Panic Attacks? Anxiety? Chronic stress?
I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this nightmare. It’s AWFUL!
I’ve been there too
Got the T-shirt… along with 273 ways to pretend “I’m fine”, when I soooo was not fine. I checked the box for every single one of the following:
Anxiety ✔
Panic attacks ✔
Stressed out my mind ✔
Moody ✔
Pain in muscles and joints ✔
Dizziness ✔
Fatigue, lethargy ✔
Brain fog ✔
Poor breathing ✔
Poor sleep ✔
Lousy blood sugar levels ✔
Out of control eating ✔
I HATED it. I spent three years either having a panic attack or constantly feeling like I was a whisper away from one.
I was embarrassed and deeply ashamed. I couldn’t believe that this was happening to me. People needed me. I was a single parent. I had a desperately difficult yet extremely important job. The number of people that relied on me was crazy. Yet, here I was, actually going crazy.
It absolutely mortified me.
And, because of my utter and profound shame at the collapse of my mental health, very, very few people knew what I was dealing with. A major mistake.
Even more foolishly, I made an already awful situation worse for myself, because simply the thought of seeing a therapist or psychologist (or any other type of “ist”) became a major anxiety/panic attack trigger for me. My wobbly state of mind convinced myself that they’d take my kids away, that I’d lose my job, my friends, my home… (It’s only now, firmly on the other side of that mental health crisis, that I realise that the anxiety itself was distorting my thinking.)
But this paralysing fear meant that healing, finding my peace, was down to me. No one could help, because no one knew. I spent hours and hours and hours researching the subject.
I needed to know:
Why this had happened to me. Was I truly, as my wonky thinking insisted, “broken”?
What could I do to get better. Was “getting better” even possible? Could I come back from this?
How could I stop it getting worse. There were days where I felt I was riding a slippery slope to hell.
How I could stop it happening again. If, by some miracle, I did start to get my mind back, how did I avoid a relapse?
And slowly, so slowly and in my ramshackle, haphazard way, I began to figure it out what I needed to do to heal. At first, it was just hours went by without a panic attack. Then it was days, then weeks, then months. Then years.
I’d done it! I got my life back!
And, as what I’d gone through receded into my past, I packed away what I’d learned.
Comfortable in my certainty that I’d never need the info again.
Then something absolutely awful happened…
Every parent’s worst nightmare
It began on a rainy winter’s night with urgently banging knocks at my front door. A strange man stood, dripping and white faced, on my doorstep. His words, “Do you have a 16-year-old daughter?” will forever ring in my ears. Because, yes, I did.
“She’s been hit by a bus,” he said, sounding like a bad joke. “Come, I’ll take you to the scene.”
And what a “scene” it was. One I will never ever forget. Blue lights flickering on sodden roads. Backed up traffic. Crowds of people. A stationary bus with it’s caved in window.
And my beautiful baby girl, gravely injured.
Her physical injuries
We consoled ourselves with how they could have been so so much worse. But they weren’t great either. Far from it.
She spent months in and out of hospital, dealing with multiple surgeries. Some complex and hours long, some simple and, by comparison, relatively minor.
These were followed by months of further visits to the burns unit to treat her awful scars. And to the physio units to help her get her mobility back. It took over a year for her to be discharged, and this came with words to the effect of, “Yeah, we know she’s not fixed. But there’s nothing else we can do.” And that was that.
Her mental injuries
She was absolutely, perfectly, joyfully fine!! To begin with.
But, as so often happens, these things take time to fester. A few years after her accident, I began to notice small changes in her behaviour. Seemingly inconsequential irregularities at first. Little, illogical things, that had never bothered her before, began to make her fret.
The bath wasn’t clean enough, and no possible amount of cleaning could make it so. The food was weird, wrong. She couldn’t, wouldn’t eat it.
And then the health anxiety began kicking in.
3am phone calls
Before long this amazing beautiful soul, who’d faced multiple, complex surgeries with total equanimity was on the phone to me at all hours, fretting herself into a state, sending me blurry photos as she asked:
These white marks in her nails. Did I think they could be cancer?
A heat rash. Could it be signs of meningitis?
A sore tummy. Almost certainly a ruptured appendix?
And as for her pulse, racing ever harder, ever faster… This, she was quite certain, had to be a heart attack…
Then came the chance of a lifetime
At just 21, my incredible daughter, who was working for a well known international corporation, was asked to go to Hyderabad to help set up the first Indian branch of their organisation. Professionally, and personally, it was a dream come true. She couldn’t say no.
Now, 8000 miles away from home, anxiety set in with a vengeance. Panic attacks flew at her. She was too scared to eat (too many stories of food poisoning). Indian traffic near as dammit paralysed her. Simply leaving the hotel to go to work became an act of breathtaking act of bravery.
And, I am incredibly proud to say, she did it. She stuck it out, completed her contract. But, as those of us who have struggled with anxiety know, ignoring it is a decidedly unhelpful approach. By the time she got back home, her anxieties had worked themselves into a tight and horribly complex knot.
Far wiser and smarter
Than me, she was all too happy to see a variety of “ists”. Indeed, she longed to get professional help. But, there were two big problems here.
First, the wait times. It was months before she could get an appointment. And second, when she finally got to see someone, they didn’t “click”. In fact, it was their meeting was a total disaster. So back on the waiting list she went.
By this point, having myself lived through what she was dealing with, I could no longer bear to sit on the side lines and simply watch and wait.
I had to help
I knew what she ate was absolutely crucial to her mental health, but I also knew that the little knowledge I had was just as likely to be dangerous as it was to be helpful.
So I went back to college, this time to study nutrition.
I also began to go back through the research I’d done when I’d struggled. Being blessed with ADHD, I used and thoroughly abused my ability to hyperfocus. Where before, when researching for my own healing I’d spent hours, now, with my daughter struggling so badly, my studies verged on the obsessive.
A thousand possible tools
Alongside everything I was learning about nutrition, I began collecting every possible tool and avenue to healing I could find.
The goal was to find every option possible that might help unravel those knots inside her, or at least stop them tightening and/or getting worse, while we waited for professional help.
I also wanted to learn what we might do that would support and work alongside any professional treatment she received, possibly even helping make treatment quicker, more effective, easier.
♥♥♥ A few much appreciated reviews ♥♥♥
From some readers and beta readers who received advance copies of Boosted!
Rachel Lior: The recipe design is inspired. I am not one for reading a whole book. Sure, I intend to, but more often I glance at a couple of recipes, make some of them, then I’m done. I know this is rare, but jen’s book has a very different approach, and it works. If you hate the idea of another book about anxiety that you probably won’t read, give this one a chance.
Dr Ayesha Ashraf, clinical psychologist Well written, comprehensive information related to panic attacks, anxiety and stress. The contemporary approaches used in conjunction with psychotherapy are highlighted on point. The use of analogy to explain stress developing into anxiety and panic attacks is beautifully mentioned to be easily grasped by the layman.”
Millificent: We know we’ve got to eat less meat to save the planet. But if we all end up in hospital or needing long term health care because we’ve f****d up our health, that has its own environmental cost, doesn’t it? I’ve ordered copies of this book for family and friends. I only hope they read it and enjoy it as much as I did. U can lead a horse to water and all that…
Susan Strutte: I was given this book for my vegan daughter to read. She had been suffering from dizzy spells, and I was concerned she was not getting sufficient nutrition in her diet. Within weeks of following these delicious recipes, she is feeling and looking a lot healthier and find the meals easy to create.
Johanna J Jordan: I wanted to go more plant-based, but I didn’t want to end up making two different meals. One for me, another for the family. But because I knew enough to be worried that I wasn’t giving the kids the nutrients they needed by going plant-based so I just stuck to what I knew but felt uncomfortable about it. I leapt at the chance to read an advance copy and I am so glad I did. I feel much more confident about my plant-based choices, and the flexi suggestions are so helpful because my husband doesn’t want to give up meat.
Charles: Very impressive, extremely informative and knowledgeable.
Bev Varley: By just adding three suggested ingredients to boost my normal recipe, I had the comfort of knowing that all the nutrient groups were covered barring one. Before I started, my original recipe was short of at least 5 key nutrients including iodine and B12 which are both normally hard to ensure we have enough of as vegans. Not only was it nutritious, it was delicious too. The book was informative; easy to use and above all else, it has given me confidence that I can ensure I am eating the right foods to stay healthy and increase my longevity. This should be every cook’s new bible, a long-awaited but crucial addition to the literature on healthy eating!
Meg Tully: I wanted to go more plant-based but I never seemed to manage. I’d start out full of optimism, but by week five or six my energy levels would be waning, and I’d be questioning myself. Was my desire to save the planet costing me my health? Because, excuse the pun, I didn’t want to be the sacrificial lamb – while the rest of the world destroyed the planet, I destroyed my health simply because I was trying to do what I thought was right. So I’d start eating meat again. This book has been EXACTLY what I wanted because it’s shown me what nutrients the meals delivered. It’s removed so many of my doubts and worries, and truthfully, I think I am getting far better nutrition than I was being a meat eater.
StevieR: I am NOT vegan. I got the book for the other half and it’s been good and bad. Bad because we have plant based meals EVERY day now. Good because she was pretty happy with me and the flexi tips that come with every recipe have shown her what meats, fish, eggs, could go well with the meal so now we can eat together and I’m not left always having to forage for myself. The recipes are pretty tasty tho, even without the meat
Grace: If I could give this book ten stars I would. When I was asked if I’d like to read it I confess I was in two minds. I liked the idea behind the book, but I didn’t think I would be able to commit the energy needed.I was so wrong! It was funny, clever, and so easy to read. And did it help with anxiety? OMG YES! My son suffers with panic attacks and we now have a collection of tools that actually work to help make them pass quicker, and have less of an impact. If you struggle with anxiety, panic attack, depression, do yourself a favour and get this book as soon as you can.
Sarah E: I was given this book to read in order to get my review. To be honest, I felt a little awkward about it because I dreaded having to lie and tell Jen I loved it, when I didn’t. Luckily, there has been zero need for lies. If you or anyone in your family struggles with depression, anxiety, stress, panic attacks, high blood sugar, and wants to do everything they can to tips the odds of healing in their favour, GRAB THIS BOOK. I promise, you won’t regret it.
Lynn T: Jen gave me this book to read to help my foster daughter with her panic attacks. Wow! It has genuinely been life-changing. But not just for her, for my entire family. There is no question about it, we now eat healthier meals, do more to combat stress, and can say we truly do lead happier, less rushed lives. Best of all, and I am not just saying this, the information has been so incredibly easy to absorb and take on board, it took next to zero effort.
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