As many of you know, I find therapy to be incredibly rewarding and helpful. I’ve pretty much had a standing hour-long appointment with my therapist every week for the past two years, and it’s been such a comfort to me and become an integral part of my health & lifestyle. My therapist recently had a baby and took a six week maternity leave, and I was so nervous at first that I wouldn’t have access to her for so long. The time has flown by, and I’ve really felt a sense of freedom realizing that I am also fully capable and complete on my own. Therapy no longer feels like something that I absolutely consistently need to function anymore, but it is because of the many lessons and tools that I have learned that I can continue to grow and heal.

I plan to continue with my therapist now that she’s available again, and I still highly recommend therapy to absolutely anyone and everyone. We all carry a lot of baggage and it is so incredibly healing and empowering to work through it bit by bit with a therapist. They’re like mental Marie Kondos, helping us to clear the unnecessary and outdated/outgrown while helping us rediscover what truly sparks joy.

Here are three of the most important lessons that I’ve learned from therapy that I think almost everyone can benefit from:

As humans, we love to categorize and name things to make sense of ourselves and the world around us. We all work on defining and establishing our identities in order to feel like we are understood and capable of understanding others. It’s why we love personality tests, enneagrams, horoscopes, and more! I think on the surface, it’s mostly about striving for self awareness and a desire for our “true selves” to seen by others.

I think there’s also an innate curiosity and desire to understand those who are different than us, and tools like personality tests can be helpful in that. I think the true root of it all though, is deep desire for community. Identity helps us find and create our community!

I have such a beautiful and comfortable life, but it’s still constantly filled with challenges. Some are intense and overwhelming, some are minor annoyances, and some feel life changing. Whether these are challenging people, situations, or thoughts/feelings, it’s something we all must face and endure. Challenges often actually help us in many ways, too! One of the obvious ways is instilling in us perseverance and a strong, safe sense of self. No matter how bad anything has seemed in my life so far, I’ve survived!

I think one popular tip to handling challenges is to look on the bright side or try to find something that makes them seem less difficult/painful/annoying. This is definitely wonderful advice and a great habit to create. Recently though, I’ve been working on trying to reframe my challenges and it’s amazing how something that seems so negative can actually be the opposite.

Last year, I tried three different organic tampon subscriptions to see which one I liked best. Lola, Cora & Sustain are the brands that I tested and here I’ll give you a rundown on each.

Okay, even though I felt really prepared, my first appointment with my new functional doc was overwhelming. It went mostly well and I liked the doctor, but it had just been such a long time since I’d had to give my whole recent health history and hear someone’s thoughts about it. Talking for an hour and a half talk about my health was a lot and left me pretty drained! After some time and space from the first appointment though, I feel really good about moving forward.

In this post, I’ll give you a rundown of what the appointment was like, what we discussed, and how I felt during/after. At the end, I’ll share the details like the cost for my initial appointment and an estimate for the testing he recommended. I’ll probably do a part 4 after the holidays or maybe in the new year to share what I decide to do and what results we find. Here we go!

So now that we have the basics of functional vs conventional medicine out of the way, I’d love to share how I find my functional doctors, what I look for, and why I chose my (hopefully) new doctor.

One of the greatest things about my increased interest in health and wellness lately has been my discovery of functional medicine. I grew up with a very conventional experience with medicine and honestly had an overall pretty unpleasant experience with it. Yearly checkups and shots, cold, brief and impersonal consultations, and numerous medications (that were beyond unnecessary and actually damaged my health in the long run, looking back). I rarely left a doctor’s office without a prescription, whether it was for an antibiotic when I had a sore throat or–more than once–for an antidepressant after only a five minute chat (not cool). Conventional medicine and I did NOT get along. Little did I know that when I went through a period of really struggling with my health a couple of years ago, it would change my perspective of health and wellness completely.

As promised, here are my top five tips for developing a healthier sleep schedule and bedtime routine! Just in time, too, since we’ll lose an hour with Daylight Savings beginning this weekend. All of these tips have been hugely helpful for me as I’ve worked back from staying up super late to going to bed much earlier on a regular basis. So here we go:

Confession: I’ve had pretty bad sleep habits for most of my adult life so far. From all-nighters and regular late night parties in college to even more all-nighters (but no more parties, unfortunately) in grad school, I was basically a walking zombie for most of my early-mid twenties.

Cassie is a wife, mother, holistic nutritionist, and the wellness writer behind Candid Health. I connected with Cassie on Instagram after following her account and loving all of the gorgeous pictures and “Candid Tips ” that she regularly shares about lifestyle, nutrition, and other health & wellness topics. Cassie is so incredibly kind, smart and supportive and I love her outlook and attitude towards health. To read Cassie’s thoughts on snacking, smoothies, trusting your intuition, and what’s non-negotiable for her daily nutrition, check out our interview below!