For those of you who don't follow sports, Catherine Garceau was a part of the Canadian synchronized swimming team that won a bronze medal in 2000 at the Sydney, Australia Summer Olympics. Swimming Out of Water describes her struggle to find health and well-being in her life. Here's an excerpt from Swimming Out of Water.
9
Rose-colored Goggles
“It is the food which you
furnish to your mind that
determines the whole character
of your life”.
—Emmet Fox
I slipped my pencil into the centerfold of my
journal, snapped it shut,
and put it down on the ground
behind me to the left. In climbing
the wall, I had no faith and
staring at those words wasn’t doing me any
good.
Doubting my power, strength,
and ability to climb back up the wall
was hardly a new feeling for
me. Throughout my life I have experienced
setbacks that produced the
same feeling of inadequacy. Or maybe it was
the other way around. Were my
deep-seated feelings of unworthiness
subconsciously setting me up
for failure? If so, how would I reverse this
negative spell?
Faith aside, one of the most
satisfying breakthroughs that came to
me through synchronized swimming was
learning to adopt an optimistic
approach in different areas of my
life. It would be hard for anyone to
develop the motivation it takes to
achieve something great, such as an
Olympic bronze medal, without learning
from challenges, setbacks, and
shortcomings. Perhaps it was my
stubborn lack of self-confidence that
motivated me to devote time, effort,
and commitment to my mental
training.
People who meet me today (and
chuckle at my cheerful and
upbeat nature) have a hard time
believing that I was such a serious
and pessimistic child. How on earth
did I become an Olympian if I
was always so negative? Actually,
it’s amazing to realize how many high
achievers are motivated by pain, or
the avoidance of pain. Our brains
seek adrenaline in activities that
elevate dopamine and serotonin levels,
which are often depleted from years
of stress or even set off balance from
birth. Sometimes, we even find
activities and passions we can devote
ourselves to one hundred percent to
forget or to create the biochemical
reactions that make us feel good.
But these temporary fixes almost always
lead to greater problems over time.
For me, there was no hiding anymore:
I’ve been surfing a wave
of sadness for as long as I can
remember and using temporary coping
strategies hardly worked anymore.
During various phases of my life,
symptoms of deep sadness (and what I
now know to be a mix of
childhood emotional traumas and
brain chemistry imbalances) showed
up as insomnia, over-exercising, chronic
dieting, bingeing, isolation,
procrastination, and breaking down
in tears at the slightest perceived
failure. With one foot grounded in
deep spiritual inquiry, my other
foot kept investigating the world of
neuroscience and toxicology in
order to better understand the
brain’s connection to mind-body health.
It’s sure been an interesting puzzle
to put together. While many experts
will proclaim to have figured out
all the pieces of the puzzle, it is my
belief that how and when the
pieces come together for each individual
differs greatly from person to
person and could be orchestrated for a
much higher purpose—for each of us
to truly get the lessons we are
here to learn.
Today, when I catch myself feeling
down, discouraged with my
progress, or judgmental of others, I
bring compassion to the situation
and choose to move forward with
love. I’ve come to accept that if I do
lose myself in negativity for a
while, it’s probably Life asking me to walk
through another tunnel in order to
see the Light. This involves choosing
to feel and release the arising
emotions instead of avoiding them with
exercise or food. And in the event
that I succumb to old habits of eating
instead of feeling, I remind myself
that the journey towards emotional
freedom and the acceptance of
imperfections is always unfolding.
With brain health on my radar, I
found the work of Dr. Daniel
Amen, which included his Change
Your Brain Change Your Life book
series and educational PBS programs22.
Suddenly, there was much more
to ‘brain health’ than I could have
imagined. As I continued to learn
more about neurology and several
human typing systems that reveal the
uniqueness of our combined genetic,
energetic, and chemical makeup, I
learned that those of us who
struggle early on may be born with certain
predispositions, which others (who
seem to breeze through life) are
not. What became more and more
obvious was how much the integrity
of our chemistry and neurology23 greatly influences our emotions and
behaviors. Whether the cause was a
genetic predisposition, a dominant
personality trait, a birth trauma
(subtle brain injuries are often caused at
birth), conditioning from a
childhood trauma, overburdened organs from
toxicity, or a combination of it
all, understanding the interconnectedness
of
everything helped me gain patience and compassion for many health
enigmas, including my own. Dr.
Amen’s findings made more and more
sense
the more I observed myself and those in my life.
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