How Positive Intelligence Helped My Eczema

Mental health is definitely a top priority these days with the pandemic. Maintaining and enhancing it is important for the future of humanity as well as the future for eczema warriors who want to live a fulfilling life.

Why did I have a bad eczema flare?

Towards the end of 2021, I was recovering from a really bad bout of eczema due to my anger about the world, the politics, and social injustice being exposed in the news and social media. In my anger and rage, I made some really bad decisions about my health and ate a lot of food that I shouldn't have in large amounts – namely spicy food and sugar. That led to me having another huge flare full of oozing, swelling, and itching.

How did I start turning it around?

I returned to Chinese Medicine to treat my eczema and anger with custom herbal cream and herbal tea formulas, which helped me to recover. As the year 2022 arrived, I realized that I needed to change my mindset, and I started doing a lot of research on stress, skin, the nervous system, and neuroplasticity.

What Meetup did I stumble upon?

It led me down a serendipitous path to a Meetup group called “Self-Care for Single Women” led by self-care life coach for single women, Amy Morikami, who is based in San Francisco, California. Thankfully (considering that I was unemployed at the time), I was lucky enough to win a contest that she held for the Meetup group for a free month and a half of group coaching with her and a handful of other members of the Meetup group. The program is based on the "Positive Intelligence" program created by author and executive coach trainer Shirzad Chamine.

What did the program give me?

After attending her 6 week-course on Zoom, I experienced the following benefits, which greatly impacted not only my mental health but also my skin as a byproduct of the lessons I learned:

Benefit #1

I felt less judgmental of other people and myself. I experienced a lot less stress because the exercises from the program reminded me to be considerate of many possibilities for why my health, my life, people, and the world are the way they are during the pandemic. Also, the fact that one can spend a lot of time judging strangers who they barely know and assign them stories that may or may not be true.

Benefit #2

My level of compassion increased for others as well as myself. After applying the exercises of positive intelligence to my life, I realized that although I should not have previously allowed my emotions to take over and overwhelm my decision-making about my health and food choices in the previous few months, I had legitimate reasons for feeling the way that I felt even if they only applied to me.

Benefit #3

My skin, food choices, and digestion improved and cleared up for longer periods of time because I was getting less and less triggered by stress and anxiety. In combination with my Chinese Medicinal herbs, this program helped me to sustain my recovery in a more effortless way with its positive and considerate systems of thought. Even the news stopped bothering me to the extent that it used to because of what I learned.

What can positive intelligence do for you?

It is this positive impact on my life that convinces me that positive intelligence is a topic that other eczema warriors should definitely research, look into, and apply on their own. We have lost many great warriors on the battlefield of itchy skin because of the level of depression it could induce from all the pain. With positive intelligence, you could enhance your life by finding self-compassion, kindness, and understanding for yourself and others and make life easier to live.