Things You Learn in Therapy
Things You Learn in Therapy
A birthday miracle: How letting people in led to relief and renewal
Hey friends. This holiday season, I am grateful to share a story that is quite vulnerable for me. My hope in sharing is that someone needs this encouragement today - like I have needed in so many moments over the last decade. Thank you for loving me well and following along the podcast!
The story starts with a single itchy spot and unfolds into a decade-long battle that touched every part of life—body, mind, and spirit. I share what it felt like to spiral each evening, why secrecy fed my shame, and how a simple, brave choice to let people in began to change the experience. As a psychologist, I understood the importance of support, yet I still fought the very human urge to hide. That tension, and the relief that followed, set the stage for a turning point I never saw coming.
We walk through the medical odyssey—clean blood work, reassuring biopsies, and the maddening feeling of being told I was “healthy” while my skin told a louder truth. I talk about the resilience it takes to keep calling specialists, the discouragement of repeated insurance denials, and the quiet faith that carried me through nights when hope felt thin. Then the plot twists: a nudge to check for a cancellation, a dermatologist who immediately recognized the pattern, and a new biologic that promised help with minimal side effects. The approvals didn’t come easy, but when the phone finally rang on my birthday, everything shifted.
You’ll hear about the first injection and the immediate relief, the joy of taking a hot bath without fear for the first time in years, and the gratitude that comes when daily suffering finally loosens its grip. This is a conversation about chronic itching and dermatology, yes—but more than that, it’s about persistence, self-compassion, and faith in the face of setbacks. If you’re navigating a chronic condition, fighting shame, or searching for answers, I hope this encourages you to keep going and to let someone walk with you. If the story resonates, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review to help others find their way here.
www.bethtrammell.com
Hi there, friends. Welcome back to Things and Learning Therapy. I'm your host, Dr. Beth Tremell. I am a psychologist, a lover of all words and all things words and communication. I also teach at IU East in Richmond, Indiana, where I'm the director of the Masters of Mental Health Counseling program. And today is going to be a little bit different. This is a um a little, not a little, a lot of vulnerability here as I share a bit of my personal story. I want to share with you a bit about my birthday miracle. So some of you who know me know that I've had sort of this long-term skin condition, this kind of chronic skin condition, that originally it started uh when I was pregnant with my youngest. So that would have been in 2015 or so. And it started with just one spot on uh my foot, on the top of my foot, and it just itched like crazy. It just itched like crazy, and I would scratch it like crazy, and it was just uh, but it was only one spot, and so that part felt manageable for kind of a long time, but nobody knew what was going on, and I didn't even seek help for that at that time. And over time it continued to kind of spread to other parts of my feet and legs, and um, long story short, over the last 10 years, it has just been yeah, quite a journey to kind of manage my own kind of demons around this uh kind of illness for me. And so I want to share a bit about that, hoping that maybe this will resonate with someone out there, will give hope to someone out there, will let someone be seen. And I think what I've learned over the last 10 years is that though it felt like some really dark days um and evenings, I knew God was with me. I knew that I had people around me who loved me. And sometimes, even knowing that, it still didn't keep me from spiraling into shame and anxiety and yeah, just a lot of negative uh thought processes. And so I want to start with a few lessons. So the first was that this itch scratch kind of process really felt like an addiction to me and um it it felt very shameful at many times. And so if you are in a position of feeling like you're engaging in addicting or addictive behaviors or cycles or processes, I just want to encourage you to reach out to someone for help. I think as I was in the midst of a lot of dark days where I just couldn't kind of get myself out of like not scratching until I would just literally bleed. I mean, it was the violence toward my legs and all the spots on my legs, especially in the last couple of years, was very isolating. And part of the reason it was isolating is because I didn't talk about it with people. I didn't let people in, I didn't let people know I was struggling. And at the beginning, I didn't even realize I was struggling. I think I had a lot of, I had a lot of messages from childhood, from kind of continuing to live in this space of like, well, it's just itchiness, you know, people have it a lot worse than me. I would have those like thought processes. And while it's true, um it wasn't helpful in those moments of really feeling horrible, you know, it was like every night between six and nine, it would feel like my whole body was just on fire, or there were just things that my skin was just crawling and itching so badly that it felt like the only path toward relief was scratching, but that just kind of continued the cycle. Um, and so I learned along the way that allowing people in was one part of feeling less isolated. And, you know, you'd think that as a psychologist, I would know that. And what maybe you've learned as a listener of this show is that even psychologists, even therapists are still human and we're still working through our own uh kind of issues, also. And so this was something that I knew logically that I would let people in. But I also kind of found myself being like, well, talking about it to people, they're just gonna think I'm complaining or they're gonna think I'm dramatic. And I had a lot of negative ideas around that that just weren't true. Because when I would share it with um, you know, a friend or somebody, they'd be like, Bet that sounds terrible. That sounds awful. And I'm like, actually, it kind of is. It kind of is terrible and awful. And um, I am kind of struggling and trying to figure it out. So the first thing is let people in, right? I'm saying this for you and for me because I'm clearly still working on this. I think the second thing that really stands out as I think about my kind of 10-year journey with with this chronic illness is continue to search for answers. I think there were lots of like two-year periods where I would go without bringing it up to a doctor or not trying to find another specialist, because I would go to specialists and they would say, You're totally healthy. I would get blood work done and they'd say your blood work looks great. You look healthy. And I would think in my mind, that's amazing. And then I must be crazy, right? And so it, I've talked to other people about this too, that it's like when you go to see a specialist and when you go to see a doctor, it's almost like you want them to say something's wrong so that you know, you just don't feel like it's all in your head. You don't feel like, okay, well then what what what is what is wrong? Because if you look at my legs and my arms and my hands, you can see all of the spots all over my hands. It reminded me of when I was young and we had chicken pox, right? That's how that's how my like arms and my legs looked. And so I remember moments where I would like leave being so defeated and so frustrated that I just ended up avoiding going to see more people. And I think at the very end, and when you're gonna hear about the birthday miracle, you're gonna see that um continuing to fight for an answer, though it felt very overwhelming and very defeating, um, is important. And eventually the hope is that you'll find the right person who can offer you the lighthouse of hope, of light, of we are gonna work through this together. And I'm so grateful that that is where sort of my um birthday miracle is gonna end. And so continue to seek um medical advice, continue to find people until you can come up with an answer. And actually, Victoria Rodriguez is one guest that I've had on this show several times, and um, she talks about sort of the medical odyssey and really working through that. Um, though it feels very big and hard, she also advocates for continuing to search for answers. And I think maybe one additional thing I'm gonna offer here is that, you know, as I talked more about it in the last couple of years, both here on the show and with other people in my personal life, I found that I would often share that it's not, it wasn't for me the physical ailment of the bumps on my skin. You know, I definitely had moments where I was like, man, I don't really want to wear shorts because I don't want people to ask me what my legs are. I didn't want to wear uh short sleeve, short sleeve shirts because then people could see the spots on my arm and then people would ask, and I didn't want to go into it in this whole sort of spiral of shame, really. But the physical ailment by itself, um, though that sucked, it became such an emotional and spiritual um difficulty, right? I mean, I I would I would just emotionally crash, and then I would feel shame. I would feel so bad that I I just let this crash me, you know. So in the evenings when my family would be around and I would just sort of be in my room isolating because I just felt so much shame. It was just such a it was just such a hard time, and even talking about it now, it's kind of hard to talk about how I think about some of those nights and some of the thoughts I had. And you know, so my hope is that you'll be encouraged by this, and then on those nights where it feels like, oh, I don't know, I don't want to keep feeling this way. I remember like crying to God and being like, I don't I don't see you in this. I know logically that you're here, but I don't want to keep suffering. And so if that's you today, whether it's an illness or you're just struggling in some other way, you're not alone, and there are people that care about you. You just have to let them in, you know, you have to let them in. And so let's get to the let's get to the miracle, right? I've seen lots of doctors, I've spent lots of money on creams and medicines and so many things over the last 10 years. And my physician was ready to send me, you know, to the Cleveland clinic where there would be just a whole team of doctors. And she said, Let's try one more local guy, one more local place, and let's see what they say. I'd go to dermatologists and they say, Well, the creams aren't working, so it must be internal. I'd go to folks to do blood work. I've had so much blood work, and they'd say, Your blood work looks so great. It must be dermatology. So I finally went and made this appointment at another dermatologist. I think this was at this point, it was the fourth one. And I tried to go in with hope with every appointment. I really tried to have hope. And it was hard to hold on to that after sort of letdown after letdown after letdown. But I scheduled the appointment, and you know, if you've scheduled an appointment with dermatology, you know it takes a minute to get in. And so the appointment was, you know, a couple of months out. And I thought, well, you know, I've been waiting 10 years, what's another couple of months? It's no big deal. Continued to have every night just this cycle of itching and scratching or working really hard not to scratch, and then feeling very minimal success, and then eventually shame. So I had this appointment and it was with you know, one of the dermatologists. And a couple of weeks into my waiting, I felt this nudge from God just to call, call back and say, see if you can get in early, see if there's a cancellation. And so I called back and they said, actually, we have an appointment in two weeks with this different person. And I said, Amazing. And I remember saying to God in that moment, like, God, I hope that that was you, and that I didn't just say no to the right doctor and say yes to the wrong doctor, because I really don't want to have another moment where I show up and they tell me that I'm just fine. Because when you look at me and my body, it doesn't, it's not fine. And I had biopsies and they told me that this wasn't gonna kill me. It wasn't cancerous, and so they're like, you know, it's not gonna hurt you, it's just annoying. I'm like, okay, well then I can I can suffer through, I can do that. So I went to this doctor, and I just can't say enough positive things about this dermatologist because he was warm, he was encouraging, he said, you know, I know exactly what this is, and I wish I could tell you exactly what it is. But he was saying words that I was like, I'm gonna need you to write that down, sir. Um but his medical assistant was so kind, and I just felt like just the warmth of God around it was this is the right place for me. This is the right place, and this is the right path toward answers. And he was like so confident, he was like, Yeah, I know exactly what this is. This is called the what it's called a small itchy bumps. I don't know. It's got a fancier name than that, friend, but I don't know what it was. And so he said, you know, I'm very confident that this medication will work. It's a newer biologic, it has very few side effects. The worst side effect is that it's expensive, it's very expensive. And so he said, you know, insurance will cover it usually. And if they don't, then you know, usually there are paths to that, but it might take four to six weeks before we can get approval so that you can um do this. So let's try this first before we go down a different path. And I said, Okay, let's try this first. So we went through all of the insurance. I got the first denial from insurance that said your insurance is not going to cover this expensive injection medication. And I said, Okay, well, he told me that that might happen. And then he said, just follow the steps that they kind of walk you through. And so I followed the second step of filling out some um financial hardship form or something. And uh 10 days later or so, I got another denial in the mail. Said, you haven't been approved for this medication, and an appeal is not an option. Um, so I was like, okay, well, kind of a dead end there, right? So um I was I was remarkably like not totally defeated by this. I was just sort of the unfortunate part is what I think I just felt sort of numb to that process. It was kind of like, well, yeah, here we are again, you know, another no, another no, another no. And so the week of my birthday, my birthday was on a Wednesday, and the week of my birthday, I started getting these strange calls from a pharmacy saying they wanted to schedule my medication. And I was like, it must be spam. You know, I know y'all get spam calls all the time. I do too. And so I just like ignored it, right? So on the morning of my um, actually it was the day before my birthday, I called the dermatologist and I said, I left a message and I said, Hey, you know, I've gotten two denials about that medication. And so I just want to know what our next steps are. What are we gonna do next? Oh, and by the way, I've gotten these like strange phone calls, and I just don't know if you know what that's about, right? So she calls me back on my birthday, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, last day, last business day before the holiday, right? She calls me back and she says, Well, it's the strangest thing, she said. It's the strangest thing, isn't that how God always works? He always works in the strangest thing. She said, It's the strangest thing. She said, I called the pharmacy that's been that's been calling you. They're they're the pharmacy that does the medication. She said, I called them and I asked them what's really going on here. And she said, I don't know how it happened, I don't know what it was, but you've been approved. Your medication has been approved for a year. For free, for free. I just I mean, I said to the lady on the phone, this is a birthday miracle. It's my birthday, and these four thousand dollar injections are free for a year. What a wild way for me to show up. You know, as I think back, it's funny how emotional I'm getting. Because those of you who know me know I'm not I'm not a super crier, you know. But she said, call the pharmacy back they're gonna send it to you and start as soon as you can. And as I was thinking about this injection, I spent about you know, a half hour on the phone with the pharmacy. They were like describing how I do these injections or how I can do these injections from home. And I remember like, am I gonna be able to do this? I know those of you who do it, I'm sure you can resonate with this idea of initially like, I don't know, am I gonna be able to stab a needle into my leg or not? And as I um schedule the medicine, as it came, I remember sort of butterflies and feeling like I think I can do this. I ended up um being able, after a moment of like holding it over my leg for like, I don't know, 30 or 40 seconds. Those of you who have started injections, you know what I'm talking about, where you're like, Can I do it? I don't want to do it, I don't want to do it. And actually, it was really no big deal. It was just fine. I did the injection, I had immediate relief. That injection was exactly two weeks ago, and I have been itch free since that day. Praise God, it's literally a miracle that I have not had this consecutive days of not scratching in 10 years. In 10 years, I had a bit of relief a few years ago when I took prednisone long term, which then caused me to gain 20 pounds that I still am working on getting off, which is a whole nother issue in a whole nother episode. But a few nights ago, I was feeling really good. You know, I'd had about a week of feeling really good. The bumps had started to sort of look like they were fading. And one of the hardest things for me over the last 10 years, one of the things that triggered the itch response the most was getting in hot water. So hot tubs were a no, baths were a no. Anytime my legs would get hot, it's a no. And those of you who know me know I love a hot tub and I love a bath. And so a few days ago I got on the bath for the first time and I can't even tell you, six or eight years. And I didn't scratch at all. I've taken baths in the last, you know, two or three or five years because I just love them so much, but always at the expense of my legs just itching and then scratching and bleeding and the whole the whole nine yards it was like this horrible thing. And I just sat in the bath and just cried. I was so happy. Something as simple as like, oh, I can take baths again. I can now buy bubble bath again. Oh praise God. Friends, I am continually on this path toward healing. Emotionally, spiritually, physically, I'm on this path toward healing. And I know that the work is still happening. I don't know why my skin decided to do this. I don't know if I'm going to be on these injections forever. What I do know right now is that I'm celebrating this win. And I am just praising God for how he showed up in so many unexpected but such loving ways. And that if you are in a season that you need encouragement, I hope that this story encouraged you today. And if you're a person who also has a story to share, I'd love to hear from you. Beth at MakewordsMatterforgood.com, you can email me directly. I would just really love to hear from you. Your story matters. And if I can walk alongside you and celebrating or um just reminding you that you're not alone and you're suffering, I'd love to do that. Hey, listen, thanks for tuning in today. This was a much different episode for me, and um, I hope that it resonated with somebody out there. I love you. Have a lovely day today, and um a great winter holiday.
