Updates from Kristen Jeffers

Dear Christian friend who has never lived with anxiety,

I’m so happy for you that you have never experienced this. It’s something I wouldn’t wish on my worse enemy. However, I feel like those of us who are Christians and live with anxiety are often misunderstood and even shamed in some situations. This is my attempt to help you understand what we experience on a consistent, sometimes even daily, basis. My goal is not to point fingers, but to give you food for thought and hopefully some useful tips for interacting with Christians you know who have anxiety like me. Here’s what I want you to know.

Anxiety is often labeled as fear because it’s hard to really put into words. It’s not always a conscious concern about performing a task or being in a certain situation. Sometimes it strikes out of nowhere for no apparent reason and will not let go. I’ve been asked, “what’s your trigger?” I wish I had the answer. It’s also more than just a feeling. Mine portrays itself in very physical ways. When it is extreme, I will shake uncontrollably and eventually throw up before it ends. It can also make me feel like I can’t breathe or that my heart is beating out of my chest.

I know the Bible tells me not to fear, not to worry about the future, etc. However, quoting those verses to me in the moment isn’t helpful. It’s trite. (You’re probably thinking that’s extreme, but honest truth here.) I know those verses and my brain is already accusing me of being a failure and although you may be trying to help, hearing it from you just fuels the fire. Silent support would be much more helpful.

If you happen to be with me in the middle of an anxiety attack, please don’t pepper me with questions or suggestions that you think may help. It’s just another source of overwhelm. Again, I know it’s rooted in good intentions, it makes me feel like I should try to hide what’s really happening. Imagine your brain screaming at you that you are in extreme danger but you can’t move plus having someone seemingly tell you to get it together.

Even well meaning comments like “I wish you could stop worrying” are frustrating. I wish I could stop it more than you do! Like it said before, attacks can strike out of the blue with no warning and no explanation. I can’t control that.

A common response to anxiety is to freeze. I often leave tasks undone because they seem too overwhelming. All while I can’t do them, my brain is accusing me of being lazy and is frustrated that the task is not complete. Commitments can also be daunting because of attacks. I try my best not to say “no” to things, but sometimes just the thought of following through makes me physically ill. Please don’t interpret this as me not caring or thinking I don’t need to live up to my word. Anxiety attacks are just as real as being physically and visibly sick.

If you are ever with me during an attack these are the best ways to support me.

Love,

A Christian with anxiety

This year has been heavy in many ways. January wasn’t perfect, but it was mostly normal. February stared a series of events that have knocked me off my feet over and over again including the loss of Jared’s grandmother and my dear friend, Abi. I’ve said to multiple friends that dealing with grief must be the lesson that I am supposed to learn this year. Here are a few things that have stood out to me along the way.

These 3 are my girls! I have talked to them about literally everything. We first met because we are all in the same Young Living family and love everything related to essential oils and natural living. Over the last 2 years they have become my dearest friends. It all started in 2021 when Abi asked if anyone in the team wanted to do weekly accountability calls where we worked together to build our businesses. We became the faithful four pretty quickly and for a while we met once a day because we loved it so much. We backed down to 2 days a week when we all got busy, but still made sure that those 2 days always happened. When we got word from Abi’s sister 3 weeks ago that Abi (the spunky one in the unicorn t-shirt) passed away unexpectedly, the first thing that happened was a group call between the rest of us. We cried, shared memories, and just sat there together. It was the support we needed in that moment from those who were experiencing the same emotions.

Family and church family are equally important. When Jared’s grandmother passed away in March, the time we spent with his family the week of the funeral was healing for everyone as well. Again, stories were shared, precious keepsakes discovered or chosen to bring home, and lots of tears and hugs. When my family walked through an unexpected health crisis, our church family was there to give hugs, pray over us, and offer many words of encouragement over the two month period where everything seemed upside down. Who you surround yourself with is vitally important!

I have cried the question “why” to God so many times! Not in an angry way, but from a place of total confusion and grief. I don’t have the answers, but I know He does. I was discussing the feeling of needing to know with someone recently and she brought up that when we get to heaven we won’t even have the need to know anymore. That has really stuck with me. Yes, God has all the knowledge of all the situations, but once we are there with Him, the answers won’t even matter to us. Wow! In the meantime, while my human brain grapples with all the questions and trying to make sense of everything, I can rest in the peace that God is pouring on me that truly does pass all human understanding. I know He works all things for my good even when they hurt. I also keep reminding myself that while I am missing Abi greatly, I have the ultimate assurance that I will see her in heaven. I just wish I knew when.

I am a vocal processor and Jared has been a saint to let me talk and talk and talk and talk. There were so many thoughts that I needed to let out. I know from years of past experience that when I don’t sit down and feel the emotions it will lead to worse things. Emotions will show themselves in a physical way if bottled up long enough. (If you’ve never read the book Feelings Buried Alive Never Die I highly recommend it! It’s a thick read, but so good.) Journaling can also be helpful, I haven’t done it in a journal per se, but I have written out messaged to my 2 other girlfriends, typed out lots of words in my social media stories, and even sent messages to Abi’s account that she’ll never see. 

I will be the first to admit that in the thick of it all, I’ve slacked on my supplement routine. It just felt too overwhelming. But as the fog of grief is beginning to lift a little bit, I feel like those routines will come back soon. I know I need the nutrients to properly support my body in the process of working through all the emotions. My adrenals especially need the support so I don’t stay in flight or fight mode. I have used lots of my other “tricks” to help myself. I’ve filled the bathtub many times with epsom salts and essential oils to soothe me, taken my wellness purée, diffused oils like crazy, and coated myself in them especially to help me sleep.

Little things that bring me joy have been a must! They have been as small as a cup of tea or hot chocolate. Sometimes Jared has brought home a pint of our favorite ice cream to share. Other times I’ve pulled up certain songs and listened to them on a loop. Some days I’ve spent the entire day working on paper quilling projects. Whatever that is for you, don’t discount it or feel guilty for choosing a small bit of joy in the time of grief.

*this post includes affiliate links.

This is something I just learned! I probably eventually could have pieced it together, but never heard anyone say it flat out. It really struck me especially because it was in relation to fertility.

We were talking about the liver and how you can take care of it. Some signs that your liver needs help is when you are having hormonal imbalances and a host of other things. When they mentioned that the liver plays a role in hormones, and of course they control our fertility, someone said that a friend of theirs had done a liver and colon cleanse and shortly thereafter got pregnant after not being pregnant for a long, long time.

When I heard that, it really did jump out at me and I knew I had to share! So, let’s just talk through why those are connected and how you can give your liver some love so that your fertility can also be impacted. Loving your liver and giving it what it needs is going to improve a host of things because it is proabably the hardest working organ in your body, maybe second to the heart, but without either one of them, you will soon be dead. I know you need all your organs, but this one, does a lot!

The liver is the biggest filter in your body and actually filters 1/4 of your blood every minute! It’s filtering out things like toxic chemicals that you come in contact with while out and about. Things in products that you may use, medication you may be taking, hormones that are dead and need to leave your body, and antibiotics that may have been added to animals you have eaten. I am not a vegetarian and am not saying anyone should be, but those are things that are in our modern day world, especially if you eat non organic meat like I do. Someday when my budget allows, I’ll upgrade to organic meat, but until then, I trust that the Lord will honor the choices I do make on the budget I have.

So let’s connect the liver directly to your fertility. Since it responsible for flushing dead hormones out of the body, it has to have an open pathway for them to leave. That pathway is the colon, and sometimes urine, but let’s focus on the colon. It has to be clean for things to leave and it traps a lot of gunk besides fecal matter. What if you’re not pooping as often as you should (2-3 times a day) or you struggle to poop?

If you’re constipated, there are things you can do to clean that out before cleansing the liver. Pooping is one of the ways the body gets rid of excess estrogen. Estrogen dominance has a negative impact on your body, especially hormones and fertility. When you can’t move the dead hormones out via your poop, your body is still receiving the signal that you have the hormones you need. Therefore, you aren’t making new and healthy ones that can actually do the function they are meant to do. To cleanse the colon, get healthy fiber in your diet. Fruits and veggies are a great source of fiber. You can also use a fiber supplement like this.

Once you get the colon clean, you can cleanse the liver. The best thing you can do is drink plenty of clean water to help it move everything through with ease. By “clean water” I mean filtered to remove the nasty stuff in tap water. I won’t go into great detail, but one thing commonly found in tap water is medication. You wouldn’t take someone else’s meds that aren’t intended for you on purpose, but drinking tap water can expose you to that. Investing in a good water filter is important. It’s the next improvement in my home that I plan to make when I am able. Also, look for foods that are good for your liver. I’m sure you can find some in a simple online search. Lemon is also supportive to the liver. I like to add a drop of Lemon Vitality™ oil from Young Living® to my water. I only consume oils for Young Living® because they are dietary grade. I would also warn you not to consume any other brand, especially from the store or amazon. I can’t vouch for their purity or safety. You can also squeeze a fresh, organic lemon in your water for similar benefits. 

Now that you have your liver and colon clean, you are able to flush the dead hormones and you brain can receive the message that you need to create new, healthy hormones. When the dead ones are there, your body can detect them, but it cannot tell that they are dead. That’s where the challenges arise. So here’s t0 clean livers, colons, and healthy hormones that can encourage your fertility to be the best is can!

*Nothing in this blog is meant to be medical advice or an attempt to diagnose or treat any disease. I share it as educational content that you can take and empower your own wellness. 

“I can smell the fear on your breath.” Ok, so not really, but did you know that your breathing can affect your emotions? 

Breath work is being studied by doctors right now in relation to feelings of strong fear. It’s pretty neat that you can actually hack the autonomic nervous system just by controlling your breathing. I don’t know if you have noticed, but when you get into a state of extreme fear, you’re breathing tends to pick up, maybe your heart speeds up, you feel Iike you can’t breathe. I know I’ve been there, and it’s not fun. But when you take the time to pause and tell your brain how to breathe, it allows you to take control of a function of the body that you normally do by default so that you don’t enter that overwhelming stage of hyperactivity with your breathing and emotions.

One of my favorite ways to do this is to do box breathing. Picture a box in your mind. Each side of the box is going to get 4 counts. Breathe in as you go across the top of the box for 4 counts. Hold your breath as you come down the side of the box for 4 counts. Now breathe out as you come across the bottom of the box for for 4 counts. As you come back up the other side of the box, hold your breathe again for 4 counts. You can go around this box as many times as you need to until your body begins to calm down. It’s super simple. 

A way to elevate this experience is to add essentail oils. I always keeps some on hand. I’ve done this in public as necessary and even at home when things become overwhelming and tense. Simply put a drop of oil in your palm, rub you hands together, cup them over you nose like a little tent and do the same exercise. You can either breathe in through your nose or mouth. The mouth is sometimes a bit more effective, but the nose works well. You can try it first through your mouth and follow it with a round through your nose. 

Essential oils are really neat in that they can effect your emotions by reaching the amygdala of your brain. The amygdala is the part of your brain that controls your emotions and it’s very physically closely located to the part of your brain that processes the your sense of smell. Emotions and smell are also very closely linked to each other in how you process information. You may notice that certain memories you have are connected to certain smells. I know when I smell vanilla, I think of my grandmother because of a vanilla scented lotion she used to use. You can use this connection to help yourself calm down when you reach the overwhelming state of fear.

You can also use another technique called tapping. It uses acupressure points on the body to stimulate a calming response. Simply tap gently on the top of your head, middle of your forehead, under the eyes, under your nose right above your lip, the thumb side of your fists, and under the arms. You can repeat this process as needed. 

You can also come down to your chest. This is referred to as a thymus tap. You can do this on its own. Some people do it as part of their morning routine to ground themselves for the day. You can give that a few, good, solid taps right below the center of the collar bones, on the sternum. This can be the most effective location for me when I begin to spiral. 

You can use the tapping with phrases to remind your brain that you are ok. Any positive words you use, your brain will search for the evidence of that statement. Because you are telling your brain to look for that evidence, it helps you to come out of the state of “everything is going wrong and I am in danger.” You can try statements like:

You can totally be prepared to confidently overcome strong fear in a given moment with just these techniques. You don’t need anything on your or with you. It doesn’t matter where you are: the airport, going to a meeting at work, or driving down the highway. You will be prepared to take on your emotions.

Grab some essential oils to pair with these techniques for the ultimate calming experience. My favorites are Stress Away, Valor, Peace & Calming, Lavender, and Frankincense. They are incredible for getting to the amygdala and calming the body. All five come in a set of twelve oils with a diffuser that you can use to create a calming atmosphere in your home. When you grab them using my link below you’ll get the 12 oils and diffuser at a 60% savings! I’ll also send you a guide on how to use them to make sure that you can enjoy all of their benefits. 

Your fertility has been under attack since you were born. I don’t know about you, but I am right on the verge of turning 30, and a lot of these things that are impacting us have been causing damage, pretty much from the time I was a young kid, or from the time I was born. Much of this stuff was introduced or studies about them started to come out in the 90’s or early 2,000’s. This information has been around for a while, it’s just not been put out there in front of the general public because the powers that be don’t want it put out there because they benefit from us not knowing. Let’s dive into those 3 things.

The first thing is chemicals. If you are familiar with any of my content, you know that one thing I am passionate and careful about in my own life is keeping chemcials out of what I use. Anything that has any kind of toxin in it is not crossing the threshold and coming into my home. These include phthalates, pesticides, heavy metals, BPA, triclosan, parabens, and the list goes on. That’s the short list that will get you started in your awareness. But studies have shown that these things can cause disruption in your endocrine system, which is everything related to your hormones, and you know that tour hormones are really important to this. Phthalates, specifically, can disrupt follicle growth and increase follicle death by increasing oxidative stress in your body. Oxidative stress to your cells is like rust to a car. Never good. Things that cause that can lead to infertility. Phthalates can also cause the reserves in your ovaries to be used up faster and cut off your reproductive years earlier than it should. In other words, menopause coming on sooner. 

Some other things that people have discovered is that this is also effecting your hypothalamus, pituitary, ovaries, and uterus because your pituitary gland and hypothalamus control a lot of the release of your hormones. All of that is connected. You can’t pull them apart and separate them. Your body is one giant system. We kind of divide it up into the different systems, and while that is true, it’s all part of one giant masterpiece that God created and He didn’t mean for it it be picked apart into pieces. It does help to have those subcategories, but I think too often we forget that we are one large puzzle with pieces all effect each other. 

Some other interesting things that I found in some studies is that Triclosan specifically can affect progesterone production and ovarian functions. Both of those are very important to fertility. Progesterone is the hormone that is key to us being able to get pregnant and being able to sustain a healthy pregnancy. This is basically the protector that is creating the safe environment for your baby when they are in utero, especially in the first trimester. I know multiple women who have used natural progesterone, and did it myself, to encourage our bodies to work they way they should and be able to get pregnant and also sustain a healthy pregnancy. I have a friend who was pregnant at the same time I was with my son. She lost that baby. Months later, she came to me asking questions about the natural progesterone I used and started using that. A month or two later, she was pregnant with her second baby and now she has another child as well! Triclosan not only impacts us when we are trying to conceive, but when babies are exposed to it in utero, it can have negative impacts on their fertility in the future. The domino effects of the chemicals we are using even into the next generation are astounding. 

Triclosan has the potential of being carcinogenic, so it could cause cancer. Specifically it is connected to breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer. Obviously the first two would be in women and the last one in men. Men need healthy hormones too, especially for conception. 

The second thing that affects your fertility is xenoestrogens. These can come from chemcials; you can look up which ones are classified as xenoestrogens. They can also come from things in medication, esepcially birth control. If you are on the pill form of birth control, that’s a xenoestrogen. It’s a fake form of a hormones that’s causing your cycle not to happen the way it should. It’s muting or turning things off in your body that are natural functions. It does damage. We’ve been taugh that this this the “responsible” or “convenient” thing to do; whatever word you want to put there. I took it too. I didn’t know better when my husband and I were about to get married and people said, “if you don’t want to have a baby on your honeymoon, take this now so your body has adjusted to it.” I just did it. I really paid the piper in a lot of health issues. 

If you don’t already know my story, you can read that here. But long story short, it did a lot of damage that took me a long time to figure out and heal. I would never try to make that decision for you, but I don’t encourage anyone to use birth control of any form. I have not found one that doesn’t contain a damaging chemical or synthetic hormone. So if you were wondering my opinion on that, there is it. The reason these are so damaging is that they can go into the body and mimic the function of estrogen and we end up with estrogen dominance because our body can’t get rid of it. Estrogen dominance is mostly responsible for things like endometriosis, PCOS, and other issues like that that play a role in fertility struggles as well. 

The last thing is sugar. I have an entire blog post on this, but some of the thing it does in the endocrine system is that it can create a chemical dependence on sugar itself. If you don’t know, it’s just addictive as cocaine. It lights up the exact same centers of the brain as that drug. This is why cutting out sugar can be especially difficult for some people. It does cause an imbalance in the organs that control our hormones. This will also effect all of our hormones in turn because when one is off kilter, the rest will be as well. The reproductive system for men may respond to sugar by presenting with erectile dysfunction. Sugar also shuts down testosterone and elevates estrogen. Women have testosterone in much smaller amounts than men, but we don’t want it to elevate the estrogen. We’ve already touched on what that can do. Sugar does not do your fertility any favors.

I don’t want to leave you wondering “what can I do?” I have a 90 day fertility workbook with 11 different changes you can make in your lifestyle. You choose 3 of them and focus on them for 30 days each. I make myself available to you in monthly one on one coaching calls or simply through email as you implement these changes. This is completely free for you to grab so you are never lost or confused like I was in my fertility journey. I want to take you from point A of trying to conceive to point B of being pregnant as quickly as possible. Grab your copy of the workbook now by clicking here.