How your GI Issues are Created by your Nervous System

[00:00:00] So when we think about why the symptoms are happening, right? If we look at the relationship
[00:00:07] between stress and digestion, right? Which the autonomic nervous system controls both of those
[00:00:14] things, right? It does stress and it does digestion and stress impacts digestion along with a whole
[00:00:20] host of other things. So if we look at or if we accept that stress is really the biggest culprit
[00:00:30] when it comes to digestive symptoms, assuming that your diet is fairly healthy and well balanced,
[00:00:38] right? If we assume that and you've been medically worked up and gotten a DGBI diagnosis
[00:00:44] from a physician, then I think it's safe to assume that stress is the biggest culprit of your symptoms.
[00:00:51] And yes, this is deductive reasoning, but there's a whole lot of evidence these days that supports
[00:00:58] this. It's not a real leap to think this way. Hey there and welcome to Heal with Grace. I'm your
[00:01:04] host Grace Secker and I'm a holistic life and therapist and nervous system coach who believes
[00:01:10] that the chronic and often unseen symptoms you're living with are a sign of something deeper going
[00:01:15] on. A sign that your nervous system needs attention. In each episode, I'll share the science behind
[00:01:21] the most calming chronic health disorders, cost holistic health tips using mental, physical,
[00:01:27] and spiritual practices. You'll hear what I've learned in my journey and the true
[00:01:30] stories from our trusted guests so you can feel less alone in your experience and give
[00:01:36] yourself grace no matter what you're going through. So without further ado, settle in and get cozy,
[00:01:42] it's time to Heal with Grace. Hi, Jennifer. Thank you so much for coming on the Heal with
[00:01:46] Grace podcast. I am excited for you to be here. Thank you, Grace, for inviting me to be here.
[00:01:51] I'm looking forward to having this conversation. Yeah. Let's go ahead and jump right in. I
[00:01:56] really want to understand your story of how you became a gastro-psychologist.
[00:02:00] That's brandishing. I know many people have not heard of that and it's been a long time,
[00:02:05] right? It's not just something new. You formulated this a while ago. That's right.
[00:02:10] Yeah. Why don't you share a little bit of your story with us? Okay. So I didn't set out to become a
[00:02:17] gastro-psychologist or a psychologist that focuses on gut symptoms. This is something that I
[00:02:25] sort of fell into first through personal experience. I was diagnosed with IBS as a teenager
[00:02:31] and I had a really progressive gastroenterologist that very quickly referred me on to a psychologist.
[00:02:39] And I waited a year to seek treatment from the psychologist because it felt really stigmatizing.
[00:02:49] But I got so desperate, I had to. And back then, they weren't prescribing a lot of things,
[00:02:54] especially to kids. So it's not like they were prescribing this and prescribing that.
[00:02:59] And then I was trying these different meds over time. He very quickly said,
[00:03:03] there's really nothing more I can do for you. And that didn't feel bad. That felt like he was
[00:03:08] very caring. He listened well. So I felt heard. I felt cared for. And so when he said,
[00:03:17] there's genuinely nothing I can do for you, it was a little disappointing, but it didn't
[00:03:22] feel dismissive, which is important. So he gave me this referral. Then I sat on it for a year.
[00:03:28] By the end of that year, my symptoms were so acute. I was so desperate for relief.
[00:03:32] I had no other options but to reach out to the psychologist. So it was like the logical next
[00:03:38] step. I didn't really have to think so hard about it. I started talking to this psychologist
[00:03:42] once a week in person. I knew nothing about the type of psychologist she was or anything.
[00:03:48] I'm still a teenager. And I go in once a week for an hour and I talk never about my GI symptoms.
[00:03:57] I never talked about my GI symptoms. I just talked about my life, my stress,
[00:04:03] the dramas of the week, my friends, whatever. And lo and behold, after one year of just that,
[00:04:09] nothing different. And if anything, worse stress in my life, because now I was getting
[00:04:13] closer to like my grades mattered more, I was getting closer to figuring out
[00:04:17] what college I was going to apply to, all that. After the end of that year,
[00:04:21] I was, I'd say about 50% better. So all of my acute symptoms that caused me to miss school,
[00:04:28] caused me not to be able to eat, made me feel terrible and I was in so much pain.
[00:04:33] All of those terrible symptoms went away. And so I was able to function in my life.
[00:04:38] So I graduate high school and I was just very acutely aware of the connection between the
[00:04:43] mind and body. Like how is it possible that I could get so much better from just talking to
[00:04:50] a psychologist once a week about my life? So that was my question, my big question. That then
[00:04:56] later led me to make certain choices as it came to studying psychology. So I was going to
[00:05:04] probably become a psychologist anyway. But because I'd had that experience,
[00:05:08] the graduate program I chose was a different graduate program than the one I would have chose
[00:05:13] otherwise. And I ended up having an interesting experience in graduate school. As a result, no,
[00:05:20] I, it was important to me to pick a school where I could ask the question that I wanted to know,
[00:05:25] how did this happen? And I could pursue studies that would help me to understand that.
[00:05:30] And so as I did that, I started learning about a lot of different mind body modalities,
[00:05:35] right? Like I was expected to meditate every day at the beginning of every class,
[00:05:39] I was expected to do martial arts and yoga and have certain conversations and engage in
[00:05:44] mindful communication, mindful conversation, self-compassion was something we talked about.
[00:05:50] I mean, this is way before Madonna popularized yoga and way before mindfulness was a word that
[00:05:57] most people had heard of. So all of those things ended up making a difference. I started,
[00:06:05] my system started calming down. My brain started calming down. I didn't even realize
[00:06:11] how anxious I was until I really understood meditation. And then I started really being
[00:06:17] able to see how anxious my mind really was. So I started calm, I started working on that and
[00:06:22] calming down. And I was in a community of really wonderful people that were very supportive
[00:06:27] and kind and loving and affectionate. And that all made a difference. And so by the time I
[00:06:33] got out of graduate school, had before graduate school, I had, you know, I still had some symptoms
[00:06:37] that happened every so often, not acute, but they happened. And by the time I graduated,
[00:06:43] pretty much all those symptoms had gone away. And then I started realizing certain fears that
[00:06:48] I still had certain things I was avoiding. And I started unraveling those one at a time
[00:06:54] when they would show up. And then I got to the point where I just, I was fully recovered.
[00:06:59] And that was about the time I was already working as a psychotherapist for, you know,
[00:07:08] like getting my hours in order to get licensed. And I needed to find, I needed to find clients.
[00:07:15] And I was responsible for getting my own clients. So that means I had to go out and
[00:07:20] pound the pavement and attract people to my practice. And, you know, I happened to
[00:07:26] simultaneously be working part-time at an advertising agency. And they said,
[00:07:30] you need a niche, you need a niche. So I was talking to my mom one day and she says,
[00:07:34] well, you should work with people who have IBS. And I said, no, no, no, that's the last thing
[00:07:40] I want to do. I don't want to work with people with IBS because if I start hearing them talk about
[00:07:45] their stories, right, they start telling me about their IBS symptoms that might trigger
[00:07:50] my own symptoms again, which is completely irrational because I had not had symptoms in years.
[00:07:56] So then I was like, kind of the last piece for me. I was like, wow, I'm avoiding exposure to
[00:08:02] patients or to people's stories because I'm afraid. And it's totally irrational for me to think that
[00:08:09] I could suddenly have symptoms just from being there with someone who had symptoms. So that was
[00:08:14] it. I worked that, I unraveled that and it took me like just days. And then I thought,
[00:08:18] okay, I'm ready. So it wasn't even my idea is my point. I never thought about doing that.
[00:08:24] Yeah. Similar to me actually never in a million years thought I would be doing what I do.
[00:08:30] Really? Yeah, no, I went into school because I wanted to be a teen girl therapist because
[00:08:35] that's how I was helped as a teen. And that was my thing. I was like, I'm going to be a
[00:08:43] teen girl therapist. And I went in a totally different direction, not totally different,
[00:08:46] but just not that way. So I'm curious, have you had symptoms since working in the specialty?
[00:08:53] Sometimes we talk about that, you know, taking fine symptoms. Yeah.
[00:09:00] No, digestive symptoms are sort of interesting because like digestive symptoms is like
[00:09:07] even normal includes certain digestive symptoms sometimes, right? I mean, we get like indigestion
[00:09:13] sometimes if we don't eat a particular way or drink or we travel, we get constipated, you know.
[00:09:17] So I mean, yeah, I still have like, you know, the normal things that happen. And from time to time,
[00:09:26] I mean, we're talking once in a blue moon, I have something really bad happens. And it's
[00:09:31] always because of a massive stressor. But the thing is that I now know
[00:09:38] that that's what's going on. And I know, I know how to get myself out of it really quickly. So
[00:09:44] it's not even diagnosable as a disorder of gut-brain interaction, because it doesn't
[00:09:50] go on long enough to actually meet these criteria. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.
[00:09:54] Okay, so then how do you explain what did you essentially find out in your studies? And
[00:09:59] when you weren't to search, how do you explain the relationship between the gut,
[00:10:02] the brain, and the nervous system? Well, I think I like to, I like to make things as simple as
[00:10:08] possible. I think it's important to really recognize that the whole purpose of the brain is to ensure
[00:10:14] our survival. Okay, so that's like the primary job of the brain. And pretty much everything it
[00:10:22] does is in service of our survival, right? Keeping us safe and out of harm's way, right?
[00:10:29] When the brain, when their nervous system is really, you know, tasked with our survival,
[00:10:34] and the brain is what does a lot of the, you know, perceiving of danger to ensure that we know when
[00:10:41] it's time to do certain things, right? And so when it's time to do stress, then the brain
[00:10:50] signals our autonomic nervous system to start doing stress, right? And the autonomic nervous
[00:10:57] system not only does stress, but it does digestion, right? And so right there, like when we think about
[00:11:05] the autonomic nervous system, first of all, we don't consciously control our autonomic nervous
[00:11:10] system. It does these things, it does stress and it does digestion without needing our conscious
[00:11:16] control, which is really good, because we would be bogged down if we had to consciously decide
[00:11:21] to do stress or to do digestion, we would be doing that like all day, we wouldn't have enough,
[00:11:27] we wouldn't be able to work. So our autonomic nervous system does stress,
[00:11:31] does digestion, and does it without needing our conscious control. So if we're having digestive
[00:11:37] symptoms, right? And we don't control digestion. That's a real conundrum, right? Right? So the
[00:11:46] way I think about this is, you know, we are not in the driver's seat of digestion. We want to
[00:11:52] be, you want to control your digestive symptoms, right? But you don't actually control your digestion.
[00:11:59] So you're not in the driver's seat and that's really frustrating. And for most people when
[00:12:03] you have digestive symptoms, you feel like you're in the back seat of the car, right? With no control
[00:12:09] whatsoever, totally out of control. And it's extremely stressful, right? So the goal is
[00:12:16] not to get in the driver's seat, because that's not really the way this works, right? Nobody's in
[00:12:22] the driver's seat of their autonomic nervous system. So the best we can do is get in the front passenger
[00:12:31] seat. And from there, we have a lot more at our fingertips, right? We can control the music,
[00:12:39] we can control the volume, we can control the temperature of the car, we can talk to the driver
[00:12:46] we have a lot of influence, right? And that's essentially what we want to do. So we want to
[00:12:52] sort of not just feel like a victim in the back seat and go into panic mode. But we want to be able
[00:12:58] to, you know, using a lot of self talk and self compassion and acceptance strategies, right? We
[00:13:05] have to accept, okay, we're in the car. This is happening. The car is going places we don't
[00:13:11] really want to go, right? And yet, here we are to breathe. Let's figure out how we're going to
[00:13:18] address this situation, right? It's kind of like the way a lot of people respond to digestive symptoms
[00:13:23] quite automatically is almost like the way a child, like a young child reacts when they have to do
[00:13:30] something they don't want to do, they have a tantrum, right? And, you know, it's kind of
[00:13:36] the way our brain works when we really don't want to have symptoms in this moment or at all,
[00:13:42] and then they start happening, right? A little bit of a tantrum. And it's justified. It's totally
[00:13:48] understandable for you to have feelings about this. And yet, if we just stay in that high stress
[00:13:54] tantrum state, we're not able to really effectively deal with the situation at hand.
[00:13:59] We don't deal with things well, unless it's an emergency or a crisis, we don't really want
[00:14:05] to be in crisis mode, right? We want to be calm and centered so we can think mindfully, logically,
[00:14:12] rationally about what's happening and to understand the situation clearly so we're not overreacting
[00:14:19] and then allow ourselves to just, you know, process our feelings and then make sense of it
[00:14:23] all and make a plan. What are some of the tools and skills that we can do as a passenger
[00:14:28] in the passenger seat? I think if we're in the passenger seat, we have to think about, like,
[00:14:35] where we are in a given moment, right? What's happening right now in this moment, right? Because
[00:14:41] the way that we respond is not really about what seat that we're in. It's more what's happening
[00:14:47] in this moment and what's the most effective choice I can make to help bring about the
[00:14:53] outcome I'm looking for. So there's lots of different moments that can play out and those
[00:15:01] can look a little bit different, right? Like, I'm in the grips of acute symptoms versus I'm actually
[00:15:07] having a good day, but having a good day creates some problems too for people, right? Because
[00:15:13] when you have a good day but you're not used to having a good day, sometimes the mind has
[00:15:17] learned to focus on the symptoms so much or, you know, the place in our body where we experience
[00:15:25] the symptoms that we can be so fixated on the problem and we're not actually enjoying our good day.
[00:15:33] And in fact, it can be even a self-fulfilling prophecy of I'm so worried about having symptoms
[00:15:39] later. I'm predicting that I'm going to have symptoms later, which is what our minds do.
[00:15:43] They use predictive processing, so it's really normal for the brain to do that and yet it's not
[00:15:48] helpful when you're actually having a good day and you can't even focus on the goodness that's
[00:15:54] happening in the here and now. Yeah, yeah. So what I'm hearing is working with
[00:15:58] fear and anxiety around the body and symptoms are what could or could not happen, may or may
[00:16:04] not happen. That is a whole set of strategies, yes. But that plays out, you know, in a lot
[00:16:09] of different ways. Fear, so when we think about why the symptoms are happening, right, if we look at
[00:16:17] the relationship between stress and digestion, right, which the autonomic nervous system
[00:16:24] controls both of those things, right? It does stress and it does digestion and stress impacts
[00:16:30] digestion along with a whole host of other things. So if we look at or if we accept
[00:16:38] that stress is really the biggest culprit when it comes to digestive symptoms, assuming that
[00:16:45] your diet is fairly healthy and well balanced, if we assume that and you've been medically worked up
[00:16:53] and gotten a DGBI diagnosis from a physician, then I think it's safe to assume that stress is
[00:17:01] the biggest culprit of your symptoms. And yes, this is deductive reasoning, but there's a whole
[00:17:07] lot of evidence these days that supports this. It's not a real leap to think this way. And the
[00:17:14] reason why I think we need to start thinking this way and treating for stress or chronic stress
[00:17:20] really is that, you know, basically there's no reason not to treat for chronic stress,
[00:17:29] because what's the worst that happens? There's no side effects for treating chronic stress.
[00:17:34] And what is the downside, right? I mean, it's only upside. So if you're reducing stress,
[00:17:40] how is that not going to benefit you, right? So then the question becomes, how do we reduce
[00:17:48] stress? How do we come out of this pattern of chronic stress that's been at play for a while?
[00:17:54] And there's a whole lot of ways that we do this. And then there are some commonalities
[00:18:00] or things that that are just true across a wide range of people. That's actually what
[00:18:05] I was going to ask you next is, you see, there's two parts to my question. One, do you see a theme
[00:18:11] with people that are coming in your door with chronic digestive symptoms? IBS? I don't know
[00:18:19] if there is or not. I'm just curious. And what are some of those themes that help the majority?
[00:18:26] Yeah. Well, I think one of the themes is when you have chronic stress, most often people
[00:18:33] are suffering from some form of anxiety, whether it's diagnosed or not, right? So I think sometimes
[00:18:40] anxiety is not necessarily diagnosed because if you're not complaining about what you experience
[00:18:47] day in and day out, then you're not going to see care for it and you're not going to get
[00:18:52] diagnosed. So that's one reason. Another reason is we live in a very fast-paced society. And so
[00:18:58] if you're moving fast, talking fast, going fast, go, go, go, go, do, do all the time,
[00:19:03] there's so much positive reinforcement for that in our culture that it's really hard to see that
[00:19:08] as maybe some form of anxiety. And so I think a lot of people manage symptoms of anxiety
[00:19:19] that is not problematic, really. In their day-to-day lives, it's not necessarily problematic,
[00:19:25] but it becomes problematic when you're living at the top of your window of tolerance or your
[00:19:32] zone of regulation. Everybody has their max capacity of stress that they can handle,
[00:19:40] stress or activation or stimulation that they can handle before their nervous system
[00:19:46] sort of reaches its peak. And then once you surpass that capacity, then you start seeing
[00:19:56] symptoms, whether it's overwhelm or panic attacks or just way too much anxiety or crashing out in
[00:20:04] depression or fatigue. So if we're living hard and fast for too long,
[00:20:16] we're setting our nervous system up to not be able to handle much more. And then if a traumatic
[00:20:21] experience happens on top of that, this is like a common scenario. You type a person,
[00:20:28] you know, lives hard and fast, go, go, go, do, do, do. They don't really have a habit of slowing
[00:20:36] down or practicing more contemplative things or paying attention to how they feel and processing
[00:20:42] their emotions and all kinds of habits. And then something truly traumatic happens and
[00:20:49] they don't have the bandwidth to deal with it very well. I mean, something traumatic,
[00:20:56] even for the best of us, even if we have all these skills that help us to be more resilient
[00:21:01] and to have greater capacity, even if we had all those skills, sometimes a traumatic event
[00:21:06] can blow us out of the water. But when we have more capacity, we have greater ability to come
[00:21:14] out of that chronic stress that happens as a result of trauma easier. So we have more bandwidth
[00:21:21] to reach out to people or to maybe do some of the things, engage in some of the practices or
[00:21:28] to do some of the journaling or trauma processing or whatever we need to do.
[00:21:33] Just we have a little more capacity for that. And we maybe have the built-in resources
[00:21:41] and skill set to be able to do those things effectively so that we can navigate out, right,
[00:21:47] and back to a calmer state of being. I want to highlight what you mentioned. We do a lot
[00:21:57] and you get rewarded very easily for that. And I often find, I don't know if you find this too,
[00:22:01] but I often find that people will acknowledge a little bit of stress or acknowledge maybe
[00:22:06] something here or there. But overall, it might just be so normal that they're like,
[00:22:10] well, how could I be this stressed to have these symptoms? Exactly.
[00:22:14] But it's just become part of the norm. That's it. It's hard to recognize something
[00:22:20] when that's been the way you've been living for a long time or your whole life, right? It's hard
[00:22:25] to see something as a problem if it's been that way your whole life. That's just normal.
[00:22:32] So yeah, I'm a perfectionist, but it's hard to see yourself as a perfectionist. It's hard
[00:22:38] to see yourself as a people pleaser if that's just kind of what you do. It's not a change.
[00:22:44] You don't go into that mode. It's just part of your overall integrated thought process and approach.
[00:22:51] Exactly. Which is why things like this, like podcasts and information, and it's helpful
[00:22:57] for people to hear or someone might hear it and send it to someone, because we can't see
[00:23:01] everything about ourselves. We can't understand the dynamics that happen that contribute to
[00:23:05] the stress that then contributes to our bodies. Yeah. So just to sum it up though,
[00:23:11] the things that contribute are sometimes lifelong habits, lifelong strategies, lifelong
[00:23:18] patterns of thinking, of doing, of feeling or not feeling, serve a valuable or helpful purpose
[00:23:31] when these strategies or behaviors came into being, right? When they started being used,
[00:23:39] they were helpful, effective, maybe a matter of survival. And as they become habitual, as one grows
[00:23:49] up and does different things and exposes themselves to different situations, different people,
[00:23:55] different stimuli, they become rigid, right? And one of the keys to health is flexibility.
[00:24:01] I mean, we're seeing this right now politically in a lot of ways, but we see this
[00:24:05] with any organization that if they don't know how to adapt to change, as change is the way,
[00:24:13] they don't know how to adapt to change, they're not going to survive.
[00:24:17] And we as human beings are designed to adapt pretty well. So well that we adapt to circumstances
[00:24:27] without even consciously knowing that that's what our brain's doing. And that's why it's
[00:24:31] hard to recognize stress and trauma as easily as I think would be helpful in treating DGBIs.
[00:24:40] And I meant to ask you this earlier, can you explain DGBIs just for someone who doesn't understand
[00:24:45] that? So a DGBI stands for Disorder of Gut Brain Interaction. It includes, it's a category
[00:24:52] of digestive disorders that includes visual bowel syndrome, chronic constipation,
[00:24:57] cyclic vomiting syndrome, chronic dyspepsia and some others. And it's basically the new name that's
[00:25:03] given to functional gastrointestinal disorders, right? And it's just a category of digestive
[00:25:10] disorders. And every medical specialty has its category of what are called functional
[00:25:16] medical disorders or functional medical problems. And I think, you know, certain people would
[00:25:22] call those mind body problems or neuroplastic conditions, all terms that mean the same thing,
[00:25:28] medical or physiological problems that aren't attributable to disease or structural dysfunction
[00:25:35] or injury. Okay. Yeah, that's helpful. And so this, these terms can be more labels,
[00:25:41] syndromes that you get after going through medical testing and rolling out other things
[00:25:45] that could be more structural. Is that right? I want to back up to emotions and working,
[00:25:51] understanding ourselves, understanding emotional regulation and processing them as obviously,
[00:25:56] and you mentioned this is a big part of this. How do you explain how either stuck emotions or
[00:26:03] non-processed emotions or emotions at all? How does that contribute to a stressed body?
[00:26:09] Okay. So we have emotions all the time as human beings. It is totally normal and natural
[00:26:15] to be emotional and to have emotions. We don't always get that memo. In our families,
[00:26:21] in our culture, in society, as Americans, I don't think that we are trained very well to
[00:26:30] see ourselves as normal human beings when we have an emotion show up. And so emotions are not
[00:26:38] like totally welcome. They're not welcome in the business world. They're not welcome
[00:26:44] in a lot of different contexts. And so when that's sort of the context,
[00:26:49] and we're growing up in families who also don't learn how to welcome their own emotions
[00:26:54] into the fold, then you learn very early that I'm not supposed to have emotions
[00:27:03] or I'm not supposed to talk about my emotions. I'm not supposed to share them. I'm not supposed
[00:27:07] to cry. Whatever the assumption is, and that assumption is not necessarily wrong.
[00:27:14] It's based on what you pick up on or the experiences you have, whether explicitly
[00:27:20] your parent tells you, you can't talk about that here or I'm not going to talk about it,
[00:27:26] whatever it is, or whether oftentimes it's more implicit. It's just a sense that I don't feel
[00:27:32] safe or I don't feel comfortable opening up and showing vulnerability, crying or talking about
[00:27:38] how I'm really feeling. And so when we learn at such a young age that it's not okay to share
[00:27:45] how we really feel in one situation or multiple situations, or worse, we get punished or slammed
[00:27:55] or something really terrible happens when we do open up, then our brain sees that as a threat.
[00:28:04] It's a threat to my sense of safety or my security or even my life, God forbid, for me to open up
[00:28:12] and start sharing my emotion or to even recognize or to cry or whatever it is. And so if we learn
[00:28:20] really young that we can't have that emotion come up and out in some way to be seen, to be
[00:28:28] experienced inside and or to be seen by somebody else. If we learn that that's not safe,
[00:28:36] then our brain is going to try to keep that from happening. It's going to keep that out of
[00:28:41] consciousness and how far out of consciousness depends on what you've experienced, how your brain
[00:28:47] responds to those experiences and what the specific emotion is. For example,
[00:28:54] some people have anger go underground, but other emotions are welcome. And there's so many
[00:29:02] different scenarios that can play out that can result in emotions being experienced by
[00:29:14] different people in different ways. But the bottom line is if your brain does not
[00:29:20] feel safe enough to allow feelings to be felt experienced inside and then to be shared in some
[00:29:27] way so we don't just have to hold it in or express, then our brain has to use its resources to keep
[00:29:35] that stuff out of consciousness and to keep it in. And that is not a one-time deal. It's not
[00:29:41] like your brain goes, okay, we need to put a little effort into this for just a moment and
[00:29:46] then we're good. We can just stop putting effort or work into that. It's 24-7. If something has to
[00:29:52] stay out of your consciousness, your brain has to work at that all the time to keep it out,
[00:29:58] to keep you from having to look at it, having to feel it, having to deal with it.
[00:30:03] That's a really helpful part that I'm glad that you brought up the idea that your brain's
[00:30:08] working so hard to keep that away because I haven't heard that explained in that way very
[00:30:13] often. And this is why I asked. I talk about emotions on here. We've discussed it, but it is
[00:30:17] the one thing I find with clients in the mind, body, space with symptoms and a lot of digestive
[00:30:23] symptoms where they're doing the brain training, they're learning about fear and anxiety.
[00:30:28] And this emotions piece is kind of that thing that maybe not probably not consciously, maybe,
[00:30:33] but unconsciously not working with or looking at or feeling, right? And so I love to have
[00:30:41] people explain it in different ways. So maybe it'll, we'll take it in a different way and understand,
[00:30:46] oh, okay, and get the courage to feel a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so important to
[00:30:54] understand that part of how we know we're alive as humans is we feel things. And I mean,
[00:31:01] when you think about what depression is, depression is like a depressing, right? A pressing down
[00:31:07] on our life force, right? And that's why we feel we just like, there's no effect. We're like, we go flat.
[00:31:15] So when we're alive, we feel when you when you think about like what passion is, right? It's like
[00:31:21] that aliveness to the nth degree, because of something or someone that ignites you makes
[00:31:27] us feel really alive, right? So emotions are part of our aliveness. And it's really important
[00:31:34] for us to retrain ourselves to recognize that, first of all, to just recognize in a blanket way
[00:31:42] that we have emotions all the time and to have that be okay to learn how to develop maybe a
[00:31:49] different type of relationship with our emotional lives and our inner selves so that we create
[00:31:56] a safe space for our emotions to exist, right? And then we need to work maybe on finding safe
[00:32:02] spaces in our external world, right? With other people so that we can have our feelings not just
[00:32:10] be recognized by us, but also to be shared to be talked about to be expressed and to work with
[00:32:15] them in ways that might be important in order for us to recover from something painful or sad
[00:32:22] or traumatic or intense. Yeah. Thank you for that. That's really helpful. And you really
[00:32:29] need a good picture around understanding how stress and emotions affect the autonomic nervous system,
[00:32:34] which we don't have control over, right? And that we can't help either direct or shift,
[00:32:40] especially being that passenger in the car, love that analogy. Is there anything else around
[00:32:44] what we've talked about that feels like it needs to be summed up or you want to share more on?
[00:32:51] Yes. Okay. So first of all, when a doctor does a full medical workup and tells you that you have
[00:33:00] IBS or some other disorder of gut-brain interaction or chronic pain or some other
[00:33:05] condition, when they've assessed your body and they told you that they don't find anything,
[00:33:11] that's really good news. You don't want them to find anything. That means that there's
[00:33:15] probably some kind of structural dysfunction, which is a much bigger deal, right? So when you
[00:33:21] have a disorder of gut-brain interaction, it's a software problem, not a hardware problem,
[00:33:27] right? And that's actually really good news. And you might not see it that way,
[00:33:33] but that is something to work towards, right? What part of your brain, what part of you,
[00:33:38] what feelings are you having in response to hearing that this is good news? And
[00:33:43] be curious about that response. That brings insight. That might tell you what needs to happen in order
[00:33:49] for you to find some ease in this situation. So that can be a start. Yeah. So that's one thing.
[00:33:57] All right. Two, your brain and body are never working against you. Thank you for saying that,
[00:34:04] right? They're always working in service of you staying alive and safe, right? Three,
[00:34:11] your brain and body, they know how to heal and recover from all kinds of things. They do it all
[00:34:17] the time. When you have an injury, they know how to help the body to heal. When you have a cut,
[00:34:22] you don't have to tell your brain and body how to heal and recover from that, right? You do need
[00:34:27] to treat the wound to make sure you don't get an infection. But once you treat the wound,
[00:34:32] or maybe you keep treating it, but your body is automatically going to do the healing,
[00:34:38] right? On its own time clock, you don't get to say, okay, can you heal this in five minutes for
[00:34:43] me, please? Some people do that with their digestive symptoms. They're like, well, I can't have,
[00:34:50] you know, from this day to that day, because I've got this other thing going on,
[00:34:54] then they get really, really frustrated when the symptoms happen and they feel a lot of pressure.
[00:34:59] Like, okay, I got to get this fixed by this date. And guess what? That creates more stress.
[00:35:04] Yeah. And I think that's the final thing I want to say is that
[00:35:09] the fix here is it's all about reducing stress. You might need to avoid certain things initially,
[00:35:17] but avoidance is really not going to cut it long term, right? So we can't just avoid everything
[00:35:25] and then everything's going to be great. We have to start deconstructing the things
[00:35:32] that we know, we have to start with the things that we know are causing us stress and start
[00:35:38] deconstructing these, whatever they are, these stressors little by little. Like we have to,
[00:35:43] first of all, we have to be willing to turn towards them and say, okay, yes, I am. We have to
[00:35:48] be willing to acknowledge, yes, this thing is causing me great stress. If we're starting
[00:35:52] with what we know, then we can start to take a bite out of stress and work towards the
[00:35:58] things that we don't know instead of banging our head against the wall, trying to figure out
[00:36:03] what we don't know and what our brain is keeping out of consciousness. Brains are going to keep
[00:36:08] things out of consciousness until there's enough time and space for that stuff to come forward.
[00:36:15] So we have to create the conditions under which the stuff that we don't know about,
[00:36:21] the stuff that our brain's been keeping out of consciousness, we need to create enough
[00:36:25] time and space and safety for that material to start coming forward.
[00:36:31] Yeah, it's a great way of looking at it. We talk about learning how to create safety in the body
[00:36:36] to reduce some fear and anxiety, but yeah, it's for allowing too. It's allowing that space and
[00:36:42] being able to work through what we need to work through or for that unconscious to come forward.
[00:36:45] So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Right. And we do that by focusing on feeling good
[00:36:51] as much as we can. Because we're going to all feel much more at ease when we feel good.
[00:36:58] Yeah, beautiful. Okay. Thank you so much. This is a great conversation because you explained it
[00:37:05] easily and simply like you mentioned in the beginning. So I think that it's a way for
[00:37:12] people to grab on to it and start to make some connections for themselves. So thank you.
[00:37:16] I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. That's what we can do, right? Share and help and try to say it in a
[00:37:22] different way maybe at some point in time because we all hear things differently.
[00:37:27] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope this speaks to people and helps people to not get lost in all of these
[00:37:34] different more complicated processes or get bogged down in flooding themselves with data,
[00:37:41] information, information, information. I think it's simpler if we just start slowing down
[00:37:48] and paying attention to the parts of ourselves that haven't really gotten our attention.
[00:37:53] Yeah. Yeah. And I'll end with repeating what you said that if you have heard from a doctor,
[00:37:59] if you have one of these symptoms, syndromes, it can be a good thing. Even if it feels
[00:38:04] scary at first because you don't know, but if you're listening to this,
[00:38:08] it can be a good thing and you can, it can be helped. So yeah. Yeah. It's good news. Exactly.
[00:38:14] It's good news that you don't have a disease or a structural dysfunction.
[00:38:19] For sure. That your body is in fine working order and that the problem is a software problem
[00:38:24] that is a good problem to have in the scheme of, in the grand scheme of things.
[00:38:29] Yeah. For sure. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for having me, Grace. You are welcome. And we
[00:38:34] will make sure to link your links below, but do you want to share how people can find you?
[00:38:38] Yes. People can find me at Don't Hate Your Guts on YouTube or Don'tHateYourGuts.com
[00:38:45] for a free ebook and two different courses that I have available.
[00:38:50] Amazing. I love the web page, the website, the handle. That's great. Don't hate it.
[00:38:55] Thank you. All right. Thank you. And we will see you next time on The Hills Grace Podcast.
[00:39:01] If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to me if you could do these couple
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