121. The Choice of Mindset with Zulma Berenice

• Zulma and I met when I gave my second TEDx Talk back in 2018, where she was the emcee for the event
• Her name is of Arabic origin even though she’s from Mexico, and means “full of life.”
• As a young immigrant in the US, her name was difficult as people weren’t used to it, didn’t know what it meant, and often picked on her for it
• What it taught her is the importance of our names, and how we can fulfill the meaning behind it
• For her, that means being full of life
• Zulma’s middle name, Berenice, leads to her playing with the initials Z and B in her blog name, ZBYoutiful, around the idea of holding onto the beauty we have so we can rise like a phoenix rather than blowing away as ashes
• Her name and the meaning in it is a big part of why she went into coaching, as was her personal journey
• Zulma got married and had kids in her early 20s, and as she and her husband were building a life and family, she got sick
• At 26 or 27, she was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia after years of no one being able to figure out what was wrong with her
• The diagnosis was difficult because it didn’t bring answers, but did bring a prognosis of pain and limitation for life
• This was so hard to bear at such a young age, and given that she had a 3-year-old
• This taught her early on what life with chronic illness is like
• She described it like smashing your thumb with a hammer, but feeling that pulsing, throbbing pain from the tip of your head to the bottom of your toes all day and night, every day
• It makes it painful to be touched, making basic everyday actions painful, like doing dishes, washing your hair, or embracing your child
• She advises those close to someone experiencing chronic pain that, just because the person suffering, doesn’t mean they’ll show it or tell you
• Chronic pain often comes along with some form of trauma in our past, either as a direct trigger or a long-term contributor to it
• For Zulma, she believes trauma around her childbirth experience may have been the trigger
• Understanding this connection informs part of Zulma’s interest in functional medicine, which is about how our bodies and life experiences are intertwined, making it less effective to look at each specific symptom or issue on its own
• Our central nervous system has three responses – fight, flight or freeze responses – across our entire body
• We don’t need to be scientists to look into why we feel the way we often do, and we find that fear is often at the root of it
• Fear is a feeling that’s trying to keep us alive, not harm us
• For Zulma, in her trauma, she froze
• When we freeze, our body and its energy becomes stagnant, and we become sick
• This forms the psychosomatic state of disease in Zulma’s view in how our thoughts and feelings from our experiences can manifest in different illness in different people
• Zulma was prescribed 10 different medications
• After the FM diagnosis, she was also diagnosed with Lupus
• She decided that she wanted to live (or die) on her own terms, and realized that she could help herself and would have to start by working on the fear
• Some people don’t feel they have the right to question the professionals, but because it is our body and our life, we always have the right to ask questions
• The Lupus diagnosis, which came in 2010, was especially hard because of all the information you find on it about the impact on your organs, the medication you have to take to live and way life
• Going back to her childhood, Zulma and her family immigrated to the US when she was 10, leaving everything they owned behind in Mexico
• This lead to an emotional attachment to hold onto everything, which she didn’t understand in herself until she did her studies for her functional medicine health coach training
• Coming to the US with nothing also showed Zulma the power of helping others as good-hearted people helped her family when they had nothing and no one in the US
• Zulma learned that she’s an empath, feeling the pain and need of others very strongly herself
• A struggle for empaths is knowing how to give help without the boundaries they need to respect for their own needs
• Today, Zulma is medically Lupus-free, has gone on to have a second child when it looked like her health would mean she could not have another kid due to the risk to her
• One of the main contributors to this was using biomagnetism, a treatment using magnets to balance the pH in the body
• Her experience with biomagnetism was so positive that she got trained and certified in it herself
• Despite her advocacy of that treatment, she also shares that it is only one piece of the healing puzzle, and we need to work on more aspects of our lives and ourselves, which is why she also advocates for and got a degree in life coaching
• Being an immigrant, being someone who experienced chronic pain, her achievements, degree and certifications are empowering for her and a signal for her family that you can achieve no matter what you go through or come from
• She shared her perspective in her own TEDx in 2019
• Zulma’s father recently passed away, and she shared how people came out after his death to share their stories of his generosity and care for others
• Zulma reminds us that there is always a choice when it comes to mindset, attitude, response and courage
• This is what she realized she wasn’t doing, and wasn’t living up to her name
• So she asked Why? 
• Zulma reminds us that, no matter what differences we have, we are actually the same – we feed hunger the same way, we feel pain the same way, and we can heal it the same way

Links:

• Linktree
• Facebook: @zbeeyoutiful
• Instagram: @zulmaberenice & @creativelifemedia
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/zulmaberenice