Unstoppable Body and Mind

Episode # 115- Shelby’s Healing Journey and Energy Hacks

I love this interview with one of my favorite people, Shelby Hansen.

 

She shares her healing journey including overcoming decades of hip pain to run a pain-free triathalon.

 

Shelby is a coach for moms with Chronic Fatigue, and she shares with us some energy hacks that anyone can use to feel better in life.

 

You can find Shelby on her website https://shelbykhansen.com/

And download her top 3 Energy Tips here: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/63dc400c8e06d4dae9492ea0

 

 

For weekly calls and community support integrating this work into your life, check out Alignment Academy:

https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/alignment-academy-membership

 

Please subscribe and share this podcast with someone who might love it!

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy

on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/

 

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA

 

Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

 

*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it  https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6

 

*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen

 

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Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 115, Shelby's Healing Journey and Energy Hacks. In this podcast, we learned to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind. All right, everyone, welcome. I'm so excited today to have a special guest, my friend, a fellow coach, she's been a client, all of the things, Shelby Hansen.
Welcome, Shelby.
Thanks so much for this opportunity.
I'm so happy to have you here. Every time we talk, just feels so good. You've been doing this work for a while, your story is amazing, what brought you here?
And you coach women that have chronic fatigue and have special tips about energy that I also thought might be helpful to everyone. Not even if you just have chronic fatigue, but you had a poor night's sleep or you, however it might fit in, if it's more of a freeze type of symptom, which I'm sure we will talk about later. So anyway, I just really wanted to have you on the podcast.
I'm glad you agreed to come and share with us your story and your wisdom. Absolutely. Oh, yeah.
Well, can I just start about how I found you? Oh, I would love it. So like Betsy said, we're both coaches and I was on a Facebook group and she had talked about doing this book club for The Way Out and that was back in October of 2021.
I was newly certified as a coach and I had just had, or maybe it was November. I don't know. I just had a jaw surgery in October of 2021 and the pain was not going away.
I'm not somebody that takes a lot of pain medications. So I took a pain. My pain had started to kind of subside and then it got worse a few weeks after the surgery.
And I took one of the medications and it didn't touch the pain at all. And I was like, what is going on? There's something.
I knew there was something emotional happening, but I didn't know what it was. And so I saw that you were talking about chronic pain, which I've been coaching women that experienced chronic illness and now specifically chronic fatigue for a long time. And chronic pain goes hand in hand with so many of those conditions.
And I was like, I got to find out more about this chronic pain. So I joined your book club. And during that time, I was sitting in my chair.
I was 20 pounds heavier than I've ever been. Hadn't been really working out. And you were talking about having us imagine doing an activity that would cause pain and I imagined running because since I was 14 years old, I would experience pain in my hip when I would run.
And so, but it would only happen after I had run or while I was running and I hadn't run in months and I was sitting there, closing my eyes, imagining myself running on the beach and my hip started to hurt.
In real life, I hadn't even moved at all. And I was like, what did Betsy just do?
Your brain, what did your brain just do?
Right.
I mean, yeah, it is like magical sometimes and seems really like a cool party trick, but pain is just this creation of your brain and we can reroute those neural pathways and feel different things and mess with your brain and see those things.
That's when I knew in that moment, I was like, this is neuroplastic. I'm not neuroplastic, I've never heard this term before. Whatever's going on is neuroplastic because I had been, like I said, since I was 14 years old, in cross country.
I remember the moment it happened and unlearning that is actually what helped. But I'd been to physical therapists, I've been to all of the doctors. They told me I had hip bursitis, I'd had x-rays and podiatrists, like all of the things, done the physical therapy and nothing could touch it.
Yeah. And so it wasn't like it hurt all the time, but it was related to activity. And so then that belief formed of like, oh, the activity causes it and then the life adapts around it.
Oh, I just don't run anymore. So, yeah.
Exactly. So then when you open up your Alignment Academy in February, I was like, I'm all in. So and when I did that too, I went into it with this really aligned goal that I wanted to be able to complete a triathlon that summer.
That's right. Which was a lofty goal, I would say, right? For not even like, I don't think you could even run a mile at that point without me.
No, I couldn't. I couldn't.
Yeah.
I couldn't even run a mile like just like breathing.
Yeah. And so, and this was like February, I think we started and you were like, this summer, I'm going to do a triathlon.
Yeah.
Yeah, I remember that.
Yeah, I'm going to back up just a little bit. So I had a kidney transplant when I was 30, how old was I, 34? Yeah, 34 years old.
So I went into kidney failure when I was 31 years old. And so I had previously done triathlons, but I hadn't run one since my transplant. So, and obviously like I have been diagnosed with medical PTSD.
It was a very traumatic time in my life. I had a difficult healing after the surgery. So there was just a lot going on physically for me.
And also COVID didn't help with that because being somebody that's immunocompromised and then we were also moving because my husband's active duty military, there's just a lot of things that were going on. I lost my support groups, my support system, and that was what led to a lot of that inactivity and just being really disconnected from my body and being heavier. So back, a little bit before I started working with you, I mean, for the Alignment Academy, I decided that I really wanted my focus that year to be my health and I wanted to feel healthy.
And I was looking at that vision, I'm like, what would it be like if I felt healthy? What would that look, physically look like?
Oh, I love that question. Because so many people haven't even answered that for themselves. They can't even imagine it, but they want to feel healthy, but what does that even look like?
Yeah. And so for me, I was like, I would know, like, check the box that I'm healthy if I was running triathlons like I used to. And I know I've told you this before, because as high achievers, people pleasers, like overachievers, like these people that just push, push, push, that are the ones that experience chronic pain.
It's really easy to set a lofty goal and then like body to shut down and not want to complete that goal.
Well, can I even say, like, I love how you said you were really in alignment with it, because I think if you had that goal, like, I remember hearing that goal and kind of my own brain was saying like, that's a lot, like, I don't know that she should have that kind of goal, like, that's what my brain told me.
Good thing you never said that.
I know. But you were so in alignment with it. I was like, of course, I'm going to support that, right?
Like, but if you had had a lot of fear about it, like, this is what I need to do to be healthy, and I have to achieve it. Otherwise, I'm not successful, you would have had different feelings about it. And that triathlon would have been more like a lofty goal to really show, like you said, shut yourself down, and not achieve anything, versus like for you, it was totally aligned, meaning like, good to you, right?
How would you say that?
It did, because when I made that goal, I've been developing my relationship with my body, and like listening to that intuitive part of me. And so as I saw that vision in my mind of doing a triathlon, I also stopped because I did feel a little bit of that escalation in my nervous system, in my body. And I was like, oh, like I let my brain make this decision, I didn't consult my body yet.
And so I took a moment, and I literally like, I talked to my body all the time. I'm like, body, depressing you.
I love that.
I was like, body, do you want to do this? Like, do you want to run a triathlon? And I was open to any possibility that like, whatever feeling I was going to have.
And I just felt this like pulling forward, like, yeah, that sounds fun. Let's go do it.
Yeah. In Deb Dana's book, she says like, stretch, not stress. So I think if it's like in that stretchy, like a pull forward, it wasn't in your comfort zone, but it was like calling to you versus like when you stress the system too much, too soon, that's where it causes more dysregulation and more pain.
Yeah. Well, one of my coaches, too, she says that like, rather than pushing towards your dreams, like rather have your dream and let your like be pulled by your vision.
Yes. Yes. Like, yeah, not like pushing towards it, but like inspired by it and yeah, exactly.
It's all about, you know, that energy, the emotion behind it, you know, if it's lack based, then it will be like, oh, I have to do this in order to be better and feel better versus like, oh, okay, I just want to do something that is like, what is possible for me?
Yeah, exactly. So I entered Alignment Academy with this goal and I was like, you know what? From what Betsy is saying, I really think that I could run this, like complete the triathlon.
I think I could do it pain free. And so that was my, whenever I buy coaching, because I love coaching, I always think about what is it that I, what is my end goal and like the vision part, not the pushing part. But I'm just like, yeah.
Your intent.
Yeah. This is my intention. My intention out there, so yeah.
So that was a big part of it was just like, okay, starting really, really slowly and really small to see like, what is it that my body wants, getting the feedback from my body, getting the coaching when there was times when I felt a lot of pain and I'd be like, Betsy, what's going on?
Even though you have that belief, like when you start feeling pain and you've increased your running, there's a lot of like, you know, understandable concern. And I love like, I think back then that Alignment Academy was like a small group and it was a six month program. And so you gave yourself like six months to achieve that goal.
It wasn't like, I'm going to run a triathlon by the end of this month, you know, and I have to just like, hurry and force myself. Like, you were starting from really not even being a runner at all without pain. And then, you know, having that goal or that like vision for six months.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and as I would run in different places, try different things, like it was so fascinating just, just getting the feedback from my body.
Like, okay, this being the detective for the opposite on times when it's like, I had this whole run and I felt amazing the whole time. What was different than this time when I barely could even hold it together? And recognizing with that nervous system stuff going on.
Right. Because I remember sometimes like, I think you started on a treadmill, but then like going outside, you know, there's like hills and roots and branches and there's this concern of safety and your body naturally like tightened up in certain places and you felt pain.
Yeah, I remember too, I was running through a park one time and it was so funny. I would feel pain as soon as I thought that somebody could see me running.
Oh my gosh. I was like that connection.
Yeah, because I had never made that connection. In fact, it was one of the things that really helped to heal the pain was that I was so concerned about what other people were going to think about how I looked when I ran. How slow I was, like all of that.
I was so concerned and it was totally just putting me into fight or flight while I was running.
What if someone sees me? Yeah, you might have even subconsciously like sensed someone around you and all of a sudden then you have pain. And then what's funny is like, how would you have looked with pain anyway?
Like our brain creates like our fear anyway, you know what I mean?
And then like, it was so funny because I'd feel myself go into alignment and then it stopped hurting. And then I would feel myself go out, it would start and I was just like, oh my gosh, like I just felt like, you know, with one of those cogs in the wheel that it's just like, you know, it's not well oiled and it's like, it's like going and then it stops falling off the bike. But then it gets gone, I was like, this is so weird because I am just doing the same motion and I am having a really weird experience.
Yeah. And even saying alignment, like some people might think, oh, physical alignment. Like that's how I used to think, right?
Oh, because your step was the right length and you have perfect symmetry and your hips are strong. No, it's the mental, physical, spiritual, I don't know, whatever, the alignment of your emotions and your nervous system, the regulation or dysregulation of your nervous system. When things are safe, you don't have pain, you're flowing, it's easy, it's fun.
You would tune into nature. I know you would like...
Yeah, that's what I was just going to say. Part of that was like, I thought somebody was like paying attention to how I was running while I was running and then my ankles would start to hurt and both of my hips would start to hurt and then I would envision being out in a field and when I was like a little toddler, just running through grass just for fun and then the pain would just be like... But then I would go back to freaking out about something and it was just like back and forth.
But really, like you said, being in nature, tuning into what feels really, really good, like that is what helped me to really regulate and tuning into what my body was desiring.
Yes.
She didn't want me to hold still. She didn't want me to be on the couch and not exercising because that didn't feel good either.
Yeah, that's true. Our bodies love movement, but when we're so focused on the like, okay, I've got to move in this certain way so that I don't get hurt and I have to have this strength and I have... You know, that focuses on that fear versus when you're in that flow state, that parasympathetic calm state, the ventral state, you're not even thinking about the fear and the pain and you don't have it.
You're tuning in to other things and that's such an important point of this work. It's not just decreasing the fear, but like replacing it with something that feels good and is enjoyable and you're actually feeling safe in your body.
Yeah, and I had a powerful coaching from just a peer around that time and she had said something about, she's like, well, it sounds like you beat the odds to me. And I was like, oh my gosh, I have beat the odds. And so sometimes when I was running, I would physically hit my chest and tell myself, I beat the odds.
Like it's what I do, it's who I am. And it just felt so empowering and so just strong and strength. And instead of me thinking like this, this exercise is going to make me weaker, it's going to hurt my body, which is what I used to think, like running so glad for your body, it's bad for your joints, like all of the stories that people tell us, I'm like, no, this is stronger.
Yeah, totally shifted my experience.
Yes. I love that you said that because like, I just will put in this little thing, this little story from dancing where I started doing all of these like flips of my head and you know, rolling my neck and my my neck used to tighten up when I first started doing it. And then I could just like calm myself down and I would tell myself like, this motion is good for my neck like this.
It's good to have like full motion and be able to move it freely. And now my brain doesn't even produce it anymore and I do, you know, even more head rolls and all that stuff. But when I reacted with fear, you know, I was thinking like, what just happened?
Did I just pinch the synovial sac? You know, like, just the anatomy of it, I would tighten up more and have more pain. But when I was like, it's good for my body.
And there's actually so much research now about running, being good for arthritis, being good for back pain, like all these things we used to say. Now there's research saying the opposite. So it's so sad.
So yeah, one thing I will say is that it was pretty easy for me to unhook from the physical pain of the hip because I didn't have an injury that happened. And I feel like that was like a real advantage for me because I remember, like I said, I remember when it happened. I was 14 years old.
I was on a cross country team. We were living in Hawaii. We, like I was running in the rain.
We're running up this hill that was like really challenging. I was the last one. And I really feel like, and that's when I was like, oh, yeah, my, my, my hip hurts.
And that's when it started. There was no like real reason for it to start. It's not like I broke my leg or like, you know, something fell on it.
There was no like physical damage. So when you told me like, if you're like, this is neuroplastic, how you explained it and that there like, there was no physical reason for it to start, it was really easy for me to just believe like, oh, yeah, this is just my brain.
Well, that's so fascinating, Shelby, because really like you were running at the time. So like so many people that I've coached, like not only do they tie it to like, well, I was doing an activity at the time, but they reach back as far as like a month before that. And they'll be like, well, a month before the pain started, I was riding four wheelers.
Or two weeks before it started, I had an accident where I fell off a horse and then they didn't have pain. And then it started two weeks later. So it's like so interesting that you could detach from that, even though it wasn't like you were like, I was laying in bed and my hips started hurting.
You were actually running, but we want to see that just even just like normal running is not something that just injures your body, right? It doesn't like, like you said, it wasn't like something fell on you or that you fell down and broke your bone. Like it just tightened up and there was this emotional component going on.
Yeah, because I was, I was, I was holding up the team. Like it's a team score, like, I mean, it was just a practice, but, oh yeah. And the reason why I say that too, is because then I, you know, I had had the jaw surgery and that, you know, that I've gotten quite a bit of coaching on like tongue and like jaw pain and like all of that.
And that's been a lot harder for me to unhook from because I'm like, oh yeah, that's because of the surgery.
Yes. Yeah, it's so true. And when you have that belief that there is a physical problem, your brain is more likely to produce the pain.
Exactly. But yeah, that is so interesting.
And like it's been like in the past, like the last like few months or so, like the jaw stuff has kind of been flaring up. And so what I realized was that I was really hooked in to the story of the surgery causing the pain. So it's been so much better because I decided that the sensations have nothing to do with that surgery that happened two years ago.
Right. Yes. And that is so, so amazing that you can uncouple that and realize that.
And because so many times we just are under that belief like, oh, it's not perfect anymore. You know, there's been some damage. But what we really see is that even pain free people, if you did an MRI, so many of them have like anomalies or herniated discs or torn menisci or like different kinds of things.
We have these normal abnormalities and if your surgery has been more than three to six months ago, we're assuming and because this is what we see in this field that the structures have healed to the degree that they don't need to keep causing a chronic pain and chronic pain is a different type of pain than like normal surgical healing pain.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So, in August 2021, no, 2022, it was last summer, I signed up for the Cleveland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Triathlon. I did the mini one, like my brain is like, I need to tell you guys, it was not very long, but like, come on brain.
I know, right? Oh, it's a mini triathlon.
It's a mini sprint, like it was like the shortest one that you can do. But I didn't care because that's my brain just wanted to see me doing a triathlon. So I signed up for it.
I did the swim part, no problem, did the bike, no problem, was right by one of the Great Lakes. I think it's Lake Erie. I could be wrong, but I think that's what it is.
Did the running and I was coming up around the bend and like feeling good. And as I was coming around and starting to go down this hill where I could see Lake Erie and see the beach area, legs started to seize up. I started to feel pain shooting up the sides of my ankles.
I don't think my hip was hurting at all. But I was just feeling really sharp. And I was just like, you know what?
In my brain, I wanted the pain to go away so bad because I just really, really wanted to do this with no pain. Right? And so it was making, because I was in resistance, it was making it even worse in the moment.
And so once I realized that, I was like, you know what? I just don't care if I feel pain while I do this. I just don't care.
And I told myself that this thought was so empowering for me in that moment. I said, I'm just willing to feel it all.
The pain went away right when you had that change of heart and that release of the resistance.
I didn't realize how hard I was resisting. And I was like, I'm just willing to feel it all. And my body was like, that's what I was waiting for.
Oh, this is so interesting. I mean, we just see this over and over and over and over, right? I'm sure you see it with every one of your clients.
And we see it in ourselves that the more we're resisting it, it builds, it holds on it, like, you know, festers or gets worse or what you think about you, you create more of. So the more we're in resistance to pain, the more pain we have to be resistant to.
Yeah. So, like I said, I just I sing Betsy's praises, I it's been so incredible working with her and just finding out that my body has such a bigger capacity to heal and to like how I feel in my body. I didn't know that was possible.
I thought that like this is just where I'm at and this is how I'm going to feel for the rest of my life. And I didn't realize that that was not true.
You probably had even been told like, well, you've had a kidney transplant in your thirties and that's so rare. We don't even know what it's going to be like, but you're probably going to have a lot of, you know, feelings of fatigue and not being able to do my, I don't know what you've been told, but it would be very understandable to just be like, yeah, this is my lot in life based on what I've been through.
Well, and you look at the medications that I'm on for life, like I'm on prednisone for the rest of my life. You know, heavy duty immunosuppressants. So I've been told all sorts of things, like scary things, and they're like, this thing, this thing.
I don't even say them out loud anymore though, because I'm just like, that doesn't help me. Because all it does is create fear. And so I am constantly on the look, detective for the opposite, for other people that have experienced similar things to me that are not these worst case scenarios that people warn me about.
Yes. Yes. I love that you mentioned detective for the opposite, one of the best tools, not only for pain, but literally any kind of limiting belief.
I've done that with, you know, I'm not a great mom. And then you look at the examples of how you are great in some moments, right? Like detective for the opposite, you can almost always, it's like an Amazon review.
I was thinking like, sometimes there's like a million five star reviews and there's one person that's like, I hated it. It didn't work for me at all. So you could be the opposite though of that, that's like more of a negative one.
But it's like, you can always find something, right? Like that's opposite of your belief. And if your belief is something about pain and like I have pain with sitting or with running or, you know, finding detective for the opposite moments is one of my favorite things to do to just rewire those neural circuits so much faster.
Yeah, I totally agree. So and then the other thing that you helped me with so much too was understanding my freeze response because that was my go to.
Oh my gosh. Let's talk about that. Because I think people identify with fight or flight a lot.
Like do you think that's like probably true with we hear about that more. We know what fight looks like. We know what flight looks like somewhat or, you know, we get it when we hear about it.
But freeze, I didn't realize about it either until like a few years.
Well, and that's what I that was the fatigue that I was experiencing because here I was, you know, like I said, had kidney failure and had debilitating fatigue and nausea because parts of my body were not clearing the toxins that they're meant to. And so my my blood was becoming toxic. And so having the kidney transplant that that remediated that problem.
And so, you know, you would think, OK, awesome. So she's not going to feel fatigue or nausea anymore because she has a working kidney. But that didn't happen for me.
I continue to feel that fatigue and nausea, even though I have a new organ that's helping. And so I was like, what is going on with this? And so just like the pain and healing that chronic neuroplastic pain, I applied those principles to the fatigue and nausea like you taught me to.
Yes. So that is so important, right? It's not just chronic pain, like, oh, my muscles hurt or a nerve pain.
It can be, I mean, of course, nausea, like the digestive issues are so affected by the nervous system, right? They're the first to shut off. If you're being chased by a tiger, you're not going to be digesting your food.
And then the fatigue, though, is such an interesting one because so many people just believe fatigue has to do with how much you sleep and what you put into your body, right? Like what you eat or don't eat and how much you sleep.
Yeah. And it's been so fascinating because I would feel this just like drain of energy, just like sucked of energy and just like couldn't do anything else. And I was like, oh, that's the fatigue.
And then I would talk to you about it and you'd be like, that's freeze.
Like, this is just like, this is what fatigue is. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, exactly. Cause we're kind of just trained to think like, oh, just something's hemically, physically wrong with me.
Yeah, exactly. And so, and again, like I would think, oh, it's like you said, it's something that I ate. Like I ate the wrong thing.
And I feel so terrible in my body and I'm so tired. I'm so sluggish. I just like, I can't do anything.
It was just very all or nothing thinking is what the freeze was, because I had exhausted all of my fight or flight frenzied. And then when I just felt so hopeless that whatever I was doing wasn't going to be fixed, then my body just went into this hopeless state and just all of the energy reserves are just gone.
Yes, because it's not just fatigue. There are emotions that go along with freeze. Do you want to talk about those for you?
Yeah, I mean, definitely, it's like the hopeless and the despair. Even disappointment can really bring that freeze.
And shame is a big one that we see.
I'm sorry. Yes.
Yeah. Who could forget that? But it's so insidious.
We're just like, oh, but this is true. It just feels true that we're bad at life. I always tell the example with freeze of I was getting coached, and I was saying how everything was bad.
I'm a bad mom, bad coach. Everything's going horribly. And I had 10 people in my yoga class, but I was still like, which is a good number for me.
And then I was still like, but I play the same music every time. I bet they hate that. So that just encapsulates freeze for me where it's like, you see everything as just kind of bad and tinged with despair and hopelessness.
And it just feels true. It feels so true.
And there was just so much. Oh gosh. I wish I could remember the person that said this.
And I think I've talked to you about it before, but they were saying that a regulated nervous system is not feeling calm. It's feeling at choice.
I love that.
When I was in the freeze, and I mean, it still happens sometimes just not nearly to the frequency that it did. I just felt like every single choice was taken away. The only choice that was there was to do nothing.
Yeah. And so many people who lived in a lot of fight or flight, especially the flight, they can kind of combine that freeze with flight. And so then you're like despairing and hopeless.
And then you're like, but if I could just get up every morning at five and do the 10 hour, not a 10 hour, the morning routine that I used to do in my 20s before I had kit, they're like, then we just put all this pressure on ourselves and then we feel hopeless again. And it's this sometimes can feel like opposing forces, not just fatigue, but this like antsy energy to do stuff. But then also this fatigue of like, I just can't actually get off the couch and do anything.
But then I feel really bad about it.
And actually, like one of the things that I have my clients do, especially if they experience a freeze response or they're feeling that fatigue, because they're not feeling safe in their bodies and they don't realize that's why they're feeling the freeze.
Yes.
I'll have them when they are in a regulated state, make two lists, like a list of the comfort list of things that bring them comfort so that they don't have to think about it in the moment.
So smart. Yes.
And then also a list of the things that they just enjoy. Oh, I love that.
Yeah.
It's like, because, like I said, they just feel like there's you're not at choice in that moment. And so when you've already made those decisions ahead of time, like, yes, like go do the things that's whatever is going to bring you comfort. I know I talked to you so much about like me.
My comfort is go lay down on the couch with my fuzzy blanket and watch some Netflix and sometimes have a bowl of goldfish.
Yes, I love that example because sometimes people are like, what's the like Wim Hof breathing method I need to do to calm my nervous system? I'm like, your body knows like, it's like your inner child knows to like curl up with a teddy bear or whatever, like do that kind of thing. What's called, I love that it's a bowl of goldfish too, because it even sounds very like a toddler, you know.
I didn't eat goldfish for like 20 years, like I don't even know like who I am, but as I was doing it, once I recognized that I was doing it deliberately, I would just like each goldfish that I would eat, I would be like, I'm safe. In this moment, yes, no danger. There's no tiger.
There's no lion and not shaming myself for being in a freeze response. Yes, yes, yes, yes, just narrating, narrating what's happening, like I'm eating a goldfish. Yeah, I'm scrolling on Instagram, like I tell myself, because, you know, we're like, we always want to get to present moment.
Like the easiest way to do that is to just say what's happening to yourself.
I love that. Yeah, because then you're doing it purposely. It's not like you're eating, you know, a whole bag of cookies all at once.
If you're eating one bite at a time, telling yourself you're safe, you know, chances are you'll eat just the right amount. Because I think you've even said with your like being able to eat different foods and I think even losing weight, like it's not like you're just turning to these self-soothing activities at your own body's expense. Like when you regulate, you are allowed to have some of those fun things and pleasures in your life and your body's actually healthier than when you're restrictive and not allowing them.
Exactly. Because, you know, I had told you I've been on every like every single elimination diet, like because they told me that a big part of my kidney disease was that I had inflammation in my kidneys and they could never figure out why. I'm like, interesting, interesting.
Yeah, maybe from from all the stress.
I mean, I also have a genetic predisposition to have a genetic disorder as well. But, but anyway, had been through all of those diets. And when you were like, yeah, the food doesn't cause the digestive distress, like distress.
I was like, what? I gotta go try that.
Yeah.
And now I do not eat a restrictive diet at all. There is nothing that's off limits for me, other than if I just don't feel like eating it. It's a relationship with body.
It's just like, do you actually want this right now? Yes, I do. And sometimes I don't.
Yes. And again, it's like you have choices that way. Back to choice.
Like I haven't heard it phrased that way. I would say like the opposite of that, you know, dysregulation is that safe feeling. But like the choice, when you have more choices in life of what you can do, where you can go, how you can move your body, how you can eat, then you have that fuller, richer life.
But when you have been told you can't eat these foods, and then you've experienced pain with movements, so then you decide you can't do those movements. Like, I mean, of course, it's natural. I'm not trying to say we're deciding it, but like, you know, we want to eliminate those things that are going to, quote unquote, cause us pain, not realizing that, you know, that's not even the source of the pain.
And since I have worked with you, I'm like, I have lost those 20 pounds and kept them off since November 21.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you weren't like dieting and...
No, I was eating goldfish.
Yeah, exactly. I love that.
Not that I was eating goldfish every single day, but like when my body's like, hey, like you've overextended yourself, you didn't pay attention to me. You didn't listen when I was whispering. Now I'm screaming.
Better listen. And that's when I started to. So that's a lot of what I, you know, what I've learned for myself, what I teach is like, let's listen to the whispers before they become screams.
Yes.
Yes. I'm curious if you experienced this, because I definitely did. And I know a lot of my clients have, when we're starting to learn to self care, come out of freeze, to do these kinds of things that are in this loving way, starting to worry that like, oh man, am I just like, creating all of this so I can lay on the couch and eat goldfish?
And is this going to start to be my new life? And did you experience that?
And you're like, no, you're going to regulate, you're going to, your body's going to play some like, okay, I'm just going to trust her because that does not feel like it's going to happen. And I trusted you because that is the truth. Like, we're wired to contribute, we're wired to be creative.
We're not wired to just not do anything. Like, it doesn't feel physically good.
It's true. Like people who are always like, oh, I could just, you know, I just really have a problem with sleeping too much. And if I allow myself to sleep, then I'll just like, and I'm like, haven't you ever experienced a time where you actually want to get out of bed?
And everyone has, you know, you're, you've been in bed too long and you're like, it doesn't feel good to just stay in bed all the time. It does when you're in a freeze response or when you're dysregulated. But once you start regulating that, like you said, we, that is where we have that capacity to connect, to learn, to grow, to evolve, to help other people.
But when we're doing it from freeze or from a depleted place, you know, that's when we end up getting sicker and sicker.
Well, and I think that it was such a shift for me, like going back to just narrating when I was in a freeze response, because what I had been doing for years was beating myself up that I couldn't do anything. So it's just this chain cycle that was just like pile and compound and compound and compound. And so then I'm like, I haven't been doing anything.
Why don't I have energy? I should have energy because I didn't do anything, but there's a good way to rest and there's a crappy way to rest. And beating yourself up while you're resting is not, it's counterintuitive.
It's not productive.
That is so true. I'm glad you said that because so many people are like, oh no, I'm good at watching Netflix. I could do that for eight hours.
And but then they're beating themselves up the whole time and shaming themselves. And so that's really not rest at all.
Yeah, it's not. And really at the beginning, when I realized how often I was going into freeze and like that's what was happening to my body. I like, I had one client one time, she's like, well, what do you do?
Like when, when you're like, you need to sleep and you need to nap. I'm like, I did what Betsy taught me. I nap.
At the beginning, there was a lot of resting because there was so much that I quote, unquote had to catch up on because I had just neglected that part of me for so long. So, and because I made that investment in that current place of where I was at, I very rarely need to do that anymore. If I did, I would, but it's, it's, I, you know, yeah, I live a life, like it's living in a place where I'm like, oh, I'm going to do that.
I'm going to live a vibrant life because I'm able to live a vibrant life now. I think there's so much of this black and white thinking. And I got coaching one time where the lady was like, you know, there's more colors in the crayon box than black and white.
Yeah.
That's what happens when we're in an escalated nervous system state where like, there's only this way or this way. And so when I realized like, there's all of these emotions that I can choose, there's all of these different paths. Like, that's when the vibrancy and the color came back to my life.
Oh, my gosh. And it's back to choices again. I love it.
Right?
When we're like in that survival mindset, we're like, is it right or is it wrong? Is it black or white? And then when we have more choices, we're able to live that full vibrant life.
I love it. So for people who are struggling with energy, struggling with fatigue, maybe even I think it's really common that in earlier parts of our lives, we've been that fight or flight type of person. And then maybe it's when we have kids or in our 30s or 40s or not that it's age related, but more stress related because of the things that happen in those decades.
Then we go into freeze and then we're like, why do I have this brain fog? Why do I have this constipation and GI issues and all of the things that can come with freeze, including fatigue? What are your, I don't know, if you have some favorite tips or advice for people?
I think my favorite thing is just to be aware of what's going on in your body and not making yourself wrong for what's happening. Just really be experiencing it and like finding resources, finding resources, like what Betsy says, what I'm taught, like what I teach about too. And just learning about how you personally, it works for you to regulate your own nervous system, because there are so many choices in what you can do.
And it's just not thinking that there's a one size fits all. And if I just do this path, then I'm going to get out of this rut. Really getting to have an actual relationship with your own body.
People with chronic illness from what I've seen and from what I've experienced, we're just so disconnected from our bodies. And just take them for granted. We're like, brain, you just tell us everything to do.
We'll keep doing that until we can't do it anymore. It's taking that step back and really getting to know yourself really well. It's like, what do I even like?
What do I even want to create? What do I want the future to look like? Because chances are your brain is so focused on what has happened and what hasn't happened for you in the past.
That's what it's just trying to avoid creating what's already happened. Instead of being like, oh, I could create a new even better future.
Yes, and that just sounds so much like regulating that nervous system to me, right? You're in those fierce states of like, you know, the past and not letting those things happen again and wanting this sense of control and not, you know, and then when you're more in that safe ventral state, that's when you start to feel more energy. You have this bigger capacity to not get so dysregulated with all of the little things in life, so you can tolerate more, your window of tolerance grows, and that takes less energy because being in survival states takes energy, right?
Right? Yeah, so my energy, I'm just going to live in this.
Yes. Yeah. So even the way the body like shuts down during freeze to reserve energy, it's just like going into this like low heart rate, like stasis, kind of like preparing for death kind of state, and it's using more energy to do that than when we're regulated.
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, a couple of the modules that I take my clients through, like one of the first ones I do is rhythms and routines because we get so rigid in thinking this is how life should be. And if I don't have this exact thing happen, this exact way, the controlling part, Yes.
everything's going to go to pieces. And so instead, like, I talk more about like, okay, this is like an overall rhythm that's happening in your life. And you can just gently return to that rhythm when it feels good because sometimes life's going to happen.
So rather than beating yourself up and just seeing, okay, this is the overall picture and having trust and faith that all of the pieces are going to work out.
Yeah.
So I'm like, I always go back to like laundry, but I'm like, laundry is a rhythm. Okay, guys.
Right.
Mom, so you got chronic fatigue. It's like, oh, the laundry is never going to get done. But like if you put in tight, like these little systems that are easy to return to, then you don't have to get dysregulated because we weren't able to do the laundry how we want it to this week.
Like you can just return to gentle.
I love that because it's not even like the laundry, if it's done or not, that's a problem. It's how we're thinking about it, what we're making it mean about us, even the thought, it's never done, has that trapped feeling versus like, I have little bits of time during the day that I do it, and it feels so good to just get those, get the socks put away or whatever. I don't know how you suggest.
I just make my kids do all of their own since they were like five years old.
Yes. No, exactly. So many times we are low on energy because we're doing all these things for other people that we could actually enable them to be more self-sufficient and it could take a load off of our plate.
And you work primarily with moms, I think. So I'm sure you really see that because we're really trained to fill those roles and help everyone and give it our own expense. And it not only benefits you but everyone around you when you start to release some of those responsibilities you've been clasping on to.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
So good. Well, I love that you're doing this work, especially with energy levels, because that is just something that almost everyone talks to me about. And I've really thought at times in my life, I'm like, I think something is just wrong with me.
Because I had the belief I was just supposed to be happy all the time and have energy all the time. So just even being aware of how much the nervous system contributes to feelings of fatigue or brain fog or focus or memory or all of these things is just, you know, it's so helpful for people to know. So they don't think that something's just going wrong with them or, you know, this is just a result of aging or it's just perimenopause.
I guess I'll have this for 10 years and then whatever other symptoms, menopause, brain, you know, just, I love you're doing this work.
And I just, I think to myself, I'm like, if I could just teach or, or people could learn it from wherever, you know, I'm like, if I could just teach these women how to process emotions and sensations in their body with safety and how to regulate their nervous systems and how to, for them to figure out how to regulate their nervous systems in ways that work for them.
Yeah.
They would have all of the energy they could ever want.
Oh my gosh. I love that. Can you just say that one more time?
Because that I think is so important because it's again, yeah, it's more about like those two things, the processing emotion. Because when you say like tune into your body and get to know it, like maybe people are still like, I don't know what that means. Like, how do I just develop a relationship with myself?
But how you broke it down there?
It's really the two main things that I think about is learning how to process your emotions and your sensations in your body with safety.
Yes. Which is what we do in this pain reprocessing and it's for emotions too.
Exactly. Yeah. And then learning how your specific nervous system works, how to heal pieces of it, and how to bring just more of that aligned, calm, focused, energized state.
Yes.
And then you can do amazing things with all of the energy you need because you don't have all of the resistance. Because it's not about how many things you do, it's about all of those beliefs surrounding everything in your emotions and past traumas and things like that. That's your energy.
And you can borrow this thought if it helps you, my friends, but my thought is that I always have more than enough energy. Sometimes I'm using it a little inefficiently, but it doesn't mean that it's not there.
Oh, I love that. Okay. That just reminded me actually, because you have had some really good thoughts that have helped you.
I have one of them just written on a post-it note here. But if you don't mind sharing some of your favorite thoughts that have gotten you through, I think you've already mentioned one earlier. It was the, I beat the odds.
I beat the odds. Yes. So empowering.
And that might not resonate with anyone else that hasn't had a kidney transplant or whatever, or doesn't feel like they're at that point in their life. But any others that you remember?
It's so funny because while I was doing this work, I had posted after posted after posted of thoughts that I was incorporating. And as I incorporated them into my psyche, my subconscious, I've actually just taken them and thrown them away because I'm like, they're a part of me now.
Yeah. You have to remind yourself. I love that.
But I'll give you some. Like one of them that I that I still have up is that I'm saying no to perfectionism, so I can make space for something even better.
I love that.
And a question that I'm asking myself right now is, what is the influence I consciously want to create in my environment? Wow.
Instead of being reactive, that's like a way to have that intent about what you want.
And if you can see the video, I have this this little quote behind me. It says the world needs who you were made to be. I believe that about every single person.
And I've got another one. There's two more back there. One of them says she believes she could, so she did.
I just read that over and over again while I was on my treadmill. The last one is the magic is already inside of you. You don't need more of it.
You just need to remember it.
I love that. I love that. Yeah, I love that you have that like about magic.
And that's another reason we especially get along. And the one that I have from you, I don't know if you even remember, I have this from you, but it was, I'm the best me. Oh yeah.
That was a good one. That was a really healing thought.
Cause like we get into this compare and despair, or we compare ourselves to how we used to be, or, you know, we're just in freeze when we're doing that. But even just like, okay, I'm the best me. And sometimes that's freeze.
Sometimes the best me is like healing old trauma responses. And that's just the part of life I'm in and building my nervous system capacity, but I'm the best me. I love that.
Oh, I'm glad. I'm glad that helped.
Yeah. Well, it has been such a pleasure talking to you. I will link up any of your resources that you want to share.
And like I said, I've just cherished doing this work with you, seeing your progress and that you're now like have this special niche for especially moms with chronic fatigue. Because if it's treatable, and there are some ways that we can like help ourselves and have, you know, more capacity to help our kids. So good to know that.
Thank you so much. Yeah, I'll say to like when I when I was deciding, like who I was that I wanted to serve, I was like in a room full of amazing women and just like this energy was just palpable. And I was writing down.
I was like, who is it? Like, what is it? What do I do?
And I was just like wrote down moms with chronic fatigue, like before I even like could even it was pen to paper before it hit my brain. Wow. I just felt like full body chills and I was like, okay, that's who we're helping.
That's what we're doing. So I feel very blessed and very called to be able to serve that. And I just have to say, if you are listening to the podcast and you are on the fence about working with Betsy, get off the fence.
You will see so many results. Like there's just still things that I am getting results from. And I'm in her group program.
I'm like, I will always have Betsy in my life. Now it's a membership. Yeah, just so many amazing ahas and just incredible breakthroughs from things that she's taught me.
So thank you so much. Yeah, I love having you in that group. And it's nice just to know that you can always ask a question when you need.
But, you know, if you don't have to show up to every call or whatever, you're at this place where it's just kind of this maintenance. But as we go through life, you know, we always have some things that just regulate our nervous system if we're growing and expanding.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Thank you so much, Betsy.
All right. Thank you so much. Take care and we'll be in touch soon.
All right. Thanks, everyone, for joining. Thank you so much for listening.
I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an Unstoppable Body and Mind.

 

Episode # 114- Personality Traits and Chronic Pain

Did you know your personality traits are a predictor for whether you will have chronic pain or mindbody symptoms?

Traits like perfectionism, people pleasing, and wanting to be liked keep the nervous system in dysregulated states and wreak havoc on the body.

 

For me, my personality traits were the biggest thing keeping me dysregulated and in a state of dis-ease before I found this work.

 

Listen to find out more!

 

For weekly calls and community support integrating this work into your life, check out Alignment Academy:

https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/alignment-academy-membership

 

Please subscribe and share this podcast with someone who might love it!

 

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Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

 

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Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 114, Personality Traits and Chronic Pain. In this podcast, we learned to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind. Hello, my loves. Today, I wanted to talk to you about common personality traits that are associated with chronic pain.
Now, this is definitely something that I was not taught in physical therapy school. My knowledge of chronic pain was basically you just treat all pain the same way. As if it's damage in the body and you try to perfect the body and prevent further damage.
And when I say chronic pain, it could be, you know, a bad back that flares up every few times a year, or it could be other symptoms like irritable bowel syndrome is a common one, digestive issues like reflux, issues like migraines and fibromyalgia, as well as things like brain fog or tinnitus or fatigue, those can all be signs of neuroplastic symptoms, basically mind-body symptoms, meaning that the thoughts, the emotions, the nervous system, are the things that are giving the brain the information to produce pain, rather than that it's an injury that needs to be taken care of medically. So most people that are coming to this work have already tried the medical procedures. Their pain has lasted longer than three to six months, and it's resistant to medical care.
So that is kind of how we describe chronic pain. And what we find is that there are some common personality traits that we see with people who tend to have symptoms display in their bodies. These personality traits are things like perfectionism, people pleasing, wanting to be seen as good, wanting people to like you, a strong sense of duty.
They're often things that are not bad in themselves. They're actually usually very nice people, kind people, empathetic people that end up having chronic pain or mind-body type symptoms. As children, we develop these survival states and did not have any tools to know how to regulate.
And so over lifetimes, patterns can form of giving of yourself at your own expense, making sure everyone is happy before you can feel happy, or never letting yourself rest when you have achievements and you've achieved them, still criticizing yourself, thinking you should have done it faster or with less help, or as soon as you achieve something, you're on to the next thing because it's not fulfilling for you. For me, I think the personality traits were the biggest thing keeping me dysregulated, because I had a pretty great childhood, caring parents, attentive parents, and no big T traumas. But I developed this sense of trying to be very good.
I was raised in a religious setting, so wanting to be good, wanting to not make mistakes, worried that if I made mistakes, it would have eternal consequences. I was very scared. It promoted a lot of fear in my young developing nervous system around getting things wrong, about what other people thought of me.
And so that kept me dysregulated. When I got married and had kids and was a working mom, I felt like I was never doing enough. I couldn't be good enough by the fact that I was working and a mom and just continually being a very harsh critic on myself, pushing myself to do more, and really not knowing how to do any kind of self-care and starting to feel guilty if I did take time for myself.
So it was a real recipe for disaster, and no wonder that my digestive system was not doing well because when you're in these survival states, your digestive system shuts down, right? It's not as important to digest your food as it is to run away from a tiger. But in my case, there was no tiger chasing me.
Many of the things in the environment were actually safe for me, but I kept myself in a dysregulated state all of the time because of these personality traits, these survival states that I had used to cope and did not know any differently and did not have any tools to regulate myself out of. Dr. Schubiner describes internal pressures. Internal pressures meaning the pressures that we put on ourselves that keep us in these fierce states and in states where we're more likely to produce that neuroplastic pain.
He says people who are at higher risk for having mind-body syndrome are people who put more pressure on themselves, who are more self-critical, self-blaming, who feel more obligations and have a strong sense of duty. They worry excessively, take responsibility for external problems, they're overly conscientious and caring about others, and especially to the exclusion of doing things for themselves. So I checked every box on there for myself.
That's exactly the way I was living my life. It was actually well-meaning and well-intended. I wanted to be a good person.
I wanted to be there for everyone. I wanted everyone to like me, but by setting myself up for these unrealistic standards, I was actually really harming my own body and creating a state of dis-ease constantly. I like to remember that these personality traits developed as protective survival responses.
Sometimes you'll hear them called trauma responses. When you look at these personality traits of chronic pain, you can see them in the survival states. So this is what I mean.
The kind of person who might tend to go more towards fight and have chronic pain would be the kind of person who would be angry or frustrated with themselves, critical of themselves, also tending to find imperfections in others, feeling like a victim, and blaming. So this is actually a survival state, and this is what your nervous system has developed as you were growing up, as your nervous system was developing. So as you were growing up as a child, this was not a conscious decision.
The autonomic nervous system happens automatically. It's below our conscious control. So our response to an unsafe situation as a child could have been to go into fight.
Now, for someone who tends to go into flight, that response is this perfectionistic response. Like, if I could just do things better, if I could do things perfectly, then I'd be safe. Then people would like me.
If I could figure out all of the problems and fix them, if I could work a little harder, if I could push a little more, it's this frenetic energy of doing things and doing them at your own expense. That's the energy of flight. I have to keep doing more so that I can be safe.
With freeze, you tend to go into more isolation, thinking that if I can hide, I'll be safe. This is where shame lives. So people who are overly critical of themselves are often in shame, thinking something is actually wrong with them.
And fawn is a survival state that I guess I didn't even really realize that I've been living in probably most of my life. Fawn is a people-pleasing state where you would feel safe if people like you. So I would rather shut down part of myself than show up as myself and risk being disliked.
And so I was always gauging myself based on other people's opinions of me, external circumstances. It made it very hard for me to make decisions. I would always want to ask a lot of different people and get a lot of different responses, so it was confusing.
And in fawn, you tend to be more empathetic. You can read the room. You come in and you can just feel what other people are feeling, and you can imagine how it is for them.
And you're, again, so into other people's emotions and managing their emotions for them that you're forgetting about your own self. And people pleasing for me just became so innate because I was always looking for external information to know if I was doing the right thing or not. Again, our nervous system is just always on the lookout for danger.
And if we've had some events in our childhood that we don't want to repeat, our brain is actually on the lookout for anything that resembles something like that. So we can be on guard and looking for danger all of the time. And when the nervous system senses danger or threat, it doesn't mean that there's a real threat, but the nervous system senses that there's a threat, it will decide to put us into a survival state and these old familiar patterns, these old personality traits that cause us to disconnect from ourselves, to live in the future or the past, and to be in this frightened, fearful state that when we're in it long term, it does affect all of the systems in the body, the heart rate, the blood pressure, the breathing rate, the blood sugar, the fat storage, your immunity, your inflammation, your water-sodium balance, all of these things are managed by the autonomic nervous system.
It's automatic, but this is just for survival mode. This is to get us to survive, but not necessarily to thrive. For me, unlearning these personality traits was the biggest part of my healing.
And I had to build the tolerance in my nervous system to feel safe showing up as me, not asking for advice, taking time for self-care, and placing emphasis on how I felt over how other people feel. There were times, and there are still times, that it's very scary. And so be so compassionate with yourself.
If you are noticing some of these personality traits and you want to get rid of them because you don't like them, just please know that the first step is understanding them, accepting them, really seeing what this protective response has been and why you developed it and that this makes sense and that your brain and your nervous system is just trying to protect you. And we want to teach it that it is safe. We don't want these primitive responses in the driver's seat of the car driving us, the nervous systems coming along for the ride, but we want these primitive responses to be in the passenger seat or in the back seat.
And when you learn the tools to regulate your nervous system, then if you do go into these survival states, you know how to process through them, you know how to move through them and get back to regulation with most ease, rather than what we typically do, which is fight and resist, which actually makes our symptoms worse. If you identify with these personality traits, and if you have been doing this work and want a little extra help, or if you want a community of people who know what you are going through and are going through similar things, check out Alignment Academy in the show notes. And for more information, check out my website, bodyandmindlifecoach.com.
All right, you guys, have a great week. Bye. Thank you so much for listening.
I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an unstoppable body and mind.

Episode #113- How Skiing Helped My Back Pain

In this episode I tell you a real life story of my back pain and a flare I had this weekend.

 

Since chronic pain has more to do with fear and nervous system dysregulation, I decided skiing sounded like a nice thing to do when my back pain was uncomfortable.

 

Listen for how this counterintuitive approach helped me through the pain with less resistance and more curiosity.

 

Click here for more information on somatic coaching & Alignment Academy: https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/somatic-coaching

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy

on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/

 

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA

 

Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

 

*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it  https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6

 

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If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543

Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 113, How Skiing Helped My Back Pain. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become unstoppable body and mind.
Hello, my loves. Today, I want to talk about what happened over this weekend. So there was some back pain involved and the way I handled it.
The history of the back pain is that probably 15 years ago or so, I was snowboarding and went off a jump and landed weird and hurt my back. And ever since then, maybe one or two times a year, I have some back pain. And usually it lasts for a few days.
As a physical therapist, I always attributed it to like my SI joint and probably the lowest facet joints. And it feels like, you know, it gets kind of stuck and immobilized. And then the muscles around it get tight.
And anyway, so there's this logical answer that I had for what was going on, and I would always attribute it to something physical that I had been doing. So obviously, with this work over the last few years, I've really changed my perspective and I look at things completely differently. So I actually had some back pain that I recorded a podcast about, and I checked on that, and it was just about a year ago.
It was in May of 2022 that I recorded that episode about my acute back pain. It's just like once or twice a year, but not in any predictable way. And this time, I was just very curious, and here's what happened.
I started feeling uncomfortable in my back when I was dancing on Saturday night. So I had gone to this dance, and it was at a trampoline place, so I'd done some jumping on the trampoline, I'd done some dancing. But at this point, when my back started hurting, I could still dance.
I didn't really think anything was physically wrong. I didn't think there was damage, I didn't have fear. I was able to lean into this curiosity and identify several things that were less than perfect in my mind.
I look for the emotional things that could be going on, the stress level in my life, and especially this type of pain, where these neural pathways are very formed and developed. And the way I see it is probably it's like a trauma response in that area of the body or a survival response, telling that specific area to tighten up certain muscles, and then that creates the immobility and the asymmetry and the pain and the SI joint stuff. So anyway, that's kind of my physical therapist mind.
If you didn't get that, it doesn't matter. But instead of thinking of it as a physical thing causing the physical pain, thinking of it as the emotions and the nervous system being dysregulated and stress causing the body to actually, yes, tighten up in certain areas. And so when you feel the muscle, it is actually tight.
But instead of attributing the source of the pain to damage and then having a fearful response that amplifies the pain, I was able to look around at what was going on. And there was something, there was not to get into too many details, but just like some simple things about comparing myself with dancing and a guy that I was interested in, not giving me a lot of attention that I wanted. So and then some bigger things going on just in my life and with family and business.
And anyway, it was very easy for me to see that it made sense that my back started seizing up in this predictable pattern. I also want to mention, and I'm not an expert on this yet, and I do want to study more about it, but there's a lot coming out with fascia right now. That fascia, which surrounds all of the muscles and nerves and joints and connects everything in the body, we used to just think it was kind of a sheath and because they would study cadavers and it would just be like this dry outer covering.
But now they know that this actually transmits neural information. So messages from the brain can be transmitted into the body, not through actual nerve pathways, but through the fascia. And that could account for some of these predictable tightenings, like I said, in a certain pattern, like with my lower back or with someone else, it might be their hip or their neck or their shoulder when they have stress, right?
Sometimes people do really worry though that they've injured themselves and thinking of this pain as an actual injury and like wear and tear and maybe I've torn something or it's herniated. Here's what I have to say about that. What we know is that when they started studying pain-free people, that the majority of pain-free people, especially if you're over age 40, they do have damage and wear and tear in their body.
So they have herniated discs and they have stenosis and they have rotator cuff tears and meniscus tears. And the amount of arthritis that you can see on an X-ray or MRI will not predict the amount of pain that someone will have. So when there is wear and tear on our bodies, it's not necessarily painful if pain-free people also have that same amount of wear and tear.
There was one study that I found that they studied young athletes, so people who are young and athletic, so they're performing well, they're pain-free, and 89% of them had a hip labral tear. So we might not even know when things in our body are getting damaged. And when we find that hip labral tear, when they're in their 40s or 50s, they could think they just did it when it actually happened when they were a young athlete.
So I know it's kind of mind-bending, and it's different to think of things this way. But if I ever start to worry about the pain indicating that something just got damaged, I really just question that, because there is so much research showing that these structural changes are normal and do not cause pain in everyone. So we cannot blame chronic pain on structural changes that are normal, just like wrinkles and gray hairs as we get older, we have degenerative changes inside of our body that do not cause chronic pain.
But anyway, I was able to stay and dance as long as I wanted to, and then went home at night. I was having problems when I would roll over, and it would just tighten up and spasm and seize. I describe it as kind of like grabby.
So my back was kind of like, I would go to move, and the muscles would just grab and spasm. So I did notice that during the night. And in the morning, I usually go to...
This was the weekend, so it was Sunday morning, and I usually go to a dance class on Sunday mornings that I really like. And I also sometimes like to go skiing. It's near the end of the season.
And so what I chose to do is just listen to my body, and the dance class sounded like a little much. There's a lot of like, you know, moving and body rolls, and that sounded like a little scary for my back. And again, I'm trying not to lean into fear here, but at the same time, I was really just asking my body what sounded good.
And it did sound good to be more active than to lay around. And skiing actually sounded really good to me. So what I did, and this is just, you know, I was a physical therapist.
This is my bias. Maybe it's a placebo effect. I don't care.
I love it. It works for me. But I did some kinesio tape on my back.
So KT tape or kinesio tape, kinesiology tape. It basically is like a moving brace that is, uh, that supports your muscles wherever you're putting it on your back or other body parts. You can put it on specific ways.
The way I put it on was like for lower back SI joint. And I just think of that as like supporting my muscles. So although I know that this is my body, and I'm not worried about damage, and I'm not in that fearful state of like, you know, I've done something bad and how long is this going to last?
I have the belief that this is, you know, at most going to just last a few days, and I'm just going to do what sounds really good to help it right now. So I taped it, and that decreased my pain immediately by like 50%. And I have that expectation from tape, because that's how I always used to describe it, is when you have, you know, kind of those spasmi, graspy muscles, grabby muscles, or whatever these, I'm just making up words, I guess.
But when you have these, you know, you go to move and the muscle like clenches and gets really painful and sore, when I have the tape on, it feels like it supports the muscle. So I taped, I decided to go skiing. And again, I just want to point out that to someone else, skiing might sound very scary, even without sensations in their back.
That might sound super scary to someone, but I've been skiing for years, decades. So for me, it sounded relaxing to get up in the mountains and to enjoy the movement and exhilaration and the distraction really of going skiing. So I went ahead, went skiing, and throughout this process, I was really noticing detective for the opposite moments or times that my back did feel better.
If there were any times that I would get up to go walk and it wouldn't catch as much, I would try to notice like, oh, okay, this feels better. So I was cognizant of what was going on with my back, but I also wasn't urgent or fearful or monitoring it in a really judgmental way. So I started noticing with the very first run that it seemed to, like I was engaging the muscles in my body, and it was almost like that area wasn't as much of a presence.
I wasn't focusing on it. It was less painful as I started just moving my body and engaging in this, you know, flowy motion of skiing. And I ski at my favorite resorts that I grew up skiing at, and it's just like home for me.
You know, I just, I love that whole experience of being there. So I just was really trying to be in the present moment, and I noticed after the first run, it felt like my pain had decreased another 50%. So I went ahead and went up on the lift, did a second run.
And then I noticed, okay, I'm trying not to get too graphic here, but I think it is important to tell this part. So I think that because when my nervous system goes into these survival states, for me, especially digestion can be an issue. So if I'm going into freeze, it's more of the like gassy feeling and more like blocked up.
And if I'm more in fight or flight, it's more like loose and urgent and frequent. Okay, does that make sense? So again, not to get too gross, but I did have this sense when I was feeling my back in the morning that like my bowels had something to do with it.
And I even, you know, usually use the restroom in the morning and wasn't really able to, but had this kind of like bloated, gassy feeling. And again, instead of thinking of like, well, what have I been eating or like what caused this? I just, it was just so clear to me, like your nervous system is dysregulated.
This is classic, you know, nervous system dysregulation for you is shutting down that digestive system. Again, that's why I felt like the skiing would be so helpful and important for me is because that is just such a peaceful place for me.
I was able to use the restroom. And that felt really good. So anyway, that's all I'm going to say about that.
But just keeping in mind, your digestion is closely tied to your nervous system. And some of those uncomfortable feelings in the body, it's hard to tell exactly what is going on, especially people who've had chronic pain, their interoception, which is their ability to tell what is going on in their body, from the signals from their body to their brain, can become less accurate. So again, just something I noticed.
And after that release, I did feel better. And throughout the day, just kept feeling better and better. Now, the tape was still on.
It's tape that you can wear for several days. So I still, like, I bathed with it, and the next day was still wearing it. And throughout the next day, Monday, I probably noticed my back maybe 10 times.
And the rest of the time, it was feeling pretty good. I still had the tape on, but I wasn't in any rush to force my nervous system to, you know, not have that assistance. It felt good to still have it on.
It was like a little tender still. If I touched it, it was sore to the touch, for sure. But it wasn't like painful, other than a few times I noticed it.
And probably five of those ten times that I noticed my back were at yoga, because I did decide that it sounded good to do a hot yoga class. And I did notice my back with certain movements. And then I also noticed that I could relax and quickly either just keep going with the movement or modify it or take a little break or whatever, and the pain would go right away.
So the next day, so this is Tuesday now, I still have the tape on. I'm starting to feel like, you know, it's probably about time to take it off. But again, I'm just listening to my body.
I've gotten some coaching about the stressors in my life and ways that I was magnifying those stressors and making things harder on myself. And so that has really helped. And through this whole process, it was just interesting because each time it happens now, it's just clearer to me that this mind-body stuff is going on, and it makes this whole process of when there is a flare or an aggravation, just to be very compassionate with myself, to really take this as a chance to tune into my body and notice what I am gravitating towards or wanting to do from what's inspiring me.
And I will say that's taken some time to develop, so if you are starting out, you might feel a lot of pressure from what other people are saying. You've gotten a lot of your information from outside sources, and so you'll know the difference when it sounds like a should, and I'm doing air quotes, like should, like, you know, I should meditate for 20 minutes, or I should journal in this certain way for this amount of time, like versus if you ask yourself, your internal, your wise self, your higher self, your intuition, your body, however you like to think of it, what sounds good to you, sweetie? Like what, how can I help you love?
I like to talk to myself in this loving way like that. What do you need, hun? And then if there are any shoulds, have it come from that place, right?
From the wise self, from that calm self. And usually it's things like you should take a break or you should not be so worried, right? So those are the only kind of shoulds to listen to from your calm internal self.
But when you find that urgency or that desperate-ness or this, it's actually a nervous system state of flight of like trying to figure out and trying to fix, then you're still in a dysregulated state. And so it will not be effective if you're finding a problem and then trying all these things to fix it. Again, this is a process.
I teach all about it. I love teaching people how to tune into their intuition with their own bodies, how to think of their symptoms differently so that they're able to move through them more quickly, so that they're able to learn from these experiences. And as we keep regulating our nervous system with each of these times these things happen, our window of tolerance grows, our ability to stay regulated, no matter what's going on, expands each time we work on regulating our nervous system, coming back to that calm place, feeling more safe in our body.
And you can learn more about all of the techniques I teach through my podcast, through my membership program, my monthly membership, Alignment Academy. If you're ready to do this, we'll support. Have a loving group atmosphere, where you can bring your questions and share your celebrations.
And I also have a very special hybrid one-on-one slash group coaching program called Somatic Journey, where we're diving deep with individual sessions three times a month and one group mini retreat together, focusing on fun, different ways to connect the mind and body through hypnosis, dream interpretation, enhancing our intuition, and learning about our human design and how that affects the body. So that Somatic Journey information will be in the show notes as well. And if you've been liking this podcast and have not yet given it a rating and review, it's very easy to pop over to iTunes, give it a five-star rating, a sentence or two for a review, and I would really appreciate it.
I read all of the reviews and cherish them. And it does help my podcast get found by more people, apparently, is what they say. So thanks for doing that.
Thanks in advance. And have a great rest of your day, guys. Thank you so much for listening.
I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an Unstoppable Body and Mind.

 

 

Episode #112- How to Know if You’re in Freeze

In this episode I talk all about the nervous system state of freeze.

 

This is the nervous system state of shutdown when the system detects a mortal threat.

 

The nervous system chooses this state as the best option for your survival, so it is not a conscious choice.

 

Here is an example of what you may feel in freeze:

Feeling space, foggy, unable to think clearly, forgetting details, disoriented, forgetting where you’re going, losing track of time, continual exhaustion, numb, no energy, feeling overwhelmed, disconnection, feeling trapped, hopelessness, helplessness & shame.

If you identify with feeling these emotions, you are going in to freeze.

Listen in for more details about how to know you're in freeze and how it affects the body!

 

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Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 112, How to Know If You're in Freeze. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind. Hello, my loves. This episode, I'm going to talk about the state of freeze, the nervous system state so that you can identify if you are in freeze.
For me, I feel like I tended to be someone who was a little more anxious, more of the sympathetic activation, meaning fight or flight, primarily flight, high achiever, wanting to get things done. But then lately in my life, especially since my mom passed away and I've started to learn about trauma responses and the nervous system, I really have started to identify with freeze. I think part of it is also I'm growing my coaching business, so I'm putting myself out there in different ways.
There's been a lot of overwhelm. So freeze is a nervous system state. I feel like I really become an expert in over these last few years.
Now, in general, for all of our survival responses, they are to try to protect us when there is danger. So if there is a threat that we think we can handle, then our nervous system will choose fight or flight. And this is a choice by the nervous system and our subconscious mind.
We are not thinking this through. This happens physiologically at the body level. If the threat is more than we feel that we can handle, the body and the nervous system can choose to go into freeze or shut down.
We see this with animals in nature. If they're being hunted, and there's no way they could outrun the predator, they might have the nervous system response to freeze so that the predator might not notice them, and they might survive that way by just becoming immobilized. So the body closes up and the systems shut down.
So our primitive system decides what nervous system state is best for us to adapt to survive. And when it chooses freeze, these are the types of things that you will feel or notice in your body. Your head can feel spacey or foggy, unable to think clearly.
You could forget details or feel disoriented. You could feel blank or checked out, forgetting where you're going or losing track of time, continually feeling exhausted or numb, no energy, feeling overwhelmed, feeling like you're on autopilot or disconnection, feeling lifeless with a flat affect. Think of the walking dead.
You're immobilized or feeling collapsed, dissociated, emptiness, trapped, hopelessness, helplessness, burnt out, depression, isolation, feeling like you can't defend yourself or say no, wanting to hide and numb out. This is where shame is, so feeling ashamed and like something is wrong with you, feeling abandoned or unwanted or not good enough. It may show up as the silent treatment or giving up quickly when you're trying to advocate for your needs.
You could see difficulty taking actions or making decisions, procrastinating, fear of achieving or trying new things. And you still could be highly functional in a functional freeze state where you're a hard worker, an overachiever, performing well, just feeling numb on the inside, like you're watching yourself in your life, but not experiencing it. Freeze can have a mix of two states, the dorsal and the sympathetic.
So it can have some conflicting energy, like a horse that's given a direction to run and stay still at the same time. So you may think things like, there's so much to do, but I can't do all of it, but I need to do it all, but I can't do it, and I need to do it. So you can have a lot of energy, but also feel stuck.
Eventually, if the nervous system continues to be overwhelmed, it could go to immobility, to a shut down state, where you get tired and fuzzy, you can't think. It's like, I can't do all the things I want to, so I'm just gonna go back to sleep. And the more you try to get unstuck, the more stuck you may feel.
I have experienced this so much. As I said, with growing my business, it's crazy to me. Now I can watch all that's happening.
And so say I'll have a new idea, and I'll think about doing it, and then I'll think about the website that I have needs to be updated, and I need to figure out how to post three more things related to that. And so soon, I have overwhelmed myself. I get very tired, and I have this chaotic feeling in my brain, so I feel like maybe I should just rest, take a nap, distract for a little while, go get a cup of coffee.
And so I literally create freeze in myself, thinking of something that I need to do, and then all of these things that my brain thinks I have to do first, or that also need to be done, and soon I actually feel tired and overwhelmed and can't do anything. And that, again, is the protective nature of freeze to keep you from doing something where you could get hurt, right? So it's this quote unquote safety reaction, but it's keeping you immobilized.
If you feel like you're swimming upstream of a major current to get things done, then you're probably in freeze. The other thing to notice is that when you are in freeze, you will tell a story of how bad things are in all of the areas of your life. I call it the freeze goggles.
So when you have the freeze goggles on, it's like everything you're looking at just seems kind of dreary and hopeless and bad. So I had an example where I was getting coached, and I was telling my coach how I was bad in all the areas, not a great mom, horrible coach, every example I could think of where things weren't going how I wanted. And we talked about my yoga class, and I had had 10 people that night in yoga, which is usually what I would want, 10 people or more.
And I still told her, yeah, but I teach the same thing all the time. It's probably so boring for them. It's not creative.
I bet they hate it. Right? So that is the idea of those freeze goggles.
Even when something could potentially be something that in other frames of mind you'd be excited about, when you're in freeze, even something good, you can see the bad part about it. And it feels very real. So whenever I'm in freeze, I've started to really be able to notice it now.
And then I'm better able to just remind myself like, okay, this feels real, but it's not as bad as it seems. And there are several other specific strategies for coming out of freeze. So the story you would tell if you were in freeze is you're hopeless, you're stuck, you're powerless, because this state immobilizes the nervous system.
That's what it's designed to do. When you're chronically in freeze, you can have a low capacity for emotion and connection. You will often find yourself in situations where you feel trapped, unheard or helpless, and until you start to notice and recognize what's going on with freeze for you and supporting the nervous system to regulate it, you'll continue to have these same patterns.
Physiologically, the way that freeze affects your body is by decreasing the heart rate, decreasing the blood pressure and temperature, decreasing your muscle tone and facial expressions and eye contact. There's decreased social behavior, sexual function and decreased immunity. And there's increased fatigue, brain fog, and focus on the body sensations.
There's also increased fuel storage. So you could have the best diet in the world, but if you're in freeze, your digestion is not going to work properly, and you will be more likely to hang on to the food as storage because your nervous system is in the survival state of freeze. What I experienced is something I see oftentimes with my clients is that they were more on the activation side, the high achievers doing things with a lot of frenetic energy earlier in their lives, and then maybe have moved more into this freeze and overwhelm state as they've gotten older or had kids or had more stressors in their lives.
So you may feel like you go into an out of freeze or you may feel like you're predominantly in freeze and stuck in freeze. So with this podcast, I wanted to just help you get an understanding of what freeze feels like so that you can make sense of what's going on with your body, with your physiology, and how to move out of it. So for coming out of freeze, I'm actually doing a workshop.
I'll have a link in the show notes, but it's coming out tomorrow. So go ahead and click on that link if you want to be involved live or have access to the replays. A special workshop all about coming out of freeze.
I'll have some other workshops available this week as well. If you register, they'll also come with an exclusive coaching call with me to answer all of your questions on Friday, March 31st. So if you're listening when this comes out, go ahead and click on the show notes.
Or if it's after, you can always find the replays there as well. All right, you guys have a great week. Thank you so much for listening.
I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an unstoppable body and mind.

Episode #111- Pleasure on Purpose

In this episode, I talk about one of my favorite things to teach- having more rest, pleasure and fun in your life.

 

Most people with chronic pain are devoted, high achieving, hard working, people pleasing givers who have a hard time taking time for themselves.

 

But this concept is research based, and actually shows that when your pain or emotions are high the best thing to do is to distract rather than try to work through it and process.

 

We often think we should be working on healing all of the time, but sometimes our nervous system just needs a break, and avoidance behaviors can help you get more regulated.

 

So instead of meditating or journaling, you may watch a funny show or read a book (NOT about pain).

 

Then when you are regulated and your sensations are at a more manageable level, you can do the cognitive or emotional processing at that point.

 

When you do distracting activities with intent, they can be soothing for your nervous system.

 

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Episode #110- Trauma and Post Traumatic Growth

In this episode I define trauma in nervous system terms, so you can have a more compassionate view about the survival states and why you go into them.

Your nervous system is always trying to keep you safe and can get stuck in survival states from all different types of trauma.  

All of us have had things that are more than our nervous system can handle, but some have not been able to process it because they have not had a compassionate witness.

Trauma can be processed and there can actually be more growth than would have been otherwise possible (post traumatic growth).

If you want to learn more about the nervous system, how it affects your body, and how to regulate it, sign up for my free nervous system modules here: 

https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6

I will send you 4 of the video modules I use in my coaching programs, to teach you the basics in an easy to understand way!

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Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 110, Trauma and Post Traumatic Growth. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind. Hello, my loves. Today, I want to talk about a term you might have heard a lot about, trauma, and maybe one that you haven't heard about, post-traumatic growth.
Now, I want to just keep this really simple and give you a few facts, not dive too much into depth into the world of trauma. There's obviously so much with trauma and healing, and really what we know about how trauma affects the body. But I don't want to get into all of that today.
I just want to give you a basic, basic concept of what we even mean by the word trauma. So if you think of the nervous system's capacity to tolerate a situation, trauma is more than what the nervous system can handle. So there are certain things that tend to be traumatic for everyone, but it is possible that something could be traumatic for one person and not for another, because it's more than what their nervous system can handle.
When you think of going into a trauma response, that's the same as going into a survival state. So when you go into fight or flight, freeze or fawn, again, just keeping it simple, there are more nuances to the nervous system. But the main four states that we talk about are fight or flight, freeze or fawn, and those are survival states, or what you might hear called trauma responses.
So if you, for example, didn't get a lot of attention, a trauma response, a survival state that you might have gone into could have been flight, where you tried to be the best at everything you could and be a high achiever and be a perfectionist and always be doing things so that you can get that sense of safety that you want. And your nervous system develops as you are a child and adapts to going into these states without your conscious awareness. So again, thinking of just as a child growing up, your nervous system was doing its best to survive, to help you survive.
And so you may have gone into some of these survival states, inevitably, you did, and even not process some of what happened because you were in these survival states. Now, we are made to go into and out of these survival states, right? We might react with fight or flight and then come back to neutral.
But what often happens is the trauma, the traumatic incident is not processed. And so that can lead us to stay stuck in these survival states. Peter Levine, who is an expert in somatic healing of trauma, somatic experiencing, says that trauma is what happens in absence of a compassionate witness.
So there could be an event that has been traumatic, but was processed with someone and doesn't stay stuck as trauma in the system. When we talk about things staying stuck, that can also be a little confusing. So the best explanation I've heard of that is by Dr. Amy Apigan.
You can look at my podcast number 99 to hear the full explanation. But basically, the nervous system controls the muscle tension, the gut, blood flow to different areas. So there can be a nervous system response, a trauma response that has a certain effect on your body.
She gives an example of when you're pre-verbal, so under six months, and you don't have another way to calm down your nervous system. If your needs aren't met, that you may start to try to decrease the discomfort by raising up your shoulders and activating those shoulder and neck muscles, ears up by the shoulders. That's a common sign of stress and where people carry a lot of their stress.
And as well in the hip flexors, there might be a muscle tension that's produced in the hip flexors to try to get into that fetal tucked up position. So trauma in our nervous system can present in different ways in the body. As adults, that's why somatics can be so important in releasing these trauma response patterns.
So there can be what we call capital T traumas or little t traumas. So basically, there are some things that are generally traumatic to all of the human population. You know, abuse, neglect, and little t traumas could be things like falling off your bicycle, hearing bad news, witnessing violence.
There can be these things that still overwhelm your nervous system, and if they're not processed, lead to some of these protective patterns in the body. There was one time I met someone new, and he was talking about when he was in elementary school, that's when the Challenger space shuttle exploded. And I remember that.
I think I was in fifth grade, and I remember it being sad. I remember it being traumatic. But the way he was describing it in his present adult life, that was still something that was unsettled for him.
It was still something that caused him fear. It was something that changed the course of his life. It was never processed for him.
So when we got into conversation, that was something that he brought up as still affecting him. For me personally, I did not have a lot of capital T trauma growing up in my life. I didn't even have anyone close to me die until a couple of years ago.
And I was in a really good home with a loving family. What did end up being traumatizing for me was the trauma response that I went to being raised in a religious culture where I felt like I needed to always be better. And this wasn't necessarily, I'm just realizing, as an adult, I just started to realize my parents really did love me for who I was.
But I think I took on this feeling of, I'm not good enough, shame, I need to be better, perfectionism. So I would alternate between flight and freeze, feeling hopeless, not good enough, discouraged. And those were the main trauma responses that my nervous system, I think my nervous system was just maybe a little more sensitive than some.
And so things that could have been less traumatic for other people ended up being more than what my nervous system could handle, putting me into these survival states, basically living in survival states. And that's when I finally got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, because years and years of not having proper blood flow to my digestion or proper functioning of my digestive system, because I was never really in that parasympathetic, calm rest and repair state, I was mainly living in survival states. It took its toll on my body.
And I mean, fortunately, in a way, I'm actually really grateful for it because it brought me to this mind-body approach and to the information about healing and about really changing the way I was putting pressure on myself and keeping myself in survival states. So I often use the analogy, being in a survival state can feel really physiologically to your body like you're being chased by a tiger. And even when the environment around me was not dangerous, I kept that feeling going of being chased by a tiger because I was never satisfied with doing enough.
I thought I needed to do more. I was perfectionistic, which is just impossible to be perfect at things. I was a people pleaser.
Oh yeah, I went into faun a lot too. Oh, lived most of my life in faun actually. So faun is another version of shutting down the nervous system in order to make other people happy, in order to hope that everyone's gonna like you.
A common thing my family would say is, what would the neighbors think? And so that is representative of living in faun. What are people gonna think?
I need to act a certain way. I should be different than I am. And really just starting to shut down part of myself in hopes that more people would like me if I wasn't me.
So those survival responses can be helpful in the short term. But when we're living in survival states, that's where it really starts to affect our body, our relationships, our health, all areas of our life. Often we talk about the trauma that happens to us in our childhood, while our nervous system is developing.
But of course, trauma can happen at any point in someone's life, and that traumatic response can affect their nervous system at any point. And we also know that there is intergenerational trauma. So meaning if your parents or grandparents or your long line of ancestors have generally been stressed or had certain reactions to certain things, that can actually be inherited.
There is a study that they did with mice where they shocked the feet of the mice while they were smelling cherry blossoms. And then later, when those mice had babies, their babies produced cortisol when they smelled that same smell of cherry blossoms that had been associated with that stressful event of their parents. So even though the babies never received the shock to their feet, they had a stress response just from that smell in the environment.
So being in a survival state doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong or that anything has gone wrong. It's actually a sign that your nervous system is working. It's maybe even a little hypervigilant.
But being in a survival state in itself doesn't mean that anything has gone wrong. It is just a sign to you. It is a sign that you're in some kind of fear.
You're believing that you're at some level in danger. So it could be from chronic pain and you're feeling pain, and then you go into the flight mode of, I really wanna fix this and I wanna figure it out. And you start Googling and you start asking a lot of people and that survival state of flight, which may have been very helpful when you were trying to find out other information and trying to solve a problem, becomes less and less helpful and even promotes more of the pain that you're feeling because when you're living in survival states, again, it's affecting the muscle tone in the body, the oxygenation, the inflammation even, and your immunity.
You just set yourself up for things to happen in the body when you're living in a stressed out survival state or going between them or getting stuck in them most of the time. Now, what we also know about trauma is that there can be what's called post-traumatic growth. And that means that because of the experience that the person has gone through, they are able to reach higher levels of growth, of expanding their window of tolerance, of being able to cope with more and more because they've had the trauma and then processed through it.
So it can be very scary for people. Sometimes they'll hear about trauma or they'll read the book, The Body Keeps the Score, and they're reminded of the trauma that they had. And it can feel very overwhelming, and very hopeless, but the person who's gone through trauma, there's actually so much more that they have learned than a person who hasn't gone through those experiences.
You see examples all of the time of people who have had horrible childhoods, and sometimes they end up really repeating those patterns and staying stuck in those behaviors and perpetuating abuse. But there are other people that have had horrible childhoods and who have risen above, who become motivational speakers, who help millions of people because they have gone through those trials. They've been through some of the toughest experiences, and so they can effectively teach people where they would not have had those resources to draw on if they hadn't gone through that.
It's like when there's a forest fire and then the ground becomes even richer and more dense with nutrients and has this place now for fertile growth because of the loss that it had gone through. So this is not to try to minimize anyone's trauma or to be Pollyanna about it and say, yeah, it's great that happened to you, and just be thankful for that, whatever. If that does not resonate with you, that's not the main message I'm trying to portray here.
But there is that other side of trauma that allows for more growth than would be possible if that wasn't there. Now, getting out of survival states requires a lot of compassion for yourself, a lot of understanding. So what I really want you to hear from this episode is that your nervous system is doing its best to try to protect you.
And if there was something that was scary, it came up with ways that it figured were the best ways for you to adapt, either by activating your nervous system, to fight or to run away flight, or to go into a freeze response, to shut down, to fawn, and pretend to be someone you're not. The more you can see your nervous system as trying its best to protect you, and it may be hypervigilant, and it may be overly fearful. And the best way to work with it is to understand it, to work with your nervous system, and not fight it, and not expect it to just be different because you've practiced regulating a couple of times.
These neural pathways, again, since it's subconscious, since it's immediate, since it's been going on for years and maybe decades, those neural pathways are strong. And so just understanding that you start to be this observer of your nervous system, observer of what's going on, allowing it, accepting it, and understanding it. And then from there, you can work to regulate your nervous system more and change it in a loving way.
As Deb Dana says, the nervous system is good at detecting the subtle difference between an invitation and a demand. If this talk about trauma and post-traumatic growth has piqued your interest into delving a little more into the nervous system, finding out more about how the nervous system affects your body, how to get out of these survival states if you notice that you're going into them, then please download my free nervous system modules. I'll have a link in the show notes, and you can start to watch these videos.
There are four videos about your nervous system and how it affects your body, how to regulate it. I will send them to you, and you can start integrating this work into your life, and they're completely free. So go ahead and check out the show notes.
And if you've been liking this podcast and haven't yet given it a rating or review, please pop over to iTunes, give it a five-star rating, a little sentence or two for a review. I read all of them, I really appreciate them, and it helps the podcast be found by more people. So keep learning about that nervous system and regulating it for better help, and have a great week.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review.
And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an unstoppable body and mind.

Episode #109- What is Somatic Coaching?

Today I talk all about somatic coaching- what it is, what it looks like, and who it can help.

Somatic means body, so somatic coaching uses perceptions and sensations and attention to the body in order to enhance the coaching experience.

Most therapy and coaching just involves talking, and using our conscious mind. 

But about 95% of our thoughts are subconscious, so many of our behaviors and nervous system responses are not in our conscious awareness.

Through somatic coaching (involving the body vs. just talking), I have reached the deepest insights about myself, and hugely shifted my thoughts and feelings in a short amount of time.

 

Here is what somatic coaching can help with:

 

* Chronic pain/ illness- Somatic coaching helps you feel your sensations more neutrally, which rewires the brain to decrease pain instead of amplifying it.   Most chronic conditions are from learned pain pathways that can be rewired.

 

*Returning to movement- Somatic coaching is a great way to get back to exercise or normal movements without pain, since training the brain first has no risk of injury!  Sports Psychologists have known the power of visualization with athletes for decades.  We use similar techniques to return to movement in a progressive, safe, effective, and pain-free way.

 

*Processing emotions- Somatic coaching is how we can process emotions, since emotions are felt in the body.  Trapped emotions are responses learned by the nervous system, and can be can be unlearned with somatic coaching.

 

*Healing trauma- The same somatic techniques to process pain and emotions are used in healing trauma.  Trauma occurs when something is more than what your nervous system can handle.  By building the capacity of your nervous system through somatic coaching, you can respond differently when triggered without getting stuck in survival states.

 

*Subconscious breakthroughs for behavior change- Ever wonder why you find yourself repeating unhealthy behaviors?  We can get to the root of them through somatic coaching.  Often something from childhood has primed the nervous system to behave a certain way.  This happens subconsciously before you even have conscious awareness of it.  Behavior change becomes much easier with somatic coaching and addressing the issue at it's root!

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy

on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/

 

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA

 

Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

 

*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it  https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6

 

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Episode # 108- 5 Minute Somatic Tracking Meditation

In this episode I take you through a 5 minute somatic tracking meditation to calm your nervous system, and rewire your brain to create less pain!

 

Somatic tracking is the process of going into the sensations in the body and describing them neutrally.

 

This gives some space between the stimulus (sensation) and the typical response (some form of fear that leads to more pain).

 

When we can describe the sensations with different words, imagine the color or shape or texture, and just watching what is there instead of reacting to it, it actually trains the brain that the sensation is not important.  So it does not continue to produce it.

 

Listen in for a quick description of why we do somatic tracking to reprocess pain and emotions, and for the short meditation that you can use when you just have a few moments to practice!

 

Want help applying this into your life?  Check out my group coaching membership, Alignment Academy!

 

Join a community of like minded self healers- full of support, inspiration, and fun!

https://betsy-jensen.mykajabi.com/alignment-academy-membership

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy

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Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

 

*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it  https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6

 

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Episode #107- Pain Catastrophizing

Today's Episode is about Pain Catastrophizing- what it is and how it affects your symptoms.

 

People with high levels of pain catastrophizing are more likely to develop a new acute pain, more likely for their acute pain to turn chronic.  And who catastrophize more before surgery are more likely to have complications and a slower recovery.

 

Here are the 13 questions on the Pain Catastrophizing Scale.  Rate from 0 (not at all) to 4 (all of the time) when you feel pain:

1. I worry all the time about whether the pain will end. 
2. I feel I can't go on. 
3. It's terrible and I think it's never going to get any better. 
4. It's awful and I feel that it overwhelms me.
5. I feel I can't stand it anymore. 
6. I become afraid that the pain may get worse. 
7. I think of other painful experiences. 
8. I anxiously want the pain to go away.  
9. I can't seem to keep it out of my mind. 
10. I keep thinking about how much it hurts. 
11. I keep thinking about how badly I want the pain to stop. 
12. There is nothing I can do to reduce the intensity of the pain. 
13. I wonder whether something serious may happen. 

A score over 37 means you tend to catastrophize how you think of your pain.

 

What is the solution for pain catastrophizing?

 

Mindfulness- being in the present moment!

There are ways to interpret your pain differently, like through somatic tracking or sending yourself messages of safety

 

Somatic strategies to calm the nervous system will help decrease pain catastrophizing.

 

So listen in for this quick summary of pain catastrophizing and how to rewire it!

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy

on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/

 

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA

 

Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

 

*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it  https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6

 

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If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543

Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 107, Pain Catastrophizing. In this podcast, we learned to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind.
Hello, my loves. Today, we are going to talk about pain catastrophizing, what that is and what the research shows about it. So pain catastrophizing is a way that they measure the way you think about your pain.
What they found in research is that people's views on pain, the way they think about their pain and talk about their pain actually influences how much pain they have. This totally makes sense with neuroscience because of the pain-fear cycle. If you want to learn more about that, you can listen back to episode 69, the pain-fear pain cycle.
And I talk a little bit about pain catastrophizing there, but I wanted to make a quick little episode about pain catastrophizing today because I think it's so helpful just to hear the kind of statements that they use in the pain catastrophizing scale so that you can be aware of when you're catastrophizing about your pain and decrease that to decrease your pain. The pain catastrophizing scale is given to patients where they rate from zero, which is not at all, to four, which is all the time. How much they think about these types of thoughts when they have pain.
It's only 13 questions, so I'll read them to you. Here are the 13 statements on the pain catastrophizing scale. I worry all the time about whether the pain will end.
I feel I can't go on. It's terrible, and I think it's never gonna get any better. It's awful, and I feel that it overwhelms me.
I feel I can't stand it anymore. I become afraid that the pain may get worse. I think of other painful experiences.
I anxiously want the pain to go away. I can't seem to keep it out of my mind. I keep thinking about how much it hurts.
I keep thinking about how badly I want the pain to stop. There's nothing I can do to reduce the intensity of the pain. I wonder whether something serious may happen.
These sound like normal things that people who are in pain, and especially in chronic pain, would think. But what the research shows is that people who score higher on pain catastrophizing also are more likely to get new acute pains. They're more likely for their acute pains to turn chronic.
And people who catastrophize more before surgery are more likely to have complications and delays with their healing. So notice with yourself, do you tend to think these type of thoughts? And how frequently do you think them?
Even if they seem true, even if you could prove them, they are not helpful to think. They're actually amping up the danger signal and dysregulating the nervous system to think these kinds of thoughts. So what is the solution to catastrophizing?
It's mindfulness. So episode 70, I talk about mindfulness and give you some examples and give you some examples of different ways to think about your symptoms. But one good example of mindfulness is somatic tracking.
You may have heard the term somatic tracking. It's very similar to a way I learned as a life coach to process emotions and what they do in somatic experiencing to process trauma. And basically, it's going into the body, just describing what is going on in real time with general neutral words.
So instead of saying, I have a lot of anxiety right now, or I have a migraine right now, you might say, I have a tightness in the chest and a rapid heartbeat, or I have a pulsing sensation in this part of my head. So you just describe it neutrally. You see, if you visualize a shape or a color to it, is it moving?
Is it warm or cold? These types of things bring you to the present moment. You're not thinking about the future.
You're not thinking about the past, and you're able to calm the nervous system. When you get into more of that relaxed rest and repair state, you're actually able to decrease those pain signals. Your brain is not on high alert and creating more and more of them.
Now, I'll give you a few suggestions for thoughts you might want to try on instead. You could notice if you're catastrophizing, just be the observer at first. You could label, oh, there's my brain catastrophizing, and then you want to send your brain messages of safety.
You want to be in the present moment. You want to describe things neutrally, just as they are. So you could say things like part of me is feeling scared.
My brain interpreted this signal as dangerous, but I'm safe. It takes time for my nervous system to heal, and that's okay. I'm learning to take care of myself.
I am here. This is happening. I'm working on getting physically and mentally stronger.
This too shall pass. There may be other thoughts that are soothing to you. One of my favorites is just you are safe.
You're safe. It's amazing how often I tell that to myself because my primitive brain likes to be very reactive. It's always on the lookout for danger, and my survival responses are constantly kicking in.
And when I feel that dysregulation in my body, I tell myself, I'm safe. I look around the room. You can actually look and name objects that you see.
You can think of things that you smell and taste and touch. Tuning into your senses or many of the other somatic approaches that are out there for calming the body and the nervous system can also be helpful to come back to the present moment when you're catastrophizing. If you want help with pain catastrophizing or any of the other pain reprocessing or emotional processing techniques that I teach, I would love to be your coach.
There are some different options that I have for a group membership, for a few limited spots of one-on-one coaching. And if you'd like to check that out more, just feel free to click on the information in the show notes. And right now, I'm offering a free 60-minute consultation with me so that you can talk to me about your specific situation and see if coaching might be a good fit for you.
Thanks for listening. Have a great week. Thank you so much for listening.
I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an unstoppable body and mind.

 

 

Episode #106- Extinction Bursts

Episode #106- Extinction Bursts

 

Today’s topic is about part of the normal mind-body healing process- extinction bursts.

When you are starting to experience some success with healing, one thing that can commonly happen is a resurgence of pain in an old area or a completely new pain.

Dr Sarno called this the “symptom imperative.”

In “The Way Out” by Alan Gordon, they call it an extinction burst because of a study with a rat receiving food through a lever.  

When the lever broke, the rate started pressing more urgently and quickly before the behavior of pressing the button extinguished.

If you have an extinction burst, there are 3 common stages 1- panic, 2- forcing it, and 3- oh this is how it works!

Listen to this episode for more, and trust the process- extinction bursts are a good thing because it means the signal will soon become extinct!

 

Want help applying this into your life?  Check out my group coaching membership, Alignment Academy!

https://betsy-jensen.mykajabi.com/alignment-academy-membership

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy

on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/

 

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Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

 

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Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 106, Extinction Bursts. In this podcast, we learned to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become unstoppable body and mind. Hello, my loves. Today, we are going to talk about a topic.
I actually can't believe I have not recorded a podcast about this sooner. It's such an important step in the process of mind-body healing. And it's good to know about it, that it can come up and have a name for what's going on so that you know.
So today we're going to talk about extinction bursts. This is also what Dr. Sarno called the symptom imperative. But basically, they got the name extinction burst from an experiment they did with a rat, where the rat was pressing a lever for food and the lever broke.
So the rat wasn't getting the food. So they expected the rat to just stop pressing the lever, which it did. But before that, it actually started pressing the lever even more frequently and urgently.
So there was actually this increase of behavior before there was the extinction. So think of an extinction burst as a good thing, because it's a sign that it's on its way out. But what can happen is you're going along and starting to get these mind-body concepts under your belt and feeling better, and then you have a resurgence of pain.
It could be what they call like a flare of the same pain that you've had before. In the Boulder back pain study, they found that that was often what happened. But some people would have pain in a totally different area, like their hip or their knee.
So most people think that they've injured something, and then they start to get afraid. And then we know the pain-fear cycle kicks in and actually causes the brain to produce more pain and to amplify the pain. But remember, neuroplastic pain is all based on fear.
So this is what Alan Gordon says in The Way Out. By authentically changing your relationship with fear, you can start breaking out of the pain-fear cycle and your symptoms will begin to fade. But if fear has been a part of your life for a long time, your brain has been accustomed to it and may not go quietly.
So basically, it's a protective response from our body. And it makes sense if we've lived with so much fear and high guard and high anxiety and hypervigilance that it doesn't feel totally comfortable to just relax. If you were sleeping in the jungle at night, you wouldn't have the best sleep of your life because you would be in this vigilant state.
And when you're in that vigilant state a lot, it does not feel comfortable to let that go. So these extinction bursts are usually seen at the early part of your healing journey. And it is usually very frightening and brings up a lot of emotions.
The most common thing people think is that something structural is going on after all, or they've re-injured themselves or hurt themselves with a new injury. The other thing I see people thinking a lot is that they're not good enough. They can't do this.
They haven't been doing enough somatic tracking or they haven't been meditating well enough. So just notice if you do start to get some sensations during this process, it's not always linear. And if sensations come up, what emotions come up for you?
And just know that the more neutral you can stay about it, the faster it will go away. There are certain stages that people go through. They describe in The Way Out three stages.
And the first one is panic. So that's normal, to feel panic, to worry, to think something's gone wrong. This is part of the process.
The second stage, he calls forcing it. So it's where you're like trying really hard. You might try your somatic tracking, and then you get frustrated that that doesn't work.
And you do all of the things that you've been doing that have been working, but with this like urgency or intensity. It's like you're in flight. And so your nervous system is still activated, but you're like doing all the right things, but from this energy of forcing it.
And then he says, after the terror of stage one and the frustration of stage two, there's stage three, which is, oh yeah, this is how that works. So if you guys haven't read The Way Out yet, it is really a great book. I love how he explains extinction bursts and the process here.
That's why I'm quoting it so much. Because when you can start to see that this is normal, this is part of the process, then the fear goes away much more quickly. The frustration goes away and you'll actually be able to resolve your symptoms in days or hours or minutes, depending on how you're reacting.
But this process of rewiring these neural pathways and regulating your nervous system is not one that you can force. Trust the process when things do come up, if you have a resurgence or new sensation, stay in the present moment, remind yourself you're safe. Notice if you start catastrophizing, which is basically thinking of the future or the past.
They actually say the best thing to do if your pain is at eight, nine or 10 is distract. Do something completely different. And that could even be taking some pain medicine if that fills in alignment with what would help you.
Or it could be watching a TV show or taking a nap. When we have the symptom and we know these things that normally work, but we're doing them urgently, and that's exacerbating the symptom, the tendency again is to just want to work your way out of it and force and do all these things. It's counterintuitive to go into it, to acknowledge it, to relax when this is going on, to trust that this will be okay.
But seeing that this is part of healing, this is part of the process can help. And each time your nervous system gets dysregulated and you bring it back to home and you regulate it again, you build your window of tolerance, you build this capacity to tolerate more and more. So sometimes you're only moving the needle 1% at a time, but that is still progress.
And that's better than trying to force the nervous system to change 100% all at once, and then all of the resistance that causes with the change. Your body has this natural intelligence. The more you understand it and work with it, the easier these sensations will be.
If you are interested in learning more about how this applies in your life, please check out my group coaching membership, Alignment Academy. There are two weekly coaching calls, that's eight calls per month, where you can join Get Live Coaching or Get Written Coaching through Slack. There are modules that you can watch that teach all of these concepts, and you're able to get real time feedback from me about how you're applying it in your life.
Enrollment is ending November 16th until next year. So if this is calling to you, you can find more information in the show notes today. Have a good week, bye.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review.
And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an Unstoppable Body and Mind.