The Journey

The Journey - Alyssa’s Story

Hello lovely humans,

This short film is heavily inspired by my own experiences with chronic physical and mental health. As I was writing and creating this piece, I got to process the journey I have been on and it was a very healing time for me. What has helped me in the past was hearing and seeing other people’s stories to know I wasn’t alone. As a creative, this is not only a celebration of my filmmaking journey and the completion of film school but a chance to honor the growth I’ve had as a human as well.

I am not going to go full in-depth, but I do want to be transparent in hopes of others either relating to or finding pieces of this story helpful. When you talk about chronic health, the information is definitely not pleasant to hear which is just the nature of it! So please keep an open heart and understand that this is my experience and everyone’s is vastly different!

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Since I can remember I have experienced some sort of health concerns. It started back in 2008 when I was tested for food intolerances and came back off the charts for gluten and dairy. Even after going off of both of those, it’s been a lifetime of stomach aches and pains which caused me to often miss school and other events. I grew up as a competitive dancer, where I was constantly moving my body and exerting energy. As someone whose stomach wasn’t very happy 99% of the time, this would cause lots of issues because I would be so bloated making it hard to do the things I needed to.

I didn’t take many actions in regard to my health until 2017, which was my senior year of high school. Starting in January of that year, I was experiencing some of the worst pains I have had to date. I went to countless amounts of doctors, ran numerous amounts of tests, and everyone said I was completely fine - that I just had slow motility in my gut (ie. constipation). That sure was a fun thing to be told, especially after no resolutions to the “treatments” they were providing. Over the course of the next two years (2017-2019), I experienced several other symptoms including:

• Severe constipation, gas, bloating

• Brain fog

• Stomach pain attacks

• Memory loss

• Hair loss/growth

• Rashes

• Sensitive to cold

• Getting very sick/immune system crash

• Slow wound healing

• Missed periods

• Acne

• Anxiety/Depression

• Panic Attacks

I was at a complete loss. I had moved away from my hometown and to the city of Los Angeles for school in the Fall of 2017. Throughout my time down there, my body was under the most stress it has ever been physically, mentally, and emotionally. I was forced to figure out what was going on with me and why I was feeling so sick. I would spend any and all free time I had doing research on conditions and symptoms and treatments trying to find what was wrong with me. I got in the habit of heavily restricting my diet because no matter what I ate, I was always in pain. I figured, if I didn’t put anything into my body, I wouldn’t have any more pain, right? Turns out I was only making myself sicker with the lack of nutrition and substance. I continued to be on the hunt for answers and was able to find some. I was diagnosed with IBS which led me to the Low-FODMAP diet which I found to be helpful at managing some symptoms (but led to the disordered eating patterns later). I also was tested for SIBO which is known as Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth. In order to find out if you have SIBO, you have to do a breath test. For reference on how severe my results were - anything above a 5 on the scale meant you had it - my highest number was 72 - meaning I had an extremely severe case of it. There are three types of SIBO - Hydrogen Dominant, Methane Dominant, and Hydrogen Sulfide. I am Methane Dominant which is the hardest one to recover from. The issue with SIBO is that it can relapse very easily (which I have done three times due to excess stress).

Once I finally got the SIBO under control with antibiotics and at a consistent level, I was able to focus on my other health concerns. In 2019 I started experiencing mental health issues for the first time in my life. I started having panic attacks that occurred once a month, then progressed to several times a week. The stressors in my life during that time caused me to go into complete survival mode. My health got to such a critical point where a trip to the emergency room and calling 911 was the extremes. It was at this point, that my parents grew very concerned and told me it was time to move back home. A decision that I was extremely hesitant about at first. I didn’t want to appear as a “failure” or that I had given up. But turns out those were thought patterns that did not serve me. I had moved home, switched to online school and then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

When I moved home, my goal was to find the root cause of everything. I had started going to therapy a few months prior and knew I needed to continue. Once I found a therapist that felt like the right fit, we got to work. I started explaining all of my present symptoms and experiences and she started asking me about my past. I was questioning why she was wanting to know about my childhood when I was sick in the present. As we started to bring up the past, various memories and experiences were beginning to be uncovered. I was seeing a dietician at the time who had referred me to see a Pelvic Floor Therapist as a way to treat my chronic tension in my pelvis as well as a condition I have called vaginismus. Once I started seeing her, a lot of stuff began to come up. With the work we were doing, it was a very vulnerable and intimate space. I would cry during our sessions, tears that felt like they were held in me for years, tears that I didn’t connect to in the moment but knew they were from times that my brain couldn’t remember (but my body did). What was wild was that as I was releasing those tears week after week - my stomach started feeling better. I was working directly with my therapist, explaining what was coming up and we would try and work through the memories I did have. As I was releasing both emotionally and physically, all of the dots started to connect and I began feeling the most relief I had felt in a very long time.

I was beginning to implement more foods back into my diet and was working through just how disordered my eating patterns were. My stomach wasn’t bloating as much anymore and I found I could actually eat a lot more foods than I had in the 4 years prior. It took my body time to adjust as I was eating way more food than I was before which brought up a lot of body image issues I had been holding onto, but I knew that the focus for that season was to heal my relationship with food and to feel better.

Since 2020, I have felt the best I have felt in my entire life. I went from having panic attacks almost every day to having only 3-5 in the whole year. I have uncovered traumas that occurred when I was very little that I had held onto for the majority of my life. I have processed experiences and memories from my teenage years through techniques such as EMDR and EFT Tapping. I am in a place where the number of foods I can’t eat is less than the number of foods I can. I now understand just how much stress and trauma can play a huge role in the way we function as humans. I have gained more empathy for myself and for others while doing so.

Being home and having a safe space to heal has been crucial to my process. Pandemic aside, I was in an environment where I could sit with myself and have immediate help if needed. I had the chance to connect with my parents and siblings more and get back to my roots in the Pacific Northwest. I was able to stay in contact with my friends because of the digital shift from social distancing and was able to make some new friends along the way. I was also able to work and save money for when I move out again so that I don’t have as many financial stressors as I did when I was first down in L.A. I am happy to say that I am moving back down to CA in August of 2022. Two years ago I would have never thought I would be living there again, but I think that goes to show just how much healing has happened. I want to create a future that works for me and is built with the amazing community I have around me.

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With all this being said, I know that it will be a lifelong journey of healing. I still have bad moments that come up in between the good and am in the process of working on my mental health conditions with my psychiatrist. As I am writing this all out, I am honoring my younger self. The one who didn’t have the capacity to comprehend what had happened to her, the one who was so focused on making sure everyone else was okay that she suppressed all of her emotions. The one who had to inform the doctors on what certain conditions were and the one who had to speak up and advocate because they would say everything was “fine.” The one who now has grounding tools to calm herself down in any situation and can venture on in a more wholesome and authentic way with less fear.

If you have made it this far, I want to thank you for listening. This isn’t the entire story as I think I would need a full book to dive into each moment, but I hope this gives you a glimpse into what has brought me here - creating this film. My hope in sharing this is to help someone else in their own journey of self-discovery. To let people know that there are other perspectives to look at when trying to heal and that it is a full-body and full self-experience. I am a huge advocate for the ability to now ground myself on my own, but I would be nowhere without the people who have helped along the way. To my family, friends, roommates, therapists, mentors, specialists, and providers, I want to thank you all for being a part of this journey.

Cheers to healing, empathy, and a lifetime of self-discovery.

With Love,

Alyssa

May 2022