What's the Difference Between Functional Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine?

“Just keep going, it will change.” This is Elizabeth Collins’s burnout story, simplified into six words. The Cait-proclaimed Burnout Witch, Elizabeth now specializes in helping others recover from burnout. However, she was only able to truly thrive in this role after confronting her own feelings of not-enough-ness and developing the boundaries and coping skills she needed to regain a sense of balance in both body and brain. 

Elizabeth is the owner and director of The East West Company, an integrative wellness practice specializing in burnout recovery coaching, functional medicine, acupuncture and more. Elizabeth explains that functional medicine is a crossover between biomedicine and Eastern medicine; it uses a wide range of testing to identify and address the root cause of a presenting issue. Because the incredible breadth of functional medicine testing can seem overwhelming to someone who is burnt out, Elizabeth suggests starting simple with a blood panel and a stool test. This approach helps individuals correct any initial imbalances, which sets them on a more manageable path towards burnout recovery.

Tune into this week’s episode of FRIED. The Burnout Podcast to hear more about the intersections between functional medicine and burnout. Learn about the ins and outs of leaky gut, why Elizabeth uses tarot cards to broaden her clients’ perspectives, and why feelings of gratitude and frustration can and should co-exist.

Quotes

• “I had ‘Big T’ trauma, so that very much set me up for a lifetime of perfectionism, a lifetime of not really understanding that I am worthy of love simply because I exist.” (04:00-04:10)

• “My burnout story was: ‘just keep going, it will change.’” (07:26-07:32) 

• “That happens to people who are chronic people pleasers, who are prone to burnout….It’s very easy for you to set aside what you like because you’re more concerned about what needs to happen now, and it’s like, but what you like is what needs to happen now!” (10:49-11:05)

• “[Functional medicine] is kind of like if biomedicine and Eastern medicine had a baby.” (15:14-15:17)

• “When we’re in burnout, it’s very difficult to see anything other than what we’re focusing on, which is usually panic, stress and anxiety. And the benefit when I started reading my own tarot cards again was...oh, this card popped up and it means this. How does that relate to my current situation? What is it about this card that can give me the opportunity to stop focusing on the minutia and look at the bigger picture?” (31:28-31:55) 

• “Being able to address different aspects of your personality and speak to them directly like they’re individuals gives a sense of agency to the experience, and it really gives people the opportunity to fully integrate those personalities.” (36:28-36:42)

• “We are complicated enough individuals that we can feel very bad about something that we’re going through and still be very grateful for the good things that it gives us or the other good things in our life….They’re not mutually exclusive, and the idea that we have to inhabit one thing at any given time is unsustainable and unfair and will absolutely perpetuate burnout.” (38:00-38:28)

• “If you have symptoms or you are living a life that is in your experience suboptimal, but in the greater perspective not catastrophic....you are not crazy, and there is help.” (49:10-49:35)

Links

https://insighttimer.com/ 

www.theeastwestco.com 

www.instagram.com/theeastwestco 

www.instagram.com/thevintagemystic 

XOXO,

C

If you know that it’s time to actually DO something about the burnout cycle you’ve been in for too long - book your free consult today: bit.ly/callcait

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