In what way is Alahnnaa Campbell a holistic health practitioner — and what does she mean when she says autism, ADHD, mental health, or past trauma can get better?

There is a scene in a medical drama where a surgeon says: "I'm a surgeon. I don't do prevention." That's the difference between what mainstream medicine offers and what I do. But like a surgeon, I also assess risk before choosing a path forward.

Why I can't always start with physical healing

When someone comes to me with serious physical symptoms — cancer relapse, serious systemic illness, debilitating accident — my first question is not "what is wrong with the body?" It is "what is the state of their mental health?"

This is not a detour. It is the most direct path.

If someone's mental health is not stable — if they are dissociated, on multiple psychiatric medications, making choices that create an emotionally unsafe environment, running on unresolved conflict — then healing them physically is counterproductive. More physical energy without mental health stability means more capacity to break themselves faster. The illness is not the enemy. In many cases it is the only thing slowing them down enough to survive.

This is why I cannot simply go at it through the physical route, even when I can see the physical risk clearly. Even when I am genuinely concerned. The sequence matters.

The table

Think of overall health as a table with four legs and a top:

Mental health is the first leg — getting back into the body, out of dissociation, able to make choices for self-care.

Physical health is the second leg — what the body is carrying, what it is trying to clear.

Parent-child health (for those who are actively parenting young kids) is the third leg — because if we can't settle our kids with someone else, we can't have much freedom to do something else.

Relationship health is the fourth leg — the degree to which we perceived that the people around us support, trigger, or make our lives harder.

Into the world — work, purpose, contribution — is the table top.

A lot of people come to me wanting to fix the table top. They want their business to work, their purpose to feel clear, their life to move forward. But if the legs are unstable, no table top will hold. We will keep creating or drawing the problems we see in the other aspects of our health (table legs), into our business health (table top).

We have to go back to the beginning.

Can we stabilize mental and physical health? Can we improve parent-child health? Can we support their relationship health? So the table top has something solid to rest on, and doesn't keep sliding off, because one of the legs underneath wobbles.

In a way, issues with physical, mental, parent-child, and relationship health hold us back from doing more damage, by going out in the world and propagating more dysfunction.

I am still working on my own table. My physical health keeps wobbling — my right arm, which in Esogetic Medicine relates to how we go out into the world and to serve and receive, is still healing. I have to take breaks from working even when I am inspired. Until my arm stabilizes, I cannot push the table top. This is not failure. This is the sequence working as it should.

This is the order that has worked for me and that I have seen in many of my clients. It may not be the same sequence for everyone. There are certainly people running what appears to be successful businesses without having resolved their mental, physical, relationships, or parent-child health. In my experience, if we don't resolve what our mental, physical, parent-child, and relationship health is trying to tell us needs work, our problems will show up again in our business life too, because no one gets a free pass, we are all here to learn and grow, and we attract the lessons we have yet to heal.

What "getting better" actually means

I am not talking about perfect attendance or no difficult days. I am talking about grounded, self-caring, capable of facing consequences, and able to come back after a hard moment.

My daughter — who may or may not meet criteria for autism, and for whom we have chosen not to seek a diagnosis, has come a long way, see:

Age 4 → Let's Catch Things When There Is Still Time — Kirlian Photography and Early Intervention

Age 5 → Felt Safety — Inside, Outside, and Between | Made Visible and Open to Change

Age 6 → School Readiness

When I think about the shows like Extraordinary Attorney Woo and The Good Doctor - where the lead character finds a way to use their skill even though their autistic traits still impact them in some ways, it gives me hope for my daughter. When I see her happy at school, with her friends, it makes me think of the line from the movie "Frozen", where the person healing Anna's frozen mind says "I recommend we remove all magic... even memories of magic, to be safe. But don't worry, I'll leave the fun."

My son's path looks different. He still doesn't attend school every day or meet every responsibility on time. But he knows his limits, takes care of his needs, sleeps when he needs to sleep, takes time alone as needed, and faces his own consequences. In a world that teaches children to show up even when they are depleted, still being in touch with himself will put him ahead.

Getting better means the foundation is solid enough to build on. It does not mean the building is finished.

Why physical healing alone is not enough — and what the body is actually doing

When someone is in a state of unresolved mental health crisis, their physical symptoms are often protective. Pain keeps you from doing the same thing again. Illness slows you down when you will not slow yourself down. The body is not malfunctioning. It is managing.

If we try to remove the physical symptoms without addressing what is underneath, and without hobbling them in the mainstream way (with medication or surgeries to recover from), we remove the protection before the person has the capacity to replace it with better self-care choices.

In these situations, Divine Healing is the safe route, if the person is using mainstream medicine in parallel, while Esogetic Medicine is a gamble, can they handle pushing what's in their subconscious to the foreground to be dealt with or will they react even further? Even though Esogetic Medicine is the best way to get them to see options they couldn't see before, it's kind of like a clinical trial (we only go there if there is no time for doing things in a way that is more tried, tested, and true, because the chances of me becoming the truck, instead of the feather or brick, to help people see how to do life in a more compassionate way is very high).

→ See: Feather, Brick, or Truck — How the Universe Signals That Something Needs to Change | You Have A Life Plan

In North America we associate perimenopause with hot flashes — which in TCM is yin fire, the burnout that comes from trying to push a burning car uphill when it is out of gas. In parts of Asia, the primary symptom is frozen shoulder, because of cultural differences in how we carry our responsibilities and what we are allowed to express. It's important to be grateful for the things that slow us down (even those that trigger us because they don't feel aligned). When these things enter our life, it means the path we are on is very important, we need to slow down so that we can choose carefully. When we want to do something, it is important to evaluated if we have enough energy left in our tank to follow through and still maintain our health, when we fail to do this, injury awaits, and then we will have to sit out even longer.

Life is not unkind, it is teaching us, in whatever way we are willing to listen. I crossed through the hot flash era of my perimenopause over a year ago — now I am in the frozen shoulder chapter.

This article came to me at 430am. Which is an improvement over Why You're Up at 3am — What the TCM Clock, Pain, Unique Psychology, and Kirlian Are Telling You because now I am into lung/grief and approaching the large intestine/let go time on the TCM clock.

I couldn't find my Esogetic brainwave machine to restore my sleep, so I reached for my Esogetic Dream Disc, and moved the RestoreChi Specialty Speakers that I had been wearing over my liver/gallbladder, to my sacral area (where karmic chill is stored, the root of relapse) and my hurt shoulder (to establish an energy flow, rather than keeping it trapped in one area).

The Dream Disc bears the same geometric pattern we use to help both sides of the brain work together to process information (based specifically on where the person is stuck or insufficient, as seen in their Kirlian photo). The disc stimulates vivid dreams to help us process and let go of old conflict.

As I was falling asleep, and for up to 3hrs of vivid dreams, I felt cold (chill release) almost shivering, even though I was sufficiently bundled.

This reminded me of Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing method, to try to establish a safe place that people can return to, as they revisit old trauma and try to complete the action needed to let it go. Most often this involves shivering like prey animals do after escaping a predator (to shake off the excess cortisol so they can return to baseline health, no longer carrying the trauma). The body knows how to complete the stress response, when the conditions are right. True physical healing requires (some form of) this process.

What taking responsibility means — and what it doesn't

Healing requires taking responsibility for the situation we find ourselves in. This is not the same as self-blame, blaming the victim, the situation, or blaming others.

Blame says: this happened to me and someone is at fault.

Responsibility says: this is where I am, and I am the one who can move from here.

The body will not release what the mind is still fighting over. And the body can't heal if the person doesn't make different choices to create a safer environment.

Unique Psychology shows us what that plan is. For working with sensitive kids, it reframes the question from: "what is wrong with my child" to "what does my child need in order to move through this?"

That is where I come in. Not to fix. Not to cure. But to find whatever piece we can make a little more solid — and to be honest about what is possible, what the sequence needs to be, and what has to come first.

I also want to be honest: I may not have gone to the depths of suffering that some people have gone to in this life. Getting out of where they are may be harder than getting out of where I was. I am not trying to minimize this. Sometimes the odds feel stacked against us and there doesn't seem to be any way out. This is why I love that Esogetics helps us see options that we couldn't see before. The most respectful thing I can offer is empowerment, to give people more capacity to navigate their life.

If you want to explore this further

→ Mental Health — getting back into your body so you can choose to self-care

→ Felt Safety — what stage are you at?

→ Divine Healing — taking it slow

→ Esogetic Medicine — seeing more options

→ RestoreChi — physical healing that requires a mental health lid

→ Unique Psychology — your life plan, how you were built, what is most likely to work for you

→ Are You Ready? — things to consider before we begin

→ Straight from the Horse's Mouth — what Peter Mandel (founder of Esogetic Medicine) said about accepting reactions to treatment

→ Book a free 15-minute consultation