We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cody Cox a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Cody, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you share a story with us from back when you were an intern or apprentice? Maybe it’s a story that illustrates an important lesson you learned or maybe it’s a just a story that makes you laugh (or cry)?

I had gone to graduate school with the intention of becoming a self-employed clinician. I was very upset to find out, after being in school for a while, that my state legally required me to be an employee as an intern and also for supervised experience for a few years after graduation. I was lucky to find a company that was somewhat holistic in its approach to mental health, but working there for a while made me realize that most clinicians don’t really undersand what “holistic” actually means. I didn’t know what it meant, either! The more I studied nutrition, yoga, and other holistic modalities, the more I realized how backwards conventional medicine (and psychotherapy) is. Eventually, I got to the point that I could no longer work at a place that put so much emphasis on diagnosis, billing insurance, and pushing medication, so I left. Unfortunately, that’s most mental health clinics. I succumbed to getting another job elsewhere to keep paying my bills until I became independently licensed and legally able to be self-employed. At this point, I’m so happy to practice the way I feel is right, that aligns more with my values, and without feeling like an employer or supervisor is going to tell me I’m doing it wrong! I’m very proud of my training and what I do and to my knowledge, I’m the only nutritional psychotherapist in my state. Staying an employee would have kept me from achieving this.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am Utah’s Nutritional Psychotherapist. That means not only am I licensed psychotherapist with conventional training, but I also have sufficient training to practice holistic nutrition as a standalone service. In many cases, mental illness is caused or worsened by biological factors such as nutrient deficiencies, digestive issues, or blood sugar problems. Mental illness is a metabolic disorder of the brain that manifests in different ways.

Even conventional therapists are often stumped when a patient has most of their trauma resolved but they still don’t feel better. This is usually when a conventional clinician would resort to medication and suggest that the person needs to take it for life. But that’s actually the point that the patient could probably benefit from nutritional support. We need nutrition for life! Nobody has a medication deficiency.

I knew I wanted to go into nutrition even before I became a therapist because it has helped me so much, not only with mental health, but also physical. Our bodies are entirely made up of nutrients, so it makes sense to take the quality of the nutrients we eat seriously. But there’s a lot of conflicting, biased information out there, even coming from dietitians. It can really help to work with someone who is from a more unbiased (non-commercial) philosophy to help you sift through all the informational noise.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

I’ve thought about this a lot before. sometimes, I have a lot of regret about becoming a psychotherapist. It’s not a lucrative profession, and certainly not as meaningful as I had hoped it would be, especially when working in a more conventional setting. I actually put off doing the clinical exams for licensure because I was unsure about becoming licensed. I knew I wanted to do things more holistically, wholesomely. I knew nutrition was more my passion. But now that I am licensed, it has helped in my marketing. I can take insurance (if I want to), I can diagnose (if I want to), and people will find me if they are looking for therapy because they don’t know what else to look for. So there are some upsides to it. But overall, if I were to do it again, I think I’d dive more deeply into nutrition or become a naturopathic doctor for a more holistic approach that’s not just focused on one aspect of health. I enjoy working with those who don’t just have mental illness, and I can certainly do that now, but it has been hard to communicate that I don’t just do mental health.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I think for many, a lesson to be unlearned is the propaganda that we’ve been told for decades regarding nutrition. The low-fat, high-carb diet is now showing up in research as being very unhealthy. I’m still somewhat averse to eating fat, but I’m learning to force myself to eat it because the brain and other organs rely on healthy fats for proper functioning. Most importantly, I feel a lot better when I am eating it!

And at this point, carbohydrates are wreaking havoc on people’s health, but only because we abuse them (not necessarily because carbohydrates are “bad”). We tend to eat them in large amounts in ultra-processed forms such as sugars and refined flours, and this causes a lot of problems for our blood sugar, adrenal glands, and ultimately, our nervous system (including the brain). At first, it was hard for me to get away from white bread and cereals because those are staples in the standard American diet, but now, I can go weeks or months without them.

It’s a hard thing to unlearn something we’ve been taught for so long. But we are getting there as we realize not all science is sound.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://beavercreekwellness.com
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• Facebook: beavercreekwellness
• Twitter: beavercreekwell
• Other: realfoodmentalhealth.com
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