Karla M Jones, RN, MSN
My Story
I lost myself before I found the root cause.
Before
I was living in fight or flight for several years.
It all started with my mom's cancer recurrence. Then my husband told me he was struggling with suicidal thoughts. And in the middle of all of it, I was fighting to keep my kids' elementary school from closing.
I took on everything.
Every appointment. Every need in our entire household. Every crisis. I took it all on, and I told nobody.
From the outside, my life looked completely normal. Inside, I was becoming someone I didn't recognize. Irritable. Short-tempered. Snapping at my kids and then drowning in guilt five minutes later.
I stopped laughing. I stopped joking and having fun. I stopped enjoying my kids.
And it broke my heart.
I felt like a shell of myself.
What Changed
A friend lovingly called me out. She made me see how much stress I was actually under.
And that's when it hit me. This wasn't who I was. This was my physiology running the show.
So I stopped chasing symptoms one at a time. I started looking at what was going on at the root. And that's where I learned about the stress and hormone connection.
Where I Landed
"Holy sh**... I'm okay. I'm actually okay."
That was me in December, in the exact kind of chaotic week that used to wreck me completely.
The chaos was all still happening. And I remember distinctly thinking to myself, I'm okay. We're going to be okay. I got this.
It was this holy sh** moment. Oh my gosh. What I'm doing is working.
I felt calm and capable, not angry. I had stopped yelling. I'd stopped trying to escape to Target just to get five minutes alone. I was actually enjoying my kids again. I was coaching them through some really hard conversations with a calm I didn't know I had in me.
And all the things I thought had become part of who I was... I finally realized they were my physiology the whole time.
And that was something I could address.
