What Did Reversing My Autoimmune Disease Actually Teach Me?

Lessons from Rock Bottom

Pursuing remission of my autoimmune disease changed my health. What I didn't expect was that, in the process, it would change everything else in my life too.

Living with debilitating autoimmune disease was the worst time in my life, full stop. When I try to think back on the year that I was deep in my struggle, and the year preceding that where my body felt like a malfunctioning Bratz Doll, and the two years after that where my health felt as fragile as a Faberge egg, there are genuine chunks missing. It's like when I dig for those memories, my brain shoots out a parental advisory warning: you don't want to unearth these painful memories.

At my lowest, I was a malnourished 24-year-old, crying myself to sleep because my shell of a life didn't feel worth living, or drinking aggressively enough to forget it altogether (which, to be fair, is about as common an occurrence in NYC as riding the subway).

I would never choose to relive those years. I wouldn't even wish them on my worst enemy (yes, even him).

And yet.

Crash landing into a fiery pit of hell saved my life. It's the reason I have the life I do now.

Don't worry, this isn't a "Chicken Soup For The Soul" post where I preach that everything happens for a reason (even if I do try my hardest to find meaning in the proverbial pile of dogshit). But what rock bottom did give me was something I never would've chosen voluntarily:

It forced me to stop, look at my entire life, and admit what wasn't working.

What I learned during that time changed my life profoundly, in ways I never could've imagined. I use this knowledge in the work I do with my clients, coaching them through the worst health experiences of their lives.

So, now, I'm going to do the same for you.

Here's what rock bottom taught me, so maybe you don't have to go there to get your life back.

Learning Lesson #1: Confront Areas of Your Life That Aren’t Working

When I was diagnosed with not one, but two autoimmune diseases, I did what I do best: activate obsessive problem solver mode. I found the best functional medicine doctors. I read everything I could find on reversing autoimmune disease. I followed the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) diet like it was my religion.

I am nothing if not obsessive, impatient, and determined. I mean, I cut out chocolate for a full year. That might not seem like much to you, but to me that felt equivalent to losing an arm.

A few months in, I was starting to feel better, and then everything just…stalled. Sure, I was now able to walk a few blocks without feeling like I was trudging through wet cement, and my full body hives had receded to just my chin, but I wasn't well.

Around this time, I started health coach training. One module introduced something called the Wellness Wheel, a big pie chart of everything that goes into health. Before it was presented, the instructor told us we'd have to rate ourselves in each area. I'm going to crush this, I thought. How could I not? My diet was better than Tom Brady's!

And then I saw the wheel.

And I could just feel the asbestos-filled walls of my dingy West Village apartment closing in on me.

You're telling me my relationships, career, and joy, affect my health?!

Let me tell you what those looked like back then.

My friendships were like succulents, lovely and required almost zero effort to maintain. Luckily, I have always had amazing people in my life. But I wasn't actually letting them in.

The problem is, growing up with chronic illness, yes, I was sick before my autoimmune issues. Fun double whammy for me!, I learned one very important survival skill: trust no one. If you know anything about my story, you know that ultimately my vulnerability was weaponized against me. So, from that, I learned to never share my inner-most thoughts with anyone, not even my closest friends.

What this translated to was me becoming a high-functioning, emotionless robot. I mean, when I was diagnosed, I sent a group text to my closest friends saying:

"Hey. Just got diagnosed with autoimmune disease so I might not show up to things. Not ready to talk about it. Don't feel like you have to respond."

Doesn't really scream "intimate relationships" does it?

And then there was my job.

I was working as an assistant buyer at a major department store. And sure, it wasn't actively bad, but I also felt like I hadn't turned on my brain in months. I simply showed up, did about an hour of work, and quietly dissociated for seven more. Not bad, but also not quite alive.

The Wellness Wheel was ruthless. Begging me to nurture my relationships. Pushing me out of a comfortable career to chase one that actually inspired me. Forcing me to realize I have no hobbies outside of going out to dinner.

In short, it showed me something I didn't want to see: I was nailing nutrition and neglecting everything that makes life worth living.

So I began working on that Wellness Wheel. And that's when my healing actually took off.

Takeaway: Does Healing Autoimmune Disease Require More Than Just Diet?

Yes. Addressing nutrition is essential, but it’s never sufficient on its own. The areas of life most people ignore—including relationships, career, joy, and stress—have a direct and measurable impact on physiological health.

When I think about addressing all areas of life, one client comes clearly to mind: Barb. Barb was doing every single thing she possibly could for her health: a diet cleaner than my own, investing in all the top biohacking tools, a workout regimen fit for a Navy Seal. On paper, Barb’s habits made her look like the picture of health. After digging, I said to Barb, “What does joy look like in your life?” And she laughed. A deep, belly laugh. “Joy? How could I have time for joy?” So that’s what we worked on. We pulled back on her highly optimized routine, keeping the things that actually moved the needle and dropping the things that were stressing her out or barely got her any routine, and we focused on adding in the things she loved: creative writing, walks outside in the sun, more time with her family, nourishing relationships that had fallen to the wayside during her diagnosis. And steadily, we saw her come back to life. It’s not that nutrition, exercise, and certain protocols don’t help healing—of course they do. They just can’t take over your life.

Learning Lesson #2: Stop Ignoring Your Body

Survival skill number 2 you learn when dealing with chronic illness: ignore your body. It's the only thing that keeps you going when you feel like you were run through a paper mill and then lit on fire.

I grew up with chronic, debilitating stomach aches. And I don't say debilitating lightly. These were the kind of stomach aches that make getting sucker punched in the gut seem like a pleasant alternative. The kind that made me, a straight A student, miss almost 25% of my high school classes. Debilitating. So, with that pain, you learn to take what your body is telling you, and tell it to eff off.

Stomach ache? Nuh uh. Time to strap on a Thermacare. Headache? Not today. Convince yourself it's cool to wear sunglasses inside.

So I applied this logic everywhere else in my life.

Sleepiness? No match for my coffee machine. Hunger? That's what the bubbles in seltzer are for. Joint pain? Not after a few glasses of wine!

I truly thought I was above basic human needs.

Turns out, ignoring your body is a great survival skill for the short term, not so much for the long. I won a lot of battles this way, but ultimately lost the war.

Why Does Chronic Illness Make You Ignore Your Body?

Ignoring your body is a survival skill that develops during the pain of chronic illness. The problem is that it becomes a habit long after the crisis has passed, and continuing to override your body's signals is one of the main reasons healing stalls.

The metaphorical A-bomb was dropped when my body simply lost the ability to tolerate the abuse I gave it on a daily basis. Autoimmune disease was my body finally screaming at me loud enough that I couldn't ignore it anymore.

Bedbound, exhausted, barely functional, I had no choice but to start negotiating with the "enemy." And that's when I realized something that changed the entire way I viewed my health: my body was never my enemy.

Even after chronic pain. Even after symptoms that made me want to go unconscious for weeks at a time. My body wasn't giving me these symptoms to punish me. It was giving me them to communicate something powerful. What you're doing isn't working.

And when I started to really listen, it gave me some powerful clues.

The tingling I felt in the tips of my fingers and the top of my head? My body begging me to take a deep breath. The overwhelming fatigue? My body begging me to rest. The swollen glands that threatened to choke me? My body begging me to stop my bro-science, biohacker, on-my-quest-to-the-body-of-a-Greek-goddess diet.

Once I actually tuned in, the demands didn't seem so unfair. You give me rest, I give you energy. You give me nourishment, I give you an annoyingly positive mood.

Working with my body instead of fighting it tooth and nail was revolutionary, especially after having lived through the 90s and early 00s where the number one rule you're indoctrinated with is "Your body is terrible. Act accordingly."

Rather than wake up for battle every day, I learned to finally tune in and respect what I was hearing, yes, even on the days when I wanted to say screw you, slam three espresso martinis, and stay out til 4 AM (again, I was 24. Please forgive me my sins).

Learning Lesson #3: Slow Down

I pride myself on squeezing 10 hours worth of work into 1. I was once deemed the Energizer Bunny of NYC. Slow was not in my vocabulary.

But autoimmune disease has a funny way of forcing you into slow, even if you get there kicking and screaming. And I was. Immediately after my diagnosis I tried to quite literally run off my fear. Instead, I ended up collapsing into the elliptical machine.

With my ability to "do" ripped away, I had to think about what all that doing had been for. Turns out, a lot of it was just spinning my wheels.

Killing myself at the gym in the name of the perfect body, only to come home depleted and tear through my entire pantry. Going on meaningless dates to avoid being alone with my thoughts. Distracting myself with menial tasks at work to ignore the gnawing feeling that it wasn't what I wanted to be doing at all.

It's so easy to fall into the trap of more action. Because action feels productive. Rest on the other hand? Rest feels like failure.

But what did rock bottom teach me? Rest is one of the most productive things you can do.

Is Rest Actually Part of Reversing Autoimmune Disease?

Rest is not a reward you earn after healing from autoimmune disease. It is part of the healing process itself. Pushing through fatigue during an active flare or recovery phase actively slows immune repair.

Rest lets your body reset. It lets you pause to think about your actions before blindly moving forward. It's where you can actually be still long enough to hear your own thoughts.

Rest isn't a holding pattern. It's the spring loading to propel you to where you want to go.

Stop viewing rest as defeat and start viewing it as your secret weapon.

Lesson #4: Let Yourself Dream

When you're too sick to move, you end up with a lot of time on your hands. And after you doom scroll, binge watch an entire seven-season series, and paint your nails for the umpteenth time, this leaves a void. What did I use this void for? Dreaming (my therapist calls it trauma dissociating, but I've decided to go with a friendlier rebrand).

In my dreams, I imagined what life would look like after I healed. It started as a way to keep me motivated on my sometimes-grueling healing protocol, but it quickly became my favorite pastime. Sure, in reality I was rotting away in bed, but in my dreams, I could live up to my full potential. I could be a published author, doing book tours across the country. I could be an adventurer, rappelling down waterfalls halfway across the globe. I could date an absolute hunk of a man.

And then I got better.

And then the oh crap settled in.

Suddenly my old life felt unbearable. How could I click-clack on an office computer all day when my calling was so much greater? How could I go on dates with 26-year-old finance bros who wanted to rip shots while bragging about their SAT scores (unfortunate true story) when I knew I was capable of more meaningful connection? How could I sit in my dinky little apartment when the entire world was there for the taking?

So I did what I do best. Sit in existential dread. And then I took action.

I quit the job. I wrote the book. I sold all my earthly possessions and took to traveling the world.

A funny thing happens when you dream. You start to feel like it's real. You learn in your bones that it's meant for you. And once you dream for long enough, you can never go back to your old reality.

Sure that reality feels safe. But it's also so dull.

Rock bottom gave me something I never had before: a reason to fully live.

When you finally get your life back, you don't choose normal. You choose vibrant. It's terrifying, and destabilizing, and sometimes deeply painful. And it's better than anything you ever could've dreamt up in bed.

The Truth

Those years battling, and ultimately reversing, my autoimmune issues were the darkest of my life.

But that rock bottom was also the springboard into a life beyond my wildest dreams: a career helping people thrive, a lifestyle that allows me to travel the globe, a relationship with my body that actually feels like partnership.

In a perverse way, autoimmune disease was the best thing to happen to me.

But I don't want you to have to hit rock bottom to get here.

So ask yourself: Where are you ignoring what isn't working? Where are you pushing when you need to pause? What dream have you been too afraid to go after?

Hopefully this spares you from having to hit rock bottom to uplevel your life. And if you're already at the bottom, let this be your permission to stop. To tune in. To start to plan for that life that's bigger than you ever had before.

If you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and actually start healing, here's how I can help.

FAQ

Why did my autoimmune healing stall even though I was doing everything right?

Stalled healing despite a “clean” diet and good protocol compliance is usually a sign that something outside of nutrition needs attention. Chronic stress, unprocessed emotional load, poor sleep, social isolation, and lack of joy can all contribute to worsened health. Nailing nutrition is necessary but never sufficient on its own.

Does rest help with autoimmune disease recovery?

Yes. Rest is not optional during autoimmune recovery. Chronic overexertion keeps cortisol elevated, which drives inflammation and immune dysregulation. Intentional rest—including adequate sleep, not "pushing through” flares, and nervous system regulation—is one of the most clinically impactful things you can do during an active healing phase.

What does autoimmune disease teach you about your body?

For many people, autoimmune disease is the first time the body's signals become impossible to ignore. Symptoms that feel like punishment are actually the body communicating that something in the current approach is not working. Learning to listen to those signals, rather than override them, is often the turning point in recovery.