What I Wish Every Therapist or Coach Knew About the Nervous System

[00:00:00] Regulation is walking over and turning down the smoke detector every time it goes off.
[00:00:04] Super useful skill. You need it, but if the smoke detector is broken,
[00:00:08] if it's screaming every time you make toast, turning it down every single time is not a life
[00:00:12] that's maintenance. Rewiring is showing the smoke detector over and over. There's no fire
[00:00:19] until it stops going off at the burnt toast. Hey there and welcome to the heal with grace
[00:00:25] I'm your host, Grace Secker, and I'm a holistic licensed therapist and nervous system coach who
[00:00:31] believes that the chronic and often unseen symptoms you're living with are a sign of
[00:00:37] something deeper going on. A sign that your nervous system needs attention. In each episode,
[00:00:42] I'll share the science behind the most common chronic health disorders,
[00:00:46] plus holistic tips using mental, physical, and spiritual practices. You'll hear what I've
[00:00:51] learned in my journey and the true stories from our trusted guests so you can feel less alone
[00:00:56] in your experience and give yourself grace no matter what you're going through. So without
[00:01:00] further ado, settle in and get cozy. It's time to heal with grace. Hello, hello, and welcome back
[00:01:06] to the heal with grace podcast. I'm excited for this episode where I am speaking directly
[00:01:13] to the therapist and practitioner here. You could be a coach, functional practitioner,
[00:01:18] any kind of person that works with people in the wellness space, but you are not a practitioner
[00:01:23] and you are here on this podcast and you're an avid listener that I've been listening every week.
[00:01:29] You don't want to miss this either because I think that you're actually going to get a lot of
[00:01:32] value out of this. I've actually gone back and forth on do I just talk about this in general,
[00:01:38] right? And what I wish people knew about the nervous system or do I make it specific to
[00:01:44] a therapist or practitioner listening. And I went with the latter because this is, man, it's
[00:01:51] another passion of mine now to help other wellness professionals and healers understand this work
[00:01:56] so that then we can make an even bigger ripple effect here, right? Because I know if you are a
[00:02:02] client, which by the way, I'm sure a lot of you who are practitioners listening to this,
[00:02:06] you have also been the client and you're here for a reason. You came to this podcast
[00:02:10] because you've either dealt with it for yourself within yourself, you've dealt with some kind of
[00:02:14] pain or illness or physical manifestations of stress. And you also probably are starting to see
[00:02:20] this and the people that you work with. So my point being is that if you have been someone
[00:02:27] who has gone to a practitioner and they didn't really know how to help you, that's why I'm
[00:02:31] creating this. And that is why actually I am creating a training for the practitioners to
[00:02:36] learn about this work, to learn how to approach people when they come to them with these pains
[00:02:41] and illnesses that they've been labeled as just is what it is and you have to live with it, right?
[00:02:46] They're just chronic conditions that we can actually help that. We can recover from those.
[00:02:53] And as a practitioner, you can help people that you work with recover from them or at
[00:02:57] least have the language to talk with them about it. That's the purpose of this episode and
[00:03:03] a few more that are coming out like this and the purpose of why I am now going to be launching the
[00:03:08] Mind Body Integration Method Training for practitioners this fall. So stay tuned about that.
[00:03:14] But the point of this episode is to help people understand more than let's just regulate our
[00:03:20] nervous systems because societal standards have dysregulated us and trauma dysregulates you.
[00:03:26] Yes, that is all very important. And I'm really glad that's a common conversation now.
[00:03:31] We can talk about how it's trendy, blah, blah, blah, but like it's trendy for a reason, y'all.
[00:03:36] It needs to be there and I'm so happy to see it out there. And also, there often is a missing piece
[00:03:42] to this, right? So a lot of people understand what the nervous system is now. And if not,
[00:03:46] that's fine too. Like I will talk you through it. And they might understand that being in a
[00:03:50] stress state for a long time can dysregulate them and lead to things like anxiety or
[00:03:56] feeling depleted or depressed. But they don't often recognize that it can lead to things like
[00:04:03] chronic pains, chronic fatigue, interstitial stitis, OAB, pelvic pain, back pain,
[00:04:10] neck pain, gut issues, neck issues, migraines, sensitivity disorders, food sensitivities.
[00:04:18] And even if you understand that like, yeah, okay, nervous system can lead to these things
[00:04:22] like a stress place, right? We understand stress affects the body. We totally get that,
[00:04:26] which is wonderful. But then we kind of stop there. Like, okay, I'm going to help you,
[00:04:33] then manage that and be with it and learn to help yourself because you have these things,
[00:04:38] these conditions, these labels. What I'm introducing and helping, well, I'm not the one
[00:04:45] personally introducing this. This is not the work that I've created in the world. This
[00:04:48] is the work that I do, by the way, there's plenty of people out there, plenty of other
[00:04:52] practitioners and doctors and places that I've learned this. But my mission is to share it
[00:04:56] and to spread it. And our work is to help you understand that your stress levels,
[00:05:03] not that you're consciously doing it, but stress that has built up over time in your life,
[00:05:07] have led more to a stress place in your body. And your body is taking that on
[00:05:11] with certain pains and illnesses and conditions. It doesn't stop there. It's not like, oh,
[00:05:16] wow, yeah, that's part of life. It's no, okay, well, if it learned that, we can help it unlearn it.
[00:05:23] We can help rewire those signals. And people might be like, oh, that's like charlatan work.
[00:05:28] Like, who knows? What are you saying? Stop trying to trick people and like, no, sorry,
[00:05:34] I didn't mean to totally laugh at that. I understand a lot of people fear around
[00:05:38] being misled and you've probably gone down a lot of roads trying to figure out
[00:05:42] how to help yourself. But no, this work is very real, very, very real. And I have done it myself.
[00:05:47] I have recovered from many different chronic pains and illnesses. And that is exactly the work that I
[00:05:52] do. So my promise for this episode, by the end, you're going to know the differences between
[00:05:58] regulating a nervous system and rewiring it and why we even need to understand that difference.
[00:06:04] And you're going to understand why most of us were really only trained for one of them.
[00:06:10] And then you're going to see what's
[00:06:12] possible for your clients and for you when you are doing the work of both.
[00:06:16] So first of all, I want to just name the gap in our training. And this is not to be like,
[00:06:20] oh my gosh, people did us wrong, you know, we didn't get the right training. No, not at all.
[00:06:25] This is just the work that's evolving, our field is evolving. And we now have this
[00:06:29] wonderful mind body space where we recognize, oh, hey, it's not just mental health or just
[00:06:35] physical health. They're combined. And as a therapist or coach or practitioner,
[00:06:39] whatever you are trained in, you were probably trained in one or the other, right? Either you're
[00:06:43] a physical therapist, or you're a mental health therapist, or you're a wellness coach,
[00:06:47] or you're a functional practitioner. And we have our lanes, right, which is a good thing.
[00:06:53] We can't specialize in everything. We can't be a, you know, whole body healer. At least,
[00:06:59] I don't believe that I am. But I do think and I know now we know that we didn't need
[00:07:04] to be so cut off. So as a therapist, as a mental health licensed therapist,
[00:07:10] I went through all the training, right? Grad, school, internship, supervision,
[00:07:13] hours. I specialized in eating disorders for a while. So I've always kind of had a,
[00:07:18] you know, mind body component to the work that I do. And I got good training,
[00:07:22] like I learned how to hold space to build that therapeutic relationship,
[00:07:25] how to really sit with difficult feelings and thought process and how to work with patterns
[00:07:31] and trauma histories. I learned a lot. I was good at that for a long time. But we didn't recognize
[00:07:37] we were never really taught that the nervous system is actively generating physical symptoms and a
[00:07:44] huge portion of our caseloads. And some physicians in this space estimate close to 40% of people
[00:07:49] walking through a primary care door having symptoms driven this way.
[00:07:53] The same people that end up in on our couches in our rooms on our zoom call.
[00:07:58] So what happens is when we hear or sometimes we don't even hear that they have a chronic pain
[00:08:03] or illness, right? Because we're not even assessing for it, which I never did. I never asked in the
[00:08:09] beginning of my work, like beginning days of being a therapist, like, do you have chronic pain
[00:08:13] or illness? I didn't ask that I was ever taught to. And it would come up maybe sometimes,
[00:08:17] right? But that was not something I assessed for. And so that's what I want to change. I
[00:08:22] want us to learn how to assess for it and then how to help someone through it. If that's
[00:08:26] something that you want to do and feel comfortable end up doing. This is to help you recognize that
[00:08:32] when a client mentions, when you assess for and you ask if they have any sort of labels or things
[00:08:38] that they've been given when it comes to physical pain or illness, that you don't just sit there
[00:08:43] and nod and empathize that you feel confident saying, Hey, I can help you with that. Do
[00:08:49] you want help? Or do you want to work through some of that? Right? For example, the client
[00:08:56] whose stomach is always an issue, right? With IBS or something like that, but the GI test comes
[00:09:02] back normal. Or the client whose chronic pain always moves around and they're in the PT office
[00:09:06] like every single day, the client who is constantly fatigued and exhausted and missing
[00:09:11] work, missing things that they don't really know what to do because no one's ever really
[00:09:15] helped them. So one thing I want to reframe about the nervous system is that a lot of times we
[00:09:20] recognize, okay, there's the relaxation response, right? There's rest and digest, which is the healthy
[00:09:25] state. And we want to be in that more often than not, right? There's the hyper arousal state
[00:09:30] where there's more anxiety, there's more fear and hyper vigilance, right? A lot of people
[00:09:36] live in this state of constant anxiety and the nervous system and the stress response.
[00:09:40] And then there's hypo arousal, which might look like more like depression,
[00:09:44] lethargy, fatigue, things like that. And a lot of times we kind of think of it as this stress
[00:09:50] anxiety system, which is a good way to think of it. But I want you to start thinking of it as
[00:09:55] the prediction system where its only job is protection. It's scanning all day, every single
[00:10:01] day underneath consciousness. Am I safe right now? Or am I not? Every face, every email,
[00:10:06] every sensation in the body, every memory that floats through safe or not safe? That's the whole gig.
[00:10:12] And when the answer comes back, not safe, the nervous system doesn't just hand you anxiety.
[00:10:18] That's the part we were taught. What we weren't taught is that a system stuck in protection
[00:10:23] can produce physical symptoms like pain, fatigue, gut symptoms, dizziness, migraines,
[00:10:30] food reactions, bladder symptoms. And they are 100% real, physical, measurable in the body symptoms.
[00:10:38] Some people, they have scans and tests come back with some certain labels or gut findings,
[00:10:44] maybe a regular heart rate or something when it leads to pots or dizziness. Maybe they come back
[00:10:50] with food sensitivities tests that's like crazy off the charts. But then there's also people
[00:10:55] where they go get assessed by a physical or primary care functional provider. And there's
[00:11:01] literally nothing. Their tests are like, oh, you're normal, but they have real symptoms. I want to
[00:11:06] be really clear that if you're sitting here and your clients have those, they have been told
[00:11:14] probably time and time again that either they have these issues or there's nothing wrong.
[00:11:18] So it's just in their head. I really want to validate like my first job with clients that
[00:11:22] are just coming to this work is validating over and over and over again, your pain is real,
[00:11:27] your fatigue is real, the signal generating it is just coming from the brain and the nervous system
[00:11:32] instead of from some sort of damage in the body. So how does that happen?
[00:11:39] The brain learns symptoms the same way it learns everything else
[00:11:42] through repetition. So here's what happens. Something stressful happens could be an injury,
[00:11:47] an illness, a heart season in life, a death, a trauma and so a danger signal fires over time
[00:11:54] when the nervous system says we don't know how to handle this stressor in life anymore.
[00:11:59] So we're going to constantly be on guard to make sure it doesn't happen again.
[00:12:04] Then over time, it can't handle it anymore. So physical symptoms show up. It's
[00:12:11] quote unquote easier for our bodies to have physical symptoms rather than feel emotions or
[00:12:18] deal with an injury or a death or grief or transition in life on the mental and emotional side than
[00:12:25] it is the physical side. It's more societally acceptable to have a physical abnormality
[00:12:32] condition label something like that. So the brain doing its job links the two. The sensation
[00:12:38] means danger and then the person understandably gets scared of that symptom. They start scanning
[00:12:44] for it, monitoring it, bracing against it. So a great example is a food sensitivity
[00:12:50] or maybe someone has migraines and they've kind of tracked like what could bring on a migraine.
[00:12:55] So consciously and unconsciously they're always scanning for it. They're always making sure
[00:13:01] that they're not eating that food and then they're conscious about oh my gosh if I did
[00:13:04] something's going to happen and I'm going to react or they're constantly scanning for what
[00:13:09] could impact them. And so then the brain goes see I told you these were dangerous and so you're on
[00:13:16] high alert all the time and it strengthens that pathway. If you do that enough times
[00:13:22] something happens. The symptom actually doesn't need the original stressor anymore.
[00:13:27] The pathway runs on its own. The injury healed years ago. The stressful season ended but
[00:13:33] the alarm is stuck in the on position. The brain built a neural pathway of pain of illness and now
[00:13:40] it's just running the program. This is what we call neuroplastic symptoms. Symptoms created and
[00:13:46] maintained by a brain that learned them. Now here's the part where I need you to lean in
[00:13:51] because this is the basics of the whole episode. If the brain learned the symptom the brain
[00:13:57] can unlearn it. If the nervous system learned the pattern the nervous system can unlearn it.
[00:14:02] I said that in a bit of a obvious way. It's when I say it out loud it probably is like oh yeah okay
[00:14:08] that makes sense right but we don't know that we don't learn that right. We stop at like oh
[00:14:14] you know pain in illness like we can't change those things but we can. So we as any kind of
[00:14:22] wellness practitioner you know what neuroplasticity is right. It's been around for a while. We
[00:14:27] know what it is. It's not a one-way street. The same mechanism that wired the pain can wire it. We
[00:14:34] can apply neuroplasticity to physical manifestations of stress. So the same mechanism that wired the
[00:14:40] pain or the illness pattern in can wire it out. This isn't just positive thinking. It's not
[00:14:47] just wishful thinking. This is where the whole field I believe of wellness is heading.
[00:14:53] We learn these things from brain retraining, pain reprocessing therapy, somatic approaches,
[00:14:59] psychoeducation. There's real research behind it. Real recovery is happening.
[00:15:04] Like I said I've lived it and I'm watching clients live it every single day. Regulation
[00:15:08] is not just what I'm talking about. I'm not just talking about regulate your nervous system
[00:15:12] and it'll get you out of the pattern. Here's what I'm actually talking about because first
[00:15:16] yes regulation is super important right. Let's learn how we've gotten ourselves into a
[00:15:21] stressed place and let's learn how to bring ourselves back into the rest and digest more
[00:15:25] often than not. That's wonderful. Regulation is state management. It's moment to moment.
[00:15:32] It's noticing. I've left my window of tolerance. My breath is shallow. My shoulders are at my
[00:15:38] ears. I'm spiraling and I'm using a tool to come back. A longer exhale, slowing down,
[00:15:43] feeling your feet on the floor, orienting to the room, being with another calm co-regulated human.
[00:15:53] Those things are regulation and the more that we do them over and over and over again,
[00:16:01] that's the foundation. When we do it over and over it can become rewiring but at the basic
[00:16:08] it is a regulation tool to build more safety in the body. A nervous system that never gets to
[00:16:14] feel safe cannot do deeper work. If you skip this and you go straight into the deep stuff
[00:16:21] and to trauma processing or symptom rewiring, it can backfire and the system gets overwhelmed
[00:16:28] and slams the door. I'm not about to tell you regulation doesn't matter. It absolutely does
[00:16:34] but there is a limit here. This is what I want people to understand more about.
[00:16:39] If regulation is all you do, that's amazing. You're learning how to properly co-regulate,
[00:16:45] how to help your patient or your client feel more safe and grounded. That's huge,
[00:16:50] especially if they've never really learned that. If they have that kind of relationship
[00:16:53] with you, seriously amazing. That's some of the best work you can do.
[00:16:57] That's a little bit more like managing the danger alarm.
[00:17:01] Right? Think about a smoke detector. Regulation is walking over and turning down the smoke
[00:17:06] detector every time it goes off. Super useful skill. You need it but if the smoke detector
[00:17:12] is broken, if it's screaming every time you make toast, turning it down every single time is not
[00:17:17] a life. That's maintenance. Rewiring is showing the smoke detector over and over. There's no
[00:17:24] fire until it stops going off at the burnt toast. Something I see often and I did this for a long
[00:17:31] time is pseudo-regulation. We might turn the tools into another performance, like a checklist to do.
[00:17:38] Make sure I have this routine every single day to make sure I'm regulated. I sleep this amount
[00:17:42] of hours. I do this. I don't do this. Kind of doing breathing with a clenched jaw.
[00:17:47] Doing the somatic practices, doing the things but they're still white knuckling through it
[00:17:52] and they still have this. I'll speak for me. I still had this feeling that I was really fragile,
[00:17:57] that my body was super fragile, even though I could objectively see. I slowed down. I helped
[00:18:03] myself in many ways. I learned to reflect a little bit more, to breathe more, to have more
[00:18:08] spaces and times of regulation, which is wonderful. Also, there still was this little
[00:18:13] quiet humming of like I was afraid of so many things because I was afraid that
[00:18:17] I still had this feeling that I was fragile, that like any little thing could kind of throw
[00:18:21] me off. That is why we bring in then the rewiring, because rewiring is changing the baseline.
[00:18:29] It's teaching the brain through repeated lived experience, not through insight,
[00:18:34] not just through understanding it intellectually, but through experience,
[00:18:38] that this sensation that we're experiencing is safe, that this physical feeling in my body,
[00:18:44] there's actually nothing wrong and it's just my brain and nervous system sending
[00:18:49] danger signals. That understanding and then the practice of reminding yourself over and over again
[00:18:56] and learning not to pay so much attention to the body's sensations. Just a little caveat here.
[00:19:01] I am not saying any kind of pain or illness. I am not saying to do this with
[00:19:04] cancer or organ failure or any kind of structural illness. I'm saying we do that with
[00:19:11] neuroplastic symptoms, which by the way, I have a free assessment tool that you can
[00:19:15] download below or you can grab the link below to get the free assessment tool that you can use
[00:19:20] with yourself and clients. Also, if you are someone that's doing this work for yourself,
[00:19:24] it could be a great way to check your symptoms. Check there. If they fit neuroplastic symptoms,
[00:19:30] then this is what we're talking about. We start meeting the sensation with curiosity
[00:19:37] instead of fear. We start rewiring the signal of, oh, there's something wrong,
[00:19:41] I'm having the sensation to, actually, I know that this is just a protective mechanism and I
[00:19:48] don't need that anymore. So we start to rewire those signals also while continuing to send
[00:19:54] the body messages of safety while the symptom is present. So it's not just about breathing
[00:19:58] and softening, but also an internal dialogue of, hey, actually we're okay right now,
[00:20:03] while the sensation is there. That moment, that symptom present, that fear absent,
[00:20:08] that is the rep. That's what builds the new pathway. Every time the brain produces the signal and
[00:20:14] nothing bad happens and nobody panics, the prediction gets updated. The sensation might not mean danger
[00:20:21] and you do that enough times and the brain does what brains do with pathways that stop
[00:20:25] getting used. It lets them fade. So to summarize, regulation asks, how do I feel better right
[00:20:31] now? Rewiring asks, how do I teach my system a new default? Right? One is a tool that also
[00:20:39] informs the other of actual recovery and healing. The last thing I'll say about this is that recovery
[00:20:45] is not the absence of sensation. Bodies have sensations all the time because we go through
[00:20:50] stress in life, right? Recovery is the absence of fear of the sensation, the absence of letting
[00:20:59] the symptom, the condition run our lives. When the fear stops, the symptoms stop needing to
[00:21:06] produce the signal. So there is less scanning for it. There's probably less symptoms and there's
[00:21:12] more just living in life. So let's make this a little practical right now. What does this actually
[00:21:17] change on a Tuesday afternoon with a client sitting in front of you? One, you learn to
[00:21:23] speak to this. You learn to help them, right? Teach them. You stop treating physical symptoms
[00:21:30] as outside your scope by default if you're a mental health practitioner and if you're a physical
[00:21:35] practitioner, maybe you start to talk to them about things that are not physical
[00:21:40] or you refer them to a space that they can learn about this. If you're someone who doesn't
[00:21:46] always treat physical manifestations of symptoms, client might mention a pain,
[00:21:52] fatigue, gut stuff and you automatically think, okay, well, that's not mine. That's,
[00:21:56] you know, that's medical. And look, obviously medical care, appropriate medical care always
[00:22:00] comes first and is very important. But once the workups are clear and the symptoms persist
[00:22:07] and they meet neuroplastic symptoms, that client doesn't need another referral
[00:22:11] into the void of practitioners. They need someone who understands what their nervous
[00:22:16] system is doing and that's you. Therapy has always actually been rewiring,
[00:22:21] working with cognitive distortions, rewiring, reprocessing, trauma is rewiring,
[00:22:25] building a different relationship with old patterns is rewiring, right? All of therapy
[00:22:30] is aimed at tending and soothing the nervous system. We've just never applied it to the
[00:22:33] body's symptoms directly and you don't need to become a pain specialist if you can help someone
[00:22:40] by being in a relational state to help soothe their nervous system
[00:22:44] and you already do it every session, you can learn to work with
[00:22:47] what the nervous system is producing. I'll tell you what this work did for me.
[00:22:51] I hear this from a lot of therapists that I work with as well is that it didn't just change
[00:22:55] my client's outcomes, it changed how it feels to do the work. I have felt so much more confident
[00:23:01] in the work that I do since learning about this because I know without a shadow of a doubt
[00:23:07] that I can help them. It is very clear even if it doesn't feel that clear, right? Like
[00:23:12] I'm not saying the healing is always clear because it can be messy and nonlinear, but I know
[00:23:18] and it helps them too. The more that I know and I'm confident about it, it helps them feel safe
[00:23:23] and taken care of and soothed, right? Whereas before I was doubting myself a lot and look,
[00:23:28] I still do like I'm not perfect, but I know I can come back to this time and time again
[00:23:33] that what I'm doing matters and what I'm doing can actually really, really help them
[00:23:37] because I finally have a map for the clients that I work with. So if you are sitting here
[00:23:43] and you're some sort of practitioner that works with patients, clients and the wellness space
[00:23:47] and something here is having you nod along the whole time, I am hosting a free master class
[00:23:54] and I'm teaching all about this. I'm teaching about how to start actually working with people.
[00:24:01] What are the first couple of steps you need to confidently work with people to help them
[00:24:05] regulate and rewire and understand the identity layers underneath it all, taught in a way that
[00:24:12] you can actually use right after the class. The clients who symptoms don't resolve with talk alone,
[00:24:18] right? You'll leave with the lens, not just the theory. So to grab your seat, click the link
[00:24:22] below. You can sign up again. It's free. You'll get the recording if you can't make it and
[00:24:28] thank you. Thank you for being here because it means that you care about the work that
[00:24:33] you do. It means that you want to help more people and you see a gap in maybe your understanding
[00:24:40] or the training that you've had and you're looking for more. I don't know about you,
[00:24:44] but I'm always a student at heart. Like I'm always learning and understanding more
[00:24:48] tools and techniques and that's where I got myself today. So thank you for being here.
[00:24:53] Thank you for doing the work that you do and I feel very honored to now start supporting
[00:24:57] you if that's what you feel is right. Also if this episode landed and you want to send it
[00:25:02] to a colleague that you have or, hey, if you are someone doing this work yourself
[00:25:07] and you want to send this to a therapist you're working with or a practitioner you're working
[00:25:11] with, please do. This is how the work spreads, right? Thank you for being here with me today.
[00:25:17] Until next time, take care of yourself and keep healing with grace.