73. How The False Identities We Carry Are Preventing Us From Healing

At age 50, I finally pursued my lifelong dream of playing tennis, but it took me six months just to walk through the club doors.

I was terrified. I'd never seen myself as athletic.

Three years later, I just won all three sets in a women's doubles match for the first time.

Here's what makes this so meaningful: At age 40, I was so sick I couldn't climb stairs without nearly collapsing. I had an autoimmune reaction that destroyed my thyroid. It took me years to just feel normal again.

To go from that at 40 to this at 53? It's proof that the identities we carry aren't always true. "

I'm not athletic."

"I'm a chronic disease sufferer."

"I'm too old."

"It's too late."

Those stories we tell ourselves? They're not always accurate. And they definitely don't have to be permanent.

In this episode, I share my tennis journey and the lessons it's taught me about fear, identity, and doing hard things scared. Because most of the really important things in life? You're probably going to have to do them terrified. That's normal. That's okay.

If you're lying awake wondering if this is all you have left, I've been there.

I know those 3 AM tears.

But your body's potential is so much greater than you think.

Related Episode: Why I Don't Wear the Migraine Ribbon

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Episode Transcript

hi everyone
welcome to the Healing Migraines Naturally podcast
I'm your host Doctor Leslie Caesar
and I am a naturopathic doctor
former chronic migraine suffer
my mission in life
is to help other women with chronic migraines
rediscover a migraine free life
restore their health
so that body doesn't generate migraines anymore
they can get off their prescription medication
and do it all without taking fistfuls of supplements
so welcome to the podcast
today I wanted to share actually
a personal win with you
guys that happened to me recently
so I am on a women's doubles tennis league
and I just played in a match
me and my partner we won all three sets of the match
and so this was the first time
I've been playing in a women's doubles tennis league
for three years now
and this is the first time that I've ever won all three
so I have been over the moon
so I wanted to share it with you guys
now many of you
maybe you are experienced tennis players
and you're like what's the big deal about that
so I just wanna tell you
so I have had a lifelong dream of playing tennis
even when I was a little kid
I was I was captivated by tennis
I would have a little racket and like a old
stale tennis ball
and I would hit against the garage door
I had one of those tennis trainers
which is like a tennis ball
on a like a huge rubber band and you
and attached to a weight
and then I would hit that by myself
because I really never had anyone to play tennis with
hahaha and this is a sport
where you have to have at least one other person right
so um I was just always fascinated with tennis
I always wanted to play tennis
I did
when I was in middle school for two summers in a row
I took a little like four week park district
you know
kids tennis class taught by like a local gym teacher
you know on summer break I mean
it wasn't like a tennis pro or anything like that
and so that was like
my only formal experience
playing tennis in my whole life
I just loved it I always just dreamed of um
playing tennis when I turn 50
you know
as many women do when you reach a milestone birthday
particularly 50 I said to myself
this is not gonna get any better here right
like I've already lived like more than half my life
and why am I not acting on this dream
like if I'm gonna do this like I've got to do this now
nothing tells you the clock is ticking
more than hitting that 50th birthday right
so my birthday is in June
and there's a tennis club very close to my house
less than 10 minutes from my house
I would go on the website
I would click the button to get like
the quote of how much it cost to join
I would drive by there and kind of like
go in the parking lot and just check things out
but I was so scared I was so nervous to take that step
and actually join the club
and start to fulfill this dream
I was so so nervous to do this
you know when I was growing up
I was always like
the kid that was picked second to last
for the team in gym class
I never thought of myself as an athlete
and so
my whole sort of image of myself was not athletic
the thought of joining this club and doing this
and what am I doing and you know
what's gonna happen
and I was just so so nervous to do this
so it took me till December to actually join the club
and so one morning I got up and I was like okay
I am just gonna force myself to do this
whatever happens I'm getting in the car
I'm going to the club I'm joining this club
I just drove over there
I don't even have like a memory of driving there right
it was just like autopilot
go in there join this club
I did it I joined the club
and this was kind of like mid December
kind of right before Christmas
and this club they have
like a specific class called tennis in no time
and it's designed to teach
people that have never played tennis before
to play tennis in four weeks
it's kind of like this
like they've been doing it for decades
like they know how to get people playing tennis
in a four week period of time
well that was starting like
right in the beginning of January
so it was like perfect timing
I signed up for the class and away I went
it was as much fun as I thought it was gonna be
it was just a dream come true to um
get on that court play tennis
and like I started to remember the scoring again
the rules and so on that I had Learned in middle school
and the program was fantastic
the tennis pros were great
the other people in the class were great
so from there
I could continue on with adult tennis lessons
which I did and then in June 2023
I was eligible to play in Women's Doubles Summer League
I did that and the the rest is history
I've been playing in a women's double league ever since
so there's sort of like a
a summer league and then
there's a league for the other nine months of the year
one's an outdoor league one's an indoor league
and so I just finished
like my third summer of the summer league
I'm starting my third year of the indoor league
it's just been a dream come true since early 2023
so nearly three years now
I have been playing tennis consistently
if not once a week twice a week
many times even three times a week
either the drill practice that I go to
maybe some match play cardio tennis
which is really fun I had no idea this existed
so
it's like a cardio class where they're playing music
and you're doing these different drills
and hitting the balls to music
and everything that is totally fun
and just impromptu matches with friends that I've made
with the other women at the club
you know we might get together
and just do some friendly match play
so for nearly three years now
I've been playing tennis very consistently two
sometimes three times a week
I have improved so so much
I have never been in this level of physical fitness
in my entire life
the other activity that I really enjoy doing is biking
and so that is an activity
obviously you can do that by yourself
I have done that a lot over the years
and certainly
you're gonna increase your physical fitness level
doing biking but uh
tennis right it's like a whole another level
because you're playing a match for like in the league
it's two hours
and so you're in a continuous sort of cardio state
but then you're also on top of that
you're sprinting around the court
so it's just a spectacular activity to increase
your cardiovascular fitness
which I definitely have done over the past three years
I've also been doing some resistance training
and I've put on a lot of muscle mass
and I can really really feel the improvement that
that gives me in my tennis game to
as well as in my day to day life
but my main uh
priority with everything I do is like okay
how's this gonna improve my tennis game
just being consistent with it has just been
just so rewarding
to feel and to see my own improvement
over this time so with the league that I'm in
we either play at our club
or we might travel to another club
so
and my partner was a woman that I had never met before
never played with before so before the match
we were just kind of talking and chit chatting kind of
oh you know
how long have you been playing tennis etcetera
and so
I just told her like a little brief thing of my story
you know
I just always had a dream of doing this and you know
started playing about three years ago and and so on
so then we get out on the court
and it was like the chariots of fire
music playing in my head the whole time
I mean
my partner and I we had never played together before
but it was like we just like totally meshed
the style of play that both of us have
and um I would say kind of the way that we approached
the strategy and so on was really compatible
so it was like I could just like I knew okay
she's gonna move up
she's gonna take that out of the air
you know I it was like I could almost read her mind
we were just totally in sync
also I have to say my sprinting my endurance
everything came together for me
I was just like sprinting taking these great shots
it was just amazing it was like
the culmination of all of the work
that I have put in over the past three years
so um we smoked them ha ha
one of the other women on the other team
she got a little rattled you know
psychologically
cause a big part of the game is just like
maintaining your composure
your demeanor your game face
she started kind of making some errors
and stuff like that so my partner and I were like
alright she's getting rattled
you know keep hitting the ball to her
keep hitting the ball to her
and then by the time we finished an hour and a half
so we've got another half hour
30 minutes left of the match
we were starting the third set
the two other women we were playing
they were really exhausted
and I said to my partner I said hmm
looks like they're a little
getting a little tired over there
and my partner goes I feel great
what about you I said oh yeah
I'm ready to go right
so again it was like
I could just feel like my physical
fitness level and everything else was just really
you know on point
and so we just sailed through that third match
I am so happy about this
because I've lost so many matches
and so many sets prior to this
I mean I have been the person that has been smoked
so many times over the past three years
so to finally win all three sets
after all of this hard work
it was just like I say
I have just been
it just walking on a cloud since this happened
I've just been so happy about this
after we finish the match
the club serves like
a little lunch that you eat after you finish the match
so we were like leaving the court area
and we were walking to the cafeteria area
and my partner and I we were just like on this high
and she turned to me
as we were going into the cafeteria
as I had told her before we started
that I had just started playing
and this was like lifelong dream
and you know
she turned to me and she said
you know you are a real athlete
and I was like thank you
thank you so much but this is the thing too right
like I never thought I was athletic
I never would have expected anybody to say
oh there
there's Leslie she's an athlete right
I would never have even described myself that way
but as soon as she said that
I was like yeah
I am an athlete I am athletic
I found that out about myself in my 50s
you know this is the other thing too
like we have this identity about ourselves
we have this conception that we have about ourselves
and that's who we are right right
I'm not athletic I'm the person that was picked
second to last in gym class
every time but is it really true right
we don't want to hang on to these identities
that aren't true or can be changed right
so
this has been another really mind blowing experience
doing this because I've always wanted to play tennis
I didn't go into this thinking oh
I want to turn myself into an athlete
like that wasn't my goal
but that's what I've discovered about myself
I'm athletic
I have athletic talent that I never realized
wasn't evident in previous times of my life
since my perception of myself
the perception of the people that were the captains
of the gym class picking the team
it wasn't true right
I
I do have an athletic ability and some athletic talent
like I say we don't want to hang on to these identities
and things like that you know
I've talked before about you know
like I have a podcast it's one of my favorite podcast
this is why I don't wear the migraine ribbon right
we'll we'll link to that in the show notes
we don't want to take on these identities
that are false limiting
I'm a migraine suffer I'm a migraineur
we want to understand our
our true identity and these things
like whether or not we're good at sports
or whether or not we're picked in gym class
or whether or not we have migraines
we don't want to hang on to that
I mean my goodness
the other thing that makes it so poignant to me as well
is in 2012 so right before I turned 40
I got very very sick
so I got the seasonal flu in March of 2012
and unfortunately as can happen
kind of a one in a million shot
that sort of flipped my immune system
and my immune system started to attack my thyroid
basically destroyed my thyroid
in about a six week period of time
so
I started experiencing the symptoms of this in sort of
like mid April
beginning of may right before my birthday
and um
by the time I did turn forty in June that year
I mean I was very very sick
we had to surgically remove my thyroid
my thyroid was completely destroyed
the likelihood of it ever repairing itself
was so slight and the damage was so significant
you know we decided my naturopathic doctor myself
my endocrinologist surgical consult
and then unfortunately
that wasn't just the magic bullet
I um
had
fallen so far out of a state of health because of this
that it took me several years to fully recover
for a while after this
I could not go up a flight of stairs
without feeling like I was going to collapse
at the top I was very
very fatigued
just the exertion of like going up one flight of stairs
my heart would pound and pound and pound
and I would feel very lightheaded
like I might collapse here
that type of feeling my health was really
really decimated and so
to go from that at the age of 40
to recovering from that and like I said
it did take several years of incremental improvements
for me to get to the point
where I could go up a flight of stairs comfortably
get back on my bicycle again
perform with my work at the high level that I do
but to go from there at age 40
so then at age 50 kind of
embarking
and fulfilling this lifelong dream that I have
and then being successful at it
and now I know that my heart can take it
I can run all over that court
I can keep my heart in a high
cardio zone for a good two hours
and walk off the court and feel totally fine
so this is really the potential that we have
the true miracle that our bodies actually are
that we can go from a state where we can't
even go up a flight of stairs
and our body is attacking and destroying an organ
to 10 years later
achieving this type of physical fitness
and learning a new skill and actually
you know winning a match all three sets
so I wanted to share this with you guys
because I know a lot of you
you know you may be 40 and you may feel like you're 80
right right
I've been there and um
during that time when I was really sick
my daughter was very young
my daughter turned 2
right around this point in time of my life
I remember waking up in the middle of the night 2
3:00 in the morning not being able to fall back asleep
because I felt like I was just a shadow of myself
and I was so young and my daughter was so young
and what is the future gonna be like
and am I ever gonna feel better again
is anything else gonna go wrong here
I remember those really dark nights
and I know a lot of you listening
probably go through the same thing with your migraines
and any other health concerns that you have
and you may be wondering is this all I have left
is this gonna be the rest of my life
I'm so young is this it for me
yeah I've I've thought those same thoughts too
I've been there with you too
but if I had taken on sort of like
this chronic disease identity
um would I have recovered to the
to the extent that I have
I don't know I don't know if I would have
and so I'm so thankful that I already
you know knew
enough about how much the body can heal and recover
and that's what kept me going through those horrible
dark nights at 3 in the morning
where I would cry and wonder
what is my future but at least
I had the knowledge that probably
I can get through this
because other people have gotten through this
other people have healed and recovered
that really kept me going
most Americans
they're being told that they have a chronic condition
and that this is their new reality
and now they're a chronic disease sufferer etcetera
and the these things are not helpful
just like me thinking that I'm not an athletic person
that's not a helpful identity to have
if somebody is trying to fulfill a dream
of learning to play tennis
so we really have to be on guard
I mean this whole experience has really like
I've really taken an even closer look within myself
as to what identities am I not even aware of
that I'm kind of clinging to
that really aren't in my best interest
that are holding me back
that aren't really in alignment with other things
that I want to accomplish in my life
so
this whole experience that I've gone through over the
past three years with my
with my tennis journey
it's really given me so many valuable lessons
and so many valuable insights into myself
I'm telling you
with consistent effort with good guidance
crying those tears in the middle of the night
but not losing hope and keep moving forward
you can recover and you can you know
even older than you are now
embark on something totally new
you might say well it might be you know
I'm too old to do it
it sounds crazy to do something like that
but it's not if you have a dream
if there's something that you wanna do
let's do it right there's another birthday coming up
and it's never too late
and you might be really scared to do it
I took six months to join this club
I don't know how many times
I went on the website of the club
and got the quote of you know
the monthly membership fee and you know
booking an appointment to go in and then canceling it
I know I know what we do to ourselves right
so in order to have this type of dramatic change right
we've got to go through the fear of it
a lot of people say oh well
if it's if it's meant to be
it's gonna be easy or if it's the right thing for you
everything is just gonna fall into place
and you're just gonna find it so easy
it'll just be like walking down the golden road
I don't know about you I mean
some big things I've done in my life
have been really easy
and I haven't had a lot of anxiety to do it
and it's been smooth sailing
but most of the like really big things in my life
that were really important to me
and were a stretch for me
I was terrified
absolutely terrified to do and I procrastinated some
I put it off some
and thank God that came a day where I said
you know what I'm just gonna have to do this scared
I'm just gonna have to move forward
even though I'm terrified
because if I don't then this is going to be something
that just falls to the wayside for me
so like I say anything big that we do
I expect people to be terrified
haha and to be nervous and to put it off a little bit
but if this resonates with you
don't put it off
you're gonna have to you're gonna have to do it afraid
that's been my experience
you can still do hard things afraid
it's the consistency
of what I've done over these past three years too right
it's just the incremental improvement
consistently showing up and continuing to move forward
right and when we do that
it's amazing what we can accomplish
and what our body is capable of
so thanks so much for listening
I hope you got a kick out
of this and a kick out of me
celebrating the first time
I won three sets in three years of tournament play
so I haven't played yet
I haven't been slotted for a match again since this big
a three set win we'll see when I get slotted
we've got a kind of a big team
so we don't get slotted for every match
we kind of rotate around
so we'll see what the next one brings
but it really feels good to accomplish this
so thanks so much for listening
we'll see you on the next one
before you go
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I'll talk to you guys soon