From Corporate Burnout to Healing: Eliminating Stress at the Root

Deanna Farnell joins Richard Lowe (The Writing King) on Leaders and Their Stories for a conversation about eliminating stress at its root rather than managing its symptoms.

A CPA who ran big companies for 30 years, Deanna left corporate life after an autoimmune diagnosis and built a healing center around a simple conviction: unless health comes first, everything else falls.

Deanna Farnell is the founder of Highlands in Bloom, a residential healing community and, she says, the first autoimmune and mental-health facility of its kind in California. A former corporate CPA, she now teaches holistic approaches to reducing stress and reversing its effects on the body.

For more conversations like this one, see the Leaders Hub.

DISCUSS YOUR BOOK

Full transcript of the interview follows.

Richard Lowe: Hello and welcome to the Leaders and Their Stories podcast. I am Richard Lowe, the writing king and ghostwriting guru. And I’m here with Deanna Farnell. She’s got some great things to say about stress, some great solutions, some help that she can give you. So take it away Deanna.

Living Instead of Working

Deanna Farnell: Hi, thank you very much, Richard, for having me on the podcast. I really appreciate it. We’re at a time where there is so much change in the environment around us that, you know, every day is a struggle to make sure that we can keep our mind and body connected, right?

So from a bi-directional standpoint, and that is something that I work on every day. So I really appreciate you having me on here so we can talk about how to maybe eliminate some of the stresses in our life.

Richard: Yes, I’ve eliminated a lot of stress points in my life. Like I don’t read the news anymore. That’s a major stress point. I stay away from social media. That’s about news related stuff. And I’ve done a lot of things to keep the stress low because who needs it.

Deanna: No, well, we don’t. mean, was in, I was a corporate girl for, you know, 30 years. I’m a CPA by trade and, you know, running big businesses was, you know, something that I used to define myself for many years. And I let all of the other really important things in my life take a back burner to running other people’s companies., you know, which ultimately I’m not involved with anymore.

They didn’t. serve me in any other way than maybe an income for all those years. So I think it’s super important that we focus on the ways to live, not the ways to work. So, you know, it’s just a mindset shift.

Richard: I look at it as the ways to live or ways to die. think work is a mind killer.

Deanna: Well, we’re all gonna die. it just depends. Unless you’re doing something that you’re passionate about, you know, that’s the key for me these days is, you know, there’s always gonna be stresses in your life, but it’s how you manage those stresses. And one of the key things for me is doing something that I enjoy, you know, every day.

Not all of us have an opportunity to do that, but yet we can. There are ways in which we can actually add things into our days that will allow us to reduce that stress even when we aren’t doing exactly what we want to be doing every moment of every day.

Richard: Well, yeah, I mean, who wants to pay taxes, for example? I don’t want to do that, but that’s, and that’s going to be a little stressful. unless you got it covered, then there’s not stressful anymore. that’s what I found is a big reducer of stress is making sure that those little stress points are handled so they’re not stressful anymore.

Making sure my health is right and making sure my I’m doing the right thing. I love being a ghost writer. It’s my passion. So I’m. passionate about things and then things that are stress points I either eliminate or fix as a rule, not always.

From Corporate CPA to Healing Center Founder

Deanna: Well, what I’ve learned over the last several years is that unless you make your health a priority, everything else falls. So, you know, it’s why I’ve created the communities in which I have, we’ve just opened up the first of its kind autoimmune, mental health facility because we understand that, you know, the stresses in our life actually cause those igniting in the body.

And if we can’t get that under control, then, we are definitely no good for anybody, most importantly for ourselves. And so. I’ve gone into this deep dive of really working, you know, with leaders in the community, me running my own program for Sanity. Cause I was big corporate and I quit and opened up Holistic Healing Center, Mental Health and Addiction Recovery, and now an autoimmune, first one in the state of California, in fact.

And so we’re really working to teach people how to reduce those stresses by, you know, all the little things that we can do, like nutrition being a huge, huge component of it. And a lot of people don’t really understand what that means or looks like. But there are very simple things that we can do that will really impact our lives in a very positive way.

And I can share certainly some of those tips here. Now we have this nourishment and wellness pamphlet that we give out now to everybody that we meet, just the little, little tiny things that you do every day that become your habits that really change the way in which you view your health. so that’s been super important for our community.

Richard: Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I found a book called Atomic Habits, worked a lot to get rid of stress for me. It’s not an obvious connection, but Atomic Habits says change by 1 % a day. It doesn’t sound like a lot until you realize it’s 365 days and yes, 365%.

So every day I make a positive change in my life and every day the negative goes smaller and smaller. Of course, you know, I’m human, so I focus on the negative, right?

The SUSTAIN ME Framework

Deanna: Absolutely. boy. No, I try not to do that. I, there’s this book that I’ve been really following. and I’ve been, I’ve been buying for our community when they come to our auto, we have this, it’s called the body speaks. we do it twice a month where people come and it’s an autoimmune support group.

And one of the books that I like to give is it’s called sustain me by Barbara O’Neill and it is sustain me as an acronym and it stands for, sunlight use of a. for goodness sakes sleep, use of, why did I just lose it? I cannot believe this.

I’ve said it a thousand times. use of water, sunshine, trust in a higher power, abstaining, inhaling. So oxygen, nutrition, moderation and exercise. And what it does is it’s really layman. It’s, breaks it down into each part of the body. So your eyes, your mouth, your kidneys, your pancreas, your liver, every single part of your body.

And it tells you that if you work on each of those things that are part of the acronym, that you can get your body back into balance holistically without the need for medications and going and using Western doctors, which is super important for me and my community. We understand that there is medical necessity and we understand that there’s drugs that are needed to help us.

but they’re really taking care of the effects of the underlying cause roots that we’re trying to really work on. So that book has been instrumental in my life and it’s been instrumental in many, many of our community’s lives. And it’s really simple. I mean, it’s things we already know, like get out in the sun at least 15 minutes every day, no matter what you do.

Some interesting facts that I learned too is if you’re lighter skinned versus darker skinned, you don’t need as much sunlight.

Small Daily Habits That Change Your Health

Deanna: to get the vitamin D. So we’re just learning all of these really amazing things. Minerals like Celtic salt, super easy. Just take some Celtic salt, a few granulars underneath your tongue every morning with water. You get 82 minerals that are flowing through your body. It’s an instant pickup in your day.

That’s all you gotta do. I mean, it costs $7 on Amazon and it’s something that will really make a functional difference in your body that you’ll start feeling very quickly.

Richard: Interesting. Interesting. Those are called cell salts. Those are called cell salts. Celtic? Okay. I’ve taken something called cell salts. It’s just cell salts, but maybe it’s the same thing with a different name. You put them under your tongue.

Deanna: Yeah, you can use Himalayan salt, but it just doesn’t have as many minerals in it. It has about 20 less minerals than the Celtic. So there’s things like this that we can do. I can share with you lots of things. What do you do? What is it that you do to reduce your stress?

Richard: Okay. Well, first of all, I try and get rid of the bad habits. And like most people, I’ve built up a lot over the years, overeating and being diabetic, overeating is not a good thing. Being stressed out about negative self-talk. So I don’t do that anymore. I do positive self-talk.

And if I find myself doing negative self-talk, change the subject, just like I would with somebody else. Avoid the news, avoid social media, negative social media. I use social media for business, so that’s different. market my business right and get business in instead of doing random stuff and not getting business in and then being stressed about business.

having positive relationships, getting rid of it. If anybody’s the least bit toxic, I either fix it or get rid of them. I don’t need any toxicity in my life. think the word toxic is overused, but you know what I mean? yeah, somebody who’s not helpful to me. Well, harmful to me, especially it doesn’t have to be not helpful, harmful.

Eastern and Western Medicine

Richard: And sometimes that’s very, very subtle. And for creative people, toxicity that’s subtle is really bad. Just, uh, you know, why are you working on that? Could be taken as a toxic thing. Um, that’s, that seems pretty useless to me. You know, these negative comments to creative people can undermine their entire creative ability.

And as a ghostwriter and a writer can’t have that. And a lot of customers come to me because they’re facing that from people in their life. But you said something earlier that I wanted to comment on, the difference between Western doctors. I learned the difference quite interestingly. have bad knees, arthritis, so they were hurting.

So I went to a, I’m glad I did them in this order. I went to an Indian doctor first, one of those specialists who changes your knees, fixes your knees so he gives you new ones. And I went in and I said, What do you, what do you think, doctor?

As soon as I got there, so what do you, within a couple of minutes, I said, I got sore knees. What do think? Do I need new knees? And he looks at me and he says, I said, what do mean? You haven’t even examined me yet. How do you know that?

And he said, cause you asked. what do you mean I asked? He says, if you needed new knees, you’d come in here and you’d tell me you needed new knees. So then I said, okay, fine. So I went over and he gave me this stuff, these various herbs and things, know, glucosamine and things like that to take.

And then I went over to him. American doctor walked in. said, doctor, my knee’s hurting. He says, good, we can have you scheduled for surgery tomorrow. That fast. And I was like, you haven’t even examined me yet. And that was the difference. And I realized I got lucky there because I did them in the right order.

And that’s 15 years ago. I haven’t had surgery. My knees ache once in a while, but they’re fine. Maybe I’ll need them. Maybe I won’t. It’s usually a good thing to wait till after you’re 65 to get new knees anyway. And I was much younger than that. I was just overdoing it.

You know, not taking the right supplements and probably focused on them too much. So yeah, Western doctors are important. If there’s a point at which I need new knees, I want the best doctor I can get. And I don’t care where that doctor’s from and I’ll know when I need new knees because it will hurt.

And he made that really clear. The Indian doctor, says, when you need new knees, you will come in here and you will say, Curse curse curse, give me noonies.

An Autoimmune Diagnosis, and Choosing Another Path

Deanna: Yes, that’s exactly right. I was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis six years ago and I have the leading hepatologist out at UCLA, but I refused all meds. I refused the biopsy. I went straight to, and it’s an overused word as well, but holistic healing, alternative healing, functional healing, that’s what I did.

In fact, I went all over to many different healers and because I had to do that while I was still working a very stressful job at that time, That’s when I quit and I opened up my own holistic healing center that had about 60 modalities in one location so I could, I could heal.

And I used all of the alternative medicines. it’s what I include in all of my recovery now, PEMF therapy, the Beamer, that all of the electromagnetic that, you know, is in the astronaut suits when they go into space, that keeps all that anti-inflammatory down in the body. Red light therapy, near infrared therapy, hyperbaric.

ozone therapy, energy healing, meditation, sound bowls, EFT tapping. There is so much that you can do to release the stress in your body these days, which 20 years ago people were like, what are these? What are these woo woo things that people are talking about? Those woo woo things have been around for centuries, long before Western medicine came here.

So they really work. Very much so, and that is a huge part of the stress relief in my life every day, including all the other stuff like just normal stuff, taking a walk, having a hot shower, drinking some tea, getting rid of the, like you said, the people in your life that bring negativity.

Nature, Fear, and Finding Calm

Richard: Right. Well, I found that going to the local botanical garden and looking at flowers really reduces the stress. Not something I would have thought of when I was a kid. It wasn’t considered masculine, but I’m older now and I don’t care. I go look at the flowers and have a good time. Yeah. I rejected all this masculine, feminine stuff, but I just do what I do.

Deanna: I love that for you. I think I don’t think there’s anything that’s gender specific. So we should all be open minded to any of the healings that are out there. My grandparents were horticulturalists. So, you I love gardening, as you mentioned, it’s a, it’s an amazing thing. In fact, the, the autoimmune facility is on 1.5 acres and the entire property is gardens.

They’re walking past with these amazing flowers that we’ve been, you know, curating there. So I understand I go out every day and walk in the garden and and pick and it’s an amazing thing. Of course I have to wear 100 sunscreen and a big huge brim because I’m about as pale as they come. that’s the other contradiction to sunlight.

Richard: Me too. Well, I’m basically from the… Basically, Scottish, Irish and Austrian, you can’t get more pale skin than that. But I like butterflies, as you can see.

Deanna: I love that.

Richard: And so I go to butterfly farms once in a while. And those are from butterfly farms in South America and Africa. So they’re actually from farms, but I go to butterfly tents and things and that’s really relaxing looking at butterflies and stuff.

Deanna: Did you have you been to the one in Vancouver?

Richard: I’ve never been to out of the country. You know, I haven’t been to Vancouver. There’s usually one around.

Deanna: Okay. have, there’s one in Texas I went to a couple years ago and they had thousands of butterflies in the atrium and, but the most beautiful one I’ve seen is up in, on Vancouver Island. have the butterflies there too. So I get it. I love that you love that.

Richard: My favorite is going to the spider tent. It’s in California. And they have spiders that are literally that big. And they’re hanging about right there. Now I find it very relaxing. They’re only mildly poisonous, so they won’t hurt you very much. But it’s bigger than my hand. the whole tent has several hundred of them in it. And it’s something you best better not have an aversion to spiders.

Deanna: no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, You are saying spiders, right?

Richard: Big, big old spiders about that big. Yeah. It’s in, the Los Angeles central history museum or was many years ago. It’s been a long time, but that was fun. That was fun. The girl I was with wouldn’t go in there.

Deanna: for goodness sake! no, we just, okay, this is so weird you’re saying this. I just went to a meeting last week and you picked out of a hat, right? And it said to learn about each other. was an icebreaker. And my question was, what is your most irrational fear?

This was mine. And mine was, so my mom died last summer. And when she died, I was having, thank you, I appreciate that. I had bad dreams about spiders.

Richard: Yeah. I’m sorry to hear that, sorry.

Deanna: And then I saw spiders everywhere. And then I got this really weird fixation on learning about spiders, especially like the brown recluse and the black widow to see how popular they were down here in the Southern California area. And I have this very irrational thing that I do now every night.

I shake out my sheets and I look underneath my pillows before I get into bed. Cause I’m just, have this irrational fear that I’m going to get bit because I heard that brown recluse spiders. like to burrow in bed sheets and in your closets. So now when I get like I take my boots out, I turn them upside down and I pound them on the ground and it’s just this, it’s this and you’re like, I love going to see the spiders. I’m like, are you nuts? that’s, that’s funny.

Richard: Well, I’m afraid of heights. So every few years I go up in a hot air balloon and I’m afraid of small spaces just a little bit. So every few years I go down into a cave and do some spelunking and cave, crawling through caves is called spelunking. And that’s even worse because you’re hanging, sometimes you’re hanging from a ladder over a 200 foot drop and it’s a rickety ladder.

And I always go with a guide because those places are very terrifying. But You know, I can confront my fears, but talk about anxiety before going, my God. But afterwards, it’s like such a rush. Like I did it, I confronted the fear. But the thing about cave

Deanna: So think what I’m hearing you say is that I should go put myself in spiders.

Richard: Well, spiders are poisonous, all of them are, every single one, to a certain greater or lesser degree. The thing about spelunking and going into caves is it’s dark and there are lots of creepy crawly critters down there and they crawl all over you while you’re crawling through the cave and it’s very, very weird.

Deanna: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Richard: But one of my- Carlsbad Cavern has a hotel in the middle of a cave, 700 feet underground. And I want to stay there. It’s $800 a night and I still want to stay there. It’s pitch black. it’s, but, but, I found that, confronting fears can help with anxiety.

Of course, not while you’re ramping up to it, but, afterwards it’s like, wow, I did it. I didn’t die from being in a hot air balloon.

Deanna: Gosh, God love you.

Richard: And, or didn’t die from spiders. I’m not afraid of spiders, but millipedes, those are cool going up and down. LA hit natural history. We’ve seen has all this cool stuff. They’ll take a millipede out and it’s about this long and they let it crawl all over your arms.

Deanna: no, that will definitely not be me. No. But I hear what you’re saying.

Richard: Yeah, well this conversation went in a weird direction, but that’s okay.

Deanna: It’s okay, you know what, it’s facing your fears and I do agree with that, that can certainly reduce stress and anxiety. I just think it depends on how devastating your fear might be. my God, that would stress me out. I’d probably have a heart attack. No, but you know, one of the things that I find with, go ahead.

Richard: I’m I was going to say, you’ve got a lot of techniques that you’ve talked about that people can use to fight stress. I think fighting stress is very important because stress really is a killer.

Deanna: Sorry, didn’t, were you? Well, a lot of the stresses in our lives start… Are you getting a lag on your side? Because I’m getting a little bit of a lag on mine.

Richard: A big one. I’m just ignoring it.

Deanna: You are, okay, sorry.

Richard: 6 to 10 second lag.

Listen to Your Body First

Deanna: Yeah, sorry about that. I think all the stress starts in our body, most of it. I know that we have environmental factors like watching the news, social media, which by the way, I agree with you. don’t, you some people think that makes me uneducated. I’m not uneducated. I know what’s happening in the world.

I just choose not to, you know, look at it 24 seven to where I’m stressed out all the time. I like to more focus on the things that bring me peace, like my dogs and my children. you know, the outdoors and nature and flowers. But I think that everything about health and stress starts within yourself.

So you really have to do a body scan and a gut check. That is number one to getting your balance back in your body and being less stressed. And I think that food is one of the number one things that actually causes stress within the body. Because once your gut is out of whack, it’s connected to your mind.

So if you can’t get that, both of those in check, your entire system is going to be out. So it is super important to finally admit that there’s something wrong, something is going on. In fact, my tagline these days is have you listened to your body lately? And most people don’t, because they don’t want to hear the story that it’s telling them.

But in that alone, we’ll create all of the other amplified things to become much more stressful. So we have to do that first internal body scan and gut check for us to really start reducing that stress in our life. Yeah. You know? And then it’s learning. Most people, you know, they want a quick fix.

Richard: Yes, I agree 100%. Well, yeah, that’s why everybody goes for this symptom. We lost you.

Deanna: Am I back with you? Okay, I’m gonna move. I’m wondering if it’s me, so I’m gonna take a little peruse.

Richard: You’re back. You are. You’re over wireless.

Deanna: I’m over white. OK.

Richard: Yeah, you’re probably calling from your phone. That’s what’s doing it.

Deanna: No, I’m on my computer. Yeah, it is. I’m going to kind of… Yeah.

Stress, Grief, and What Works

Richard: the computer’s probably on wireless. That’ll do it. Much better. Well, we’re getting near the end anyway, stress is when my wife passed away, was just the stress. Well, before she passed away, she was extremely ill. COPD, asthma and smoking are not things that go together well. Add to that a daily dose of steroids and you’ve got a recipe for disaster and she was sick for eight years.

So I was big, became her caregiver and of course it didn’t put her in a good mood. And, anyway, that whole thing was extremely stressful. And that’s where I learned about butterfly farms. And after that, I learned about how to get rid of the grief and so forth by picking up the camera and photographing things.

I went to every national park in Southern California and in the Eastern Southwest United States. went to all of them. Renaissance fairs, dance shows, WWE matches. Those are fun for stress because you have to watch people beat themselves up. Yeah, it’s got to meet the undertaker who’s a wrestler.

somebody will know who that is. it is everybody has, you’ve got techniques that for stress and I’m sure they can go to your website to find all those things out. The thing is, is I think it’s kind of unique to individuals. There are some things that work, some things that don’t reach individual for me, butterfly farms are great.

Crawling through caves is great. doing these podcasts actually helps a lot because I’m tending to be an introvert and I’m stuck in the house all the time because I don’t want to go outside. So I talk to people on the podcast. and for other people doing a podcast would be super stressful.

Deanna: Yeah, yes, being in front of the camera is always very stressful for me, as I mentioned. So it’s something that you seem very comfortable with, which is great.

Where to Find Deanna

Richard: wasn’t initially, I was very shy, but I I overcame it because I found I could not be shy and be marketing at the same time. That doesn’t work. Not if I’m doing myself. So it sounds like it’d be very useful for people to see where can they find you.

Deanna: Well, the company is Hylandsandbloom.com, so you could take a look there.

Richard: H-I-G-H, Highland.

Deanna: Yeah, H I G H L A N D S in IN bloom.com. Yeah, that’s the residential healing community. And it also has all of our body speaks and our lunch and learns and things like that. All that’s free, by the way, if people that are dealing with autoimmune ignited in the body.

It’s a really, it’s a really wonderful place for them to come and have community because that’s what we’re trying to do. Yeah.

Richard: Okay. Okay. Cool. Nice. Nice. Well, if you’re having stress problems, go there. Get on your web browser and go there.

Deanna: Well. Yeah, it’s more, I mean there’s a hundred plus auto-immunes and most of them are due to toxic stress. so yes, it’s more about if they have an ignite in the body, mental health connector, then yes, we’re bi-directional on our healing approaches. So yes, I would love to have people join the community and learn from lots of experts in the field.

Richard: Bye. Well, thank you for appearing on the podcast. It’s been fun. think we had a great conversation, enjoyed it a lot. Is there any final words you’d like to say to the listeners?

Deanna: Yeah, I did as well. Thank you. No, just make sure you take many vacations every day and remember that you are the most important thing and without you here, nothing else matters. So you need to put yourself first no matter what you’ve got going on in your life. It is not selfish, it is survival.

Richard: Thank you very much. This has been the Leaders and Their Stories podcast. I am Richard Lowe, the writing king and ghost writing guru. And thank you for watching. As you know, this is a daily podcast, so come back tomorrow and watch some more. Thank you.

Deanna: Thanks Richard, have a good day.

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