Chronic Pain Expert, Nicole Sachs - How Repressed Emotions Lead to Physical Pain & The Solution

Have you ever wondered how to heal your own body, how to look after yourself, how to prevent disease, how to get rid of it when you get it? Well, I have. Like most other humans, we'd like to know the answers so that when the time comes, we've got options. I had Nicole Sachs show me an amazing psychotherapist who's just about to launch her most recent book. In fact, it's available right now, called Mind, you'd Body. And we had the most fascinating conversation around the power of our mind, how that influences our body. So please sit back, take notes and share this episode with someone you love. The Lead On Purpose podcast is sponsored by NZ Mortgages. Learn more at nzmortgages.co nz Nicole, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thanks for having me, James.

I'm so excited that you're here because when I saw the title of your amazing book. Wow, we need to chat. Personally, I've got things I want to explore and discover, but also I know my listeners are. Will benefit so much from this. They are. They're high performers, they're eager to grow. They want to be fulfilled and healthy in their lives. And mind your body, your newest book with Penguin Random House is a game changer. So I want to chat a little bit about why before we give people the absolute gold. Why did you write this? What's your story?

Yeah, so I come by this honestly. I am not just a person who's interested in it, I'm a person who's lived. It's. I won't take too long, but I can give you my story in a nutshell. When I was 19, I was a freshman in college and my back went out completely. As anyone can understand, they always hear someone's back going out, which means I was laid up, I was really needing help to even walk. And my parents had to come to school and bring me home. And I underwent all the tests that any responsible parents would do, MRIs, X rays or orthopedic surgery consults. And I was in terrible pain. An acute pain incident is what we call it. So I was on steroids and muscle relaxers and painkillers. And the determination upon seeing my films was that I have a condition, still do, called degenerative spondylolisthesis. It's a big mouthful of a diagnosis, and what it means is that I have an abnormality, pretty severe one in my lower spine. And. And since my back pain was lower back pain, obviously everybody assumed, yes, she has this condition and this is why she's in Pain. And so essentially what the surgeon said to me at that age was, listen, you're young, you're otherwise healthy. The only treatment we have, and remember this is 1990. The only treatment we have at this point is spinal fusion surgery, but we're not recommending that to a 19 year old. So here's what you need to do to avoid the surgery for as long as possible. No more travel, no more exercise, no more sports. Be careful about how you sleep. Very specific sleeping positions as to not destabilize my back. No riding in the car for longer than an hour because of the bouncing motion could destabilize my back. And finally the likelihood, and they said this so casually, but the likelihood that you will have a biological child is slim to none because you know, the weight of a baby on an abnormality as severe as yours would be really a risky situation. They said maybe you'll have one child, but it would be with like seven to eight months of bed rest. So this is what I'm told. At 19 years old, how did you.

Feel when you were told these things?

You know, it's so weird, I mean, it's so long ago now, but I think at the time it was a combination of shock and denial. The shock part was obviously in the response to what they were saying, but like the, the, the baby thing and anything, this surgery thing, I just went into that bucket of denial. You know, we're like, I'm not, I can't deal with this. I was like up to here, you know, and I, that was about all I could take. And so it's a very long story and I'll just kind of truncate it to say that I was very careful, very scared. There was a handicapped sticker on my car. I went back to school, I could drive to my classes, which you know, my friends enjoyed, but other than that it was pretty sad. And I just kind of did what I could to not think about it too much. I went from acute pain to chronic pain, which means I had a back problem and it would flare up and sometimes it would lay me out and sometimes it was just bothersome. And that just became my reality until I discovered the work of Dr. John Sarno. He is, was, he's passed, but he was an attending physician for 50 years at the Rusk center for Rehabilitation at NYU Medical Center. And he had written some books, actually three or four best selling books on the mind body connection and why we might experience pain even though we don't have a structural abnormality or why our structural Abnormality, whatever it is, might not be the cause of our pain. And so it was very fascinating to me. I was a psychology student, and then in my mid-20s, I was getting my master's in social work so I could do private practice. And I was fascinated, like, what do you mean there could be a mind body connection? What do you mean, there's more to understand about my pain? So I started to learn. And what I understood from Dr. Sarno was that there is brain science behind why we feel anything. And so even though your pain is real, there is nothing about pain that is in one's head. There's nothing about pain where someone's making it up or being too sensitive or being hysterical. Never, ever. However, there are people in the world, many, many, many millions of them, who are suffering with things like migraines, fibromyalgia, back, neck, shoulder, hip, knee pain, irritable bowel, any stomach issues, skin disorders. Like so many things, Long Covid. Long Covid is a huge one right now. Chronic fatigue, where there's no resolution really for their symptoms except for managing them in different ways. Where there's brain science. This is what I understood. Mind body medicine behind why the brain and the nervous system send these signals of inflammation, muscle constriction and spasm, neuropathy, et cetera. So I just became fascinated. I was a graduate student, I was studying psychology, I was studying the human condition and what I understood it to mean. And this is sort of. I sometimes don't remember what I understood back then and how I've evolved it over 20 years. So just forgive me, but how I understand it to mean is that we live in a mind body system. Sometimes you feel things in your. In your heart, for lack of a better word, in your mind, in your thoughts. And sometimes you experiencing things in your body, physical manifestations, and they are literally interchangeable. And this is something that people really take a minute to understand. So I like to say it like this. What I'm explaining to you, you already believe. You know, I could lecture to a room, let's say, of 500 people, and I could say, who's ever had a stressful day? A lot's been on your mind and you've gotten a headache. Every single hand in the room will go up. There's no one in the world I've ever met who, who hasn't had a stress headache. And I say, okay, okay, keep your hands up, keep your hands up. Who has run to the emergency room that evening to get a CT scan of your brain. Cause you Thought you had a brain tumor. And everybody kind of laughs and all the hands go down. And I say, you see what I'm teaching you, the thing that is going to change your life? You already believe, you already know that emotional stimuli can cause physical reactions. A stressful day can cause a headache. And then there are so many other examples. Panic can cause hives. You know, bad news can make you lose your appetite, et cetera. And so I'm like, we just need to build the bridge. Because when people are in chronic anything of any kind, pain is no longer the thing that is on their mind. It is fear and meaning. And their nervous systems are extremely dysregulated. And that dysregulated nervous system leads to the perpetuation of pain. So I don't want to go on and on, but I will say that through my understanding and my work, first with Dr. Sarno, and then evolving my own practice and all the things I've done since, I have had no chronic pain for 20 years. Not in my back, not in headaches, nothing. And there's a lot of work that goes into it, so I don't want it to sound easy. I had three babies. I exercised till the day they were born. They're 22, 20 and 16 now. And my life has been created and changed in the most profound way from understanding that there's more to know about our physical experience than we are taught in our current society and that people are being taught in medical school. And so that's what I do. I spend my life teaching others.

That's incredible. I'm so inspired and I'm excited because I know I've got things that challenge me in terms of pain. And I've been on a journey for a year and a half. And I know that 99% of the listeners, if they're not currently in some form of pain, they either have been or they're going to be. And so this fascinates me, this mind, body connection. And I guess there's a couple of things to think about. Here is one. This can cost us our joy, our happiness. It can impact our relationships, it can impact our self worth, our self perception. But also, like from a working standpoint, most of our listeners are working age. This can cost us a lot of productivity issues. So for there's somebody leading a team right now, listen up. Because if we can manage this, then it means that we're going to be more at work, we're going to be more present and engaged at work or with our loved ones. So may I share some of my personal experience with you and see what your thoughts are, please.

Yeah.

So about a year, just over a year ago, I discovered a lump on my pec. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. So went and seen the doctor, and they said, look, it's quite inflamed. Take some antibiotics, come back to us if the lump's still there. Okay, cool. At the same time, I'd done a lot of blood work with a friend out of the States who's essentially a scientist for the Navy SEALs. And this blood work started coming back in and there were some interesting signs. So high prolactin, high ignition, F1.

Cortisol, a lot of stress markers. So I went back to the doctor, got a mammogram, which was for those that haven't had one. Quite uncomfortable, quite interesting experience for a guy. So went and did that, and they said, yep, you've got gynecomastia. I say, okay, that's not cancer. That's. That's a good thing. However, why have I got it? And it's uncomfortable and it's painful. Look, don't worry about it. It's nothing to worry about. Well, I want to know why it's there. And so we started doing a little bit more research, went down and seen specialists, and they said, look, you don't have.

You know, I had to go to LA to get an mri, full body mri, but you don't have a prolactinoma, you know, a brain tumor. You don't have anything on your adrenals that might cause that. No testicular cancer. So I said, okay, why do I have gynecomastia? I eat well. I'm generally plant dominant in my diet. I don't drink alcohol, I don't smoke. I exercise often. So what is it? And they said, tell us about your work. And so I was like, I speak on stage a lot. I'm a keynote speaker, and I really love it and I enjoy it and I genuinely don't feel nervous. But they said, look, we feel that there's a bit of a stress response that's happening that's creating increases in these different. Yes, that was their thoughts. Now, I still got this pain, still got this gynecomastia. It's not visible to the human eye, but I would love to know, how could I actually manage it? What might I be able to do to work with my nervous system?

Well, the first thing I want to say, James, is how thrilled I am that the medical community, whatever way you're interacting with it is suggesting that there is a stress component because it's just so rarely communicated. So I mean, it gives me hope. It gives me hope that, as I like to say, the global consciousness is rising to understand there's more to discuss about our optimal health. So that's the first thing I want to say, which is that's, that's wonderful to hear. Okay, so here's what I'll explain, which is really going to be helpful to anyone listening because it really doesn't matter how it's manifesting in your body. One man's migraine is another man's fibromyalgia is another woman's pelvic pain is another woman's back pain is another man's irritable bowel.

Your condition, all of these are what we call in mind body medicine symptom imperatives. Which means that if your brain and your nervous system are dysregulated, if you're high stress, if you don't understand how to mediate that stress, if you are trying things like, you know, and by the way, I think all these things are wonderful, but if you're trying things like meditation, breathwork, mindfulness, acupuncture, and it's like not working, meaning it's not relieving you of your symptom, it might be a great bonus in your life, but it's not resolving the thing that you want it to resolve. What happens is we actually become more stressed because we are like, I'm worried here, I'm doing everything I think I can possibly do for myself, but I'm not relieved of this condition. And that's when people start to spin out. Because especially if it's something like a migraine condition where you are in so much pain and you're blinded by it, you're missing work, you're missing your kids, recitals and sports events, you start to really panic. Now what happens here is the nervous system receives that panic and that urgency and sends more pain signals because pain is a protective posture through the lens of brain science. So for example, if you are being chased by a predator, whether it be early man and you're being chased by a saber toothed tiger, or today and you're being chased by someone with a weapon, you could run away from that person and break your ankle while running and you will not feel pain in that ankle until you reach safety. So you can run on a broken ankle with no pain. The moment you get behind a door, slam that door and lock it, and you perceive yourself as not being in immediate Danger, your ankle will explode in pain, because pain is meant to protect you, because it's adaptive. If you didn't know that that's supposed to hurt, you would not have the ankle repaired and you could lose your ability to walk. And back on the savannah, that means you get eaten by a lion, right? So we're still very similar to that early iteration of our species. And so what's happening for you? Is that your symptom imperative? And forgive me, what exactly is the name of your diagnosis?

Gynecomastia.

Gynecomastia. That is your symptom imperative. The reason that you are experiencing it is because it works. See? So now this is something that people need to understand when it comes to the symptom imperative. Your brain and your nervous system perceive your level of stress, your repressed emotional world, which is the stuff we just can't possibly deal with, that is stored in this invisible reservoir inside of us of rage and shame and grief and all the big feelings. Your nervous system and your brain perceive that stuff, including your stored trauma, as a greater predator to your life than your physical pain. Physical pain is seen as safe because what does it do? It slows us down. It allows us to ask for help. It makes us go sort of gentler on ourselves, right? So if you're a perfectionist and your own worst critic, being in pain, like, maybe you, like, give yourself a little bit of a break, right? So these are protective postures in terms of humanity. So unfortunately, there's this confusion in the mind, body, system that if we can't mediate our stress and our repressed emotions, it's going to send a signal into our body. Sometimes that builds a mass. Sometimes that is just physical pain, right? Your shoulder or your knee. Sometimes it's a stomach issue. So your stomach's not right. All the things I've talked about and long Covid. I always want to remember to mention long Covid because it's such a huge deal right now. And there are thousands of people that have done my work that are completely relieved of their long Covid. So it's so important because it's seen as such an impossible thing. And every article I see in the New York Times or wherever is like, oh, this is a problem with no solution. And it makes me nuts because there is a solution and I'm here to shout it from the rooftops. But anyway, so what? So the solution exists in. First of all, there are three facets of my work. Believe, meaning, understand the brain science. Listen to conversations like this. Read the book you know, go learn about it. You must understand what's going on in your body to regulate your nervous system enough to let you in, to let you in to do the work. Because if you're just going through the medical model like, you always have to do that first you did the most perfect thing. You got blood work, you sought out a specialist, you were scanned. God forbid you had cancer, right? I don't want anything to ever go unexamined. But once you find out that something is, you know, not going to kill you. Chronic, but not solvable, not curable, that's when I really want people to look at my work. So the first thing is believe. Understand what's going on in the mind body system in a very deep way. I have in this book tons of scientific studies. So if you're like a science wonk and like, you really need to read like the ones out of Harvard, do it, you know, whatever it takes. If you just hear the testimonials and my story and all the stuff I write about and that's enough for you, great. But believe is the first facet. The next is do the work. And I teach people how to go into that space where it hasn't felt safe. How to go into your rage where, like, nobody really feels safe to express rage. Men are frightened that they're going to be labeled as having anger issues or frightening. Women are afraid to be labeled that they're hysterical or they're overreactive or they should be dismissed. Like, that's a big one. Shame, you know, we don't talk about our shame.

Grief. Grief is like if you lost something, whether it be a relationship or a job or a friendship or even those little death by a thousand paper cuts. Grief in our lives. You don't want to keep talking about it with your friends, right? Like, you talk about it once, you talk about it twice. People want you to turn the page. So we bank a lot of these big emotions. We don't know it. The whole point of defense mechanisms is that they defend us. So repression by its very nature is not unhealthy. But when it reaches a point where it's hurting us more than it's helping us, that's when my work comes in. So I teach people a targeted way. Most of it is anchored in this practice I created called Journal Speak, which is this expressive writing practice that helps you very pointedly and safely get into this reservoir. And it's like putting a ladle in and dumping it out. And so that's the work. Obviously, there's much More to explain about it, but there's only so much time in a podcast, so I just have to give you, like, the high points. And then the third facet of my work, which a lot of people dismiss, is patience and kindness for yourself. A self compassion practice. Because even though it might feel light and stupid and unnecessary, if you are.

Annihilating yourself on a daily basis, like so many of us do, unconsciously, you're so kind to someone else when they make a mistake. But if you make a mistake, it's like you're ruminating and you're up at night about it and you're panicked and you don't want to talk to your boss or whatever. That is like being in a boat and trying to bail out the boat where there's a hole in the bottom of the boat. Like, we have to learn to treat ourselves differently. So I teach people. So what I would say to you is, this is your symptom imperative. It's hurting you mostly because it's holding that space and it's working. You believe it, you fear it, you hate it, you want it gone. And that kind of emotion sends the signal to your nervous system, oh, great. This is right where we want to keep him. Because if you can use a lot of energy to focus on this issue, he's not thinking about all the stuff that could actually quote, unquote, kill him if he felt the level of rage that he feels toward his. Blah, blah, blah. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say it because we're talking about you. If I was talking about a client, I might make some stuff up. But anyway, it will kill him, which of course is ridiculous. Our big feelings will not kill us. However, our nervous system perceives them to be predators because they are not something we can make sense of and control. And this is why it's so, so important for people to understand that my work is rooted in brain science. Because if they think this is just like, oh, emotional, you know, oh, she's the therapist, they could dismiss it. But it is hard science because the brain, the human brain seeks familiarity, it seeks habit, and it seeks predictability. This is just. Any scientist in the world will explain this to you. If it feels that it is working for you to focus on a symptom rather than look at what it perceives as you needing to be saved from it will keep you right there, which is why people are in so much chronic. Everything.

It's so powerful, Nicole. And a couple of things. The believe piece. Step number one, I'm Just going to put a link in the show notes right now. So for the listener or the viewer, please go and order Mind you'd Body right now. It's available today. Please go and order that book. It will arrive with you very shortly and you will start to understand the science. So that's step number one. We've got to get clear on that. So the do the Work piece, I'm fascinated by this. So meditation, mindfulness, breath, work, all the stuff, I incorporate these practices and I enjoy most of them. But things like internal family systems, emotional release. Some of these things, when I bring them up with friends, clients, etc. Often they're like, that stuff sounds a bit weird and wacky. Like, what on earth. Like rage, shame. Like you don't have any shame, any guilt. What are you talking about? But I'm really open to understanding this and I've started exploring some of this stuff. So journaling is a practice I deeply believe in. And there's different components to my journaling. But what you said fascinates me because I read a study, might have been out of Harvard, I don't know. But I read a study where there were two groups of people. They were both. They received a wound, like essentially a wound was a physical wound was created on their arm, a small little cut. And one group was told, get on with your day. Just get on with it. It'll heal when it heals. The other group was told to actually journal on how they felt and their emotions and their experiences during the day. And what was fascinating was the group that journaled on the emotions and released things like that, they all healed significantly quicker, the physical wound. So this blew my mind. So I get what you're saying. Can we talk a little bit more about that journal practice you talk about and what it might look like and if we want to shine a light on a client example. So we'll take the rage thing, for example. And what might journaling look like? What questions might we explore?

Okay, so my first question to you, James, is, am I allowed to swear on your podcast as much as you want? Okay. Because the thing that I teach people is that we are all five years old inside. We do not want to be patient. We do not want to be polite. We don't want to listen often to what other people have to say. We don't want to compromise. We hate being in relationship at times. I mean, obviously this is not.

This is not to say that we. We hate being in relationship completely, but there are many relationships in our lives, whether they be with our parents, our partners, our children, our bosses, our friends, even where we are so resentful that we have to be quiet when we'd rather speak up, right? So all of these things are factors in being human and being alive and being in relationship in the world. And we are all inside screaming at the top of our lungs because we don't want, just like if you've ever been around a five year old or any child where they want to, you know, eat a cookie before dinner or you know, not put their shoes on, I mean, you know, just pick your poison. With little kids, they're not worried about how they're making you feel. They're not worried about inconveniencing you or making sure that they don't hurt your feelings in any way. They're just gonna fucking go. They're just gonna kick and scream. They're gonna, they don't care who sees them, right? They're completely unafraid. There is this person inside of all of us and no one is immune. This is part of the human condition. You know, I once did an advanced fellowship on this work and I was working with a colleague and, and we were talking about the fact that shame is necessary because if we didn't have shame, we would not be able to be an organized society. Like when you're two or three, you can go into the grocery store and if your mom turns her back, you can take all your clothes off, right? Might, if you have the opportunity. But if nobody helps adjust you, if you do that when you're 6, borderline if you do that when you're 10, nobody's going to want to talk to you, right? Like, so shame is society's way of gently guiding us into being members of a polite society, which we need to, to get along with the number of us in the, in the world. Shame, however, has a shelf life. By the time you're about 7 or 8, if you are, you know, at least if you're neurotypical, you probably understand generally how you should be, right? You've had enough rules, you know, you shouldn't get naked. You know, you shouldn't scream out in the middle when someone's speaking. Let's even give it till 10 years old. @ that point, shame actually is no longer necessary. And the problem is that shame expires and we don't know it. So we spend a lifetime banking shame over every mission. Mispronounced word in a conversation. Every time you might have said something that embarrassed you, every time you did something that you're scared to talk about with someone else, right? We bank it, we bank it, we bank it. And so the thing about that is, if you live long enough, this screaming person inside is not going to be kept at bay. You know, Bessel van der Kolk wrote the very famous book the Body Keeps the Score. So it doesn't matter if you've read it, as long as you understand the concept of that sentence. The body keeps the Score. So the score is of the game that's being played inside of you, between.

The little guys inside that are feeling ashamed, that are feeling. That are grieving without a place to put it. The unheard and unreceived inner child, every one of us, I don't care if you had the best parents on the planet, they could not have met you at all the places you needed to be met. It's impossible. You know, and I'm a parent. I know that there are many places that my kids can go to therapy and talk about me, not because I didn't try my best, but because it's impossible to meet every child. You know, some people are just an energetic mismatch with their families, right? They're. They're very withdrawn or very shy, and they're born into these loud, you know, very extroverted families or the opposite, or anything in between. And so there's that voice inside of us. Now, we don't know we need to listen to that voice, but that voice is screaming every day. But they scream through your symptoms, they scream through your head, they scream through your stomach, they scream through your back. And this may sound silly, but if you go back to the brain science, I promise you what happens. Every one of those screams is registered in your nervous system as danger. And your nervous system is responsible for protecting you from danger. Because if it didn't, we would die out as a species. You know, if you had put your hand on the hot stove and instead of your nervous system immediately responding and you pull your hand off, you sat with your hand on the hot stove and you thought, huh, I mean, I think I'll take it off. I mean, I don't know, how hot is it? I mean, your whole skin would have burned off even just in that moment of consideration. So your nervous system is going to protect you without asking your permission and without asking your opinion. It's immediate. And so because of that, we need to attend to this screaming. And I won't call it child. I'll call it an energy that has the energy of someone who is unafraid to speak, which is why I asked you if I could use all my words. Because oftentimes. So I teach people a journal speak practice, and the practice essentially is a 20 minute daily rant and it is not something you're allowed to filter. So, you know, I have a whole program where I teach people how to structure it and how to get to it. But the essence of the rant is that there is no pause. There is no allowing other people to have their way. You know, it's not like, oh, I know, but my mother did her best. Not here, not here. The five year old isn't saying, I know you did your best. The five year old is saying, give me the fucking cookie, you person who I hate. You know that that's the energy and we have to let that voice speak. And sometimes it's angry and sometimes it is so sad, so embarrassed to ever be this sad in front of other people. And sometimes, and this is my favorite, is when that voice is so pathetic, like begging for a person to want them who they know is not good for them. Journal speak does not stay true, by the way. This is very important for people to understand. I teach you to come to these places and to bring it out, but with safety, because it doesn't stay true. So I'll give you a quick example and I'll give it for my life, because I'm. My best case study, which is when I first was having my terrible pain and I needed to.

I discovered this tool through my own most difficult hour, which is recovery is not a straight line. By reading and understanding Dr. Sarno's work, I was able to completely reverse my chronic pain. I went through grad school, I had two out of my three kids. I was like, oh, I'm unaffected by this diagnosis. However, I never did the work. I didn't understand at the time what the work really was. I just understood the theory. And I, by the way, ended up working with Dr. Sarno, lecturing with him for years at NYU. So he actually wasn't just my doctor or an author. He became my colleague and a very close friend. And what he used to say to me, I was so young, I was like 30 years old and he was already in his 80s at this point. But he used to say to me, nicole, you explain it better than me. He's like, I am a doctor, I can do the theory, but you are the person who understands the language of emotion. So he used to put me in front of him on the stage and say, nicole, you take that question, which was a great delight for me at the time. But the thing is that I understood his work through his books, but I didn't really understand what to do. So after I had a huge flare up of pain when my son, my middle child, was 10 months old, I actually went into the city and met him for the first time. Instead of just reading his books, I actually met with him in person. And he explained to me what we're talking about more, More, more pointedly. So when I went home and started doing the journaling, I was doing it the way many people do journaling. I was like telling the story of my day or complaining a little bit. And then, James, I will say that it felt like a spiritual experience. Like, at the time, I'm a very spiritual person, as you find me today. But at the time, I was not. I had not yet gone further enough through this life to have experienced that. But this was a spiritual experience that I didn't realize was a spiritual experience where I'm doing this journaling. And it occurred to me.

This isn't it. The voice kind of in my consciousness said, you're lying. And I remember thinking, I'm lying. I'm not lying. I do have two kids. I am tired. You know, this does feel like too much, you know, whatever I was comfortable journaling about. And this voice just said, you would not be suffering in debilitating pain if it was about being overwhelmed or this is too much. What is it? And it felt like an opening. It felt like an invitation to tell a deeper truth. And that's why my first book is called the Meaning of Truth. Because I understood that there are different meanings for every word that we have. And in the English language or in any language, and there's the word that's truth. I was telling the truth. But there can be a deeper experience of truth. And I sat there and I remember the thought rising, the way bile would rise in your throat. And I didn't want to say it and I didn't want to feel it, just like you might not want to throw up. That's how it felt. And I remember thinking, if you're going to save your own life here, you have to be brave and you have to be willing. And I wrote down the first line of journal speak ever penned, which was, I hate being a mother. And I sat there and looked at it and I was like, what did I just say? And then I just freaking went. And I spoke from the most injured, most.

Sensitive, most.

The softest place in me is what I'll say. I opened up to the place that is not defended. This is what I'm going to invite everyone who is going to do this work to do, which is you're only. Nobody hears it but you. Your journal speak is a completely private practice. But I started to write. I hate being a mother. It's not for me. I've made a mistake. I can't do this. I'm stuck, I'm trapped. It's a life sentence. Like I started writing these horrible things and as I'm writing them and I'm crying, it really just opened me up to, wow, what, I don't need to hide from this stuff. And then like I said about it not staying true, it began to evolve. You know, I really, I got it out. So this is not like a quick thing. I really, I was like really going every dark corner I could go to. And then it started to evolve and it's like, wait a second, I don't hate this. I don't actually. So what is it? And this is what I teach people to do. I bring people through and I'm like, what is it then? What is it then? What's deeper? What's deeper? And I went full court press on my parents. Like, fuck those guys. They didn't know what to do. They screwed me up. And now that I've. Now that I'm a damaged, you know, horrible person, I can't even parent. I did that. And then I went full court press on myself. You know, I really had a lot of self loathing to excavate about. You know, why are you weak? Why can't you do this? Everybody else seems to do it, you know, blah, blah, blah. All of it is just a touch to what happened. But as it evolved and as I didn't stop it, I was able to see that this is like sludge inside of me. No wonder my nervous system thinks I'm in so much danger. I have two children that I have to parent for the rest of my natural life if I decide I don't want to do it. That's pretty much an uncontrollable situation for my human brain. I mean, it would rather me be in pain and think about pain than think about that. And so I did it. I did it. At the end of it, I somehow intuitively knew this is just barf. This is just blowing your nose into a tissue. Throw it away. This isn't like real. This is an inner child screaming. Like when they say to their mommy, I hate you, I hate you. Do they hate their mother? No, they're angry in that moment. So that's kind of the energy of it. I ripped it up, I threw it away in a public garbage can because I had an inherent understanding that no one can ever read this. This is something that would be completely misunderstood. And I just exploded with love for my children, for my sister, for my parents. Like there is so much compassion inside of us when we get through the barrier of these unthinkable, unfeelable feelings. And so what I teach people, that's just an example, is you journal speak for 20 minutes a day. When you are finished, you delete it. If you're writing on a computer, select all delete, save the empty document. If you're writing on a notebook, you rip it up into a place that no one can find it and then you sit. So it's a 30 minute practice for 10 minutes of some sort of self affirming meditation, whether that be take a walk with your face in the sun, sit with monks chanting or singing bowls, do a guided meditation, sit in silence. Some people just like to like reflect in any way, it doesn't matter. The meditation builds a bridge between your journal speak practice and the rest of your day because you got to go into your day oftentimes with these people about whom you had to vent. But what I'll say is this, and this is an extraordinary moment, but let's remember that I am a person who was in some way slated to bring this message to the global community. So not everybody gets it this quickly, but I woke up the next morning and my back pain was 80% gone, never to return. And this is debilitating. This is pain attached, I thought, to an incredibly real diagnosis. I journal spoke for the next couple months for everything I could think of. I just went totally hard on all the things in my life. I made lists. This is all stuff I teach people to do. And I have never ever again had a back pain.

I can run five miles on the beach. I travel. I lift my ridiculously over packed suitcase and throw it into the trunk. There's nothing wrong with me. I do have an abnormality, what Dr. Sarno would call a normal abnormality. It's just I'm misshapen at the bottom of my spine. It is no, it causes me no pain. Bulging discs do not cause pain. I say that, by the way, definitively because people need my confidence. I've been doing this for over 20 years. I've worked with, I'd say at this point, given my podcast, hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Bulging discs don't cause Pain. They don't need to. They're an abnormality. They're a normal abnormality. You know, gut microbiome findings do not need to cause you irritable bowel. Just because your mother had migraines and your grandmother before them does not mean you need to get migraines. And just because you've had Covid or you've had the vaccination does not mean you have to have long Covid. It's natural. It's not your fault. It's a result of nervous system dysregulation because you were probably really freaking scared and all the things. But these are conditions that are literally curable. And people need to know the power that they.

Have. What you just shared has made me go, I want 50 copies, and I'm sending it to the people that I love most, and I want them to read it and I want them to do this work, including the people in my life that I love from my family, that I grew up with. And some of those people have created rage in me and anger and, oh, my God. Well, I need to do the work. They need to do the work. Like, this book is going to be transformational again. I'm going to remind the watcher, the viewer, and the listener. It's in the show Notes. Please order that book right now. We all, as humans should have these tools. These are not reserved for the rich, the special, the famous people that are in close proximity. Anybody on the planet can learn this stuff today through mind you'd body your new.

Book. Yeah. And you know what? I know before we jumped on air, James, you said a lot of people who listen to your podcast are people who are like in sports or really people who care deeply about their productivity or their health or their vitality. I have to say, this is not first of all, chronic. Anything is the human condition, by the way. Nobody is immune. There's no one in the world that what I'm saying is not happening in their body. Some people have chronic pain. Like, they could identify as someone who has migraines or back pain or, you know, a stomach thing or whatever. But many, many more of us just identify as. I just. I'm getting old. I don't have the energy I used to have. You know, I'm going to tell people that is bullshit. My mother is 80. She'll be almost 85 years old. She is on the go. She has. She's only on one medication, which is for her cholesterol. But other than that, she no medications. She is active. She lives alone. She has her whole life, no pain, no, no chronic anything. And it's like, because I, I'm, I'm, I never leave her alone about remembering to do this work. But what I'm saying is you're not old because you're 40. You're not. You know, some people are like, oh, well, I can't do what I used to do. I'm not so sure. I need you guys to challenge yourselves. You know, this is not just for chronic pain. It's for a lack of joy for life, it's for lack of presence, it's for any kind of anxiety. If you have social anxiety, if you have insomnia, if you have ocd, if you have depressive episodes, if you just feel like you have a high level of neuroses, this work changes your life so profoundly because when your nervous system isn't stuck in long term chronic fight or flight, everything feels easier in a way that you can't yet imagine until you try.

It. Incredible. And it's interesting because I think about this. I often think in the corporate world and I do a lot of work with corporates and high performing teams, we're all quite buttoned up, we've got our suits and ties on, we use certain language, we shake and shake our hands and it's all very official and formal. And often this kind of work, I say, oh God, that, yeah, that's oofy floofy. But actually, here's my challenge. In the next five to 10 years, I would love to see corporate leaders and small business leaders getting books like this, gifting it to their teams and actually doing the work together. Because we're always looking for quarterly returns, we're looking for productivity, profitability. It comes down to our people. When our people are happy, healthy, regulated, we're going to get way better efficiencies, way better outcomes for our clients and for ourselves. So I'm very confident, Nicole, that you're going to be at the tip of the spear with this work and corporates are going to be screaming out for you going, please come and work with us. So for those that do want to work with Nicole, please check out the show notes. All of her socials are in there. Link to the book is in there, A link to her amazing world renowned podcast is in there. And she is available. You'll have to book in advance, but she is available for keynotes globally. Nicole, I could literally chat to you for days about this stuff and I feel like there's going to be more follow on conversations. I would like to do your journal speak course. So I'm going to talk to you about that. And I can't wait to share this book with all of my close people. But with everyone that's listening, I can't wait till they read it and I get the feedback from them around how it's impacting their lived experience. So a huge thank.

You. Thank you so much for having me. I've loved this conversation. And do please call me back on once you have people doing the work and asking you questions. It is my joy to be with every single one of those questions because it just opens people more and more to the work. And as I always say, and as I said before, but I will leave you with this. You have so much more power than you've ever been taught and then you've ever realized to affect your physical and emotional health. The life you save is your own. And I want everybody to understand that that's so.

Powerful. May I ask you one last.

Question?

Sure. I want you to pretend for a moment that we fast forward many years into the future. You're highly aware that today is your last day on earth and someone very young that you love dearly, they come into the room and they say, nicole, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What would you say to.

Them?

I would say that the greatest I'm not on my last day. So I'll just say that if today were my last day, the greatest gift I have learned through my experience of being alive is to connect with my gut, with my authenticity, and with my knowing.

I did not have that experience for many years of my life, but as I underwent my chronic pain journey and my journal speak, the greatest gift it has given me is that real contact with my knowing. So what I would say in terms of the best way to lead on purpose is to pause. The human brain works way too quickly, so you have to intentionally pause and drop into yourself and say what is real and true for me? And that answer will change 100 times a day depending on the context within which you ask it. But if you can figure out what is real and true, how do I really feel about this? You will avoid so many red flags. You will be able to be so present and so successful because there's no need for defensiveness, there's no need for bravado, there's no need for over explaining yourself when you can drop into that space of knowing and connection to your gut. And that's the greatest gift I've been able to learn for myself. I try to teach it to my children. And that's what I would.

Say. Thank you for sharing that gift with me and with the listener right now. And I just want to say a huge thank you. I'm wishing you all the best with this amazing book. I can't wait to see it on all the bestseller lists. Mind you'd Body is out today. Get it in the show notes, folks, and share it with all your friends. But Nicole, thank you so.

Much. Thank you so.

Much. The Lead on Purpose podcast is sponsored by NZ Mortgages. Learn more at nzmortgages.co nz.