What Your Test Results Don’t Show You

[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 cozy. It's time to heal with Grace.
[00:00:41] Hello, hello. Welcome back to the Heal with Grace podcast.
[00:00:45] Today we're gonna dive into a conversation that I know a lot of you need to hear because I
[00:00:51] hear this all the time.
[00:00:52] What if my doctor has said your scans show something?
[00:00:57] What if my tests have shown that I have leaky gut?
[00:01:01] What if my tests show that I have bacterial infection?
[00:01:04] What if my lab results come back with inflammation markers or what if I have a diagnosis of IBS?
[00:01:10] I see fibromyalgia,
[00:01:12] degenerative disc disease, bulge disc,
[00:01:16] carniated disc, all the above and so much more.
[00:01:21] Those are the kinds of questions I'm going to answer today.
[00:01:24] Is this my body if I have these things going on in my body?
[00:01:28] A lot of times people are nervous because they're saying, well, it can't be my body.
[00:01:33] It can't be on my head because I have these things that are shown, right?
[00:01:36] I mean, they're real. They're true. They're physical and yes, yes, yes, yes.
[00:01:41] They're real truth physical things that can happen in your body. I have a million of them. I've done all the tests.
[00:01:46] I've done all the scans. I have I don't know multiple diagnoses and multiple different things that are quote-on-quote
[00:01:53] wrong in my body.
[00:01:55] But the thing is that
[00:01:58] everybody's body has something quote-on-quote wrong. I don't even want to say wrong.
[00:02:02] They're just what actually we call in the PRT world,
[00:02:06] pain reprocessing therapy,
[00:02:08] normal abnormalities.
[00:02:09] We have lots of normal abnormalities.
[00:02:11] Everyone has abnormalities in their bodies because we're human and we're not perfect and we age and things happen.
[00:02:17] It's just that what I'm going to walk you through today
[00:02:20] is that the symptoms don't need to associate with those things.
[00:02:24] I know that can be hard to grasp. It's like I'm telling you to think about your health in a total 180
[00:02:30] essentially right now because
[00:02:33] you have been taught we've all been taught
[00:02:35] if there's something physically wrong, we need to treat it physically, right? That kind of makes logical sense.
[00:02:41] But if you're here, you've probably done a lot of those things and they haven't worked very well.
[00:02:46] There's a reason for that.
[00:02:48] So that's what I'm going to walk you through today.
[00:02:51] First and foremost, let's make something very, very, very clear.
[00:02:59] Your symptoms are real.
[00:03:02] You are not imagining them. You are not overreacting.
[00:03:06] You are not broken. There's nothing wrong with you.
[00:03:10] But your symptoms are very real. There is something physically abnormal in your body
[00:03:16] but also just because something shows up on a scan doesn't mean that's the whole story.
[00:03:23] Just because you have a set of symptoms that complete a syndrome, that's just a label.
[00:03:30] That doesn't mean you have to have all these issues associated with it.
[00:03:36] There's plenty of people who have very similar maybe
[00:03:40] scans or things in their body, but they don't have symptoms.
[00:03:43] And so that begs the question, why? And that's what I'm going to answer.
[00:03:46] Because here's the thing, we've been taught to believe that the only real
[00:03:51] health issue are the ones you can point to with a finger, like a broken bone, a tumor,
[00:03:56] an organ that's failing. And those are obviously 100% real.
[00:04:00] And those are actually things I'm saying that are not mind-body treatable.
[00:04:05] Symptoms around them can be, right? We can always help ourselves feel better.
[00:04:11] But those things need real physical, true treatment.
[00:04:15] Some other things that just have a syndrome or label to them don't.
[00:04:19] Most chronic symptoms fall under the syndrome, the label.
[00:04:23] The, okay, you have all these set of symptoms, so we're just going to kind of
[00:04:27] roll it into this label because we don't know what else to do with it.
[00:04:31] It's a little messier. It's a little more nuanced, a little more frustrating
[00:04:35] because they often come from the nervous system itself.
[00:04:38] There isn't a true physical reason necessarily for those, that pain symptoms to be there.
[00:04:44] So what's actually happening? It's your nervous system's job is not to make you feel good.
[00:04:49] It's job to make you feel alive. Its job is to be in the known.
[00:04:56] Your nervous system likes to know what's happening. It likes to, it doesn't like
[00:05:00] change. It likes to know everything that's in this moment and just be there
[00:05:06] or be in the past. So when your brain perceives a threat,
[00:05:11] whether it's physical, emotional, relational, or even a memory, all of these things can be
[00:05:16] threats to the brain. If we have a high stress, stressed out nervous system,
[00:05:20] it then sends your body into protection mode and that can look like that protection mode.
[00:05:26] Those danger signals can look like tense muscles, pain signaling,
[00:05:30] signals turned up, digestion slowing down, hormonal shifts, inflammation increasing,
[00:05:37] blood flow moving away from the healing and into survival. And if that state becomes chronic,
[00:05:43] you might start to see changes in your body like inflammation markers do go up,
[00:05:47] your pelvic floor might tighten, your immune system misfires. You get sick all the time.
[00:05:53] You develop sensitivities to food, sound, or light. You get labeled with
[00:05:58] syndromes that no one really can explain, like certain pain in your body or scans that show you
[00:06:06] have things like leaky gut. So yes, your scans might show something. Yes, your labs might be
[00:06:13] abnormal, but that doesn't mean the issue is permanent, structural or unchangeable.
[00:06:19] It could mean that your body's been stuck in a loop of protection and that's a very different
[00:06:25] conversation. Let's talk about diagnosis for a second. There's a difference between a structural issue
[00:06:32] and a functional pattern, as I alluded to earlier. So a structural issue are things like a broken bone,
[00:06:41] organ failure, a severed nerve. Those things, yeah, they need to be treated from a physical
[00:06:47] standpoint. Maybe you have a tumor. Yeah, that needs to be treated. Again, most chronic
[00:06:54] conditions are functional, meaning your body is functioning in a disordered pattern, but nothing
[00:07:01] is permanently broken or wrong or is unchangeable. You've probably heard, oh, this, you have this
[00:07:09] syndrome, you have this thing and it's untreatable. Things like fibromyalgia or IC or even chronic
[00:07:16] fatigue or long COVID. People are told, oh, it just, we don't really, we don't have a cure for
[00:07:21] it. We don't have a treatment for it. That's a whole other episode because that can just be a whole
[00:07:26] other layer on top of what you're already experiencing that is so difficult to deal with, right? There's
[00:07:31] fear. You're scared. You're like, well, then what do I do? I'm telling you, I'm here to change that.
[00:07:39] I want to change that. I want you to know that it's so possible to shift and actually change
[00:07:45] to those things. Some of these things include things like IBS, interstitial cystitis,
[00:07:50] fibromyalgia, chronic migraines, TMJ, herniated discs, degenerative disc disease, chronic fatigue,
[00:07:58] long COVID, POTS. I mean, the list can go on and on and on. All of these things can be treated
[00:08:06] in my body and there is research to back it up. It is not just me saying it and I will link
[00:08:10] all of those below. I will link the book resources and the research resources so that
[00:08:15] you can check them out if you would like to see them. So really what I'm saying, yes,
[00:08:19] even if you were told that there's a disc, you were told it's out of place, it may not be the
[00:08:24] reason for your pain because studies show that many people with these findings on scans
[00:08:29] have no symptoms at all. So again, this is not about ignoring the physical. It's about expanding
[00:08:36] the conversation to understand the whole body and that we have emotional and mental patterns
[00:08:43] that contribute to our physical pain. Actually, not even contribute are the root cause. So if your
[00:08:49] healing plan doesn't include that, you are very much so missing the most powerful lever you have,
[00:08:56] the most powerful tool you can use in your life. This work literally will save your life
[00:09:05] if you tune in, if you learn, if you allow yourself to go there, if you open to it,
[00:09:11] you're going to have a lot of resistance. Your mind is going to be like that's bullshit or your
[00:09:15] mind is always want to keep looking for something physical that's wrong so that you can treat it
[00:09:19] and move on because this work is our own work. Like you have to do it. We have to do it.
[00:09:25] But it'd be really nice if there was just some kind of physical treatment you could go do and
[00:09:29] you'd be all better, right? Totally. I'd love to give you that. I'd love to give myself that
[00:09:33] sometimes. At the same time, I will say this, this has been some of the most transformative
[00:09:39] work I have ever done and that says a lot because I've been in the healing world and therapy for
[00:09:46] 20 years and I'm not even that old yet. So I have only 34. And I mean, it just, like,
[00:09:54] yeah, it's hard, but it's completely changed my life and how I see myself and how I approach
[00:09:58] the world and how I approach my relationships and it's some of the deepest healing that we
[00:10:02] can do. And that's why I'm just so passionate about it. And not only that, but also because
[00:10:07] it can change your life. You don't have to be in pain or symptoms the rest of your life. It can change.
[00:10:12] Your nervous system impacts every system in the body, the immune system,
[00:10:16] digestive system, hormonal pain, inflammation. So whenever I get questions from people on
[00:10:21] Instagram or when they apply for the program and they ask, well, I have this, can nervous
[00:10:27] system work help? I would say pretty much 10 out of 10. Yes, it will help you. Now,
[00:10:35] depending on what your symptoms are, obviously I would figure out whether this is appropriate for you.
[00:10:42] But even if, so like for example, even people, this has been shown to work on people with cancer,
[00:10:47] it's not treating cancer, but it is 100% helping the symptoms. People report healing in a much
[00:10:54] different way, having their pain and their mental health, well, their pain decrease,
[00:11:00] their mental health increase essentially when they go through this work. And so it makes the
[00:11:05] process of treatment so much better because we can decrease the danger signals and the stress in
[00:11:12] your nervous system so that your body doesn't have to send you even more pain and symptoms on
[00:11:18] top of cancer or whatever it is, even if you have that. So what's actually causing this?
[00:11:26] And how do we heal it? The root cause when your body keeps sending you pain, fatigue,
[00:11:31] and mystery symptoms is the brain stuck in danger mode and a stressed out nervous system.
[00:11:39] And you have lots of repressed emotions that are stuck in your body that are overflowing
[00:11:45] and your body, you don't want to feel them. And that is not a you problem. That is society.
[00:11:49] That's what you've been taught. That's what you've been shown that it's not okay to feel
[00:11:53] them. That it's not okay to be with them. Maybe you've been someone that have just stuffed down a lot.
[00:12:00] For example, time after time, women, many, many women over and over and again. Actually,
[00:12:06] it's really not just women, but a lot of women have been taught not to feel angry,
[00:12:11] not to be in their emotions or that, oh, they're too much because they're feeling, right?
[00:12:16] I mean, we have long history of categorizing women as hysterical psychiatric patients because
[00:12:23] of how they feel and how they are in their own bodies and their own minds. And so we've learned
[00:12:29] to be the people pleasers to say yes and thank you. And I'll do that for sure. I'll take care of it.
[00:12:34] And all along, we're just completely dismissing ourselves the whole time.
[00:12:38] Okay. That was a little bit of a tangent. Maybe I will do a whole episode on that.
[00:12:43] That's just an example. When we keep pushing ourselves down our emotions, our opinions,
[00:12:48] our feelings, it stresses us out. It creates this really scared, fearful part of us.
[00:12:54] And that little girl who felt that fear very early on in life, it's still there and running the show.
[00:13:00] And so to work with our symptoms, to help our brains and our bodies release
[00:13:05] the need to send us danger signals, to send us symptoms is we work with our emotional
[00:13:10] capacity. We find safety in our nervous system and we build our tolerance for environmental stressors.
[00:13:21] We work with the deep fear about the symptoms itself because when you've been in this for a while,
[00:13:27] it's not only what happened to you that brought you here. It's also that what you're in right now
[00:13:32] that's causing so much stress in your life. The fact that you have to cancel plans
[00:13:36] or that you don't even want to show up for plans or don't even want to say yes,
[00:13:40] because you don't know how you're going to feel your relationship suffer, your work suffers,
[00:13:44] your life suffers, you can't eat the things that you thought you were supposed to eat.
[00:13:48] All of this truly affects your life and creates even more stress and fear.
[00:13:52] And so that's a really big part of this process as well as working with that fear.
[00:13:57] When those patterns are running the show, your brain and body live in a constant state of
[00:14:02] danger. And when your system feels unsafe, it adapts by creating symptoms to protect you,
[00:14:09] even if it doesn't feel like protection, even if it feels like this is a protection, this is f'd up.
[00:14:15] This is shit. Like my body's against me right now. No, it's protecting you. It really is.
[00:14:22] And we can start to understand what those patterns are, the more that we understand
[00:14:27] how you've come here, how you got here. The good news is, is that protective wiring
[00:14:32] can be changed very, very much so it can be changed. You can rewire the fear,
[00:14:38] you can discharge the stored emotions and stress, and you can gently teach your body
[00:14:43] a new way of responding. This is so powerful. So actually, you know what? I want to describe
[00:14:53] a little bit of what I mean by protective mechanisms because yes, it's protecting you
[00:14:57] because your nervous system doesn't feel safe, but let's give some examples.
[00:15:01] These might sound silly or irrational, but reminder that you're unconscious,
[00:15:06] your nervous system does not operate on the rational level. It operates on the irrational
[00:15:11] level, like very much so unconscious, irrational, doesn't make sense, might feel dramatic.
[00:15:19] Okay, so maybe you got sick a lot as a kid. What was that doing for you? Was that taking you
[00:15:25] out of school that you didn't like or maybe you didn't have a lot of friends or maybe you were
[00:15:29] bullied? Maybe it was the only time that your caregivers, your parents would give you
[00:15:35] attention, give you loving attention and take care of you and not question you.
[00:15:40] Those are just a couple examples of maybe what sickness or pain can be what we call a secondary
[00:15:46] gain. So it's protecting you from not feeling something, from feeling fear, from getting rejected.
[00:15:53] So it's sending you some signals to either shut your body down or for you to focus on them,
[00:15:58] right? Is your pain getting you out of things that maybe consciously or unconsciously you
[00:16:03] don't really want to do? It might sound kind of annoying or silly or like a little
[00:16:11] eek, you know, like icky in a way, like, oh, I kind of feel like a child, like just trying to work,
[00:16:17] get myself out of things. And actually, that's not wrong. We are often operating on a childlike
[00:16:23] level in our nervous systems when we're in this state. So that's what I mean more by protection
[00:16:29] or in terms of your, your body is protecting you by sending these signals, not only from
[00:16:34] environments and situations and experiences in life, but also from your own emotional pain,
[00:16:39] the pain you have felt over years and years and years, the pain you felt when you were a kid
[00:16:45] and you were rejected for wearing a certain jacket, or the pain you felt when your mom and
[00:16:53] or your dad dismissed you, or the pain you felt when you never had the emotional capacity
[00:17:01] from your parents to sit with you and your emotions. That's some of the most difficult pain that a
[00:17:08] human child can go through is that rejection. And then you feel alone and you feel very fearful
[00:17:15] and you don't know how to express yourself because it was shown that it's not okay to do
[00:17:19] that or no one knows how to manage or feel them or be with you or hold that space for you.
[00:17:24] Your symptoms are covering up that pain, that kind of pain. Okay, I hope this is making sense.
[00:17:32] What I really want you to take from this is that, yes, you can have syndromes,
[00:17:38] you can have diagnoses, you can have things on your scans and testing,
[00:17:43] but it doesn't mean you need to have sensational symptoms associated with them.
[00:17:51] And the way out of it is through this work. It's exactly what I teach in the Mind Body Healing
[00:17:56] Method. We stop chasing symptoms, we stop trying to perfect protocols, and we start working with
[00:18:03] the root, which is your nervous system's protective wiring. The Mind Body Healing Method is a
[00:18:07] 12-week program to help you understand the science behind your systems, your systems,
[00:18:13] your symptoms, and to learn to regulate your nervous system gently. We help rewire the fear
[00:18:19] and protection loop that's keeping you stuck, help you understand and release some of the emotions
[00:18:24] that are stuck, and finally feel safe enough to let go of your symptoms and your pain.
[00:18:30] Because your body was never, ever the enemy, it's not the enemy. It's been protecting you
[00:18:35] all along. So we just want to help you build a better relationship with it. So if you're nodding
[00:18:41] along right now and you're like, oh my gosh, this is resonating, or you're kind of like, all right,
[00:18:45] I get it. I think I'm grabbing onto it. This is your sign. Not to try harder,
[00:18:51] not to add another test or doctor or appointment, but to try something different.
[00:18:57] Try Mind Body Work. You can learn about the Mind Body Healing Method at the link in the
[00:19:01] show notes or reach out to me directly. I'm always happy to help you figure out if this
[00:19:06] approach is right for you. Remember, your labs might not have the answers, but your body does.
[00:19:13] So let's listen to it together. Thank you so much for being here, for being curious,
[00:19:19] for being open. Until next time, I'm Grace. I keep healing with grace.
[00:19:26] If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to me if you could
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