Help! Atomic is trying to KILL ME! Part TWO

This post originally appeared at Gender Dreaming and was updated Jan. 23, 2024. You can find Part One here: Help! Atomic is trying to KILL ME! Part One

I understand you want to both be perfectly safe and also to do everything in your power to sway. But sometimes these things that you want in equal proportions are mutually exclusive, and nothing I do or say can fix that. And more importantly, sometimes, in fact a LOT of times, things that we are told by others are necessary for health, for conception, and/or for swaying, are just straight up BS.

There IS no option in which you can have everything just as you want it – optimal odds of conception, optimal odds of pink, while using everything that has ever been said to promote health and fertility (whether or not these products actually DO promote health and fertility is open for great debate) AND everything that has ever been said to sway (ditto). If there was such a magic combo, I assure you, I would not have held it back from you. You would already know it. There is no mystical info that I will reveal only to those who know the secret handshake:

Control Freak Mama: I’m coming up on my first attempt and wanted to know what more I can do?

atomic: There’s nothing more. You’re already doing everything. I told you everything back at the start already.

CFM: But there’s gotta be something I can add in at the last minute. Say, maybe I’ll starve myself on O Day.

atomic: No, don’t do that, it will delay ovulation. We have not found anything we do at the last minute works, otherwise I’d have already told you to do it!

CFM: Are you sure?

atomic: Quite, and here is a very long explanation of why I am sure that I wrote while I burned my family’s breakfast this morning.

CFM: But are you really sure though?

atomic: As sure as I can be about anything in this business. Swaying can’t ever be a guarantee, but yes, I’m sure as I can be.

CFM: What do you mean no guarantees? You mean you’re not SURE? Like absolutely positively SURE you aren’t forgetting anything? I mean, wrack your brain, atomic, there’s gotta be SOMEthing you haven’t told me! Something you left out! Because you’re that kind of person, which is why you write such mindnumbingly long replies to everyone, because you’re always leaving things out. I am going to now spend the next several hours digging up old posts where you were advising someone in a totally different situation than me to prove that you’re forgetting something, you uncaring disinterested monster, since it is obvious that despite the fact you’ve spent all morning long answering my every concern in a thread that was already 67 pages long, you clearly have no interest in paying attention to my extremely unique situation.

atomic: For all the reasons I already explained, nothing you do the day of your attempt makes any difference whatsoever, but being control freakish will seriously harm your sway.

CFM: ARE YOU SURE?

atomic:

I have worked really, really hard to balance health, safety, swaying, sanity, protecting fertility, protecting marital harmony, and having a reasonable time to conception. ALWAYS I am taking all those things into consideration. I do not want to hurt you, I certainly would never ever do anything that could hurt a child, and I absolutely do not want your sway to fail. I promise on my kids’ lives, and I don’t say that at all lightly, that I really do want the best for you guys, for your safety, your sway, for your marriage, and even your sanity. But sometimes this requires me to argue against things you believe strongly, that you desperately want to be true, and even that other people have told you ARE true. You want certainty from me, but I simply cannot give you a guarantee, and I have to be honest about that. This doesn’t make me the bad guy, it makes me the person doing a hard thing against overwhelming odds – explaining all these whys and wherefores, when it would be a lot easier for me to have just gone along to get along continuing to chuck cranberry at ya and tell everyone “sure swaying is 100%, Dr. Shettles was the smartest man who ever lived and he never made any mistakes, and if you screwed it up, not my problem, must have been something YOU did wrong.”

I think many of you argue because you very badly want me to sign off on everything you personally want to do in your sway or for TTC – which means everything you’ve ever read about anywhere, regardless of how stupid the theory or how sketchy the source. When I don’t agree for some reason, usually for reasons of safety or because your plan will render you incapable of conceiving, it stresses you out. You wanted everyone to agree, darn it, because in agreement you could have certainty (even if it was fake certainty) and I’m raining on the pink sparkly parade by not agreeing enthusiastically. So you badger and pester and even at time attempt to bully me into agreeing with whatever you want to do because you want to feel perfectly confident that your sway will work and that you have done everything ever said to be healthy. But there are no guarantees, and no amount of bullying will change my mind (and in the attempt, many of you skirt perilously close to the type of extremely argumentative control freakishness that is strongly associated with having opposites, hurting your sway by far and away more than any of the stuff you’re arguing with me over can possibly even help).

Ladies, you can go through reams of old forum posts, try to find my old words out of context that I said to someone in a totally different situation to fling in my face, dig up studies or clickbait articles that claim to say this, that, or the other thing, and I’m still not going to change my mind unless I have a REASON to change my mind (and trust me, a study from 1989 done on 6 people or a product-placement article from WeSellHerbs.com ain’t it). At this point I have a lot of hardcore, real world evidence gleaned from things that I’ve read over the past 15+ years, but more importantly from having tens of thousands of people come and go on this forum, on Ingender, and even in the real world when I can get off this computer for a few precious moments, that have led me to draw the conclusions that I have. And may I remind you all, these very same conclusions have led us to our best results ever the past several years, while maintaining a very reasonable time to conception, with a premium put on health, safety, and sanity.

Guys, it’s working! Why mess with success?

Look, I know it’s a very sucky thing to first be told hey, it’s all about having sex on a magic day and then pesky old atomic comes along and says, nope, sorry, that’s not true. I know it’s sucky to be told that things are not as easy as a calcium pill and some cranberry juice. But this stuff just doesn’t work – that’s why we created the Gender Dreaming forum to begin with, is because so many of us got opposites doing those things. I’d be leading you down an evening primrose oil path if I said what you wanted to hear instead of what the truth is.

When I was considering swaying, I wanted a daughter, full stop. I didn’t want a daughter my way, I didn’t want a daughter Tamara’s way, or Dr. Shettles’ way, or in Dr. Patchouli von Chasteberry’s way, I wanted a daughter in the way that worked. And for that, I needed the truth. That’s why I did all this in the first place. The truth, and that girl. And I will never turn away from that because I want the same for you. I may be wrong about some things (undoubtedly I am) but all I can ever do is give it to you as straight as I can, even when you would vastly prefer I zigzagged and sugar coated a little bit more than I do.

Statement of fact: I am not trying to kill you, harm your unborn baby, ruin your sway, or destroy your fertility. I would simply never ever do that. I wouldn’t be a party to it. If you’re reluctant to trust the word of an online weirdo, while I understand completely, just think of it this way: if I was a liar or a scammer or just didn’t particularly care, I’d not waste the kind of time and effort I spend holding so many people’s hands, begging and cajoling you guys to eat something and not to kill yourself taking harmful supplements. If I didn’t care, like so many other people online, I’d just drop a diet for sale and start a Facebook group and leave it at that, buyer beware. Trust me, it would be a lot easier, and I’d probably make a lot more money with fake certainty than messy reality.

Since 2010, I helped everyone who showed up on Gender Dreaming whether or not they pay me, and most people don’t. I don’t get anything financially out of 95% of the people I help. I make less than minimum wage. I put this blog up at my own expense and while it’s not terribly expensive, it does actually cost me money to keep it up and running. This is simply not the way a scammer operates. 

I have no motive for steering you in “my” direction because…why would I? There’s no profit in it for me; I could go to work at McDonalds and make way more money for way less effort. The stuff I say is because I believe it with every fiber of my being and because I don’t like to see other women in misery, wasting months and years of their limited fertile windows, slugging herbal tinctures that mess up their cycles and may cause miscarriage, starving themselves on ACTUALLY insane diets, NOT the LE Diet which again, is simply the lower limits of a normal diet for women in childbearing years, according to the World Health Organization, and a safe caloric intake for weight loss prior to conception according to reproductive endocrinologists. I’m here for one reason, and that is because I legitimately want to help people and I am fortunate to be in a position where I actually can. It’s very rewarding for me; I like the thought that maybe I made the world a little bit better in my own strange way, and if I could do it all for free I would, since I could have a day off once in a while if I did.

My humble vow: When I start to see something in swaying that is not feeling right, giving me a weird vibe, I immediately drop it. I have done so on many occasions already, when things didn’t work or seemed to be causing more harm than good – herbs, aspirin/cranberry, abstain, the jellies, antihistamines, etc. It would have been easier for me if I kept those things instead of arguing people out of them, but I don’t, because I am NOT out to get you, I’m out to HELP you. I will continue to do that, but I honestly think we have it pretty dialed in now not only for swaying, but also for health, sanity, and fertility as well. We’re on the right track! Our results the past several years are by far the best they’ve ever been, with the healthiest diet anyone has ever used for swaying and with the same average time to conception as people who are not swaying. I expect more of the same in 2024 and beyond.

Now, a special shout out to my swayers from Australia, New Zealand, and Germany. I know that in your countries, herbalists and naturopaths are treated as medical professionals and given a lot of respect. In some cases, for some conditions, this respect is deserved since they’re filling a niche that traditional medical doctors are not filling and helping people who would otherwise be suffering – particularly people who have autoimmune diseases traditional doctors often miss, and elderly people who may have nutrient deficiencies that modern medicine does not take seriously. Occasionally, a younger person may end up with a nutrient deficiency, such as, to use an example that has happened repeatedly (despite my strenuous objections) if they insisted on starving themselves for over a year instead of actually following the LE Diet as it was written whilst doing a sway so strict they couldn’t conceive with it. But the fact that natural medicine can help a subset of people doesn’t make them perpetually right in every arena all the time and it doesn’t mean that their opinion is worth more than mine.

This is especially true if you are paying them vast sums of money, and paying me absolutely nothing. Again, I have no motivation to lie to you about the negative effects of herbs and megadose nutrients, and they have a very great motive in exaggerating “deficiencies” that are not deficiencies at all, or even outright lying about the positives of various supplements. Others I believe are truly well-intentioned, but only know what they’ve been taught, and weren’t able to figure it out the way I did, since they were too busy running medical tests of dubious effectiveness and prescribing herbs to actually monitor results in the real world.

I was, by the grace of God, simply put in a position where I could observe the results of herbal supplements without prejudice, and others weren’t. Because I’m an outsider to a very insider industry, I’ve been able to compare and contrast risks vs. benefits of the various herbs, OTC medication, and and megadose nutrients, without any preconceived notions beforehand.

At one time, I thought the supplements were safe, and I thought they worked, because I had been told that experts said they were safe, and experts said they worked. I had no reason to doubt that, no axe to grind. I believed what I had been told on faith, just as many of you do now. The SOLE reason I have come to take such a dim view of the advice being given to my swayers by naturopaths and their ilk is because of what I’ve witnessed firsthand.

Time and again we had people whose cycles were normal and fine, who started the supplements as advised on InGender and other swaying sites (formerly including on Gender Dreaming, till it became glaringly obvious what was happening – remember, guys, I once recommended them, I was never on a vendetta against supplements until I saw they were causing massive and undeniable side effects) who developed IMMEDIATE, severe issues that were clearly caused by the supplements. When we stopped the supplements, the issues went away within a few weeks. It was obvious the supplements caused a lot of trouble, and the fact that anyone can point to some study where “it was fine” or some herb book that says there are no risks to any of this doesn’t change the fact that it wasn’t fine and that there were risks.

I have had SO MANY people come to me for help, from other sites or after being in the care of a naturopath, begging for help with super long and heavy periods, shortening LP, delayed or stopped ovulation, not being able to conceive for no apparent reason, spotting during pregnancy and SCH, or recurrent, unexplained miscarriage. If you doubt my claims about the links between overuse of supplements and losses, to give you a couple of the most egregious examples, in one case a woman with no underlying health problems and two healthy pregnancies had 11 early miscarriages, 9 of which were chemicals, from taking high doses of supplements and then immediately conceived a healthy baby after stopping the supplements. In another, a woman with no underlying health problems and 5 prior, healthy pregnancies had 4 late first trimester/early second trimester miscarriages of genetically normal babies that appeared completely healthy on ultrasound. She was on a massive number of herbal supplements combined with prescription blood thinners that she didn’t even need, that her doctor had basically prescribed for no reason. I finally convinced her to stop the insane number of supplements and then she had a healthy baby in her very next pregnancy, after being told my many medical professionals that she would never have another living child. I have witnessed similar situations with unexplained losses that resolved after discontinuing supplement abuse thousands of times over the past 15+ years.

The first question I ask anyone who is having trouble conceiving, issues with their cycle, extremely heavy periods, or recurrent losses that seem to be happening for no medical reason, is what supplements they’re taking. In the vast majority of these cases, I can solve any issues they’re having with their cycles and even help them conceive by simply giving up the supplements. In the vast majority of the rest of the cases, a few minor adjustments in diet do the rest. It’s boring, but simple things like diet and exercise get results without the risks of supplements.

This can all be as simple as falling off a very large pile of cranberries if you guys could just meet me a fraction of the way instead of beating your collective heads against a pink sparkly brick wall doing the same things again and again, that a kajillion people have already tried and failed at (both in terms of conception and swaying), refusing to change anything based on my advice, out of some utterly misguided belief that I, of all the people out here in Internetsville, this person that 95% of you have given no money to, don’t have your best interests at heart.

I am not shouting at clouds to hear myself because I love the sound of my own voice and I don’t think I’m all that and a bag of low sodium potato chips, either. I would happily shut up and not spend six hours a day begging and pleading with you all to either not kill yourself or reassuring you that I’m not trying to kill you. When I write you some huge, massively long post to explain the complexities of all this jazz, it often takes me an hour or even more to write just ONE of them and some of you guys have threads going where I’ve done 20+ posts that long. I would NOT ever spend so much time on this for my own self-aggrandizement, because I am not completely insane, and I could get a lot more admiration telling you what you want to hear than what you don’t. Trust me, there are 9 million other things I’d rather be doing than begging people to eat some freaking food and to stop freebasing licorice root. I do not mind answering questions at all, indeed, I am completely used to answering unlimited numbers of exceedingly repetitive questions, which I’ve done lo these many years, but I’m not doing it to hear myself talk that’s for sure. That’s what I have social media for 😉

Dealing with the most extreme control freakish swayers is like watching lemmings rushing off the edge of a cliff. It’s awful. I hate it for you and I hate it for me, having to watch it happen while my protestations go unheeded. I want to stop it, I try to stop it (even at great expense to myself in my personal life, TBH, spending time I should be cleaning toilets and entertaining my husband doing so) but it’s getting pretty daunting, the number of people who are coming at me like I am somehow the villain of the piece when all I’m doing is attempting to help you guys.

One last time: I am not trying to kill you. I am not trying to wreck your sway. I want you to get pregnant as fast as possible and I want you to have your every dream come true. Your happy ending is my reward. I am not telling you things because I’m lazy, uncaring, uninformed, am overly conservative, am UNDERly conservative, haven’t done my homework, did too much homework, am not paying attention to your undoubtedly unique situation, have a raging case of narcissistic personality disorder, yadda yadda, whatever they’re saying about me this week. If I tell you something, it’s because I truly believe that it’s for your benefit in some fashion and/or is reflective of biological reality. When I reply to you guys, I take ALL factors into account – your baby’s health, your health, sanity, fertility, your marriage, the way your body itself actually works, and your sway. Not one of them in isolation, all of them together.

I don’t expect unquestioning trust, not at all, and I want you to continue hitting me with as many questions as ya got, because I always have reasons for everything I say and I like explaining things to people when I think it actually ends up helping them somehow. But if you guys can let go of the constant second, third, fifth, tenth, one-millionth guessing of every word I say, it will help keep me happier in my work and will also help your sway on track. Cause there’s no control freak like the control freak that thinks someone is out to get them.

In closing: I want to state, unequivocally, that this is NOT a request for you guys to “stop asking so many questions”. That is historically the response I get when I try to raise this issue with the main offenders – a handwave away of the greater issue, and then a mischaracterization “well atomic just doesn’t want me asking questions”. In many cases this is couched in some passive-agressive ‘tude, as well – framing it as MY problem, laziness, impatience, etc when I am merely trying to call attention to something that is actively putting people’s sways at risk. (Bizarrely, even when this is people whose questions I’ve answered for free, I get thinly veiled accusations of being a slacker.)

I answer swaying questions for hours a day, 360 days a year, and I have done so for over a decade now. I don’t mind and in fact ENJOY answering questions, or I wouldn’t do it. As I already mentioned, I could simply slap an e-book or diet up for sale, could have just posted my various essays without answering questions, or, I could do it Tamara-from-InGender-style and respond to everyone and clap back with a terse “this is in FAQ” reply. This is not, in any way, shape or form, about me “not wanting to answer questions”. It is about people who are ruining their sways with control freakishness that they refuse to address and spinning up scenarios in which I’m somehow asleep at the wheel or even actively intending to harm, when I don’t play along with the various tactics that they want to include in their sways.

Keep those questions coming, guys. Because the alternative, where you sit and stew and wonder and worry about various questions you have, is not going to help you either. You’ll simply be obsessing over and dwelling on things you very possibly have completely wrong, instead of my replies. The questions are not the problem. Failing to accept the answers is.

There is a vast gulf of difference between a normal and reasonable level of questions and arguing me to the mat as if I’m some sort of villainous jerk, in every arena all the time. K?

If you missed the first part of this essay, it’s here: https://atomicsagebrush.com/2024/01/23/help-atomic-is-trying-to-kill-me-part-one/

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