Episode 70
Part 2: How the Nervous System impacts your health
Show notes
In part two of The Missing Pieces in Your Healing series, Grace dives into what she believes is the most essential—and often ignored—element in chronic illness and pain recovery: your nervous system.
She breaks down:
- What the nervous system actually is and how it operates
- Why chronic stress responses (like fight, flight, freeze, and fawn) keep you stuck
- How nervous system dysregulation leads to symptoms like fatigue, pain, and food sensitivities
- What true healing requires beyond supplements, protocols, and mindset work
- A real client story to show how nervous system regulation creates real transformation
If you've been doing everything right and still aren't seeing change, this episode will help you understand why—and what to do next.
How to work with Grace:
- Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort
- Mind-Body Healing Method Course – Regulate your nervous system now
- Free Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your Symptoms
- Work with us in private mind-body coaching
- Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to's
Connect with Grace
Read the transcript
[00:00:00] Hey there and welcome to Heal with Grace. I'm your host Grace Secker
[00:00:04] and I'm a holistic licensed therapist and nervous system coach who believes that the chronic and often unseen symptoms
[00:00:10] you're living with are a sign of something deeper going on. A sign that your nervous system needs attention. In each episode
[00:00:17] I'll share the science behind the most common chronic health disorders plus holistic health tips using mental, physical and spiritual practices.
[00:00:25] You'll hear what I've learned in my journey and the true stories from our trusted guests
[00:00:30] so you can feel less alone in your experience and give yourself grace no matter what you're going through.
[00:00:35] So without further ado, settle in and get to do the time to feel with Grace.
[00:00:39] The missing pieces in your healing.
[00:00:42] Last week we talked about the exhaustion of doing everything right and still not healing and
[00:00:49] if that episode hit home for you today, today is going to blow some doors open. If you did not listen to it
[00:00:56] that's totally okay. You can still listen to this
[00:00:58] but I highly recommend going back and listening to part one because it's going to help kind of set the stage for also what
[00:01:03] we're talking about. But again, you don't have to go ahead and listen. So today, we're going to talk about honestly
[00:01:10] what I believe is the most overlooked and underrated piece of the chronic illness and pain healing puzzle is
[00:01:16] your nervous system, which there's a lot of talk about the nervous system right now and
[00:01:20] rightfully so, like very much so needed.
[00:01:23] But I want to get into kind of the nitty gritty of it, like talk to you about, okay, why is everyone talking about the nervous system?
[00:01:30] Like what's going on here? Why is it so important? What does it actually mean?
[00:01:34] And then what can we really take from the power of working with the nervous system?
[00:01:39] And I'll give you a few tips and tricks, especially we're going to talk about why it matters for chronic pain and fatigue and
[00:01:47] how it can keep you stuck even if you're doing all the right things too. Alright, let's get into it.
[00:01:56] So why does nobody teach us this? I
[00:02:01] mean, it's great that this is, you know, such a huge thing in our world right now.
[00:02:05] But and well, to be honest, I might be a little biased. It's like completely my world.
[00:02:10] So sometimes I forget how much people don't understand about it, which is why I'm here to teach you.
[00:02:15] But let me put it simply, most of us were raised in a system that teaches us how to suppress our symptoms, not understand them.
[00:02:23] Right? We had no idea. The term nervous system was never taught. It should 1,000%.
[00:02:29] Let me just go on a tangent here. I should totally be taught in schools.
[00:02:31] Like why is emotional health? Maybe it is now. I think there's more of that now.
[00:02:36] Definitely not. Not even like a thought or a mention when I was in school, but this should totally be taught in school.
[00:02:43] Right? Okay, I could go on a whole other thing about that, but that's not why I'm here today.
[00:02:49] That's not why you're here today. So what we were taught is just to push through that your body doesn't really matter.
[00:02:58] And you probably taught more negative things about your body than you were positive, right?
[00:03:02] We're taught that there's so much to do around pushing through, not really thinking about mental and emotional health,
[00:03:10] not actually tuning into our nervous systems at all, and that if you did have symptoms, it was just anxiety or take this pill and it'll go away when it didn't really, right?
[00:03:20] Nobody actually taught you that pain and fatigue and symptoms might be a sign of a dysregulated nervous system
[00:03:26] and that there's a whole mind-body component to it, or that our bodies were doing exactly what they were designed to do just a little too well.
[00:03:34] It's not your fault that you didn't know this, but it is your opportunity now to start understanding it.
[00:03:42] And I'm gonna kind of explain that again. So it's not your fault at all how you got here.
[00:03:48] Doesn't matter what you were doing, what you weren't doing, what experiences you went through, you're here now.
[00:03:54] So it is, though, your opportunity and furthermore, I truly believe your responsibility to help yourself, to learn about this.
[00:04:03] And it doesn't have to come from this like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I have to do all this work, like kind of blame, shame, and guilt.
[00:04:09] It can come from a place of like, oh wow, okay, there's so much power in this, so much empowerment,
[00:04:17] when you can actually tune into your body, tune into your mind and start changing some of the negative patterns that it's picked up.
[00:04:24] And that's what like Nervous System 101 is about.
[00:04:27] So what exactly does that mean? Let's talk about just plain and simple what the Nervous System is.
[00:04:35] Your Nervous System is your body's personal security system.
[00:04:39] And the vagus nerve is like the activator of the information highway from the top of the brainstem all the way down throughout your body.
[00:04:48] Your nervous system goes throughout everything and your vagus nerve connects your brainstem and signals through the rest of your body.
[00:04:56] And they talk with each other to impact your mental health, your emotional health, your physical health.
[00:05:02] Your Nervous System's job is to scan the world, scan the world around you, scan the world within you 24-7 for signs of safety or danger.
[00:05:12] And when it senses a threat, even emotional, subtle or unconscious, it responds by activating one of these states, the fight state, flight, freeze, or fun.
[00:05:26] The fight is a primal instinct to fight back against something that we fear is going to hurt us or that we might be in danger, right?
[00:05:35] So used to be we may have seen an animal.
[00:05:40] We fight if we feel like we can take it on or we flee, we flight, literally run away to protect ourselves.
[00:05:48] That's a very primal mechanism within our nervous system.
[00:05:51] Now, we live in the modern world and most of the time don't have to do that.
[00:05:57] But our nervous system is still operating out of that place, which means when you get in a fight with your partner or your family member,
[00:06:06] you still operate from this place of, oh, that's dangerous.
[00:06:09] They're hurting me or they're about to hurt me.
[00:06:11] I need to fight back or I need to flee.
[00:06:14] I need to shut down.
[00:06:15] And those are the first two, fight or flight.
[00:06:18] Freeze is this place of, I mean, truthfully, freeze.
[00:06:21] That can look like a mental freeze, emotional freeze, a physical freeze.
[00:06:25] If you're in a chronic state of pain or dysregulation, there's probably a lot of freeze going on within your body.
[00:06:33] Your nervous system is in a freeze state of the different parts of you that it deems are dangerous.
[00:06:38] So maybe there's some emotions that you were never taught to feel, that it was safe to feel.
[00:06:44] So it freezes those.
[00:06:45] There were some parts of you, some younger parts of you that went through some trauma or difficult experiences in life.
[00:06:53] And you didn't know how to deal with them because no one ever taught you.
[00:06:56] And it was too much, too fast, too soon.
[00:06:59] So those parts of you got frozen and your nervous system doesn't want you to feel them again because that was really scary.
[00:07:06] And so it just sends you all these other physical symptoms to protect you from feeling those parts, feeling those emotions.
[00:07:13] And then the fawn state is a place of managing, meaning we fawn in an extreme way of people pleasing.
[00:07:25] So maybe, for example, you might be someone who, in your family, you're the person that kind of keeps the peace.
[00:07:32] Maybe you're the middleman, maybe you're the one that's like, hey, y'all, let's just chill and go long.
[00:07:37] Or you're the one that maybe kind of like talks to each person to help everything smooth over.
[00:07:43] That's a fawn response in a simple way of explaining that.
[00:07:47] And you've learned it so that you can keep the peace and get out of a conflict that could be dangerous.
[00:07:54] Here's the thing.
[00:07:55] We need these responses.
[00:07:57] They're not bad.
[00:07:59] They keep us safe in life.
[00:08:02] It's just that when you've been living in a survival mode for a long time from stress, trauma, illness,
[00:08:09] or truly just being human in this world, your nervous system can get stuck in one of these modes.
[00:08:15] And what happens is that your digestion, your immune system, your hormones, your energy levels,
[00:08:21] and your pain tolerance all take a hit because the body is prioritizing survival and not healing.
[00:08:30] You can't meditate or supplement your way out of a nervous system that still thinks it's unsafe.
[00:08:36] This is where the chronic stuff lives.
[00:08:38] This is where the healing gap is.
[00:08:41] You can take all the protocols and supplements all day long, but that's not going to shift your nervous system.
[00:08:48] Furthermore, I said meditate.
[00:08:51] And I want to explain that because actually meditation is an incredibly powerful tool.
[00:08:57] It can help shift our state of being, which is exactly what we're doing in this work.
[00:09:01] By the way, this is a little bit of a preview of part three.
[00:09:04] Part three is going to be how we can change our state of being to help us heal.
[00:09:08] So we can't heal from a place of survival and stress.
[00:09:13] So we have to have to help our nervous system get out of the stress response
[00:09:17] and end to the relaxation response so then things can actually change, right?
[00:09:22] It's that same notion of like you keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.
[00:09:28] But the different result doesn't keep happening because you're doing the same exact thing over and over and over.
[00:09:32] That's exactly what I'm talking about when we're stuck in our stress nervous system.
[00:09:36] So it takes work.
[00:09:38] It takes some rewiring, some reprogramming to get our nervous systems out of that stress
[00:09:44] and end to the relaxation more often than not.
[00:09:47] It's not going to be a blanket like state.
[00:09:50] You know, you're not trying to get this like crazy zinned out place
[00:09:53] where you're in this relaxed state all the time and everything is wonderful.
[00:09:57] No, it's not about that.
[00:09:59] It's just about coming home to yourself to knowing that when life hits
[00:10:05] and you got those big bumps in the road, you can help yourself.
[00:10:08] You can tune in and you can give yourself what you need to move through.
[00:10:12] You can call on the supports that you need.
[00:10:14] So my point here is what I really want to drive home is that again, you cannot operate.
[00:10:21] You cannot heal from a state of stress.
[00:10:24] You heal from a state of safety and relaxation.
[00:10:29] And when I say the term relaxation, I'm saying that because sometimes
[00:10:31] that's what we call the parasympathetic response, the safety response of the nervous system.
[00:10:37] There's the parasympathetic, which is that like more calming place, the healing ventral place.
[00:10:42] And then there's the sympathetic, which is the place where we can get stuck in that fight or flight.
[00:10:47] So what we're trying to get back to is that parasympathetic more often than not.
[00:10:51] So I want to share with you a client experience to help kind of bring to life
[00:10:56] what is actually really possible.
[00:10:58] So I am going to call this client, Maria, just a made up name.
[00:11:03] She came in and she started the mind, body healing method program that I hold for healing, chronic pain and illness.
[00:11:10] And she came in already doing a lot of what she thought was helpful for her to heal.
[00:11:17] She'd been taught that she needs to eat a clean diet, sleep well, take all the right supplements.
[00:11:23] Sana, she was doing some cold plunging and doing some red light, like all the things.
[00:11:30] But her body still felt like it was in a shutdown.
[00:11:33] It would operate from like shut down to freeze.
[00:11:36] And her symptoms honestly hadn't really changed.
[00:11:40] So she was like, I don't understand.
[00:11:41] I'm doing all the things and like sometimes they change, sometimes they don't.
[00:11:45] One of her big things we wanted to shift was how hyper focused she was on food.
[00:11:50] She was so afraid of so many foods because she'd been told that she'd need to do an elimination diet.
[00:11:55] And then basically that was it.
[00:11:57] And she couldn't put anything back into the diet because everything affected her.
[00:12:01] Everything made her body react.
[00:12:03] And she was dealing with a lot of like pain symptoms, some IC symptoms and some like brain fog and a little bit of fatigue.
[00:12:11] And once we started working together, we explored her specific nervous system pattern.
[00:12:17] And what I mean by that is that I just described very, very briefly the different states of the nervous system.
[00:12:23] But that's just a blanket general statement.
[00:12:25] We have to help you understand your specific signals of distress, your specific signals in each state of the nervous system.
[00:12:34] So there's the calm state.
[00:12:36] There's the hyper anxiety state and there's the shutdown state.
[00:12:39] And we have to help you understand what your signals are, which means what are your thoughts in each state?
[00:12:45] How does your body feel in each state?
[00:12:47] What are your belief systems?
[00:12:49] What do you end up feeling emotionally in each state?
[00:12:54] Once you can get clear, and that's what we did with her, we got really clear on where she was in each state.
[00:12:59] Because once you become aware of that, that's so much power and awareness.
[00:13:04] And we came at it from a place of like, there's truly nothing wrong because her body had adapted to protect her in these states, truly.
[00:13:12] We realized that she ended up being in a chronic freeze state.
[00:13:15] And the reason we figured this out or the way that we figured this out is because she will, she has a higher likelihood to disassociate.
[00:13:24] So what we found is that there was this high variability within her vasovagal response, which means that her blood pressure would drop and vary a lot.
[00:13:33] And so there was real physical manifestations of dysregulation within her body.
[00:13:40] And I say that because I know sometimes people say like, Oh, it's just anxiety or it's just all on your head.
[00:13:46] And first and foremost, actually, yeah, it is anxiety, but at the root of anxiety is freeze and dysregulation.
[00:13:54] So like anxieties up here, that's just like a state.
[00:13:57] It's really just a mechanism of coping.
[00:13:59] But what's underneath is usually fear, usually chronic dysregulation and a constant feeling of not being okay.
[00:14:08] Or feeling like you need to be in control because you feel out of control in other areas of your life.
[00:14:13] So her body went into this freeze state to protect her.
[00:14:16] And once we started to gently bring awareness to that, where her mental state was one of like sometimes just true dissociation where there wasn't really a lot.
[00:14:25] There's a lot of brain fog.
[00:14:27] Sometimes it was like, why am I always this way?
[00:14:29] Like trying to figure out every little thing, trying to understand every little symptom or every little thing in her body, being hyper aware of what was going on.
[00:14:36] Her emotions would kind of be sometimes all over the place and sometimes just totally numb.
[00:14:41] And her body felt so out of control.
[00:14:44] But once we started to bring awareness with tiny safe moments of connection, movement and breath, things started to shift.
[00:14:53] When she recognized that actually she had the tools and the skills to move from a freeze state and to even just a little bit more of a relaxed state.
[00:15:02] Then her body was able to feel confident and knowing that she could shift at any time.
[00:15:09] And what this might look like is sometimes understanding those fears, like what's actually going on there.
[00:15:14] Where do those fears come from?
[00:15:16] Where did she learn them?
[00:15:17] Being okay with sitting with some of these parts that became frozen.
[00:15:21] We don't want to push them away because we've already been pushing away these hard trauma parts for a long time.
[00:15:28] What we actually want to do is bring them into a place of love and compassion and understanding.
[00:15:35] The parts of us that have become frozen just want to be heard.
[00:15:38] They want to be seen.
[00:15:39] They want to be loved and we never thought that was okay.
[00:15:43] And so our nervous system goes into the freeze state and our body says,
[00:15:48] Okay, we'll protect you with all these chronic symptoms.
[00:15:51] So when we can get to those parts and allow them to be there and shift our bodies into a state of different state of being instead of fear and frozen,
[00:16:02] instead of a lot and into love and aware and open and peace, things can shift.
[00:16:09] Your body doesn't have to be in that state of stress anymore.
[00:16:12] So slowly over time, those shifts were really real from Maria.
[00:16:16] Her pain levels started to drop.
[00:16:18] Her energy started to return.
[00:16:20] Her body finally felt safe enough to come back online.
[00:16:24] Oh, and by the way, she doesn't react to foods anymore.
[00:16:28] She can eat what she wants to eat.
[00:16:30] That was one of the big lifestyle changes for her for sure.
[00:16:32] So I hope this gives you a little bit more idea of like what the nervous system,
[00:16:36] how it actually takes a toll and what it looks like to shift out of it too.
[00:16:40] So let's name sometimes what this actually feels like when your nervous system is dysregulated.
[00:16:46] I want to give a few other examples.
[00:16:49] The tired but wired, you try to go to bed, you're freaking exhausted,
[00:16:54] but then you're actually wired and you can't go to sleep.
[00:16:57] That's a dysregulated nervous system response.
[00:16:59] Your pain flares randomly and you don't understand why.
[00:17:03] Or maybe it's not so random, it's attached to something specific,
[00:17:06] but sometimes it just feels like, what, why is this happening?
[00:17:09] That's a nervous system response, a dysregulated one.
[00:17:12] Maybe you're hyper aware of your body, like you're always constantly scanning for what's wrong
[00:17:19] or the opposite.
[00:17:20] You're totally numb and you don't even know how to feel or that you have feelings.
[00:17:24] Maybe you can't relax even when you're resting and I put quotes on resting
[00:17:31] because oftentimes we don't actually know how to truly rest when we think we are.
[00:17:36] Maybe you feel anxious, you feel numb, irritable or shut down for no clear reason.
[00:17:43] Maybe you know you want to slow down or you need to slow down,
[00:17:46] but you just can't.
[00:17:47] You just can't get it done or you can't rest.
[00:17:51] You have to get other things done.
[00:17:53] You can't sit still.
[00:17:54] These things are not character flaws.
[00:17:57] This isn't because you're weak, dramatic or sensitive.
[00:18:01] This is your nervous system doing its job a little too well
[00:18:05] and getting stuck in survival mode.
[00:18:07] But when you can't shift out of survival, healing becomes incredibly hard.
[00:18:12] So we have to help you shift from survival to safety.
[00:18:16] And the good news is that your nervous system is plastic, essentially,
[00:18:21] which means that it can change.
[00:18:23] It can rewire.
[00:18:24] It just needs the right conditions.
[00:18:26] It needs safety, connection, consistency, slowness, loving support,
[00:18:34] lots of loving support.
[00:18:36] And this is what most healing approaches miss.
[00:18:38] They go straight to mindset or lifestyle changes
[00:18:41] without addressing the foundation.
[00:18:43] And if your body doesn't feel safe, it won't let you heal,
[00:18:47] no matter how many affirmations you repeat.
[00:18:50] So I want to help you understand this.
[00:18:52] And I mean, truly, this is my passion in life, right?
[00:18:55] To help you really understand your body
[00:18:57] to get you out of the stuck patterns that you're in.
[00:19:00] And that's exactly why I created the mind-body healing method.
[00:19:04] I didn't.
[00:19:05] I wasn't actually planning on talking about this,
[00:19:07] but this is really important to me.
[00:19:08] And also, I just want to help you.
[00:19:11] So I created the mind-body healing method program
[00:19:14] so that we don't only talk about the nervous system.
[00:19:17] We work with it and help you understand
[00:19:21] that it's not just about physical practices.
[00:19:23] It's truly about the mental emotional reprogramming.
[00:19:27] So in this 12-week program, it's
[00:19:31] designed to help people like you with chronic symptoms
[00:19:34] like pain, fatigue, migraines, IC.
[00:19:38] These are just a few, honestly, of some of the symptoms
[00:19:40] that we work with.
[00:19:42] And what we do is we help you understand the nervous system.
[00:19:45] We help you rewire and regulate into a place of safety
[00:19:49] so that then you can start to change some of the responses
[00:19:53] from a place of safe.
[00:19:55] We help you build that true lasting body trust
[00:19:58] and shift from fear and control into safety and connection,
[00:20:02] helping you get out of the patterns of why is this helping?
[00:20:05] Let me spend a bunch more money on a bunch of different protocols
[00:20:08] or see another doctor or have another procedure.
[00:20:12] I don't want you to keep doing that.
[00:20:13] It's exhausting.
[00:20:14] It's money draining.
[00:20:15] And actually, it doesn't really work.
[00:20:18] You don't need more medications.
[00:20:19] You don't need more procedures.
[00:20:21] You need some help connecting with your body
[00:20:24] and helping it feel a little bit more safe
[00:20:26] and changing those patterns that you've been stuck in
[00:20:28] for a long time.
[00:20:29] So if you've been stuck in a cycle of symptoms,
[00:20:34] shame, burnout,
[00:20:35] I hope today's episode helps you breathe a little bit deeper.
[00:20:39] And if you're wanting to get started to truly shift,
[00:20:42] think about where you could be in just three months
[00:20:45] if you started today.
[00:20:47] So we start in early May
[00:20:50] and I'm really excited for this new version.
[00:20:52] So you can go to the link below
[00:20:54] and you can sign up for access.
[00:20:58] And once you do, you'll get full access.
[00:21:01] You'll get a call with me and you'll get a bunch of group calls.
[00:21:03] All the information is in the link below.
[00:21:05] If you have any questions at all,
[00:21:07] just DM me on Instagram.
[00:21:09] We can talk through it, figure out if it's right for you or not.
[00:21:12] And we can go from there.
[00:21:13] You know now that you're not broken
[00:21:16] and that it's really just your nervous system
[00:21:18] that needs support and you're allowed to give yourself that
[00:21:21] and make sure you hit subscribe
[00:21:23] so that you can tune into next week's episode,
[00:21:26] the final part of our series
[00:21:28] where we're talking about what healing actually looks like
[00:21:31] and the reprogramming that actually happens in the mind
[00:21:36] and in the subconscious when you start to heal
[00:21:38] and how to actually do it.
[00:21:40] It's possible and you don't have to do it alone.
[00:21:44] So I'm sending you so much love on your journey.
[00:21:48] So, so, so much love.
[00:21:50] And again, if you have any issue or any questions,
[00:21:53] please let me know.
[00:21:54] Keep healing with grace and I'll see you next week.
[00:21:57] If this podcast means something to you,
[00:21:59] it would mean so much to me
[00:22:00] if you could do these couple things.
[00:22:02] One, go to the Heal with Grace Show page
[00:22:05] wherever you listen and tap the plus sign
[00:22:07] or click on the follow button
[00:22:08] so you don't miss an episode.
[00:22:10] It helps both of us out.
[00:22:12] While you're there, if you could give a five star review
[00:22:15] so that this podcast can reach more people,
[00:22:17] it would mean so much to me
[00:22:19] so I can continue sharing episodes that help you
[00:22:22] as well as others.
[00:22:23] Thanks for listening
[00:22:24] and I hope this brings you hope on your journey.
[00:00:04] and I'm a holistic licensed therapist and nervous system coach who believes that the chronic and often unseen symptoms
[00:00:10] you're living with are a sign of something deeper going on. A sign that your nervous system needs attention. In each episode
[00:00:17] I'll share the science behind the most common chronic health disorders plus holistic health tips using mental, physical and spiritual practices.
[00:00:25] You'll hear what I've learned in my journey and the true stories from our trusted guests
[00:00:30] so you can feel less alone in your experience and give yourself grace no matter what you're going through.
[00:00:35] So without further ado, settle in and get to do the time to feel with Grace.
[00:00:39] The missing pieces in your healing.
[00:00:42] Last week we talked about the exhaustion of doing everything right and still not healing and
[00:00:49] if that episode hit home for you today, today is going to blow some doors open. If you did not listen to it
[00:00:56] that's totally okay. You can still listen to this
[00:00:58] but I highly recommend going back and listening to part one because it's going to help kind of set the stage for also what
[00:01:03] we're talking about. But again, you don't have to go ahead and listen. So today, we're going to talk about honestly
[00:01:10] what I believe is the most overlooked and underrated piece of the chronic illness and pain healing puzzle is
[00:01:16] your nervous system, which there's a lot of talk about the nervous system right now and
[00:01:20] rightfully so, like very much so needed.
[00:01:23] But I want to get into kind of the nitty gritty of it, like talk to you about, okay, why is everyone talking about the nervous system?
[00:01:30] Like what's going on here? Why is it so important? What does it actually mean?
[00:01:34] And then what can we really take from the power of working with the nervous system?
[00:01:39] And I'll give you a few tips and tricks, especially we're going to talk about why it matters for chronic pain and fatigue and
[00:01:47] how it can keep you stuck even if you're doing all the right things too. Alright, let's get into it.
[00:01:56] So why does nobody teach us this? I
[00:02:01] mean, it's great that this is, you know, such a huge thing in our world right now.
[00:02:05] But and well, to be honest, I might be a little biased. It's like completely my world.
[00:02:10] So sometimes I forget how much people don't understand about it, which is why I'm here to teach you.
[00:02:15] But let me put it simply, most of us were raised in a system that teaches us how to suppress our symptoms, not understand them.
[00:02:23] Right? We had no idea. The term nervous system was never taught. It should 1,000%.
[00:02:29] Let me just go on a tangent here. I should totally be taught in schools.
[00:02:31] Like why is emotional health? Maybe it is now. I think there's more of that now.
[00:02:36] Definitely not. Not even like a thought or a mention when I was in school, but this should totally be taught in school.
[00:02:43] Right? Okay, I could go on a whole other thing about that, but that's not why I'm here today.
[00:02:49] That's not why you're here today. So what we were taught is just to push through that your body doesn't really matter.
[00:02:58] And you probably taught more negative things about your body than you were positive, right?
[00:03:02] We're taught that there's so much to do around pushing through, not really thinking about mental and emotional health,
[00:03:10] not actually tuning into our nervous systems at all, and that if you did have symptoms, it was just anxiety or take this pill and it'll go away when it didn't really, right?
[00:03:20] Nobody actually taught you that pain and fatigue and symptoms might be a sign of a dysregulated nervous system
[00:03:26] and that there's a whole mind-body component to it, or that our bodies were doing exactly what they were designed to do just a little too well.
[00:03:34] It's not your fault that you didn't know this, but it is your opportunity now to start understanding it.
[00:03:42] And I'm gonna kind of explain that again. So it's not your fault at all how you got here.
[00:03:48] Doesn't matter what you were doing, what you weren't doing, what experiences you went through, you're here now.
[00:03:54] So it is, though, your opportunity and furthermore, I truly believe your responsibility to help yourself, to learn about this.
[00:04:03] And it doesn't have to come from this like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I have to do all this work, like kind of blame, shame, and guilt.
[00:04:09] It can come from a place of like, oh wow, okay, there's so much power in this, so much empowerment,
[00:04:17] when you can actually tune into your body, tune into your mind and start changing some of the negative patterns that it's picked up.
[00:04:24] And that's what like Nervous System 101 is about.
[00:04:27] So what exactly does that mean? Let's talk about just plain and simple what the Nervous System is.
[00:04:35] Your Nervous System is your body's personal security system.
[00:04:39] And the vagus nerve is like the activator of the information highway from the top of the brainstem all the way down throughout your body.
[00:04:48] Your nervous system goes throughout everything and your vagus nerve connects your brainstem and signals through the rest of your body.
[00:04:56] And they talk with each other to impact your mental health, your emotional health, your physical health.
[00:05:02] Your Nervous System's job is to scan the world, scan the world around you, scan the world within you 24-7 for signs of safety or danger.
[00:05:12] And when it senses a threat, even emotional, subtle or unconscious, it responds by activating one of these states, the fight state, flight, freeze, or fun.
[00:05:26] The fight is a primal instinct to fight back against something that we fear is going to hurt us or that we might be in danger, right?
[00:05:35] So used to be we may have seen an animal.
[00:05:40] We fight if we feel like we can take it on or we flee, we flight, literally run away to protect ourselves.
[00:05:48] That's a very primal mechanism within our nervous system.
[00:05:51] Now, we live in the modern world and most of the time don't have to do that.
[00:05:57] But our nervous system is still operating out of that place, which means when you get in a fight with your partner or your family member,
[00:06:06] you still operate from this place of, oh, that's dangerous.
[00:06:09] They're hurting me or they're about to hurt me.
[00:06:11] I need to fight back or I need to flee.
[00:06:14] I need to shut down.
[00:06:15] And those are the first two, fight or flight.
[00:06:18] Freeze is this place of, I mean, truthfully, freeze.
[00:06:21] That can look like a mental freeze, emotional freeze, a physical freeze.
[00:06:25] If you're in a chronic state of pain or dysregulation, there's probably a lot of freeze going on within your body.
[00:06:33] Your nervous system is in a freeze state of the different parts of you that it deems are dangerous.
[00:06:38] So maybe there's some emotions that you were never taught to feel, that it was safe to feel.
[00:06:44] So it freezes those.
[00:06:45] There were some parts of you, some younger parts of you that went through some trauma or difficult experiences in life.
[00:06:53] And you didn't know how to deal with them because no one ever taught you.
[00:06:56] And it was too much, too fast, too soon.
[00:06:59] So those parts of you got frozen and your nervous system doesn't want you to feel them again because that was really scary.
[00:07:06] And so it just sends you all these other physical symptoms to protect you from feeling those parts, feeling those emotions.
[00:07:13] And then the fawn state is a place of managing, meaning we fawn in an extreme way of people pleasing.
[00:07:25] So maybe, for example, you might be someone who, in your family, you're the person that kind of keeps the peace.
[00:07:32] Maybe you're the middleman, maybe you're the one that's like, hey, y'all, let's just chill and go long.
[00:07:37] Or you're the one that maybe kind of like talks to each person to help everything smooth over.
[00:07:43] That's a fawn response in a simple way of explaining that.
[00:07:47] And you've learned it so that you can keep the peace and get out of a conflict that could be dangerous.
[00:07:54] Here's the thing.
[00:07:55] We need these responses.
[00:07:57] They're not bad.
[00:07:59] They keep us safe in life.
[00:08:02] It's just that when you've been living in a survival mode for a long time from stress, trauma, illness,
[00:08:09] or truly just being human in this world, your nervous system can get stuck in one of these modes.
[00:08:15] And what happens is that your digestion, your immune system, your hormones, your energy levels,
[00:08:21] and your pain tolerance all take a hit because the body is prioritizing survival and not healing.
[00:08:30] You can't meditate or supplement your way out of a nervous system that still thinks it's unsafe.
[00:08:36] This is where the chronic stuff lives.
[00:08:38] This is where the healing gap is.
[00:08:41] You can take all the protocols and supplements all day long, but that's not going to shift your nervous system.
[00:08:48] Furthermore, I said meditate.
[00:08:51] And I want to explain that because actually meditation is an incredibly powerful tool.
[00:08:57] It can help shift our state of being, which is exactly what we're doing in this work.
[00:09:01] By the way, this is a little bit of a preview of part three.
[00:09:04] Part three is going to be how we can change our state of being to help us heal.
[00:09:08] So we can't heal from a place of survival and stress.
[00:09:13] So we have to have to help our nervous system get out of the stress response
[00:09:17] and end to the relaxation response so then things can actually change, right?
[00:09:22] It's that same notion of like you keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.
[00:09:28] But the different result doesn't keep happening because you're doing the same exact thing over and over and over.
[00:09:32] That's exactly what I'm talking about when we're stuck in our stress nervous system.
[00:09:36] So it takes work.
[00:09:38] It takes some rewiring, some reprogramming to get our nervous systems out of that stress
[00:09:44] and end to the relaxation more often than not.
[00:09:47] It's not going to be a blanket like state.
[00:09:50] You know, you're not trying to get this like crazy zinned out place
[00:09:53] where you're in this relaxed state all the time and everything is wonderful.
[00:09:57] No, it's not about that.
[00:09:59] It's just about coming home to yourself to knowing that when life hits
[00:10:05] and you got those big bumps in the road, you can help yourself.
[00:10:08] You can tune in and you can give yourself what you need to move through.
[00:10:12] You can call on the supports that you need.
[00:10:14] So my point here is what I really want to drive home is that again, you cannot operate.
[00:10:21] You cannot heal from a state of stress.
[00:10:24] You heal from a state of safety and relaxation.
[00:10:29] And when I say the term relaxation, I'm saying that because sometimes
[00:10:31] that's what we call the parasympathetic response, the safety response of the nervous system.
[00:10:37] There's the parasympathetic, which is that like more calming place, the healing ventral place.
[00:10:42] And then there's the sympathetic, which is the place where we can get stuck in that fight or flight.
[00:10:47] So what we're trying to get back to is that parasympathetic more often than not.
[00:10:51] So I want to share with you a client experience to help kind of bring to life
[00:10:56] what is actually really possible.
[00:10:58] So I am going to call this client, Maria, just a made up name.
[00:11:03] She came in and she started the mind, body healing method program that I hold for healing, chronic pain and illness.
[00:11:10] And she came in already doing a lot of what she thought was helpful for her to heal.
[00:11:17] She'd been taught that she needs to eat a clean diet, sleep well, take all the right supplements.
[00:11:23] Sana, she was doing some cold plunging and doing some red light, like all the things.
[00:11:30] But her body still felt like it was in a shutdown.
[00:11:33] It would operate from like shut down to freeze.
[00:11:36] And her symptoms honestly hadn't really changed.
[00:11:40] So she was like, I don't understand.
[00:11:41] I'm doing all the things and like sometimes they change, sometimes they don't.
[00:11:45] One of her big things we wanted to shift was how hyper focused she was on food.
[00:11:50] She was so afraid of so many foods because she'd been told that she'd need to do an elimination diet.
[00:11:55] And then basically that was it.
[00:11:57] And she couldn't put anything back into the diet because everything affected her.
[00:12:01] Everything made her body react.
[00:12:03] And she was dealing with a lot of like pain symptoms, some IC symptoms and some like brain fog and a little bit of fatigue.
[00:12:11] And once we started working together, we explored her specific nervous system pattern.
[00:12:17] And what I mean by that is that I just described very, very briefly the different states of the nervous system.
[00:12:23] But that's just a blanket general statement.
[00:12:25] We have to help you understand your specific signals of distress, your specific signals in each state of the nervous system.
[00:12:34] So there's the calm state.
[00:12:36] There's the hyper anxiety state and there's the shutdown state.
[00:12:39] And we have to help you understand what your signals are, which means what are your thoughts in each state?
[00:12:45] How does your body feel in each state?
[00:12:47] What are your belief systems?
[00:12:49] What do you end up feeling emotionally in each state?
[00:12:54] Once you can get clear, and that's what we did with her, we got really clear on where she was in each state.
[00:12:59] Because once you become aware of that, that's so much power and awareness.
[00:13:04] And we came at it from a place of like, there's truly nothing wrong because her body had adapted to protect her in these states, truly.
[00:13:12] We realized that she ended up being in a chronic freeze state.
[00:13:15] And the reason we figured this out or the way that we figured this out is because she will, she has a higher likelihood to disassociate.
[00:13:24] So what we found is that there was this high variability within her vasovagal response, which means that her blood pressure would drop and vary a lot.
[00:13:33] And so there was real physical manifestations of dysregulation within her body.
[00:13:40] And I say that because I know sometimes people say like, Oh, it's just anxiety or it's just all on your head.
[00:13:46] And first and foremost, actually, yeah, it is anxiety, but at the root of anxiety is freeze and dysregulation.
[00:13:54] So like anxieties up here, that's just like a state.
[00:13:57] It's really just a mechanism of coping.
[00:13:59] But what's underneath is usually fear, usually chronic dysregulation and a constant feeling of not being okay.
[00:14:08] Or feeling like you need to be in control because you feel out of control in other areas of your life.
[00:14:13] So her body went into this freeze state to protect her.
[00:14:16] And once we started to gently bring awareness to that, where her mental state was one of like sometimes just true dissociation where there wasn't really a lot.
[00:14:25] There's a lot of brain fog.
[00:14:27] Sometimes it was like, why am I always this way?
[00:14:29] Like trying to figure out every little thing, trying to understand every little symptom or every little thing in her body, being hyper aware of what was going on.
[00:14:36] Her emotions would kind of be sometimes all over the place and sometimes just totally numb.
[00:14:41] And her body felt so out of control.
[00:14:44] But once we started to bring awareness with tiny safe moments of connection, movement and breath, things started to shift.
[00:14:53] When she recognized that actually she had the tools and the skills to move from a freeze state and to even just a little bit more of a relaxed state.
[00:15:02] Then her body was able to feel confident and knowing that she could shift at any time.
[00:15:09] And what this might look like is sometimes understanding those fears, like what's actually going on there.
[00:15:14] Where do those fears come from?
[00:15:16] Where did she learn them?
[00:15:17] Being okay with sitting with some of these parts that became frozen.
[00:15:21] We don't want to push them away because we've already been pushing away these hard trauma parts for a long time.
[00:15:28] What we actually want to do is bring them into a place of love and compassion and understanding.
[00:15:35] The parts of us that have become frozen just want to be heard.
[00:15:38] They want to be seen.
[00:15:39] They want to be loved and we never thought that was okay.
[00:15:43] And so our nervous system goes into the freeze state and our body says,
[00:15:48] Okay, we'll protect you with all these chronic symptoms.
[00:15:51] So when we can get to those parts and allow them to be there and shift our bodies into a state of different state of being instead of fear and frozen,
[00:16:02] instead of a lot and into love and aware and open and peace, things can shift.
[00:16:09] Your body doesn't have to be in that state of stress anymore.
[00:16:12] So slowly over time, those shifts were really real from Maria.
[00:16:16] Her pain levels started to drop.
[00:16:18] Her energy started to return.
[00:16:20] Her body finally felt safe enough to come back online.
[00:16:24] Oh, and by the way, she doesn't react to foods anymore.
[00:16:28] She can eat what she wants to eat.
[00:16:30] That was one of the big lifestyle changes for her for sure.
[00:16:32] So I hope this gives you a little bit more idea of like what the nervous system,
[00:16:36] how it actually takes a toll and what it looks like to shift out of it too.
[00:16:40] So let's name sometimes what this actually feels like when your nervous system is dysregulated.
[00:16:46] I want to give a few other examples.
[00:16:49] The tired but wired, you try to go to bed, you're freaking exhausted,
[00:16:54] but then you're actually wired and you can't go to sleep.
[00:16:57] That's a dysregulated nervous system response.
[00:16:59] Your pain flares randomly and you don't understand why.
[00:17:03] Or maybe it's not so random, it's attached to something specific,
[00:17:06] but sometimes it just feels like, what, why is this happening?
[00:17:09] That's a nervous system response, a dysregulated one.
[00:17:12] Maybe you're hyper aware of your body, like you're always constantly scanning for what's wrong
[00:17:19] or the opposite.
[00:17:20] You're totally numb and you don't even know how to feel or that you have feelings.
[00:17:24] Maybe you can't relax even when you're resting and I put quotes on resting
[00:17:31] because oftentimes we don't actually know how to truly rest when we think we are.
[00:17:36] Maybe you feel anxious, you feel numb, irritable or shut down for no clear reason.
[00:17:43] Maybe you know you want to slow down or you need to slow down,
[00:17:46] but you just can't.
[00:17:47] You just can't get it done or you can't rest.
[00:17:51] You have to get other things done.
[00:17:53] You can't sit still.
[00:17:54] These things are not character flaws.
[00:17:57] This isn't because you're weak, dramatic or sensitive.
[00:18:01] This is your nervous system doing its job a little too well
[00:18:05] and getting stuck in survival mode.
[00:18:07] But when you can't shift out of survival, healing becomes incredibly hard.
[00:18:12] So we have to help you shift from survival to safety.
[00:18:16] And the good news is that your nervous system is plastic, essentially,
[00:18:21] which means that it can change.
[00:18:23] It can rewire.
[00:18:24] It just needs the right conditions.
[00:18:26] It needs safety, connection, consistency, slowness, loving support,
[00:18:34] lots of loving support.
[00:18:36] And this is what most healing approaches miss.
[00:18:38] They go straight to mindset or lifestyle changes
[00:18:41] without addressing the foundation.
[00:18:43] And if your body doesn't feel safe, it won't let you heal,
[00:18:47] no matter how many affirmations you repeat.
[00:18:50] So I want to help you understand this.
[00:18:52] And I mean, truly, this is my passion in life, right?
[00:18:55] To help you really understand your body
[00:18:57] to get you out of the stuck patterns that you're in.
[00:19:00] And that's exactly why I created the mind-body healing method.
[00:19:04] I didn't.
[00:19:05] I wasn't actually planning on talking about this,
[00:19:07] but this is really important to me.
[00:19:08] And also, I just want to help you.
[00:19:11] So I created the mind-body healing method program
[00:19:14] so that we don't only talk about the nervous system.
[00:19:17] We work with it and help you understand
[00:19:21] that it's not just about physical practices.
[00:19:23] It's truly about the mental emotional reprogramming.
[00:19:27] So in this 12-week program, it's
[00:19:31] designed to help people like you with chronic symptoms
[00:19:34] like pain, fatigue, migraines, IC.
[00:19:38] These are just a few, honestly, of some of the symptoms
[00:19:40] that we work with.
[00:19:42] And what we do is we help you understand the nervous system.
[00:19:45] We help you rewire and regulate into a place of safety
[00:19:49] so that then you can start to change some of the responses
[00:19:53] from a place of safe.
[00:19:55] We help you build that true lasting body trust
[00:19:58] and shift from fear and control into safety and connection,
[00:20:02] helping you get out of the patterns of why is this helping?
[00:20:05] Let me spend a bunch more money on a bunch of different protocols
[00:20:08] or see another doctor or have another procedure.
[00:20:12] I don't want you to keep doing that.
[00:20:13] It's exhausting.
[00:20:14] It's money draining.
[00:20:15] And actually, it doesn't really work.
[00:20:18] You don't need more medications.
[00:20:19] You don't need more procedures.
[00:20:21] You need some help connecting with your body
[00:20:24] and helping it feel a little bit more safe
[00:20:26] and changing those patterns that you've been stuck in
[00:20:28] for a long time.
[00:20:29] So if you've been stuck in a cycle of symptoms,
[00:20:34] shame, burnout,
[00:20:35] I hope today's episode helps you breathe a little bit deeper.
[00:20:39] And if you're wanting to get started to truly shift,
[00:20:42] think about where you could be in just three months
[00:20:45] if you started today.
[00:20:47] So we start in early May
[00:20:50] and I'm really excited for this new version.
[00:20:52] So you can go to the link below
[00:20:54] and you can sign up for access.
[00:20:58] And once you do, you'll get full access.
[00:21:01] You'll get a call with me and you'll get a bunch of group calls.
[00:21:03] All the information is in the link below.
[00:21:05] If you have any questions at all,
[00:21:07] just DM me on Instagram.
[00:21:09] We can talk through it, figure out if it's right for you or not.
[00:21:12] And we can go from there.
[00:21:13] You know now that you're not broken
[00:21:16] and that it's really just your nervous system
[00:21:18] that needs support and you're allowed to give yourself that
[00:21:21] and make sure you hit subscribe
[00:21:23] so that you can tune into next week's episode,
[00:21:26] the final part of our series
[00:21:28] where we're talking about what healing actually looks like
[00:21:31] and the reprogramming that actually happens in the mind
[00:21:36] and in the subconscious when you start to heal
[00:21:38] and how to actually do it.
[00:21:40] It's possible and you don't have to do it alone.
[00:21:44] So I'm sending you so much love on your journey.
[00:21:48] So, so, so much love.
[00:21:50] And again, if you have any issue or any questions,
[00:21:53] please let me know.
[00:21:54] Keep healing with grace and I'll see you next week.
[00:21:57] If this podcast means something to you,
[00:21:59] it would mean so much to me
[00:22:00] if you could do these couple things.
[00:22:02] One, go to the Heal with Grace Show page
[00:22:05] wherever you listen and tap the plus sign
[00:22:07] or click on the follow button
[00:22:08] so you don't miss an episode.
[00:22:10] It helps both of us out.
[00:22:12] While you're there, if you could give a five star review
[00:22:15] so that this podcast can reach more people,
[00:22:17] it would mean so much to me
[00:22:19] so I can continue sharing episodes that help you
[00:22:22] as well as others.
[00:22:23] Thanks for listening
[00:22:24] and I hope this brings you hope on your journey.
