Episode 153: Denial In The Diagnosis

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Alopecia Angel podcast. I'm your host, Johanna Dahlman. And today we're going to be talking about the denial within the diagnosis. For someone who's been helping others heal and reverse alopecia for the last 7+ years, I've seen a trend that there is a denial within the diagnosis and there's different types of people who like to maybe sit on the diagnosis just a little bit more, and want to see what their options are versus taking immediate actions and trying to uncover what's happening.

What I would say is that sometimes, treating hair loss, it's a cold it's a cough, it's: Oh, let's see if it, goes away on its own type thing is not the strategy here. And going back to the diagnosis and the denial with it, I want to expand just ever so slightly on this and. Anyone can really diagnose you. I myself was diagnosed at the hairstylist at the salon while doing my highlights. And my hairstylist told me: Hey, Johanna, you have alopecia, go see a doctor. And that was very cold and abrupt for me. As I was looking on my phone on the internet, while he continued to do my hair, I just saw nothing but negativity, nothing but limited options, nothing but unsafe possibilities.

This was very disturbing to me. And I took immediate action, but it takes a minute, right? To declutter a little bit of what's already going on in your life.

And in that time, I was living between the Netherlands and in the US and going back and forth, and it was a little chaotic to say the least. So then to have a diagnosis of a sort and to say, okay, let me formulate a plan. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to see doctors here, I'm going to see doctors there, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. It took a minute and for anyone going through any diagnosis, not just a type of hair loss, not just autoimmune, not just female pattern, not just anything else, but something that's really. unnerving you. That's really, making you move out of your seat in order to take action.

The denial of the diagnosis is something that I want to clear up here because it's very important that you take action as soon as possible. And taking action can look like very different things to different people, so I want to expand on that as well. But before I do, the denial of the diagnosis is a mental absorption of information. At the same time, it's also a label. And at the same time, it could also be a dead end. And I say this because having treated people for over 7 years, I've seen clients come to me with 5-10 different diagnoses from 10 different doctors. And they're getting different types of hair loss, and a lot of it is scarring and a lot of it is misdiagnosed.

I actually just read an article, I put it up on my social media for you to see about how women of color and just people of color in general are misdiagnosed more often than not. And it has a lot to do with the skin color, it has a lot to do with the type of hair and the texture of the hair and how educated the person looking at your scalp is. Just because they may or may not have a medical degree, just like in my case, where I was diagnosed by a hairstylist. It doesn't necessarily always is correct, there could be some human error in that. The other situation is that it's not just about the human error, but it's also about how we take in this information and how you can back it up and support your client.

So if you are the hairstylist who is diagnosing people on a regular basis, have some support there for you for them. This is, I think, very very important, very critical to their mental health and through their emotional health, because a lot of things can come up when you are diagnosed, especially when it's a time like in my case, where I was getting my highlights done, getting my hair has always been a fun thing for me.

I've always loved coming out of the hair salon, feeling and looking like a million dollars. I've always loved getting my roots done, looking and feeling great about myself. And that time in particular, I did not feel great at all. I felt absolutely deflated, depressed, worried, anxious, I felt all the things. This was a happy time for me to go to the salon. And so this is what I'm saying. It's just, you can get a diagnosis over the phone, over internet. You can self diagnose, which I also see a lot of people self diagnosing, which may or may not be correct, may or may not hurt, may or may not. actually propel you forward or not, because it could, take you down a different path than where you actually need to be.

And so there's a couple issues here, when we self diagnose we're thinking what the internet says is true and we're trying to place ourself in that box. This is exactly why my program is set up not to box people in, and this is actually why it works. When you take off the labels, when you take off the diagnosis, when you take off the boxes, and you just focus on the person, then everything works.

And I hope that makes sense to you, because it definitely makes sense to me and to my clients, and that's why they're seeing success at a very high rate, versus anything else out there. And I pride myself on this because I look at the person for who they are, for what's going on, for where they are in all aspects, because that's, what's needed in order to overcome the hair loss, regardless of the type of hair loss. And so there's more to it than just the diagnosis. That's first and foremost, there's more to it than just the label. There's more to it than just, what you've been told, what you've read on the internet and I get it, I get the desperation, I get the urgency, I get the anxiety. I get it. But sometimes too much misinformation is just actually hurting you versus helping you.

And someone once told me: If you're going to say something to somebody, make it valuable, make it worth their while. Don't just say things to say things. Like, are you saying things because it's helpful? Or is it hurting them? And so, many times I want to take the route of being more helpful than not. For example, when I was diagnosed in the chair by my hairstylist, It was more hurtful to be diagnosed in that manner, then helpful and the only way he could have turned it around to give me more valuable information is to say: Johanna, you have alopecia and here's some education, here is some more, options for you. You can see a doctor, you can see a dermatologist, but you can also have this natural route.

And so I've actually gone around to different beauty salons, cosmetology schools, including Paul Mitchell, across the nation, speaking to up and coming cosmetologists, so that they can empower their clients. I think that this is, something very near and dear to me, but at the same time, you as a hairstylist, you as a hairdresser, you have so many touchpoints and people on a regular basis and these are your clients.

And so some of these ramifications of just telling them what you've learned in cosmetology, which is that much in regards to alopecia, literally that much is that you will more than likely end up losing them as a client. If you just say: Johanna, you have alopecia, go see a doctor and that's it. You'll end up losing them, why? Because you're not helping them, you're not giving them the resources that they could possibly use. And then furthermore, depending on which route they take, especially if they take the regular medicine route, they're going to end up losing their hair, and then that's how you end up losing the client, right? If they have no hair, you have no client. So that's one thing to consider is that to give them the information and say, Hey, I know somebody, her name is Johanna, I'll be changing and she can help you. Here's a bunch of free resources on her website.

And at the end of it, I would love to hear that the opportunity to heal is there, that it's not all doom and gloom because that's what we're told. Everything is doom and gloom, right? Whether it's the state of the nation, the state of the world, the politics, the economy, the, this, that, our hair, our health, everything is doom and gloom. But I'm here to tell you. That it's not just me as a beacon of light, but all my clients, everyone who I've interviewed all the success stories on my website, they are all beacons of light to help you see what's possible and this is more possible than not. And so that's the beauty of this. And so when we start with a diagnosis, let's also end with a: Hey, you can heal this, you can reverse this, not all is lost.

Yesterday, I spoke to somebody who is a new client to me, and she comes from, a big background of medicine, she comes from background of medicine, she works in health care, and a lot of it was doom and gloom. There was a little bit of a denial in terms of this. autoimmune label, and my heart goes out to her and to anyone else who's feeling this way. And so hence this week's podcast is all about the denial of the diagnosis because when we eliminate or try to put aside this denial or this label, so to speak, then It does affect us mentally, emotionally, physically, it does hurt us in some, to some degree. Actually, let's call her Lori. So I was like: Lori. Hey, take it from me. Take it from

anyone else who's come this way that we can help you and you can overcome this in less time. Follow the steps. It's a proven framework, and you're on your way to health.

And I will say, I gave her the bird's eye view of what it is to be healthy. In the storm of alopecia, what it is to be 5 years later after the storm, what it is to be a mother in her 40s because she's younger than me and already healed and, thriving and living her best life. These all look like different milestones, but at the same time, if you give somebody the picture, they can also see how beautiful it is to get to that milestone, just like it is like you start elementary school at first grade and you're thinking: Oh, I have 8 years to do at this school and I may or may not like it, and I may or may not like the, the teachers or the friends or anything else, but I've got eight years and it sounds and it seems like a mountain, right? And even if you think about college, going to college, when you start at first grade, and you're like: Oh, I've got eight years of elementary, another four years of high school, and then another 4 years of college, that's so long.

But when you do it piece by piece, step by step, year by year, then you achieve it and you achieve it all. And you're doing so well and you're thriving and you're educating yourself, right? So in the same way, there is a proven framework to help you get to that next step. I would say for anyone going through denial, my top three tips would be a, to organize yourself as quickly as possible and start taking action and don't let things try to heal on themselves. That's like saying: Let's go ahead and leave the boiling pot of water on the stove and let's just leave it alone. And let's see what happens. At some point, either the water or the food or whatever's in there is going to evaporate completely and burn the pot or something's gonna happen, and it could cause a fire more than likely it will if we do nothing.

And so in the same vein, if you do nothing, things will get worse. And I will say this from seeing thousands of clients is that maybe on the first try, maybe that they do nothing and things get better. But on the second one, on the third one, it's only gonna backfire and get worse because you don't know exactly why and how this is being caused. And because of that, you don't know how to treat it or you're treating it with the wrong tools and techniques. And so this is part of it, and so it really needs to be a strategic approach for you and your situation and what's going on whether you're the child. The adult or anything else in between.

And so this is key is to take action more quickly than not. And I think sometimes when we have any diagnosis, we are stuck in a fight or flight, and more so in the fear of what this could look like in the fear of what forums and what the internet is saying or Google or our doctors or anything else, and it takes a lot of gumption. It takes a lot of, just a lot of strength and grit to be able to say: I'm blocking this out. Nope I'm not going to hear you. Nope. You don't know my body. Nope. I'm not doing that. That doesn't work. You have zero proven results. Let's move on. So I would say start looking to whatever it is that you're trying to fix. In this case, it's hair loss.

Go with somebody who has been there, done that, who can fix you, who has those proven results. That's first and foremost. Second of all, just like anything else, you want  to see how this is hurting you because having denial does hurt us in many ways. Denial can shield us from difficult emotions. Many times it's short term and it provides relief to people to be in denial who don't have the bandwidth or the ability to face a problem. And that I've also seen, if your whole world is upside down just ever so slightly, and then lo and behold, you have a diagnosis of autoimmune or hair loss or anything else, then that's also the bandwidth that sometimes people need or don't have in order to face this situation. For example, maybe someone is unhappy in a relationship, but then the thought of being alone is worse than the thought of being together, or perhaps someone has burned out and overwhelmed and the lack of energy or emotional capability for accepting what's happening.

And the thing is, it's like part of the person feels it's easier not to think about the situation and let it go because it feels like it's too much for them to handle right now, and I get that. But when it comes to hair loss, this is actually that white flag that there's something more underneath the situation that there's something more going on. And we need to tackle this as soon as possible sooner rather than later 100% always. So how can denial hurt us? In a dangerous or an unhealthy situation, denial can hurt us. For example, keeping our eyes shut about the realities of a physical or mental illness can lead to serious health consequences, right? We already know this. So for example, in autoimmune, you could start with one patch, and if you let this progress, It can keep going and you can graduate to totalis.

You can graduate to universalis. You can graduate to that next level. And this is something that you don't want to do. And on top of it, with an autoimmune disease 25% of people diagnosed with one autoimmune disease go on to acquire a second and a third. And this is actually more common than not. I've seen 5 year olds, 6 year olds, 20 year olds, 30, 40 year olds with 2, 3, 4 autoimmune diseases, even if their hair loss isn't autoimmune in nature, but they already have other autoimmune diseases. They have Crohn's, they have rheumatoid arthritis, they have lupus, they have type 1 diabetes, they have eczema, they have psoriasis, they have, you name it, IBS and so many others. Plus hair loss, and it doesn't have to be autoimmune hair loss. Does that make sense? It Like the autoimmune situation can be so many others, plus, let's say female pattern, or it could also be the alopecia aureata universalis totalis plus thyroid plus this plus that.

And so these are things that anyone wants to avoid because again, this creates more of an uphill battle, not to say that you can't heal at all. You can absolutely, but at the same time, it's a lot easier to heal a cold than it is to, heal a bronchitis, or pneumonia. We want to keep it at a lower level so that it's quickly, easier to resolve and not to say that you can't get results and resolve your other situation you can. But again, the approach and the strategy will look a little bit different. So denial can also hurt us when it involves addiction, abuse, it also can hurt us when, the problems affect a family and can lead to, more focus, let's say, on one person versus everyone else. And so I've seen this, whether it's the mom who has, alopecia, or whether it's the child who has alopecia, it affects the family to a great degree.

And so these are things that we want to really focus on and get to the bottom of, because that one child, it could go either way. It's all the focuses on them and we're doing everything possible to get them healthy, or we're taking care of everyone and we're not focusing so much on this one child, but because they have alopecia, there's more, let's say, denial or limitations or limiting beliefs. And this is something that we need to be aware of because once you're in denial, this actually only hurts you. And I say this from experience too, in my own healing journey process, I was in denial of many things. I was in denial of what was hurting me, I was in denial of what was holding me back. I was in denial of what was hindering me. I was in denial of what this journey would look like, how long it would take. All of it, all of it. I was in denial for a lot of it. And even today, there's certain things that I know exactly I can do, I cannot do, in order to help me be a better me, if that makes sense. And so there's no more denial when the proof is there.

There's no more denial when you can see how your body reacts. There's no more denial when you can see, what lights you up and what doesn't light you up, what triggers you and what doesn't trigger you. And because of this you have data and with data we can move forward. And so this is key in order to get over the hump of the hair loss and to get to that hair growth stage where you're continuously growing your hair without even fearing that it would ever come back.

So moving from denial toward meaningful change, this is a step in process where I think a lot of times we need guidance. We need guidance in order to get out of the denial and say: Look, this is the strategy, this is what we're going to do. And I'll say, even with working with health care practitioners, nutritionists, dieticians, doctors, functional medicine doctors, and they do my program and we work together, not all the times, but sometimes even with life coaches or any type of coach that does my program, I will say that ego sometimes is holding them back because let me just say this. If you're a life coach, if you're a coach of any sort, if you're a health care practitioner of any type, all the way from a functional medicine doctor, all the way down to a physician's assistant, anything in between.

And let's say, you do the program or you're in my program, a lot of times it's that ego that doesn't allow you to move forward, which creates more denial. But the thing is, it's if you were doing all the things correctly, and this is for you, whether you have the degrees or not, whether you are in the medical field or not, and you still have hair loss, then clearly you're doing something wrong. If you were doing all the things, and if your diet and your lifestyle were perfect, and everything was 100 points, and you still see hair loss, then what you're doing clearly isn't giving you results. And that's a hard pill to swallow. I understand that, I understand that's like a hit to the ego because you think you're doing everything correctly. Am I right? You think you are stellar. You get an A+ for how you take care of yourself, of how your diet is, of how everything is going, but it's not.

If you see hair loss, you have learning lessons to have, blind spots and not everything is perfect or else you wouldn't be having hair loss. That's just the truth of the matter. And so I know sometimes taking advice is hard, especially when you come from the health care situation or background, but at the same time, It's probably exactly what you need, probably exactly what you need in order to move forward, tackle it and keep going because many times we're in denial. We think we're doing all the things and everything we've been doing for this whole time is working. But if you see and continue to see hair loss, something's off, something's missing, and you're not as perfect as you think that your, dieting lifestyle is, and clearly what you're doing isn't working 100%.

There's some cracks in there. And that's exactly what we want to do. We want to fill in those cracks, we want to create a stronger foundation, we want to build you up. And in order to do that, it does take a little bit of vulnerability, it does take a little bit of showing your cards of saying: Look, this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm not doing and being open. The more open you are, the more coachable you are, the better the results. I see this even from my clients all over the board, those in India, those in Australia, those in New Zealand, those in France, those in Germany, but the ones who are closed and don't want to take the advice guess what? Then you are plateaued, then you're stuck, then you're at a certain, situation and you can't move from there because you're not open to it. And that's the truth of the matter, right? This is why some people excel and some people don't excel. It's because of the denial factor: Oh that can't be my situation. Oh, that can't be my blind spot. That's not me.

But lo and behold, all the signs are pointing right at that particular thing. And that's exactly what's holding you back. And I got to tell you, personally, I've had these conversations by myself with my own situation of going through the hair loss. I'm like: That can't be it, this is so simple. I can't believe it. Doesn't matter how simple it is. Doesn't matter how hard it is, it's the denial that creeps in. And once we take out those factors, it's Eureka, the sky is open, you hear the angels sing, you hear everything, the clouds part, the sun comes in and the hair growth is coming back. It's that denial that we need to take out.

And the thing is, it's sometimes we need somebody to point it at us. The denial factor is something that's very there, being coachable is very important and taking out the denial is huge in terms of your progress, but it's also huge in terms of your diagnosis too, because again, the diagnosis isn't everything, it's not. It's really about you, so if you come to me, which many people have and they say, I don't know what type of hair loss I have, I've never been diagnosed. That's okay, we can take this step by step and we can figure it out. But really the diagnosis, the label doesn't matter because at the end of the day, it's about you, it's about your hair loss, your well being, your health, your mental health, your physical health, your emotional health and everything else, that goes along with it.

And so this is why when you go into a tailored approach program with proven results, this is why you see more results, not the situation where you go see a dermatologist, you're diagnosed, and you're only given, potentially a banquet of pharmaceuticals or maybe not depends who you are, where you are, and you know what country you're coming from, you may have a lot of options, and you may have zero options, and I know this because I've had, Doctors in other countries give me zero options, literally zero options.

And so this is the thing, it's like we can create more options for ourselves or we can just settle for what the people around us are giving us or telling us of what's possible or we can move through the denial. We can be guided by an expert in order to move forward and get that hair growth. But this denial factor is key. So literally, when you work with me being open minded, being really focused on what's specific to you will help you move the needle. And I've said this to multiple clients because it's needed and it's needed to hear over and over again, but the denial factor is big. I had it, I've lived through it myself. As an adult trying to heal myself.

And so, I understand where you're coming from, whether you have the healthcare background or not, whether you, are a hairstylist or not, whether you are a school teacher or not, whether you are a scientist, work in tech, a stay at home mom with 6 kids, it doesn't matter. Sometimes there is a little bit of denial, sometimes there is a little maybe a hope that it doesn't apply to us, that this situation that this factor doesn't apply to us when lo and behold, it does. And so, this is why it's key to be really open minded in order to take up the denial, but to really pinpoint and have that self reflection. Hey, are we having denial with this? Are we having denial with our diagnosis? So really taking that first step, taking the action, looking at all our options and making quick decisions in order to move forward. That's the way to work, that's the way to have really a grasp on this and to take full control. The sooner you move, the better it is.

Those people who like to piecemeal here and there and try to do this by yourself, my heart goes out to you because It's really hard. You need to have a high level of self- awareness, which is something I've cultivated and it's still hard. It, it's hard to look in the mirror and say: Johanna, you need this, johanna, you need that, Johanna, this is where you're less than perfect, and this is where you need improvement, right? But that self- awareness is so great at the same time, because then you can learn and grow from it. So you see how the self denial and the self awareness go hand in hand, these two traits and characteristics are married together in order for us to grow and learn because holding on to the let's just call it hair loss. Let's not call it alopecia areata, let's not call it alopecia universalis. Let's not call it this or that. At the same time that can help you, but just for a few, minutes, days, maybe even months, but at the end of it, it's still hair loss. And at the end of it, your body's still telling you something, something needs to change, something needs to happen in order for this to stop.

And so again, taking that action, going with people who have the results, sticking to a tailored approach with proven results is the way to win this. First and foremost, I hope this has been helpful. Please rate and review the podcast, show some love and support.

I would love love and be eternally grateful for it. I wish everyone a wonderful thanksgiving. For those of you who don't celebrate, thanksgiving is a holiday that in the US and in Canada, we celebrate not on the same day, but definitely we both do and it's a time to be grateful and give thanks, and I'm grateful for you, for all my listeners, for all my clients and for anyone who follows me around the world.

Thank you so much for all the love and support. Take care.