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Topic: Chronic Pain & Symptoms

The Training That Catapulted My Own Healing

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If you have been circling the idea of mind-body practitioner training, this one is for you. Not the version where you collect a certificate. The version where the training changes you while you are learning it.

Before I took my first pain reprocessing therapy training, I had already done a lot of my own work. I had let go of most of the chronic pain. The food intolerances, the histamine reactions, the fatigue, all of it had come way down. And I had plateaued. Better, not free. There was still this low hum of managing my body instead of trusting it.

Then I went into the training and applied every single thing to myself. Light bulbs, over and over. That is the part nobody warns you about. When you learn how to guide someone else's nervous system, you are also signing up for the next chapter of your own.

I also say the thing I wish somebody had said to me five years ago. You do not have to be fully healed to help other people heal. I talk about the crash that had me lying on the couch wondering if everything I had learned was a fraud. The antidepressants I quit in college because I had decided, all on my own, that a therapist could not be on them. The imposter syndrome that has followed me my whole career. And the day my body ran an actual fever right before a three-day professional retreat, because walking into a room full of other clinicians felt that unsafe to my system.

I share what I did instead of staying in bed. It is the clearest example I have of teaching your body that you can be uncomfortable and still be safe.

If you have been quietly wondering whether you are meant to share this work with other people, the part about curiosity being the only real prerequisite is for you.

Resources mentioned

Mind Body Integration Training, my six-week live practitioner training. Founding cohort is application-based. Early bird pricing through September 17th; doors close October 2nd, first live session October 22nd.

Bring a colleague, and you each get $100 off.
https://programs.healwithgrace.co/mbimt

How to work with Grace:

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Your Chronic Pain Is 100% Real and Here’s Why Your Nervous System Is Still Behind It

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If you've ever had someone tell you your pain is real and then in the same breath tell you there's nothing wrong; this episode is for you.

Here's the thing the medical model never made room for: both can be true at the same time. Your chronic pain and illness are real. Completely, 100% real. And your nervous system is still driving it. That is not a contradiction. That is how pain actually works.

Symptoms are not a damage meter. They’re a danger signal. Your brain's best guess about how much threat your body is under. Which means two people can have the identical MRI findings and one of them is in agony and one of them is fine. And a person with completely clean scans can be in the worst pain of their life. The finding does not predict the feeling. That's not a flaw in the system; that's the system doing exactly what it was built to do.

Grace breaks this down in this episode with two groups: people whose testing comes back clean (negative testing is not the end of the road — for a lot of you, it's the beginning of the real answer), and people who do have real positive findings. Both have nervous system involvement. The nervous system is the volume dial on pain, and it decides how loud the signal gets turned up — regardless of what the scan shows.

There's also a sharp test in here worth knowing: pain that moves around from your shoulders to your hip to your jaw is not structural. Tissue damage doesn't travel. A dysregulated nervous system does. And pain that eases on vacation — if a beach touches it, it's nervous system.

Save this one for when you’re flaring and need to hear it again.

Resources mentioned:

– Dr. Schechter — mind-body physician [GEL: link to his previous HWG episode]

– PRT practitioner listserv 

– Practitioner masterclass 

– Mind-Body Healing Method program for nervous system healing 

How to work with Grace:

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Nervous System 101: How to Know If It’s Behind Your Chronic Pain or Illness

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There's a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from understanding everything and still not changing. You've read the books. You've listened to the podcasts. You can explain neuroplastic symptoms. You might even be fully bought in. And you're still sitting in your body going — so why isn't this working?

That's what this episode is about.

Here's the thing most people in this space haven't heard yet: insight and regulation are two completely different skills. They happen in different parts of your brain. You can have a life-changing realization about why your body does what it does, and your nervous system can sit there completely unmoved by it. Because it doesn't speak the language of insight. It speaks the language of experience.

If a symptom has been in your body for more than six months — the pain, the fatigue, the gut stuff, the dizziness — your nervous system is involved. That's true no matter what your labs say. No matter what specialists have or haven't found. No matter how many times someone has told you they're not sure what's wrong. Your nervous system and chronic pain or illness are connected in ways the old medical model just never had room for.

Grace shares from her own journey in this one — including a stretch where she went deep into the physical route, got caught in protocol after protocol, and realized she wasn't working with what actually mattered: the emotional state, the belief patterns, the stuff her body had been holding. The shift that changed everything for her wasn't more understanding. It was structure. A repeatable, sequenced framework for actually practicing regulation — not just knowing about it.

This episode is for you if you're somewhere between knowing and doing. If you've absorbed all the education and your body still hasn't caught up. If you're wondering whether the nervous system piece is really what's going on for you.

The map doesn't move you. The road does.

How to work with Grace:

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How Andrea Reclaimed Health Anxiety and Bladder Symptoms

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If you've been told your interstitial cystitis is something you just learn to manage — this episode is for you.

Andrea spent two years cycling through doctors, prescriptions, the IC diet, and specialists. Her symptoms started as IC, then added vulvodynia, then joint pain. Different labels, same pattern: her nervous system running on constant high alert.

What finally shifted things wasn't a new protocol. It was the moment she fully, 100% believed her mind was driving her symptoms. Not a little bit. Not "maybe." All the way.

She talks about what that actually looked like in practice — stopping the elimination diets (which were making her more hypervigilant, not better), cancelling a specialist appointment, quitting the IC Facebook groups, never going back to medical Reddit. Not from giving up. From finally understanding what was causing her symptoms.

There's a moment in this conversation where Andrea describes going from counting the minutes between bathroom trips — giving herself gold stars for every three hours — to just… not. Not tracking it. Not thinking about it. That quiet shift in mental focus was the first real sign something was changing.

She also talks about the tools that helped. Heart coherence meditations. Channeling the feeling of vacation. The Eras Tour. Music. Not because they're magic, but because they showed her nervous system what safety actually feels like — and it turns out, you can practice that.

One of the things she said that stuck with me: "This was never just about the symptoms. I needed to change the way I approach life."

That's what this episode is really about.

Resources mentioned:

Andrea's Instagram: @instinctualmothering and @socialboob 

How to work with Grace:

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What I’d Focus On If I Were Starting Over Healing Chronic Pain & Illness

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If you have been at this for months. Or years. Doctor after doctor. Protocol after protocol. Nothing fully landing. This is the episode I needed when I was you.

In Ep 127, I am taking you back to the early stages of my own healing. The crying in waiting rooms. The maxed-out credit cards. The functional practitioner who handed me a brain rewiring pamphlet that I dismissed because I was not ready.

There are six things I would do completely differently if I were starting over. These are not protocols. These are the patterns underneath all the protocols. Education first. Stop frantically searching. Build tolerance for discomfort. Chase trust instead of relief. Repair your relationship with your body before it feels better. Stop looking for the perfect approach.

Each of these took me years to learn. Some of them took specific clients of mine in the Mind Body Healing Method to teach me. If I can save you even a fraction of that time, this episode did its job.

If you find yourself constantly switching practitioners every 5 sessions, panic-searching at 2am, or treating your body like the enemy until it "earns" your love -> pin this one. Come back to it the next time you are about to swap programs.

Your body is not broken. You are not broken. You are missing the patterns under the protocols.

How to work with Grace:

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How To Heal Chronic Symptoms: 5 Phases That Actually Work

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If you've been told you need to "regulate your nervous system" and you're still wondering what that actually means, this episode is the one. Today we're walking through how to heal chronic symptoms from the inside out -> the five phases I take every single client through inside the Mind Body Healing Method.

Most of us start this work doing one thing. Maybe a lot of somatic exercises. Maybe a ton of brain training. Maybe just reading book after book about the nervous system. And then we wonder why our symptoms aren't shifting. Here's what I've learned. It's not that any of those tools are wrong. It's that they were never meant to work on their own. Your body can't soften when your brain is still sounding the alarm. And your brain can't update if your body never gets to feel safe. They go together.

I'm walking you through Recognize. Rewire. Regulate. Integrate. Reclaim. Each phase is doing something specific -> changing your relationship to the signal, retraining the thinking brain, expanding what your body can hold, releasing what's been stuck for years, and then building a life you actually want to be in. We talk about why somatic work alone wasn't enough for me, why I waited to add body-based work until after brain training in my program, and why the integration phase is the part most people skip -> the one I think is the secret sauce.

If you've been in this work for a while and you're still stuck, this is the episode that will help you see where the gap actually is.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

– Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) 

– Liana, in-program therapist + coach 

How to work with Grace:

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7 Signs of a Dysregulated Nervous System Most People Miss

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If you have been chasing test after test and the doctors keep telling you everything looks fine -> this is the episode where you find out why. Today Grace walks you through the 7 signs of a dysregulated nervous system that almost nobody connects back to chronic symptoms.

You are not making it up. Your pain is real. Your bloating is real. Your fatigue, your dizziness, your reactions to food and smells and weather -> all real. They are also exactly what nervous system dysregulation symptoms look like when your brain has been stuck in danger mode for a long time.

In this episode Grace breaks down what neuroplastic symptoms actually are, why "normal labs" are usually a green light not a dead end, and the checklist she walks every new client through in their first few weeks of working together. She also talks about why the labels you have been carrying around (IBS, MCAS, chronic fatigue, hypermobility flares, IC, OAB, migraines, fibro) are not life sentences, and what shifts when you stop identifying with the diagnosis and start training your brain.

If you have been doing the supplements and the elimination diets and the protocols and the PT and you still feel stuck -> the missing piece is your brain and your nervous system. Real talk: not everything is neuroplastic. But if even a few of these 7 signs land hard, you are in the right place. And there is a path forward.

Grace is hosting a FREE live masterclass on May 13th to take this one step further. 

SIGN UP HERE

How to work with Grace:

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How Your Personality Traits Keep Your Nervous System Stuck

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If you've ever caught yourself thinking "that's just me -> I'm an anxious person," or "I've always been a perfectionist, it's just how I am" -> this one's for you.

In this episode, I'm walking you through the 6 personality traits that show up over and over again in people with chronic symptoms. Anxiousness. Pressure. Perfectionism. People pleasing. Catastrophizing. Black and white thinking. These aren't who you are. They're learned patterns. Which means they can be unlearned.

I'm digging into how each one keeps your nervous system stuck in threat mode, where it actually came from (hint -> it's almost never random), and the small shifts that start to loosen the grip. I'm also sharing the moment my therapist called me out on my own perfectionism in grad school -> and the light bulb that finally went off for me.

If you've been doing the work, listening to podcasts, reading the books, and you still feel like something keeps pulling you back into the loop -> it's probably one of these. Maybe more than one. The good news is, naming it is half the work. Once you can see the pattern, you can step outside of it.

You don't have to fix your personality. You just have to give your nervous system a different message than the one it's been getting for years.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sign up for my FREE Live Masterclass happening May 15th :
How to know if your symptoms are nervous system driven and what to do next

Pain Reprocessing Therapy 

How to work with Grace:

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The Thing That Was Missing From My Own Healing (And Probably Yours Too)

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In this solo episode, Grace Secker opens up about the one thing she was missing during her own healing journey — and why it kept her stuck in flare cycles for years, even after she understood the work. It wasn't more information, more books, or more podcasts. It was consistent support, accountability, and community.

Grace shares her personal story of recovering from chronic pain in her 20s through what is now called pain reprocessing therapy, only to develop a wave of new symptoms years later — chronic fatigue, gut issues, histamine reactions, migraines — and having to find her way back to mind-body work all over again, this time completely alone.

She explains why understanding alone doesn't change the nervous system — because knowledge lives in the prefrontal cortex while the patterns driving symptoms operate from much older, less rational parts of the brain. Real change comes from practice, repetition, and showing up consistently, especially on the hard days. Grace also explores the science of co-regulation — how our nervous systems are wired to calm and heal in relationship with other safe humans — and why so much healing content is consumed in isolation, which limits how far it can take you.

Grace introduces what she's been building behind the scenes: small, intimate group containers (six people max) designed for people already in the MindBody Healing Method course who want structure, accountability, and a community of people who truly get it. The first group launches in April.

How to work with Grace:

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