good. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: So, good… yeah. 

Kathryn Fiske: A big connection that Tanda had me work with before we did the amino acid protocol was. She called it sleep hygiene. I thought I'd slap her. I couldn't stand it that she used that sleep hygiene. Are you kidding me?! Yuck!

But you know what? You didn't brush your teeth, you know…

 Sarah Marshall, ND: a lot like that. A lot like that.

Kathryn Fiske: But. I'll tell ya. It made a huge difference. So we began to look for what were the organic imbalances. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Can you give us some examples of what sleep hygiene was, just so we can put it in reality?

Kathryn Fiske: Yeah, so sleep hygiene is... Go to bed more or less. And I will say more or less, cause for those of us who don't like to sleep a lot, just more or less will actually make an enormous difference. Go to bed more or less at the same time every night. SoI have always been a night owl, but we made an agreement I wouldn't stay up past 1:30 at night, which was an upgrade for me because I was also an early riser.

Sarah Marshall, ND: You're only sleeping 90 hour, 90 minutes a night, you know? That’s...

Kathryn Fiske: That was an unusual time. I mean, that was not, that was a particular, my average was around five hours a night, so I often went to bed at 1:30 and slept till 6:30, or I'd be in bed at midnight and sleep till 5:30. I rarely slept late in that part of my life.

I mean, I didn't sleep late.  It's not even rarely like to sleep past seven o'clock would have been heard of the first 60 years of my life. I just didn't do it. and I thought that was normal, natural, you know, that's just, that's just what my body does.

Sarah Marshall, ND: so your first thing was to go to bed at the same time, more or less every night, 

Kathryn Fiske: and I didn't have to worry about getting up. The point was to try to stay in bed. At least the agreement with Tanda was stay in bed five hours, even if I woke up. And that was hard. That was hard at first. But you can kinda  see a difference. Sort of like if you're starving yourself. if you start to eat, you'll probably feel better. What we came to call it was sleep anorexia.

I was punishing myself with lack of sleep, and we won't go into all the psychological reasons that I might have done that, but it, it was, it was a, out of the depression and anxiety, it was a form of self harm. And you know, for some people they just can't sleep, whatever that means. But we began to investigate what is this?

And when I got it that I was doing it to myself, then I could investigate, do I still want to do that? Is it serving me right and well, no. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. 

Kathryn Fiske: So it was not an overnight, no pun intended, or maybe pun intended. Right? You know, it was not an overnight, Oh, now I need to sleep more. I'll start sleeping. There were 27 years of habit to break habituation , but I'd learned to train myself.

I now regularly sleep seven hours or more a night, and that's a success for me. That's a success for me. Yeah. Yeah. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: so you did some sleep hygiene work and 

Kathryn Fiske: go to bed at the same time, you know, don't, don't, I could read, there weren't very many screen, you know, I didn't have a lot of screen stuff, but we also now know, part of quote, sleep hygiene is no screens an hour before you go to bed.

And it makes a difference, you know, and you can throw your little medical. It activates the adrenal cortex, this increases adrenaline, which keeps you awake, blah, blah, blah. But it is true, folks, by the way. so, but reading a book is fine, you know, so, so I would read at night and that would be very helpful. getting comfortable sleeping in a dark room. Having it be as quiet as possible. There's a lot of things 

Sarah Marshall, ND: that many people called temperature. Having it around 55 degrees or less, fresh air and cold temperatures can be commonly make a big difference for people's depth and quality of sleep. Yeah. 

Kathryn Fiske: For me, that is a true statement. Having the room very cool.

And having fresh air on my face.  It makes all the difference in how well I sleep. but you have to find your own.  You gotta find your own. Then we started to investigate this thing called the amino acid protocol and my journey to healing and that was taking it on like my life depended on it, which, Oh, by the way, our health is.

Our life depending on it, and I don't care whether it's a journey toward healing your gut, whether it's a journey towards skin problems, whether it's urinary tracts, that whatever our journey is, our life does depend on it. My life depended on it.  And taking it on like, no kidding, doing the amino acid protocol requires enormous discipline.

Sarah Marshall, ND: you were… how often were you taking stuff every day? 

Kathryn Fiske: three times, four times a day, and they have to be taken within a one hour time slot. It's gotta be done. I mean, sure, you can mess up once a week, once in a while. I mean, you know, not talking about...

Sarah Marshall, ND: And what I'll say is it's not even so much that it has to be done like that. The results that you got were  correlated to how much integrity you brought to it. You know, the way that you did take it on, like your life depended on it and the rigor and the discipline, quite frankly, I remember, didn't you have like a pill box container? I was like, I'd never seen a pillbox container like that before. You know, it was like three-dimensional. 

Kathryn Fiske: It’s 30 days. Well, it was a square, 30 days with four a day. And it was only for the amino acid protocol, not for any other stuff. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Well because you were doing other remedies as well. So like the whole complete protocol, you were maybe doing something. What. Six, nine times a day 

Kathryn Fiske: sometimes. With, with different kinds of, you know, the drops and supplements.  

Sarah Marshall, ND: I’m just peppering this in for some of my clients who are listening, love you. They're like, I don't like taking something twice a day. I'm like, I'm being nice. I promise actually,  like sometimes cause without getting into cause the point of this isn't so much to like promote a protocol.  That's actually individual and it depends on the person for what they need. And you know, so that while I am committed to providing resources inside of this format of the healing podcast, you know, my intention really is more about getting to this essence of what those, those the less encountered conversations around healing, what, what the hard parts were, where you were challenged also, where you got your own transformational or however you would put it, benefit that you never expected that was going to come out of all of this.

Right. And there is this commitment to when we're healing our physical body. If an organ systems not doing something properly. We have to take an action in our life that then does what that organ system would've been doing. So your body wasn't producing the neuro-transmitters on a routine basis. You had to take supplements on a routine basis to do what your body couldn't do until it could do it, again.

Right. And so that four times a day protocol has a lot to do with timing that out to support where your gut, cause we know 85% of your neurotransmitters are made in your GI tract. So there was probably  a big relationship there and other organ systems that were involved. So like that's where some of that comes from. It's, it's really not just to torture people, I promise. 

Kathryn Fiske: Yeah. And the transformation was, as I went into that and it's applied, what I learned from it, well, the transformation was being, becoming curious. That was actually the early transformation of, they said it couldn't be done. And and I will say for those of you listening, Morley Safer’s book, who wrote a book about coming, finding his way through depression and getting on the other side of it and never having to deal with it again was, was eyeopening for me. And that was way back in the … that was in the 90’s right. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Right, right, and that’s why we’re here you hear somebody else's story,  that makes something, it's like the four minute mile, right? Everyone said a human being can't run a four minute mile until somebody did it, and I'm gonna misquote the statistic, but something like at least a hundred people did it the year later because now Somebody knew it was possible. Yeah. It's like,  that's really why we're even doing this as I want to put out there more and more possibility for people to just be curious and even question, could I and what else could I do and how could I heal more? 

Kathryn Fiske: Yeah. So the, so the big thing that happened that changed for me from feeling stuck in it and at once, I wasn't being plagued with the gray cloud over my head 24/7  and sometimes it was a thin veil, and then lots of times it didn't exist at all, which was really, Oh my God, was getting curious about, well, what would it take to heal my body so that it can find its own stability. And one of the questions for me is what does its own stability even mean? Cause I didn't know anymore. I didn't know I'd lost touch. So it became, I got curious. So I got curious about this protocol, which for me worked. It took two and a half years and I finally, I have not taken a medication since, and just to revisit was 100% with the support of my therapist and my psychiatrist. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: And I know you just said it, but it's, I want to go back and highlight. We can hear for two and a half years and be like, wow, that's so great. But like when I have someone coming into my practice at the front end, it's jarring  to be told by your practitioner you're going to have to spend two and a half years doing this thing. Like that's not the  world we live in.  The world we live in is 30 day detox, six weeks to balance this tested out for four weeks. You'll know if it works. Right? I get that question a lot where people say, well, how long do I need to do this to know if it's working, you know? And now and now, so what was that for you like, you must've been seeing results along the way. 

Kathryn Fiske: I did very early on. The wonderful thing about this particular protocol for me, And I did get supported with some dietary changes, getting outdoors more. I'm drinking lots of water, which actually supports brain function.

There were a lot of things that I was able to do. but I actually did see results in, in a fairly short time, but we didn't even try to reduce my, my, pharmaceutical medications for the whole first year. We didn't even take them down a tiny bit for the whole first year. We just waited for some healing to start to happen.

And so. It was, it is a long process. I looked at it like, well, it took me a really long time to get this nutty. So if I want to get un-nutty physically, the physical part.  It doesn't matter about the causes and conditions, you know, whatever triggered me in my youth in my life, and now they matter, but, but ultimately created a set of organic conditions that had me out of balance all the time. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Right, well, I mean, I, I'm by no means want to pry into anything, but I do think that it would make a difference for people. You know, and there's lots of, there's people that end up with diagnoses of depression and anxiety where there weren't a lot of life circumstances coming in. But would you be willing to speak even just generally to some of the stuff you dealt with that may have been me instigating factors of this.

Kathryn Fiske: Well, there was certainly, you know, my, my home life. I mean, I had, I had, I had a Jekyll and Hyde home life. My father was a difficult man to live with, and he could be,  he was unpredictable at best and could be predictably cruel at worst. I can say that out of that evolved a sense of helplessness in my world in general, and that I had no control over anything. And no, except I, I used school was my refuge. That was my safe place. So, so my home life was, was conflicted. My mother was unconditionally loving. Which at some level made me a little crazier because I had this amazingly compassionate, loving mother, and I had what I now know was a very sick father.  You know, I, I know that now. He was gone a lot because of his career. He was gone a lot. And so when he was gone, everything was really great. So up she went, everything was level in lovely. And then he'd come home and, you know, I'd hide. Yeah. And I think that contributes to this sort of instability that my body began to do...

Sarah Marshall, ND: Both physically and mentally. Right? 

Kathryn Fiske: That's what I mean. But physically, because with the shutdown comes. You know, I would quit eating. For me, some people were emotional, you know, emotional leaders as kids. For me, I wasn't emotional eater, you know, when I wasn't happy, I quit eating. I'm not anorexia bulimia not that, but I just, I would not eat. It's like my digestion quit working. Food was like, oh you gotta be kidding me. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Well, and that's interesting cause you know, in Chinese medicine and some of the other art forms that correlate a lot about our physical health and our emotional States of mind, you know, the gut is all about boundaries.

And it's one of the first boundaries we form as a kid. You know, when we're three or four years old, our gut essentially completely closes into its full integrity. We don't have the natural leaky gut that we have anymore, maybe, and it's, it's one of the places where kids originally can exert their dominance. It is with that. And then there's also, physically, you know, when there's a gut feeling about something, or I feel uneasy in my stomach and all of those, it's not an accident that we have that. So it's interesting that you said it that way. 

Kathryn Fiske: Yeah. Yeah. That's really, that's really a good, good exploration. And do a little more with that. So yeah, my early years were, were like, I suppose, sort of a Jekyll and Hyde. And, and they, it continued to be contentious at, at best. And, I mean, I don't want to say too much because I've done an enormous amount of healing around my relationship with my father. He's no longer living, sadly, quite frankly, because there are things I could say to him that I would never been able to say to him, but I say them anyway. But he, he, that there was a, there was a difficult, it was, there were difficulties and, and they helped me form my opinion of how the world was. You know, I made up my mind, if you will, about how things were 

Sarah Marshall, ND: If it’s safe, not safe, predictable, or inconsistent. So, 

Kathryn Fiske: and because he was so unpredictable, my occurring was, the world is not a safe place for me. You know, so not sleeping is like always looking over my shoulder. I mean there's, you know, there's that kind of thing. So there were certainly what we might call environmental factors.  It wasn't like I just made this stuff up. You know, I just didn't, I didn't just make it up.

There were certainly, you know, there was powerful environmental factors, and then given the belief system I created about my world. Guess what? I went out there and created a world that fulfilled on my belief system. I had boyfriends that were harmful. I had dysfunctional relationships for a long time. and so on and so forth. You know the mythology. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Exactly. Yeah. And we build evidence for it. Now we can tell them, say, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Kathryn Fiske: See that's how it is. I knew. Yeah. So 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah, so I want to kind of come all the way through the rabbit hole now to the other side entirely. So your medication free, and I recall you sharing something with me about what it was like when you started, quite frankly, feeling again and how it was a little unnerving. It was like these emotions happening and then questioning, cause, I think for a lot of people, you know, it's like, is this evidence that I really do need to be on that medication or what? And I want you to say in your own words, but I have a memory of your discovery through that time period of sorting through feeling again. Yeah.

Kathryn Fiske:  When, when, when we began to, this happened during the period and then a year or two after, when we begin to reduce the pharmaceuticals, and, and we were very careful with that. I keep saying that, when we reduced the pharmaceuticals and the leveling went away because they're great levelers they're very effective, very effective. And they're a good thing to get your work done. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: That’s also for some people, cause there's other points cause there's lots of different, they're very effective if what's happening is you actually have the serotonin imbalance or you actually have the, because that's what they're working on. And then there's other people where that's not the root of it, and they'll go on medications and then they just end up numb and it's not effective. It depends. 

Kathryn Fiske: But I get that

Sarah Marshall, ND: for you they totally work and I get that it was the right thing. Yeah. 

Kathryn Fiske: So the 

Sarah Marshall, ND: so no ow you're feeling

Kathryn Fiske: So now I'm feeling again and  I got as scared about feeling happy and good as I did about now there would be some sadness or a low point. They were both scary to me because they didn't trust either one of those could have spiraled out of control. Be in the before and I didn't trust that it was okay for a while. And.

But then there was another part of me that says, well, this is nice. I mean, you know, I hadn't cried in a Hallmark commercial in years. You know, the classic Hallmark commercials make you cry at Christmas time. You know? I mean, it was like, Oh, well that's cute. That's nice. Well done. And you know, then things like hallmark commercials started making me a little teary, and it was like, it was scary at first cause they didn't trust. I had, was very fortunate at that time to have the support of some amazing friendships. And my own spiritual life was supportive to me that that's not important to everybody. It's not a factor for lots of people. It's a huge factor for me. And, And my family became supportive as I let them in enough so that they could see, I didn't let my family and you know, I didn't allow anybody, you know, I, I would did my damnedest to cover it up when everybody was at home. And look, as normal as I could. I know there were a few years in there where I wasn't hiding it from anybody but me but that was my MO, was to cover it up and that didn't work too well. But when I started to have feelings, again, joyful feelings, sad feelings, anger was probably the single most verboten feeling. Anger was not allowed when I was a child. I mean it was, it was punished. Anger was not allowed, wasn't allowed to be expressed in any way and wouldn't begin to feel anger, it terrified me. Cause cause my go to was, Oh my God, I'm a bad person or I'll get punished for it, well, it's not so true anymore.

And it was, that was. Sort of, that was a big part of the healing phase was learning. And I think, and I think it applies to other physical things, you know, for me in the emotional healing, it was learning that these really are the kinds of emotions that human beings have. And, and they can actually be fun. They can actually be fun to be sad. I mean, actually, you know, there's like this, I mean, I'm going to share something pretty personal. I was at a, a retreat. It was, it was a retreat for, it was a, What would you call it? A therapy retreat is a five day therapy retreat, and at one point man I had gone to the pits.

I was crying and weeping, and I was just like, I was in the deep dark forest and a bunch of people were had come around me. We were very supportive of each other and bunch of people had come around and had their hands on my back and all of that. And at one point I brought my head up from the pit and I said to everybody there, I suppose you're all wondering why I called you here. We all laughed and then we all went right back down. What it showed me that it was, that was a breakthrough for me. This is not, and please people don't hear this as diminishing anything. This is not real, it's what I'm making it up to be and it feels so real, it occurs is real and it, and we play it out as real. The what I began to see as part of my healing journey is I get to do with these emotions, whatever I want.

I have choice around this, they're really not shackles and God knows for 27 years it felt like it.  I didn't know that. I would have argued what I'm just saying vehemently.  And I know there are people who will listen to this, who will say, well, that's fine for you and I get it with the deepest compassion. I get it. I totally get that. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: You know, to get all the way through this and to actually recognize the naturalness of despair. And then it actually is just a part of life and like, I mean, we have a culture and a mythology, I'm going to call it right now, that is addicted to a disbelief that human beings are designed to be happy all the time, 

Kathryn Fiske: right.

Sarah Marshall, ND: What if we're designed to be all of the things. 

Kathryn Fiske: Right. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: freely, to be able to freely move from one emotional expression to another. And you know, this is going to be fodder for future conversations, but I assert that one of the things that's happening in our humanity right now is we've had upwards of a 400 maybe even longer year love affair and infatuation with the mind and the mind and the mind. And it's been brilliant. Amazing work has come out of it. But if you look at how smart we are about education, learning the mind, even with the new budding world of neuroscience, we're idiots when it comes to emotions. 

Kathryn Fiske: we are

Sarah Marshall, ND: I mean, just as a general, like, I mean, I barely am and I do this. Yeah. And so like emotional intelligence and discovering the power of her emotions and how they serve us, how they protect us, how they bring knowledge and wisdom, and how they guide us through our lives.

Like, I mean, those are all concepts I had to work through for myself and still do. And there's plenty of times where I'm in the middle of despair. I'm not in love with that. I’m not going to be like, Oh, this is so great. Yeah. Like no way. And my quality of life, and this is getting shared as a theme throughout these conversations, my quality of life has gone up so dramatically. The more I'm willing to allow and honor the wisdom of the sadness, of the despair, of the frustration, of the anger, the more access I get to experiences of joy that I, for me, you know, I mean, we could do a whole nother one on my journey through anxiety and depression. It wasn't on the continuum. It wasn't to the extreme yours was, but I also had moments of anxiety as a natural emotion.

Kathryn Fiske: Right. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: You know, and when there's deep loss in my life, I have occasionally felt depressed. Like I've lost my way in the world, you know? This is definitely going to be a seed planted, but in one of my favorite authors, Karla McLaren kinda, I hope I said that right. We'll correct it. She wrote a book called the language of emotions, and one of the chapters is on depression, and she talks about depression as the stop sign of the soul that  literally when we're not on our path, stops us dead to get us to reorient ourselves back onto our true path. And like you talked about earlier today, that authentic connection with yourself.

Kathryn Fiske: Yeah. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: And being able to tell the truth about that and be able to connect to all of that and not be hiding from things or pretending things anymore.  How much that was important. And I think that that's one of the, in a weird way, I'm going to say the gifts that come, particularly with depression. 

Kathryn Fiske: Yeah.

Sarah Marshall, ND: And just to round it out, what she says about anxiety always fascinated me that anxiety is undefined fear. 

Kathryn Fiske: yeah absolutely 

Sarah Marshall, ND: It’s like when we’re not even willing to look at what we’re afraid of, if, we just, we're just afraid. And that one of the, in the moment tools I've used with my clients around anxiety is to actually ask what are you afraid of?

And then what would happen? and then what would happen? And then not as like to kitchen sink into, Oh my God, everything's going terribly. But when you can actually define and specifically say what you're afraid of it shifts and the emotion starts to move.

Kathryn Fiske: and you, and you get to ask yourself when you do that inquiry, and is it real? You know, what am I afraid of? Huh? Well, yeah. Do I need to be a freeing? One of the greatest gifts that a friend gave me in this journey and I was speaking with her and I was in, I'd had like my seventh anxiety attack in the day cause there was, there were times when when eight or 10 anxiety attacks a day was normal.

And she just, she just said, she got in my face. She said, stop. Not like making me wrong or bad, but just stop. I want you to ask yourself, I want you to look around and open your eyes and ask yourself, are you safe right now?

And I was in my living room, sitting in a chair. There was nobody there and I, much as I didn't want to, I had to answer yes, but that was a gift that she gave me.  Which is sort of the ending of the inquiry. You're talking about… what am I afraid of? What am I afraid of? What am I afraid of?

Sarah Marshall, ND: And then what would happen?

Kathryn Fiske: And then you get to say. Oh. And am I safe right now? And, and that got me through some very difficult days. So I, I would say that part of what my healing journey, whether it's been physical issues, I've got gut issues that drive us all crazy sometimes. But it's been a willingness to be curious about what's going on and, and then, and then ask for help, ask for assistance. And for me, that's you as a prep, you as my practitioner, it's other practitioners that share the journey of health as an inquiry. I'll tell all you folks out there, my practitioners, I don't take what they hand me. I have a consultation with them. I don't care if it's my eye doctor, if it's a gastroenterologist, if it's a foot doctor, we, I interview them first and ask them about their philosophy on healing in this journey. If I don't like what I hear, I don't go back. Yeah. And that's gutsy cause we don't do that in our culture. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: We don't have it that we get to. I mean, if you hired an employee, you would interview them and make sure that they were the right, you know? But we don't have that 

Kathryn Fiske: If I hired a carpenter to come and work in my house.

Sarah Marshall, ND: Right. Yeah. Fix your sink, your plumber. Totally. 

Kathryn Fiske: Three or four guys, 

Sarah Marshall, ND: isn't it Interesting?

Kathryn Fiske: Yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Sarah Marshall, ND: yeah. And then I always say, finding a doctor is like dating. You should have good chemistry and good communication. 

Kathryn Fiske: Absolutely. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: You know, and that, that you're building a relationship, and that's not often, you know, there's a whole conversation about. A field that could potentially exist of practitioners that are patient advocates. Which I think is awesome. It has its place, but then I'm also like, couldn’t we just have relationships with our practitioners and then we don't have to advocate for anything.

Kathryn Fiske: And I know that what I'm saying is gutsy and not what's done out there. You call up your, your heart people and they say, Oh, well we're going to give you dr so and so. And I say, great, schedule me for a consultation, not, not an exam, schedule me for a consultation. I'm going to have a conversation with this person. And I go to practices where there's some doctors I will see in that practice. And there are other doctors I will not see. And, and I'm okay with that.  I get, that's not what's done. I have an awesome team of healthcare professionals in my life. So I encourage that. I really support people in that. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. In all areas. Totally.  

Kathryn Fiske: It’s probably a whole other podcast. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Oh, we got lots. We got lots of things. This is, this is going to, I knew. You know, I wanted it like we, you were talking about being curious about your process. I knew that I wanted this to be an inquiry and in an R R I know we both are this, the more questions you ask, you don't get answers. You get more questions, which is actually good to also say about what it takes to heal and the healing journey. Oftentimes people think they're trying to get down to something, and it's often more like opening, opening, opening, opening, opening, opening, opening. But again, there is symptom resolution. I mean, that does happen. You literally do feel better. You're handling things there. But then there's also this like bigger and bigger and bigger questions start to open up, the more we investigate. 

Kathryn Fiske: The more you heal, sorry folks, the more you heal, the more there is to heal. Cause it's like, Oh well now maybe I could resolve this thing I deal with. Now that  this worst thing is handled, you know?

And it's all about what is a joyful life and joyful isn't the Snoopy dance all the time. It's joyful life is one where you feel content and satisfied. To me at this point of my life for joyful life is one where I feel satisfied most of the time. That's pure joy to me, that’s bliss. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Awesome. Well, I can't think of a better place to put a pin in it right there. By no means is this a complete conversation, but thank you just so much for your authentic sharing, giving us your heart, sharing your life with us, all of that. Yeah, 

Kathryn Fiske: you bet

Sarah Marshall, ND: Can we tell them who you are?

Kathryn Fiske: Sure. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: This is my mom. 

Kathryn Fiske: This is my daughter

Sarah Marshall, ND: pretty amazing to get to have  this relationship. And you know, a whole nother podcast is us healing our mother daughter relationship, to be here.

Kathryn Fiske:  Heals your health. Totally. Yeah. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, and I am one of your team members and we worked out what we need to do to be ethically responsible, you know, cause that's another area that's not done. Healthcare practitioners who work with their own family members. I was actually instructed in med school to not do that, but it was like, how could I possibly withhold these knowledge and gifts that I know of from the people I love the most? So we've just worked it out.

Kathryn Fiske: Yeah. And it is ethically responsible. There's, you know, we, we, we maintain high level of accountability for that. And all my practitioners know with you, my daughter, I don't, you know, it's not like you're hidden secret, at all, so. 

Sarah Marshall, ND: Yep. Awesome. Thanks. 

Kathryn Fiske: Thanks. Thanks. Thanks, honey. All right, 

Sarah Marshall, ND: we're going to go from here. 

Kathryn Fiske: All right. Okay. Bye. Bye.

Sarah Marshall, ND: Thanks to today's guest, my mom, Kathryn Fiske, for sharing her lifelong journey into self-love. You can learn more about finding your own healing by going to Sarah Marshall N d.com or following me on Instagram at Sarah Marshall and D special thanks to ratty Nikpour who composed our show music and to our amazing editor, Kendra.

And thanks for being here. Until next time.