Candida overgrowth occurs when we have lost our power, our will, and our ability to take care of our needs. The yeast overgrowth represents how our thoughts and repressed emotions have been draining our energy and power. Just as our body is being overtaken on the inside, we have allowed our desires and will to be overtaken by the world. As within, so without.

It takes willpower and courage to stop eating the foods that feed Candida and comfort our emotions, including sugar, starch and alcohol. When our desire to heal becomes stronger than the instant gratification we feel with sugar, we will feel all of our emotions and be more clearly directed by them. Knowing how we feel and what we want is the foundation of our will and empowerment.

Becoming empowered involves ending old stories of victimhood and valuing yourself and others equally. Reflect upon, when and how did you lose your confidence, self-esteem and worthiness? You may remember not feeling good enough in school but it typically goes back to the first five years of life, when you developed your unconscious beliefs about yourself and what you expect from relationships. These unconscious beliefs determine how you interpret and create your experiences of yourself and others.

As a sensitive child, your parents may not have been there for you emotionally, or they may have been physically, sexually and/or emotionally abusive. Along with the resulting emotions, you may have formed beliefs that there is something wrong with you (shame), that you aren’t good enough, lovable, and/or that life is not safe. You then attract a life based on these beliefs and emotional patterns. You may be drawn to people who are emotionally unavailable and abusive, and you feel alone and unlovable, which cyclically reinforces the unconscious beliefs. You may drink, drug and/or engaged in other avoidant and addictive patterns to numb your pain and shame. You may compensate for your deep feelings of shame, by presenting that “all is well” on the outside. There may be an unhealthy obsession with looking perfect and achieving success to try to feel good about yourself. This is another form of disempowerment that prevents you from being who you really are.

Living from a position of the victim, life seems to be out to get us, we can’t get what we want and we feel everyone else is to blame. We have these horrible symptoms of Candida: brain fog, bloating, yeast infections, bladder infections, fatigue, rashes, headaches and insatiable sugar cravings. Though physical, these symptoms are here to show us that we’ve lost our connection to our true self, preventing us from getting what we want. We blame the doctor for giving us antibiotics or our mom for passing it down, but the symptoms are actually here to show us that we are being a victim to our past and now it’s time to work it out and create a life we love. The healing process and our empowerment often includes becoming aware of and expressing the anger that is buried in our sadness, anxiety and depression.

For me, after 15 years of trying to cleanse my Candida on a physical level, including two years of total commitment to the Candida diet and spending thousands of dollars on supplements and treatments, I thought I was healed. I wasn’t free to eat and drink what I wanted but at least my symptoms were gone. However, one year later I was in yet another relationship with an emotionally unavailable man to whom I gave my power away. My yeast flared up with a vengeance, screaming at me to take care of myself. This time, I knew it was emotional and I did my core emotional healing and inner child work that finally freed me. Then, fully healed, I was able to eat what I want, make decisions from my intuition, know my worth, set boundaries and attract what I really wanted, including my soul mate whom I married a year later.

Through my own process of healing Candida and understanding what is actually involved, I have developed an effective model to help others heal and become empowered. The cure for Candida is not inside of a bottle, it is inside of you. Break free from Candida, physical aliments, powerlessness, perfectionism, judgments and blame by loving your inner child and releasing your emotional pain. Learn to stop blaming others, set boundaries and reclaim your power.

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