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Because Everyone Has A Story - BEHAS
Because Everyone Has A Story - BEHAS
Moving Forward After a Reckoning : Finding a Way Forward - Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley : 104
After suffering health challenges that resulted from focusing on everyone and everything but herself, Dr. Alex's work turned towards helping other driven women navigate the world of fatigue, thyroid issues, anxiety and depression, difficulty losing weight, gut health and more without using medications. This is a journey of resilience, strength and self-discovery. Dr. Alex shares her compelling personal narrative. From her unexpected journey into motherhood in the challenging terrain of Alaska to her battle with a toxic environment and troubled marriage, Dr. Alex's story is a testament to the power of setting boundaries and redefining personal integrity.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley is a thought leader in outside-the-box and natural approaches to women's health and hormones, focusing on what she has termed Selfless Syndrome.
Entering the tumultuous world of entrepreneurship, Dr. Alex faced the burnout many business owners fear. But rather than succumb to the pressure, she used this experience as a springboard to her greater purpose. From managing her business and leading a team to finding her passion as an Integrative Women's Health Coach and pursuing a Ph.D. in Integrative and Natural Medicine, she's a testament to the importance of working within our zone of genius.
We also delve into the crucial topic of hormonal balance and self-worth, discussing the impact of stress on our hormones and the importance of understanding our internal environment. We broach the challenges of Western medicine and women's health and how understanding our bodies is the key to well-being.
Dr. Alex founded Emergent Women Coaching & Health Consulting and is building a business that serves her clients and her health while helping other women do the same. She is the host of the Intuitive Women's Leadership Podcast for Busy High Performing Women, the creator of the Emergent Women Method and Chrysalis Health Consulting Program, a Ph.D. candidate in Integrative Medicine through Quantum University, and an Executive Contributor to Brainz Magazine. Her mission is to help women break through the constraints imposed by misinformation, society and a lack of self-worth and step into the tremendous power of who they are.
Let's enjoy her story!
To connect with Dr. Alex: www.gemstonepractice.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dralexridley/
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Thank you for listening - Hasta Pronto!
Hi, I'm Daniela. Welcome to my podcast, because everyone has a story, the place to give ordinary people, stories, the chance to be shared and preserved. Our stories become the language of connections. Let's enjoy it, connect and relate, because everyone has a story. Welcome my guest, dr Alexandra Swanson Riley. I am pleased that Dr Alex is sharing her story. Firstly, she connected with me from Alaska, which I think is awesome, and secondly, her story is one that a lot of people can relate.
Daniela:Dr Alex began her career as a chiropractor, specializing in pediatric and perinatal care. After neglecting herself and facing health challenges, she shifted her focus to helping other ambitious women prioritize their well-being. Her story details a journey of resilience, strength and self-discovery, filled with nuggets of wisdom that many can appreciate. I enjoyed meeting her. She's lovely, have a great heart and has a lot of good knowledge. So let's enjoy her story. Welcome, dr Alex. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. Yes, I am very excited that you're here because you have a story to share that is really important to me, so I appreciate it that you are going to enlighten us with all the information. Absolutely, dr Alex. Why do you want to share a story?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :You know I've learned over the course of my life. It hasn't been all that long, but it's important, I think, for us to share our stories, to give others permission to share theirs, because so much of the hard things in life we tend not to talk about, we don't heal from that place. So I think it's important to talk about our stories.
Daniela:Yes, and I'm hearing more and more through the podcast that when you share your story, you help others, but you also kind of help yourself by sharing, yeah, so I think that's great that you're here. So thank you. And so when did your story start?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :We're going to start my story at age 28, which is 10 years ago from where I am right now.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Okay.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :So at age 28, I had a defining moment, which is when my son was born, moved to Alaska I'm originally a chiropractor, that's where the doctor hat comes from but I moved to Alaska with my new husband, realizing as soon as I got into that marriage that things were not quite what they seem.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :He struggled with alcohol as a memos more of a wet sober than a full sober, and so we had a lot of strife going into it and I essentially found out I was pregnant three days before moving to Alaska, thousands of miles from everyone that we knew not planning to be pregnant for at least five years from when I was really, really struggling with that, I'd moved for a job for myself, working for a man who was a character, we'll put it that way, it was toxic in his own ways, and he actually ended up in jail for a good bit of the last 10 years shortly after I moved and started working for him.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :You know there was a lot that happened in that that, I think, started to challenge me in how I'd been living my life up until that point, because once my son entered the world, it really became clear that I needed to define my boundaries better. I needed to create a healthy space for him, because I just wasn't willing to bring him into the environments where I both worked and lived, and so it launched me on this journey of self discovery, in a way, and also of reconnecting to my own personal integrity, starting to actually put in place the things that were important to me. It's interesting that it took like having a human being that I have to take care of in order to recognize where I was not being true to who I really was not living in a place of safety.
Daniela:Honestly, you said that it took a human being, but some people have the human being and they still don't have the maturity that you had to recognize that you were in a dysfunctional environment and you needed to fix it.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Yeah.
Daniela:Kudos to you Well thank you.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :It still took time and it took layers and you know there's aspects to my story and it evolved over time.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :But you know it took a couple years for me to really get clear on that wasn't safe to stay in my marriage and there was a lot of, I think, especially when we're in environments of addiction or abuse in terms of mine was never it was never physically abusive, but definitely emotionally abusive. We stay stuck because we get stuck into this cycle of there's a lot of manipulation, let's put it that way. And so I had a lot of shame and guilt that I even ended up in a marriage that was so dysfunctional or married to somebody who was hiding things from me and had a really negative, just awful, outlook on the world, and a lot of that was directed at me. And it took a lot of years to really move past that and to not harbor any resentment either towards him or towards myself for getting there, you know it is interesting how we you know we're ashamed of ourselves for making the choices, but we really didn't know that this was going to be like that.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Right, I got married, but a lot of it was not my doing right, like it wasn't on me, and I think, as women in particular, we tend to. We take everything on as our own.
Daniela:Yes, we feel like we are going to be the resourceful, we have to find the solutions, we have to be the nurturing, we have to fix things. I don't know if it's also part of our personalities too. I wouldn't say maybe women, but some women, I mean, we do take that way of thinking that we have to do it all.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Yes, yeah, we definitely do, and I think we're more prone to make it about us right Like. Another aspect of my story is my first business. After I'd healed through my divorce and actually gotten remarried. I was able to pick. I had up enough to realize that the practice I'd built, which was a huge, high, six figure monstrosity, was killing me quickly. You know, my body was literally falling apart through that as well, and I had created all of that.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :I started my business when my son was six weeks old and built it largely because I didn't want to be home.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :So I worked all the time and I built a huge thing, but it was driven by that need to escape rather than actually creating something.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :That was my dream, although I thought it was my dream at the time. In the process of all that falling apart, I actually ended up filing for bankruptcy a year and a half ago because I just hit a point where I had nothing left to give to try to navigate all of the COVID stuff and things that happened in the last couple of years, in that, like a lot of people use that as business strategy. You know we can look at certain presidents of the United States that have used that as a business strategy, whereas I made it mean a lot about myself and being a failure. It really shook my mindset around my own worth. I think that's where we can get pulled into our own like we all have a story right and we also create stories about the story that we are currently living. I don't know if that makes sense, and they're not always based in reality Like we're just gathering evidence of things, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't make it actually real.
Daniela:To go back to understand the order. So you were pregnant and then you wanted to separate from your husband.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :I didn't separate from my husband immediately. I left the toxic work environment and job as soon as my son was born. So my son ended up coming five weeks early, which I learned later was due to the amount of stress I was under both at work and at home. We had a kid in our first year of marriage, far away from everybody, and he came early. I knew without a doubt that I couldn't go back to that work environment. I started my own practice when my son was six weeks old, which was always my goal.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :My ex-husband didn't like the unknowns of the paycheck when you're a business owner and he just couldn't handle that. So we'd moved for a job and I was like, don't have to do it on my own. So I did that and we actually stayed married for three years. But we separated for a while and there I did a separation of about eight months and then he got his act together and started trying. We bought a house and then he fell off the wagon again and by that point I was just done. So my son was not quite three when we fully separated.
Daniela:And when you started your business and you were always working so you somebody was helping you with your child. He just came with me.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :I designed my day. Yeah, I'm the working mom who also breastfed for two and a half years.
Daniela:Yeah, well, that's incredible.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Yeah, and eventually I got nannies and I had an in-office nanny because I had a lot of single moms who worked for me as well, and we just did that. You know, I still missed out on a lot, I would say, and I still dealt with a lot of gundays where he just wanted to stay home and we couldn't, or we're still hard times but we made it work.
Daniela:Seems like you had a good community there. You built a good community even though you were far away from your family.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Yes, that's the one thing about Alaska, where I am, is the winters are so hard. People are very open and welcoming, and so you find support and family pretty quickly, if you know, just look.
Daniela:That's interesting. It's true. I forgot to mention that you are in Alaska. Yes, yeah, your child was growing up and you were separated and you were having this business and you decided that it was too much.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :It wasn't quite that it was too much. We grew rapidly double or triple in business every single year. To me, it felt like this snowballing thing that I had no control over and it was just going and I was like, okay, I'm just here for the ride. Did I create it? Yes, I did, but it was something that I felt was out of my control. And so we hit the point of I purchased a 6,000 square foot commercial building for us to live in, because by that point I had seven providers who worked for my practice and then some support staff and we needed the space. We remodeled it and did all the things. At that point, before I did that, the business was actually debt free, so I was like we're in this position to do this.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :I was divorced by that. My practice was five or six years old. I just walked upstairs to my brand new beautiful office and I sat down and cried because I realized that I felt trapped by the thing that I had built and it wasn't really fulfilling me. I, at that point, my wrist was torn in six places, I was losing my voice and my hair was falling out. My thyroid was a mess, my hormones were off, I was starting to put on weight and I didn't feel well and I had no great quality of life, like I had no energy to engage with my new husband or my son when I got home at the end of the day.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :The things that just weren't working about it were many, and so it wasn't that I didn't want the practice to the business, but things needed to pivot and we also came up against.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :It was like every horrible thing that could have happened in buying a building happened Like the buildout took too long, it got more expensive than it was supposed to.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :We relied largely on the insurance world to pay for our patients and care. So we build insurance. Half of our income just suddenly stopped because one of the two insurance companies that we primarily build broke their claims processor and I was at a point where overhead was mostly payroll and I couldn't make payroll because we weren't collecting. We were no less busy, but the money just wasn't coming in, and so that set off a series of having to pivot. So we pivoted away from insurance and started only taking cash, and I had to change the pay structure of how I paid my staff and the other providers that worked for me. It was just like one thing after the other, and then COVID happened and in the midst of that I realized that I needed to have risk surgery. Everything spiraled from there and I look back on it now and recognize that all of those things were the universe trying to get me to pay attention, because I was literally running myself into the ground.
Daniela:Wasn't on the right path, but you did it, though. You made a good business, I did.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :I built our biggest year. We built out over a million dollars. I had the seven figure business and from the outside I had it all. I'd built the house and I had the building and I had the practice. On my own podcast I've interviewed some women who have also hit that point where it's like we have what we thought we wanted, then realized that it's not actually what we want, like there's no fulfillment there. Right, it's not what we imagined or dreamed it would be. I honestly had a lot of trauma, both in my marriage and then also just from the nature of the beast of building a healthcare practice on your own.
Daniela:For sure, there's a lot of responsibility, and you mentioned the word trauma. That's interesting. How do you feel when you have to close down your creation, your business?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :That wasn't quite then, yet I had had my first wrist surgery in 2019. So that was right in the fall. So that was right before COVID. So I was still in recovery and the bank that I bought the building through had given me like a grace period while I was healing from that, because obviously I had no way to earn income doing what I normally did. And in the spring of 2020, with all the stuff going on, I found renters to actually rent my practice, because by that point we had shrunk down so we didn't need all that space and I found a new location for us to go and I was just going to come back really part time.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :I ended up on this journey with this bank that, no matter what I did, they just won in $24,000. I did not have that at that point. I'd maxed out our borrowing potential. I didn't qualify for any of the COVID money that the US had, first because of credit, and then I didn't actually have employees at that point. So none of those avenues were open to me. And so I found an organization to rent the building and the bank still won in $24,000. I started making regular payments and they still won in $24,000. At one point I had $22,000 together and they told me it wouldn't stop foreclosures. So I didn't give them the money and I was just like, okay, I'm done. I then sold the building. They decided to go ahead with that and as I was in conversation with the renters to buy it, they posted a foreclosure notice so that I got low, bald, majorly on the offer and ended up finally selling the building as a short sale and the bank still wanted $24,000. I was just like, okay, there was no working with me, and so I fought and I tried.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :At that point I was still practicing really part-time, just two days a week, like sharing space in someone else's office. I finally just recognized how exhausted I was. I didn't have it in me to keep fighting for that, so I did file for bankruptcy and that was at the end. I made it till the end of 2021 and I officially filed in January of 2022 is when I went through. So what I didn't recognize in all of that and led me to a lot of the work that I do today but I had hit absolute and complete burnout.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :That goes farther than just your body being exhausted. It also gets into like you don't have capacity or willpower to do anything, and I was in the midst of that, trying to launch my coaching business there, and I needed to take the time to actually heal and get clear. Instead of you know, a lot of my journey is in reactivity, like reactive to the next fire, the next thing that's falling apart, and there wasn't a lot of creating or like connecting to who I really am and what my bigger purposes in the world and what I really want to do with my life, and so I ended up on this journey of trying to heal myself and got like so many extra certifications I can't even count them all because I was, you know, felt like I both didn't know enough and was looking for answers for myself in my own health crisis.
Daniela:It sounds so interesting that you were able to find that. Okay, I need to find something else. How can I heal myself? How can I take care of myself?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :It took a while to get there.
Daniela:I'm not going to lie that was initially what took me down the road. You said this story started 10 years ago, so it's not that long. No, and people take a lifetime to find all these. That's true, and you managed to do it in 10 years, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Well, and I'm a firm believer in you know, our journeys are very much a part of what life is about and where we arrive and what we take from it.
Daniela:What do you think you learned from having your own business? From being an entrepreneur, I learned a lot.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :My first job as an entrepreneur largely, you know, I think there's a lot to be said for being a woman and a business owner and young Started my business before I was 30 and built this huge thing by the time I was 33.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :It challenged me, like a lot of business is not so much how to do certain business things, it's more how you show up and who it calls you to be. And there were some steep learning curves, especially as I started to lead a team. You know have staff and other people I was responsible for and there were a lot of layers, and what I have learned like actually recently, more in this year, is the way I did and led my business in the beginning was actually not connected to what I call zone of genius. I've recently been exposed to something called the working genius and instead I was doing a lot of things that were in my zone of frustration and some of competence, and those are fast path to burnout. So that has been interesting to unpack now, as I am still an entrepreneur. I'm always gonna be an entrepreneur. I know that about myself. But how do you build a business that not leading you towards burnout when a lot of the tasks that we have to do are like Galvanizing people, which is one of my frustration.
Daniela:I was gonna bring my results. Thanks to you. We talked last time and I did the test, the thing with those tests and problems. Okay, I figured out all this interesting. Oh, yes, it makes sense, but I feel like it stays there like I haven't done anything else with it.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :We can talk about all this for your listeners. This is the working genius, which is incredibly interesting to me, but essentially there are six Gears that have to fit together for any kind of project come to fruition. And how we work and we have Two of the six are genius, to our competency and to our frustration. So Mine is. I have invention and discernment is actually my genius, and so I'm incredibly creative.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :And in the first business I created, you know I had aspects where that came through, but most of where I lived was in, you know, more, being a team player and the enablement which is in my zone of competence, which is a weird place to lead from right, like I had wonder and enablement in and that pairing is like the humble kind of doesn't want any of the credit, but like still leader, and that's definitely how I was. Like business wasn't. I didn't take ownership with the fact that I was creating. It was about everybody else on my team and who you know built it up and there's nothing wrong with being humble, but it's hard to lead from that place, we'll just put it that way effectively and being connected to who you really are, and then tenacity and galvanizing are in my zone of frustration.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :So that's all the marketing and the getting team members on board, creating care plans and soap notes and all the billing and I was doing so much of that stuff and like micromanaging and it's no wonder to me at this point why I burnt out. Also, you know, I practice practice very structured on, like I'm not only wearing all those hats but I was also adjusting people and having ten minute appointment slots. So there was just no space for where I actually get joy, which is in creating stuff, in helping others figure out their journey and their frustration. So a lot of what I do now is actually turned into Taking that model and how do we actually apply it in a chiropractic setting or in business and work and doing that with my own business now yes, you're good to advocate about this, this test.
Daniela:According to my results, I think we will work together well, because my strength are you. You're witnessing the other way around, great right. So then you started to think, okay, I need to heal, I need to do something. What was it? How did you get there?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Yeah, yeah so it started with my health, and so I went on and got certified as a integrative women's health coach. Mostly I was looking with my wrist, I was looking for the okay, what's next for me, still within this health space and container. So I got certified as a coach and then I Entered a PhD program in integrative and natural medicine, because I definitely need another doctor degree. That led me on a journey towards understanding trauma more and starting to recognize my own trauma. It's been this evolution where I've been learning and testing things on myself and doing things myself and also working with other women on their own Hormonal imbalances and things, because I had the experience of I woke up one day and none of my pants fit and I'd all fit a week ago and my hormones were so off my body got estrogen dominant and so I just put on 50 pounds literally overnight and couldn't get it off. And I'm in that space where and this is a lot of where I come from and how I do Help other women with this now. But it's like I was already doing all the things. I already had the healthy lifestyle, all those changes that they Often talk about making, but it wasn't working, and so I've been on this journey of finding the missing pieces to have at work for myself, and a lot of other things Actually come from getting very outside the box of Western medicine.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :You know, as I've healed and a lot of the trauma work is really actually only been in the last six to eight months for me, but a lot has opened up and there's been this Space for expansion again and I finally felt like my will power turned back on maybe three months ago, and so it's led to a lot of shifts, one of them being I finally gave myself permission To step out of the health box inside. It's like I put myself because I have this, you know $300,000 degree that I felt like I I haven't really been using because I'm not practicing chiropractic, but I finally gave myself permission to just say like okay, if I let all of that go, like all of those pieces of my identity and that was a big part of this process too is letting go of so many things that identified me, because it was like divorce was something I never thought I would go through. I didn't expect to go through. Letting go of being a chiropractor and how I define myself with stuff and my worth from stuff was another thing that I had to go through and process and just let go of.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :But when you can really actually honestly come from nothing and just say like jump into that abyss of, I literally felt like I jumped into an abyss of like dark space and it's just like okay, if I let it all go, what would I actually do? And it's been very interesting because it's brought me full circle, back to helping other chiropractors build a practice that won't burn them out and heal their bodies when they're already there, because a huge portion of us burn out. And that came from starting to share my story in circles where there's other chiropractors and just realizing how many people related to it and not to say you know, other other professions and other parts of the world can relate to my story as well.
Daniela:But this is your story.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :So it's really what opened up in all that.
Daniela:Yes, yes, I find it fantastic. You said that you have to start from scratch. And who are you really? Not the practice, not the studies, not the health, not the other classes and courses you have. And that happened to me too. I lost my job. It's not that I was defined by my titles, because I didn't really think that. Who am I really? And you know, reading a few books, you're not your name, you're not even your daughter, wife, a mother you're. If all that can be taken away from you, you're none of that. So that was quite interesting for me to realize that, and I value other things now, like my freedom and and what is it that I am here to do? And how can I help others versus, you know, having a job and having a title and making money. Yeah, I think an interesting way to look at this.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :I don't know if you've ever read the book Worthy by Nancy Levin. I've been reading this one and she talks a lot about our self worth is really a reflection of our net worth in terms of money and finances and all that. She has one statement in there where she says you know, if you basically had nothing and we're living on the street, would you still love yourself? And really what makes us worthy and this is getting into what we're talking about here is just that we're human beings on this planet. It's not the stuff we accumulate, it's not the education, it's not the you know. None of that actually matters.
Daniela:People care too much about titles and roles, and that's not really what we're here for. Yeah, absolutely. I want to know more about these, these hormones that you figured out. I know, being in Canada, that doctors just do the basic and then they say oh, you are on menopause or you are 50. Good luck. They always measure you by the numbers instead of by how you're feeling, and nobody wants to optimize you, they just want you not to be sick, and that's so upsetting. Yeah, so tell me more.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Yeah, well, and it's. That's the case in the US too, I think. Anywhere that we're dealing with Western medicine there's just not a lot of understanding. And we also have to realize, like in the US and I'm guessing it's probably the same in Canada Women weren't actually included in any medical research consistently until the law was passed in 1991. So we really haven't had that much time where we've been studying women and understanding you know how women are different from men and there's a lot with hormones that are different, and so what I have learned is especially like having hit the point of burnout completely is stress impacts hormones.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Hormones are very much the effect of our environment or of their environment, is that's a saying in the hormone world and we always take that to mean you know all the stuff we're doing outside, like how you, you know what's your diet and how you exercise and how you're sleeping, and not all of that is important. I'm not saying it's not, but there's this deeper layer of our internal environment and so when you're feeling off, huge part of the shifts for me wasn't in that, because I practiced functional medicine for you know, a couple of years and kind of making my shifts and I liked it Okay, but I still felt like something was missing. It was more of that internal work, of really getting your internal environment, including your emotional state, back online. We all deal with high levels of stress. Let's just put it that way.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Most of us aren't aware of it because that's just our normal. It starts to impact our body and so I think, as women, especially as we hit menopause we finally are paying attention enough for a notice like my body's freaking out what's going on. A lot of the increase in symptoms that I'd say we've had in the last 50 years is because we're coming into that process already completely screwed up, because we've normalized all these things that are hormonal in nature. We've normalized the PMS and the PCOS and fertility issues and cycles being off, and we've normalized taking birth control or taking hormone replacement therapy for those things and they don't actually address the issue and oftentimes they're making them worse.
Daniela:But so what do you do? You do some blood tests, and so what happened to you?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :So for me, I figured out I was estrogen dominant through blood tests, and so that is looking at the numbers, but looking at them from a functional range For women and I focus more on our sex hormones. So estrogen, progesterone and testosterone Testosterone's negligible, but if you're dealing with something like PCOS, it will go high and so that'll cause facial hair or weight gain and some of that stuff. Estrogen and progesterone that ratio really matters. They don't test this when you're just getting your blood work done. They also don't pay any attention to where you are on your cycle if you just get tested in Western medicine, and so they really don't know what the picture is showing them at all, because they have no reference range because those hormone levels change through the month.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :So when you go estrogen dominant, it can either be because your progesterone's too low and progesterone actually converts into cortisol when you're under toxic stress, like high levels of chronic stress, and this is how I had a baby early actually, because in order to stay pregnant, both have to stay high, and I was under so much stress while I was pregnant that my progesterone dropped and we went into labor. They don't explain that to you. They were just like oh, I don't know, you just had a baby five weeks early. I'm like I'm healthy. I hardly put on any weight, like I'm 28. I take really great care of myself. Why is this a thing? So it took me years to figure that out.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :So either your progesterone can be too low and your estrogen is actually fine but you're going to have symptoms in there, or your estrogen is actually too high because your liver is struggling and there's. It's all interconnected. So, like your gut, health plays a huge role in your hormone balance. Your mental and emotional health plays a huge role in your hormone balance. Your sleep cycles are going to play a huge role in your hormone balance, and so that's not to say there's nothing to do. We just have to start peeling back the layers, and that's really what I've started doing with other women, and you know it's not a very fast process. I've had women I've been working with for three years that we're still peeling back the layers. Others get through it in nine months. It just kind of depends on your body and where you're at and how much havoc.
Daniela:What were the changes that you noticed most? For you, for?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :me. I had to do a lot of emotional work before doing some of the things that we do to lose weight actually worked before a diet. You know, changing how I ate for a period of time worked for me and I did. I lost 30 pounds in 13 weeks, but I'd tried a whole slew of other things before that actually worked. You know, since then I've also learned I do a lot of.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :I call them energy centers, but you know we're connecting to our chakras is what they are. But I come from the Christian world, so we talk about energy centers. We have energy in our body and, you know, working to just restore balance and flow to those areas, because all each of them is connected to a different hormonal pathway in your body. The first three in particular, like with stress and cortisol, that's going to be your solar plexus, which is also the seat of your willpower, and when I finally put all those things together I was like, oh, that's what burnout is. Okay, your sex hormones are in your lower two and that's you know. The second is also connected to your gut and it's like, oh, all these things connect and make sense.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :A lot of it is like the big things for me. I've been learning how to get out of my head and actually connect into my body. I had a coach at one point asked me where do you feel that in your body? When we were talking through some mindset stuff and I was just like what are you talking about? Like I have no idea, there's nothing below my neck, what. And so starting to learn how to tune into areas and find those spots where I actually couldn't connect or had no feeling.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Like belly area, which is the second center, kind of like your lower pelvis and belly, it was like it wasn't there. Same thing with my solar plexus it was just like there was. There was nothing there. It's almost dead. It was starting to learn how to do those things. Things like journaling and meditation, things I never, ever done or took time for, are now huge parts of you know, my day and, honestly, my business building like they're the most important pieces because it helps me not repeat the cycles that helped me burn out in the first place, to stay connected to myself.
Daniela:Wow, super interesting. What about you meeting other doctors or other chiropractors? How is their relationship? Because you know you have a knowledge that I really share there is most people that don't believe in this. How, how do you handle that?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :It's a balance. For sure, there are medical doctors out there who are open-minded and there are plenty that are not at all, and I know healthcare works a little differently in Canada from the US. But I'm always an advocate of you. Don't have to stay with your doctor. You can find somebody who will work with you. I think you guys have a little less opportunity for that just because of how your healthcare system is built. We can't find a doctor. Yeah, you know. So it's up to you.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :I get asked about this a lot because healthcare has become so compartmentalized and I'm guessing it has there too and so it's specialists as needed for every little part of your body. And yet our bodies are all connected. I look at they're doing the best they can with the knowledge that they have. Unfortunately, there's a lot of this like very haughty. You know, I know everything and I'm on deputant attitude. That can come with Western medical doctors, so I would just take it with a grain of salt. If you need to interact with them for testing or whatever it is, and then someone else like me or an atropath can look at it, then great, you have a choice. That's the thing.
Daniela:Like you, don't have to do what they say. When you have conversations with people that don't believe in this, does it make you question anything?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :or maybe to study more, or or you just like completely sold it used to, but at this point I'm very confident in what I've learned and put together and I fully recognize like my approach is not for everybody. I'm not everyone's cup of tea, and that's fine. A lot of what I learned, have learned, is very grounded in science. A lot of my PhD program that I actually haven't finished, but I completed like 90% of it. I just never wrote the dissertation. You know that was built in quantum physics, which is a study. It's a study of science. It's newer, like not everybody's on board with it. I've been so used to being against the grain that it doesn't really phase me. I can hold my own in any kind of science discussion, answer questions that they don't actually have answers to.
Daniela:So I'm good. Good Is there always a lot of conference and always something new coming up about this?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :I think there's starting to be. It's been interesting to watch, especially with menopause. In Europe it seems like there's more push towards talking about it than there has been in the US at this point, and I'm not sure where Canada falls on that line. Spain just passed basically hormonal leave. Whether it's from menopause or horrible period symptoms, like you can, that's an acceptable reason to miss work and be paid for it. Still, in Spain, it's opening like this whole can of worms about, like the differences between men and women and all this stuff.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :But I think there's more awareness and more willingness to talk about it and there's more demand to understand it better, and so I do see movement there. You know you have to recognize that I'm coming at it from a very like let's get to the root, let's really heal deeply so that our bodies just function like they're supposed to, because they were built to function in a certain way. You know I saw on LinkedIn they named menopause as, like you know, one of the biggest things to come in 2023 is a multi-billion dollar industry and a lot of that is going to be in like the bandaid things like take this supplement and not to say some of those things won't work and won't help manage symptoms, but it's not getting to the root of the issue, and that's where I'm focused.
Daniela:Yeah, that's like everything given a diet, like the people were eating keto, and it was very simple you just have to eat healthy and more fats than carbs, and then now they start to sell these products. But it doesn't mean that it's better, it's just.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Yeah, and something like keto. It's not designed to be done long term either. It's supposed to be a short term thing that you do in it. You know at some point it stops being effective. I'm very much not about the silver bullet and more about reconnecting to yourself, figuring out what your body actually needs, because you are unique and you're going to be different from your best friend or your sister or your mom, like whoever's giving you what worked for them. It doesn't mean that it's right for you.
Daniela:But it's difficult to find your formula. I thought it would be easy. I've been like in the search for like exercise and food and I just thought, okay, I just have one recipe and it's not like that and it's frustrating. I feel, in a way, that we're in this world just to figure out what we need and who we are, and this could take a whole journey. So may as well take it slow and not get stressed about it. Yeah, but when I hear people like you and others that they seem to have it all under control, I'm like how come it takes me longer to figure this out?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :And I'll be honest, it took me five years of being aware of it and my whole life up until then to have my hormones be totally jacked up. I really like to look at it as just being curious, try things and bring curiosity to it, Also recognizing a lot of the exercise and the diets and those things. The research has been done on men and for men, and so women are going to be different. But if you can connect to yourself, is it ever going to be fun to come off sugar? No, you're going to have a period where you don't feel good, but it shouldn't last very long, you know. Giving yourself enough time, like two or three weeks, to experiment with something to really know how it's going to affect you.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :But tuning in in that way and not being committed all the way, like one of my biggest shifts with actually exercise was to stop pushing myself because I literally didn't have the capacity. My body didn't have the capacity, because all exercise is a. It's a healthy form of stress, but it still produces a stress response and so if you're so overproduced in that area from toxic stress and other areas of life, you can actually hurt yourself more than help yourself by pushing yourself to work out. Hard Walking became my thing, Really gentle yoga, Like sometimes it's interrupting the pattern that says like, ah, but I have to do spin every day, or you know whatever it is and allowing yourself the freedom to just do what feels good, Like I just started running again.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :But I'm and I'm former marathon runner who pushed myself away too hard during all that in my early twenties I'm approaching it as like does this feel good right now? Okay, then we keep running. If it doesn't feel good, then we're going to stop. We're not going to do it because it's about that. It needs to feel good.
Daniela:Where is the fine line between your brain is telling you you are out of the comfort zone, versus I'm using my heart to tell that, yeah, this is not really what I need to do. You know that I don't. I don't know that fine line?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Again, it takes getting connected to yourself and I'm not saying never push. I wear an aura ring and it gives me like a readiness score every day based on my heart rate variability. It gives you a bunch of information and then tells you how ready you are. I've learned to really gauge the amount of activity I do and what I do. Like last week I had a day where I had a high readiness score and my body was like we feel good and so I ran intervals that day because that was like the day for it. But I based my training and how I do those things based on what that says.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :And it's a game for me to figure out how to have like those days more often than I have, the days where it's like, yeah, maybe chill On those days I do yoga or something. Some of us need that kind of input, like I definitely do. Otherwise I would push really hard all the time. You know, now I can tell like I can develop that awareness of like I didn't recover from that. So maybe we should take it easy today.
Daniela:Okay, interesting. You have done a wonderful work for yourself. You are in a very healthy environment. You have your son and new husband and you have a business that is bringing you joy and not too much stress. You're helping others and you have your own podcast. How did you start your podcast?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :That was something I always just wanted to do, and so in 2020, it was actually before COVID happened I launched it and kind of kept it going. It's evolved. I've rebranded a few times. I also wrote a book. I've written a book that outlines the process that I put together, kind of pulling all of these pieces of understanding hormones and body and connect it. You want to share the name. Yes, it's called selfless syndrome, the root cause of exhaustion, anxiety and hormonal chaos and high achieving women. You can find it on Amazon and I can give you a link to download the first two chapters.
Daniela:Okay, that's great. That's great. And the podcast is about you have guests and you talk about hormones.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :So it's a combination of things. When I gave myself permission to step out of the health box, I rebranded to the intuitive women's leadership podcast. We definitely talk about health stuff still, but also how we really connect to ourselves and how we show up in business and your career, with your family, staying more connected to the root of who you are, because it's really easy to get lost, especially as we enter like a man's world in terms of how we work. I think women are often trying to step into being something that we're not finding that balance of still stepping into that world but doing it in a way that keeps you in balance.
Daniela:Do you do the podcast all by yourself or do you have help? I am doing it by myself.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :At the moment. I have some tools that help.
Daniela:Wow, the podcast, the job, the mom, the wife. That's pretty busy, it can be Again.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :It's all the balance right. The biggest thing I commit to is actually what I call white space, where I just do whatever I need to do that day, whether it's lay down and take a nap or go for a run or something else in between. But keep protecting that space for myself has been really key to all that.
Daniela:That's daily or weekly Daily I have that too, but I feel guilty yeah it comes up with a lot of.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :For a lot of us as women, right Like we feel guilt over taking any time for ourselves or what we need, or a lot of us don't even know what we need. I've really learned to let that go because I'm a better mom. Like my son knows that when I go upstairs and just chill for a little bit like he's, he's cool with that because we homeschool. You know he's around but he knows that mom's going to be good a better mom when she comes down. My husband knows that I need that time in order to be a better wife. Like they recognize, I'm happier and more adjusted if I'm.
Daniela:I don't think you saw my face. I heard my comment when you said you homeschool. I'm like what the hell was that I saw?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :your face when.
Daniela:I mean how many hours are in your days? I?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :haven't been doing great at homeschooling, but we have a new game plan for next year.
Daniela:So all all these five years you've been homeschooling.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Not quite all of them. We homeschooled one year before COVID happened and then we've been going since COVID and haven't gone back to a regular school. Okay, okay.
Daniela:Wow, wow. You are really busy, so thank you for the time. So what is next for you? Are you going to add any more to your talent? Are you going to write another book? Are you continue with the podcast? Anything new that you haven't shared?
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Nothing in the works quite yet. I'm sure I will write another book in the near future. I writing is one of my things. Like I said, I'm super creative, so I'm always creating something, but I don't have any immediate plans. Just continuing with the things I built and continuing to evolve my own process and my own business.
Daniela:Great, great, and you are going to stay in Alaska.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley :Yes, my husband is Alaska native, currently the elected chief of 42 tribes that deals and also president of a huge organization that deals with health. So we're not going anywhere anytime soon Wonderful.
Daniela:Well, dr Alex, thank you so much for sharing your story and your time. Thanks for having me. It's been a lot of fun. Yes, it was a pleasure, thank you. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I am Daniela and you were listening to, because everyone has a story. Please take five seconds right now and think of somebody in your life that may enjoy what you just heard, or someone that has a story to be shared and preserved. When you think of that person, shoot them a text with the link of this podcast. This would allow the ordinary magic to go further. Join me next time for another story conversation. Thank you for listening. Hasta pronto.
