70 | First 3 Steps You Must Take If Toxic Mold Is Making You Sick | Mold Illness Series 3

Aubree Felderhoff: So it may just be that your body has not been able to fully detox for your whole life. I mean, think about it. If you grew up in a house of mold, you can only detox so much before your pot fills up and starts to pour over, And starts to cause other issues in your body. So it doesn't necessarily mean it's your home, but if you have mold in your body, it's your job to find out. Because if you don't find you're just continuing to prolong the problem. And you don't get down to the root of what's really causing this, then you're not ever going to experience 100 % healing Today is the third episode in our mold illness series. And if you haven't had a chance to go back and listen, I discussed my recent journey through mold for the second time and what my family has been through. And from that, I decided that it was really important that I make sure that I put out all of the... experiences, failures, and successes that my family has had as we've walked this journey. Because from what I have learned as I have been researching for now over a decade and immersing myself into how do I get not just myself, but my family well, as well as my home, I have learned that mold is in fact not a very distant problem for many of us. Mold is extremely common. And unfortunately, it's not talked about enough and there's not enough awareness about it. And so most people go often their whole lives or a long chunk of their life like I did not knowing that they're dealing with mold and instead tackling all of the symptoms instead of the root of the problem, which is mold. And so from that, I had decided I'm gonna do a series. I wanna just discuss with you guys what I've learned, what I've been through, how to know if you might be dealing with mold. So we did the symptoms. episode and last time we talked about, if you have the symptoms, what would your next step be? And that would be testing. And today we are talking about the fun part, the uplifting part, healing, Now I want to start this episode by again reminding you guys that I'm not a doctor. I am not someone that can diagnose you or prescribe things to you. But I am a girl that has dealt with this for 12 years as well as my entire family going through this now twice. I have a lot of experience and you better believe that I've dedicated the majority of my last decade to researching how to get well and save not just myself but my family. So I have a tremendous amount of experience, whether I want it or not, doesn't matter. I have the experience. And so my goal and my prayer for you today is if you are someone or if you know someone who has been dealing with chronic illness, mystery symptoms, a bunch of random symptoms that affect many different areas of the body and don't seem to play a role in anything that's related to anything else, yet they seem to be that person that just keeps getting sick. You know the people, myself and my family, we were some of those people where we do quote unquote everything right and we're healthy and we eat well and we take vitamins and we do outdoor time most of the time and have sunshine on our faces and don't do the screens and have filtered water and we do all the quote unquote right things and yet my family was constantly sick and I seem to have this barrage, if you will, this massive portfolio. of all of these random things that went wrong in my health and it didn't make sense. Well, if you're listening and you identify with that or you know someone that might identify, please share this episode. This is so important just to begin to learn and begin to tackle this at the root. Or if you don't know, you end up spending like I did, closer part of a decade. tackling all of the wrong things. My Hashimoto's or my hormone dysregulation or my insomnia or skin issues and leaky gut that can never get well. So let's get into the meat of today's episode, which is how do you heal? Okay, maybe you know you do have mold or you highly suspect you have mold in your house or that you've been exposed somewhere and are not healing. You've got these reoccurring issues going on. What do you do? There is so much information and mold is really unfortunately a booming topic. due to the way our world is now and our building materials that we're using within houses and so much lack of awareness on how to have a house that is safe from mold and how to be proactive. And it's going to continue to grow. No pun intended. The first thing that I can say with 1 million percent confidence that completely changed the trajectory for myself and my family through this journey is you've got to go to God. You've got to go to God. And I can tell you as someone that didn't grow up a Christian, I didn't become a Christian until I became an adult, that my faith in the beginning of this journey was extremely weak. And I had a lot of anger. and lot of frustration. I assumed that if I prayed for God to instantly heal me and he didn't, and I continued to do that and I continued to live what I thought was a godly life, that it must be on me that I was doing something wrong. It took a really long time of me praying before God delivered the answer. The story of how I actually got my diagnosis after 31 doctors and almost eight years of searching is an incredible story that I would love to share, and I might on a future episode. But for time's sake, I want to share what happened to me round two with mold. already knew that I had mold illness. In fact, this is year 12, so it would have been five years ago that I knew. And yet mold hit us again for the second time in this house after new construction. So I knew I had mold. I knew what to do. And we started the procedure. testing as I shared with you guys how to do in the last episode and removing myself from the source And yet... I was going backwards. And it wasn't until I got real with God about the fact that I hadn't released this illness to him, I hadn't surrendered. I was still frantically searching for the person, the quick fix, the medication, that last trigger that I needed to pull in order to flip me into complete healing mode. That's what I was searching for. I wasn't searching for God to provide the answer. I wasn't searching for God to heal me. I was searching for a human being on this earth or a capsule of some sort to give me the answer. And so I wanna start today by letting you know that God was the one in both of these testimonies. both of these mold journeys that I've been through, God was the one that really took me by the hand and began my healing journey. I stayed stuck until I let go and I started focusing on Him. And I know that that can be so tough when you're in the midst of suffering. Believe me, I, understand what that feels like. When you are hurting, when you're struggling, mold, it isn't just a physical illness. Mold affects every single area of your life. It affects your body, it affects your mind, it attacks your spirit. It affects your finances, it affects your marriage, it affects your friendships, it affects your home and your place of refuge that's supposed to be the place that you can come home and be safe. It literally rocks your entire world. And when you're in that spot, not to mention you've got mycotoxins in the brain possibly causing all sorts of disray in your mindset and the way that your mind is able to even process information. When you're in that spot of desperation. It's really hard to take a step back and say, let me pray. And I will be the first to admit that I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I yelled at God. I got mad at God. But I didn't rely on Him. I didn't surrender and say, no matter what, I know that you are going to hold my hand through this. And at the end of the day, that you have promised to restore me. I hope it's on the side of heaven. It's really hard. But I wanna encourage you that if you are struggling with this, mold is so big and it can feel so overwhelming and so overpowering. And the only thing, the only thing that is bigger than this is not a human being, it's not a pill. It's God. The second thing that I recommend you do to begin that healing journey is to start to work on your nervous system. And a lot of times, people who are stuck with chronic illness a really long time you begin to feel as if you're not with mold illness, this can really expand to everywhere. Because even if you discover that your home has mold and you leave it, you now have this fear set inside you that no place is safe. How do you know if a hotel is safe? How do you know if an Airbnb is safe? You guys heard my story, we went to eight. Not to mention the hotels and other friends' houses that I went to in between over the past four months of this journey. So going in and out of all these places, a smell will trigger off such fear if you smell anything musty. water on a ceiling can trigger off this fear. A simple symptom. Maybe you wake up and you have a headache. That's a trigger. Maybe you feel itchy and have a bump on your arm that begins into a rash. When you have mold toxicity, it really does a number on your brain and your mindset because it rocks the natural way that our world works. Your home is no longer safe. if you have begun colonized, and we talked about that last week, If you've had mold in your body for an extended period of time, you can become colonized. Your body is no longer safe. And it becomes incredibly hard to heal if you are trapped in this fight and flight area. And so the next thing you've got to do is you've got to start working on your nervous system and regulating that and beginning to teach your body and your mind that you're safe. And I can tell you, I've done a lot in this area. There's a lot of different ways you can go about it. did a program called DNRS about five years ago when we moved into our current home, because I recognized that my current home was completely free of Yet, I was still dealing with a massive amount of symptoms in my body. was simply trapped in fight and you've heard it a million times, your body is not meant to run from a tiger forever, And if our body is constantly pumping out cortisol and adrenaline to be on the lookout, to make sure that we're in a safe environment and that this food is safe and this place is safe and this symptom could mean that we have this going on. If we're constantly doing that, our body is not prioritizing healing. And so it doesn't matter, and that's what happened to me. It does not matter if you are in a bubble, and your body is completely free of mold. If you are trapped in flight and fright, you're not gonna heal. Your body is not going to prioritize healing. It's not going to prioritize digestion where you can then break down your nutrients and start to refuel your mitochondria in your cells. It's not going to prioritize anything except constantly scanning to keep you safe. And if you've been through some trauma, you know that trauma can stay stuck for a really long time. And it can be incredibly difficult to work through that on your own. I also sought out a Christian counselor and we use something called for mold patients in particular and other people who have cognitive issues. Sometimes your of the brain that allows you to process and speak out what you're thinking, that word recall can become pretty tiny. It did for me. Word recall was a real thing. I could not come up with my words. And when you're in trauma, A lot of times your body again is in that fight or fight and you're not able to sit down and really process what's going on. And so if you are dealing with this and you'd go to a counselor and want to talk about this and it's not for everyone, let me preface that because I have done talk therapy as well it's been very helpful, but with mold specific things for me, I couldn't come up with words. It was so traumatic. It was so hard for me because I didn't have words then. I was in such an extreme brain fog. and I was in such extreme survival that the words and even talking about what was going on after the experience, I wasn't able to do it. So there's a very certain type of technique that my counselor and I have used that has been extremely helpful. And EMDR, they use it a lot with war veterans and people who have pretty significant PTSD. it allows you to feel centered and feel safe in your area so that you know that you are presently not in that trauma, so that then you can go back and unpack. You're not necessarily talking to your counselor, you're just doing an eye rapid movement type thing across the body, and it's allowing you to go from memory to memory and unpack that trauma. And let me tell you, it is extremely powerful. I went back to my counselor to do EMDR in preparation to move back into the house that we are in now because I knew, I knew how traumatic this experience was for me going through it a second time as far as feeling unsafe in the world. And I wanted to prepare because it's something. you don't think about, especially if you've not been there mold or if you're at the beginning of the mold journey. But if your house has mold and it requires remediation, moving back in can be a bit traumatizing. It can be very scary. You're questioning every single thing. Am I safe? You can't see the mold most often. So you're just hoping that any possible thing that you feel, smell, see doesn't lead to mold. And it can be very scary. Number three. after you've done those two, those are the most vital. Then we look into physical healing. And the very first thing that I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that you need to do if you've got mold toxicity is you need to find clean air. That means that if you have mold in your body you need to find the source. And it does not mean guys, it does not mean that you necessarily have mold in your house. I have definitely known people along this journey. that they didn't have molds in their house. In fact, I was one of them. Now, granted, I had mold the first time, but when I got to my new house, I remained unwell for a really long time. And even when I got well, I got well to about 60 to 70%. I never went to 100%. I still had a lot of mold symptoms, and I was very certain there was no mold in this house. It was tested many times. But it was living in my body. And that is exactly what I'm talking about. Some people are sick seemingly for their whole life. Maybe it started in childhood. Maybe your parents' house had mold. Maybe your grandparents' house had mold. My grandparents did. I remember going. They lived in Corpus Christi. We would go visit them. And I had no idea at the time anything about mold like most of us. But their ceiling around their air conditioning vent had black fuzzy mold growing out. And every time you walked in, you could smell musty. I've heard it many times before, but that musty smell, people wanna know, what is that musty smell? That's mold, that's mold. That is what it is. If you're smelling must, you are smelling mold. In fact, I heard it put by another mold-ineer, I guess, that the smell of must is actually mold off gassing. So the must is the smell of mold farts. So it may just be that you have had mycotoxins in your body that your body has not been able to fully detox for your whole life. I mean, think about it. If you grew up in a house of mold, you can only detox so much before your pot kind of fills up and starts to pour over, right? And starts to cause other issues in your body. So it doesn't necessarily mean it's your home, but if you have mold in your body, it's your job to find out. Because if you don't find out, you do the, don't really wanna know, let me try all these things first. If you do all of that, you're just continuing to prolong the problem. And it will get worse. It will get worse. If it's in your house and you're breathing in toxins, like we talked about last time, if you take a bottle of bleach and you take a small sip, does that mean it's not gonna do damage? No. But what if you take a small sip every single time you breathe? Like that small amount that you're breathing in constantly is just adding more and more toxins. And if you don't fix the source of the problem, if you don't get down to the root of what's really causing this, then you're not ever going to experience 100 % healing because we are not meant to live in mold. once you find the source, if it is in your home, you need to find clean air. You need to move out, you need to move in with a friend. I've had friends that have gotten campers and lived in that. But find an area that's clean. If you have no possibility of moving out, then. Find where the mold is in your house and stay the heck away from it. Make a clean area as much as possible and stay away from that until you can get it remediated. And then focus on being outside. God gave us sunshine for a reason. Outdoor sunlight, grounding, being outside in that sunshine is so healing. I know when I had a gut instinct that there was something going on in our house but we had not tested yet. that I have spent the majority of my nights, mornings, afternoons outside. I took everything outside and I just did everything outside. I ate outside, I read my Bible outside, I did work outside, I took my dog's food bowls outside. We were just outside. And it really, really helped. It didn't heal, but it helped. Okay, I know that I've given you a lot to think about and I hope that in hearing a lot of the steps that I've taken to heal during this journey that you have found something to hold on to to begin with because it can be so overwhelming. It can be so overwhelming to have any clue where to start. So I wanna remind you, start with prayer, start with talking to God, start praying for answers if you haven't, start there. Then move into your nervous system and beginning to calm your heart and your mind. And then move into clean air if you're not already in it. Because without those three things in that because without those top three things in that order, I didn't budge in my healing. And I truly believe after my second time going through it that that is the answer. You've got to pray and surrender to God. You've got to calm the nervous system and teach your body again to feel safe and to learn to be safe and to focus on being safe instead of focusing on being sick. You've got to relearn how to be healthy because you learned how to be sick. But you have to relearn and reteach your body to be healthy. And then you've got to do the physical work. So of course, if you have any questions, You can email me. You can message me on social media. You can join our Facebook group. and ask me questions there, but I would love to help. I've already been talking to quite a few people and it is just my prayer that I continue to reach people who need to hear that there is hope and there is healing and there is an answer. So do not give up and keep fighting sister. All right, until next time, go in your day.