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Natasha Furian. psychologist mental health exercise
Natasha Furian at the workout network
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How Exercise can improve your mental health. A psychologists perspective.

It would make sense if I began my blogging career with a bit of storytelling around how Interconnection came into existence. I talk about my background and journey a little bit but I would like to do a deep dive. 

There were two aspects of my life running parallel to one another for a long time. One of them, my career in mental health care and the other, sports and training. 

I started swimming when I was 3 years old, thanks to my mum, she made sure the love of exercise was established early on in my life. I still have vivid memories of her working out at home to Cindy Crawford's aerobic cassettes in the mid 90’s when I was a young child. We used to have fun exercising together, I’d sit on her feet when she was doing sit ups, it was a great time. So my association with exercising has always been a positive one. 

As a teenager I got into running, continued swimming, and played volleyball in high school, but it wasn't until my mid 20’s that I started going to the gym.

And it wasn’t a deliberate choice, I got injured and I needed rehab for my rotator cuff. The physiotherapist suggested I go to the gym a couple times a week to strengthen my shoulder as the injury was severe (my shoulder never recovered but more about this later). 

I was in a lot of pain so I did what I was told, got myself a cheap gym membership to my local Gym group and conscientiously did the exercises on my little print out from the physio.

And after a while I thought, I’m already here, why not try some other stuff. So I did what most people do when they first start going, I used all the machines one after the other. And do you know what I noticed after a few weeks? I was sleeping better and that was the biggest hook anyone could ever throw at me. I was in my first year of uni, I was working full time, better sleep was all I needed. 

So the next step naturally was to learn how to do this properly. So I got myself a PT and he put me on the path of powerlifting. I had no idea what a deadlift is, I’ve never done one before, but realising that I could lift 50 kilos blew my mind. I was sold, apparently for life, because that was nearly 10 years ago and I have no intention of stopping any time soon. 

I grew up in the 90s in an Eastern European country, the ‘heroine chic’ aesthetic stuck with us far into the 2000s… If you were not skinny you were ugly, no in between. And let me tell you I wasn’t skinny, what I was, was bullied, for many years, for my round hips, the tiniest fold of a tummy peaking out of the super low rise jeans (yuk). 

Having started lifting was the first time in my life I looked at my own body through the lens of strength and not size. It was the first time I didn’t resent myself, I didn’t feel shame or disgust and it was amazing. My new found appreciation for my body was the kind of fire that couldn’t be put out easily. I was building knowledge, technique, strength, and self-esteem. As the years went on training and weightlifting in particular only added to the list. It became my safe haven, my therapy, my stress management, my anti anxiety, anti insomnia, my feel good, my ‘hooked on the endorphins’... That’s it I’m a junky, take my supply and see what happens. 

 

On the other path of my life I began a career in healthcare at the age of 24 not knowing the challenges that lie ahead of me. 

I’ve always had a craving for understanding what’s going on inside people’s minds, particularly when things go wrong. It was the most bizarre but fascinating thing at the same time. So naturally I got into psychiatric care and did my degree in clinical psychology. 

For the majority of my career I worked in inpatient care, for many years on PICU wards looking after the most unwell and also most challenging patients. I thrived in the chaos, my drive to make it just a little bit better and easier for them was so strong I often overlooked my own needs. 

This is how I’ve gotten attacked and injured multiple times. I’ve been strangled, my hair ripped out, my shoulder was injured in restraints on 2 separate occasions (I told you I’ll come back to this). I’ve needed physio on 5 different occasions and it’s the kind of injury that will never heal. My right rotator cuff is now forever prone to injuries and you’ll still regularly see me do my shoulder physio routine. I’ll carry the marks this career left on my body and soul for the rest of my living days. And it’s such a mixed bag because hearing how badly I was hurt is awful, but I know that other people were safe as a result of those interventions. There were a hundred beautiful moments to every injury and incident. 

It was a never ending uphill battle but I never gave up hope and faith that things can get better for anyone. And then I had to learn that it’s not always the case. The lives lost throughout my service were some of the most painful moments. Turning up for shift in the morning and learning that we lost someone, sometimes at their own hands, sometimes due to an overdose, occasionally through means of violence. I will never forget their names, faces, their voice ‘ Natasha take me out for a cigarette come on’. 

But you still get through that shift, you still wake up the next day and you still show up and smile.

And then the pandemic hit and everything changed. I never thought I could get burned out, I could dread Mondays but there it was slowly creeping in.

Part of it was the systemic failure to support front line stuff but I don’t want to spend a lot of time or effort discussing it here or really anywhere.

There was this other thing that slowly crept up on me. I started to feel really weighed down by being resented and at times downright hated for trying to provide care. It was always there, it’s the nature of psychiatric care, most patients are there against their will and don’t think they should be there at all let alone being nursed and taken care of. To them their illness didn’t exist, it was all a conspiracy from the government, the queen, god or the aliens. And somehow I always just accepted that this is how it’s gonna be, so long as I practice in a way that aligns with my morals and I can look at myself in the mirror knowing I go in there every single day keeping their best interest at heart, it’s all good even if they hate me for it. 

But suddenly it weighed on my chest like a ton of bricks. I remember the conversation I had with a friend ‘ I don’t want to be hated for trying to do the right thing’ I pleaded. And that might have been the moment I knew my days were numbered and change was necessary. 

 

From that moment to Interconnection officially existing was a 2 year journey, so no it didn’t happen overnight.

At first I did my personal training qualifications. I didn’t know exactly what I would do with them  but I knew after healthcare training was my second biggest passion so it felt natural to invest into the skill and knowledge I already had. 

After the qualifications I began the process of working out what it’s gonna be. Am I gonna go work in a gym and completely abandon psychology and mental health? That seemed unlikely. So how am I going to fit them together? 

Over the course of a year I worked out the intricate details of my interventions and I must say I’m quite pleased with what I’ve created. 

I now specialise in training for wellbeing. My primary aim is to help people integrate exercise into their lifestyle and find the same support through it as I did all those years ago. Better sleep, stress management, improved self-esteem, healthier relationship to your body is what I focus on. So many things in life we can’t just walk away from and often our best bet is to learn how to manage it better. Both psychology and exercise are perfectly positioned to teach someone how to achieve this but I’m bringing these two under one roof. Because our mind and body are intricately interconnected so should be our support systems.

 

My coaching interventions are primarily aimed at chronic stress and stress management, depression, anxiety, neurodiverse conditions, sleep disturbances, disordered eating habits and body dysmorphia. The training portion of the intervention is just as much tailored to these conditions and nervous system states as the coaching. Not all exercise is the same, and different levels of intensity, complexity and duration will be suitable to some but not for others. To showcase this through an example, someone who has high levels of anxiety and their nervous system is on high alert might find a high intensity workout suitable but in the long run it just further increases the fight or flight state making the anxiety so much worse either in duration or intensity, sometimes both. Using techniques to help the nervous system wind down and adjust back to a lower intensity of being will condition the nervous system to learn the cues of when it’s safe to switch off the high alert. 

On the other hand someone with depression will likely experience low levels of nervous system stimulation which plays a big role in why it’s so hard to just get out of bed each day. Using low intensity workouts and slowly increasing the nervous system stimulation is more likely to gently bring someone out of the frozen depressive state. If we suddenly turned up the volume and asked our depressed person to come and take part in a very intense session, the chances are they won’t even sign up in the first place. 

From a coaching perspective I build on the many different techniques and approaches I’ve learnt and practiced over the years. This includes CBT, CFT, narrative therapy, sensory modulation, grounding techniques, and the practice of PMR. The coaching portion of the session can be entirely talking based, we might decide to practice some grounding techniques together, we might build a sensory profile. It's all highly individual and I tailor the approach to the individual's needs always. 

The unique combination of training and mental health coaching is the full package and the best of what I can offer. Call me obnoxious but I think it’s the best that anyone can offer. 

Your mind lives inside your body and your body is led by your mind, they are interconnected. Holistic has been such a buzz word over the last decade, but I do see this as a holistic approach that’s designed to improve the quality of your life in all aspects. 

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