Putting MOOD Balance to the Test

MOOD Balance was launched and while it took a bit for MOOD to pick up speed, those practitioners who were using it early on were telling us amazing stories of how beneficial it was for their patients, and we were thrilled. With six years under our belt now, MOOD continues to prove it’s a trusted and valuable support supplement.

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In all my life, through all my life trials and all my professional responsibilities, I have never felt more overwhelmed than I did in 2017 and early 2018. For those of you who really know me, you know I’m typically one who can juggle everything in my universe and not flinch. Unfortunately, that was not the case in late 2017 and into early 2018. SHAPE was growing by leaps and bounds, and I was shouldering all the responsibilities while Todd was working on selling his practice and keeping up with his intense practice demands.

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We lost two grandbabies earlier in 2017, one miscarried at 4 months and baby Blake died just 6 days shy of being three-month-old. He was born 11 weeks early weighing 1.13oz with underdeveloped lungs. He never left Children’s Hospital and we had to say goodbye in the garden on the top floor of the hospital…the first time Blake experienced life outside the Nicu. Needless to say, it broke us all wide open.

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That same year we completely gutted and rehabbed space for our new SHAPE Headquarters & Distribution Center (we ran SHAPE out of Dr. Todd’s practice and had to find our headquarters a new home), we moved out of our home of 22 years, rehabbed a villa home in Chesterfield, MO and finished construction on our home in Wisconsin all at the same time. Juggling one construction project is enough to send someone over the edge, not to mention three construction projects.

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We sold Dr. Todd’s practice in July of 2017 and his intention was to continue practicing for another few years and an Independent Contractor for the one who purchased the practice. That lasted three months. By October, he decided to quit practicing altogether. To say I was shocked is an understatement. I was not prepared for what was ahead. He saw his last patient at 2 pm on Halloween, Oct 2017 and by 6 am the very next morning, he was on a plane to the Northwoods of WI. For the next 6 months, he would come back to STL for holidays and commitments but for the better part of six months, he was decompressing in Wisconsin from practicing almost 38 years, averaging 50 patients a day. Though I was emotionally struggling to juggle all my responsibilities, I was trying to be strong because I believed he deserved a break from his years of massive patient responsibility. We were both trying to embrace an extremely unconventional retirement (split living) and while he was thriving, I was barely surviving. By Christmas, I shared that I was struggling to handle it all on my own, but it fell on deaf ears.

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2017 turned to 2018 and more family drama presented itself (I’ll spare you the details), we hosted our biggest SHAPE Symposium followed by back-to-back business trips, along with me taking on the monumental project of revamping our entire Certification Course, along with revamping our website to better serve all our SHAPE practitioners. Dr. Todd continued to come and go. I was sharing with Todd that I was struggling emotionally but he was not grasping the gravity of the situation.

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By the end of March 2018, my inability to shut my brain down at night pushed me over the edge. I cracked. I could not think clearly, I was crying constantly, I could not eat, and I barely slept the majority of the previous 6 months. I was completely broken!

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For the first time I started seriously thinking…do I need to start taking an SSRI to deal with this overwhelming anxiety and a couple meltdowns (which was so out-of-character)? I called Todd and told him I needed to seek professional help and was going to request a drug to help me cope.

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Now he was in shock. In all our years together, he only knew the “strong Linda”. He didn’t know the “I can’t handle my life Linda” and he panicked. He felt terrible that he was not “hearing” my cry for help even though I was sharing month after month that I was struggling to handle it all by myself. He had a couple commitments he needed to honor in WI and said he would head straight back to STL after. That same day he said he would come home, I decided instead of turning to chemical support first, I would put MOOD Balance to the test. From the stories practitioners had shared about what MOOD did for their patients, I decided I had nothing to lose by trying. I made the decision to front load 3 caps/twice daily for 21 days before giving any further thought to taking an SSRI. Literally, within three days, I was not crying constantly. Within a week I could think clearly and was able to process and resolve business needs, my appetite returned and by the time Todd arrived, I was feeling like there was a light at the end of my dark tunnel.

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To go from, I seriously think I need to start taking an SSRI to deal with this crazy anxiety and feelings of being so overwhelmed to, “I got this! I’m gonna be fine and am finding my way back to the strong, confident and detailed girl I know myself to be was a miracle. I felt peace and joy returning and I knew I would be whole again without needing to turn to drugs to help me cope. To go from, “I’ll never need that product” to “MOOD completely healed my emotional crisis”, I’m a believer! It’s an amazing product and it’s not just for emotional instability, it also helps with pre & post menopause, PMS, thyroid imbalances, blood sugar instability and adrenal insufficiency.

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If MOOD Balance can pull me out of that dark pit, I am convinced it will make a tremendous difference for folks struggling with their own challenges. I hope our practitioners will consider all the patients they are working with who could benefit from taking MOOD too! None of us would have ever imagined we would endure all that we have in the past four years and mental illness is at an all time high. Even folks taking SSRI’s are telling us MOOD is helping above and beyond what the drugs have been able to help without all the negative side effects.

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Let’s help one another. We’re all in this together!!!

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~ Linda A. Frisch