93: Can Your Brain Keep You Stuck in Chronic Illness? The Missing Role of Neuroplasticity in Healing with Faith Ashenden

So today we're having a little bit of a different conversation than we normally do. We are chatting with Faith Ashendenj, who is a chronic illness recovery educator and the founder of That Healing Feeling. After fully recovering from Graves' disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, IBS, panic attacks, and several other chronic health conditions, she now helps people understand the neuroscience of healing and rewire the subconscious patterns that can keep our body stuck in survival mode. So this was a fascinating conversation and it's just another part of the onion, the layers that we have to peel back on our healing journeys. So let's dig in. Well, Faith, I am so excited and grateful for you to be here today. We are unraveling a conversation that we've actually never had on the podcast and is in part missing in the conversations we have with our thyroid patients. So I'm excited to share your message and information with, with our listeners. Thanks for being here today.

Thank you so much for having me.

So take me back to when you had Graves' disease. You had chronic fatigue. You know, I would love for you to share a little bit about what ultimately changed your perspective on healing. And I think, too, there's such a message, an underlying message of hope, because I think so many people struggling with significant severe fatigue, chronic fatigue, Graves' thyroid conditions feel kind of lost. They feel hopeless, like there is no real path to recovery.

Yes. And I find that people are pretty familiar with Hashimoto's, but when you say Graves', they're like, oh no, I don't really know a lot about Graves'. And I always say, think Hashimoto's, but the opposite in many ways.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, it seems crazy now that it took them a while to actually pinpoint what it was, but it was a little bit over a year that I was in and out of the doctor's office. I was in school at UT Austin. And I would go in and say, you know, I have these really weird symptoms, like I have severe anxiety all of a sudden and heart palpitations. I'm sweating and shaky and I feel like I'm going to be sick. I have to get up and leave the class and I don't know what's going on. And he's saying, oh, you know, this is— these are panic attacks because you've taken on a huge schedule and yada yada. You need to relax a little bit. Right. Okay. So then I was losing weight rapidly, which at the time I was kind of like, oh, okay, so I don't really have to work out. I'm in college, I can do whatever I want. I'm losing weight. But actually I was down to 90 pounds and my friends were saying to me, you know, like, do you have an eating disorder? Like, we're really worried about you. So again, back to the doctor. Oh, you know, metabolism changes in whatever, maybe you're not. I don't really know. There wasn't really a reason for it. And so this went on for about, a year and a half. And you will probably think this is crazy, but it is unfortunately how it went down. The doctors ended up prescribing me Adderall for the fatigue. For those who are not watching this, your mouth and jaw drop because you understand the implications of that on the heart as well. I had gone into thyroid storm before, and it's very dangerous because my heart rate was so high. When I got diagnosed, it was 181 per minute. And ironically, finally the diagnosis came when I was back home and I saw a doctor who's known me my whole life. So she had the context and she was kind of just like, all right, what's going on here? And all she did was check my pulse of all things. And she happened to be an endocrinologist and she said, you have Graves' disease. Let's test it, but you have Graves' disease. And so yeah, it was a crazy journey and ultimately that was kind of the start of what then was like a cascade effect of so many different symptoms and so many like diagnoses kind of thrown at me, which I sometimes kind of adopt sometimes and like, I don't think that was a thing. So yeah, and so then the sort of a decade later and here I am. So, well, more than a decade since the diagnosis, but a decade after that season of being so sick for so long. So yeah, it was, it was, it was hard.

Yeah, I feel a couple thoughts in that. One is I tell my listeners and my patients all the time, like, it is so important to have a primary care doctor that knows you, even though you think you're going to them and it's useless and you check in every year, but they don't do anything like that. Familiarity and that relationship that builds over time, even with those small interactions on a yearly basis, so that meaningless. All of that is the foundation that's built so that when you meet them and you show up, they're like, oh gosh, I believe you, I see you, this is not the person I've seen for the last 5, 10, whatever years. And it is so incredibly valuable because, sad and frustrating as it is for women, it is hard for us to show up at a doctor's office and be heard, seen, believed, especially if they don't know us. If they didn't know you looked a certain way your whole life and now you're coming in at 90 pounds they would be like, well, you're just— again, often it's blamed on psychiatry, right? You're anxious, you have an eating disorder, you're having panic attacks from high stress. But when you know that person, they actually believe you.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And it was like, it took her 2 seconds, you know? It was like an instant without lab work, obviously. Again, of course we did that and it confirmed it. But like you said, it's— she just has to look at you, having known you, and say This is crazy, you know, and it becomes obvious, right?

And to give a little color to listeners, right, Faith struggled with Graves' disease. It's hyperthyroidism. That is the end result of that, where Hashimoto's is hypothyroidism. And largely the thing that gets people with Graves' disease to realize something's wrong is generally their heart rate. Like they'll have worked out their whole life and they go to the gym and they're 2 minutes into their workout and their heart rate's 180 degrees and they're out of breath. 180 degrees, 180 beats per minute.

Mine sound like Austin Summer, right?

Exactly. And you know what's dangerous is the elevated heart rate. And so what's often prescribed is something called a beta blocker to slow your heart rate down. Well, instead of getting a beta blocker, Faith got a stimulant, Adderall, which is going to speed up her heart rate, which can compound, you know, the secondary effects of this in a really really dangerous way. Tell me, so most people that are diagnosed with Graves' disease, they go in and they're like, listen, you need to get a thyroidectomy immediately, nothing else. Tell me how the next kind of phase unfolded for you.

Well, it kind of— by the time I had a diagnosis, I had actually come back to Dallas because I was so sick. So I was really, you know, the typical high-achieving, like, push myself to the limit personality, which didn't pair well with the autoimmune disease that I had. And then it got to a point where like I didn't know what was wrong. I convinced myself perhaps I was just going a little bit crazy because it is so, like you said, non-tangible in a way. It's like you just get in this weird place where you're having like insanely high heart rate and you're like, this must just be panic. And so I ended up leaving. I think it was summer. I went back home. And I actually just went there to stay until I figured out what was wrong because I couldn't really get out of bed or anything. Mind you, I was, what, 20, 20 years old, I think. So that point I was already basically bedridden. And so the ideas thrown around were initially thyroidectomy, which I just really didn't want a surgery. Like the idea of it at the time was, like I said, my first thing I said was, how am I going to go back to class? Like, how is this going to affect me? We also tried— I did get on beta blockers. Alongside the Adderall, which is like— I know, it's— I know, and it's confused. It's so weird. I was doing things like injecting myself with B12 every day because my B12— it was like so weird. There were so many different things that they were trying. I was not using functional medicine at the time. So while I was raised in a very healthy household, my family's South American, so it's more or less the culture to just kind of fish, vegetables, bone broth, all of that was just how I was raised. I didn't actually get into the world of functional medicine until 2018. This was in 2012, so I was still very much using the allopathic medicine model. So I was kind of trying their suggestions until the point where, and I think this is gonna surprise a lot of people, and I've said this before, I was trying a lot of their suggestions until the point where there was no other option for me where they said, you know, this is getting pretty life-threatening for you. You need to do radioactive iodine or a thyroidectomy. You can't go back to school. I had had a thyroid, couple thyroid storms. I've had to have a tranquilizer. It's— it was like kind of the picture billboard of like, this is— it's not— I feel like it's not like Hashimoto's where you can kind of like deal with it in time. Graves' can escalate really quickly and yeah, it's scary. So I just went with their advice and did the radioactive iodine and I think that was the start of a really bad path for me. That kicked off a decade of intense sickness and more conditions, more diagnoses. Had I known what I know now, of course I might have done— I would've tried to do things differently. Whether or not I would've succeeded without any treatment, I don't know. But what I will say is that wasn't necessarily a solution for me. The symptoms in many ways got worse and more intense, or they just flipped a switch to hypo symptoms in the most intense way. And I was completely bedbound still. So yeah, it was not ideal.

Yeah. And it's funny, we haven't even gotten in the meat of the interview yet, but I so wanna just share because your story parallels so many people with Graves', you know, with the misdiagnosis, eventually get the diagnosis and they dangle this carrot of, look, if we just take out your thyroid, if we just ablate it, if we just stop it from functioning, life's gonna be so much better. Right? Everything's going to be fine. And so people do it. They're scared. This is like threatening. Not to say it's not the right solution, but the concept and the construct that everything's going to be easy once we get this done is such a lie because life is so incredibly challenging. If you arrive on the other side of that surgery or procedure or whatever it is, and you don't have already the team in place that knows how to progressively manage thyroid, it, it's a swing into the other world, but it is devastating, right?

Yeah. Yeah, it sucked. It sucked. I ended up having to take a year off of school after that. I did end up going back in my, you know, my victory lap, as I say, and finishing. But it was a, it was a slog. It was not easy.

Yeah, absolutely. And I know that you credit a lot of your recovery after that to your brain playing a central role in your journey of healing. Which is different than all of this is just in your head. But I'd love for you to expand on how your brain mindset did play a role in this and what unfolded after that.

Yeah. So one of the things that's interesting about chronic conditions as it relates to the brain is that the brain actually changes when unwanted sensations are chronic. So obviously if it's acute, it doesn't apply. I know it sounds a bit obvious, but just to clarify, your brain isn't going to change if you get strep throat and then, you know, you follow that timeline of whatever and then you're getting better and it is pretty much linear unless something goes catastrophically wrong, right? And then whatever, you're fine and you go back to your life. But when a condition is chronic, what happens is that the brain makes a habit of your symptoms. And that's because the brain likes to habituate everything, right? Like we get up, we brush our teeth, whatever we do, we don't have to think about, oh, I should brush my teeth today to prevent cavities. We just do things on sort of an automation, um, and that's because the brain's efficient and wants to learn new things and plan new things, etc. So with symptoms, the brain essentially latches on to trigger response, whether like the trigger is, you know, being around a lot of people or heat, or for some people it's sitting down or whatever it might be, and it habituates those symptoms. So if you are struggling with severe symptoms over a period of time, it's really hard to know what is actually still happening in the body, and what is neuroplastic, meaning what has your brain actually just habituated over time. And it's one big reason why so many people stay stuck, because they're doing the right things, but their brain is— it hasn't, you know, it's a maladaptive response, essentially.

And how long would you see that in your own experience, or in whatever your studies and your knowledge around this concept, how long would that go on? If it wasn't actively approached. Like, if you were right, forever.

Yeah, forever. You would stop— you're stuck forever unless you address it. And I really believe this, regardless of what you're doing, you have to include this neuroplastic piece because this is really how I feel you get to this place of fully healed, right? You don't snap back when there's a trigger because you've actually weakened those pathways and created new ones. Yeah.

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And what does that look like? I mean, obviously, here's the thing, right? Like, we obviously want to deal with the biochemical part first. Like, that's people's foundation. That's what's going to probably give them the leverage to rebuild their mindset, their subconscious thinking, their patterns. So you want to deal with the biochemistry, and that's, you know, that's like our shtick, right? That's what we do at Modern Thyroid Clinic, and honestly, we do it better than anyone else that I know. But I love the idea that we can, and I love the idea we're built on this in general, that we create leverage for people to then be able to do the work. We create the biochemical energy, the platform, the ability for them to show up for themselves. And then they have to show up for themselves, right? And in all these different ways, obviously we talk about nutrition, we talk about exercise and sleep. And but I love that we're unraveling this part of the conversation too, because this isn't our area of expertise. So if someone is there in their journey, they have gone through the work, they are on medications that are working for their body, their labs are in an optimal range. What is the next step of this work look like?

Well, I guess it just depends. I mean, is that person experiencing symptoms? It sounds like pretty good place. Are you talking about they're experiencing symptoms but their labs are good and that's the mismatch?

Right. And I kind of think, look, like what I've seen at Modern Thyroid Clinic doing this for 10 years is we get people to like on a scale of 1 to 10 of energy, vitality, sense of well-being, thriving. If 10 is perfect, like impossible You're living in a bubble, doing everything right. Our goal is to get them to like an 8 or an 8.5. But what if they're at a 7.5? They started at a 2. What if they're at an 8 but they could reach a 9? You know, it's like these little levers that are left at the end that we can influence are so powerful from taking people from feeling really good to like feeling extraordinary. And I think this could be one of those, you know. So if they want to kind of think about it like an onion. We're peeling back these layers and we're deep now, right? Like, we've peeled back thyroid hormones, adrenals, inflammation, blood sugar, but now we're kind of left with this mindset piece. What does it look like when— that someone might realize, okay, maybe I need to work on my mindset now, maybe I'm there?

Yeah, I think that in that situation, because mind you, the people that I work with are Adam too, like they've done all that. Okay. You know, the people I work with are like kind of extreme scenarios, if you will. You know, like, but kind of they've done a lot. The kind of a prerequisite is you've seen a functional medicine doctor, you've done the testing, you then are very confused because even like the in-depth testing, you know, I did every single one with functional medicine, you know, you've got nothing there. So we're all like, okay, now this is a bit sticky. Let's see what's going on. But of course it applies to anyone, right? If you're It's even better if you're an 8 and you wanna be a 10. I think the big thing is when you've been chronically ill for a long time, you form an identity about your capacity and this identity underpins everything that you're doing. So even if you are optimizing in all the other areas, if you still ultimately have this deep-seated belief that you are more vulnerable than someone else in an unexpected situation, perhaps you are then more fearful, meaning your nervous system is a little bit more hypervigilant. We can't control, right? There's so much we can't control. And so there are people living with constant fear subconsciously, something's gonna happen out of my control and I'm gonna relapse, or this is gonna happen. And these are not thoughts that are necessarily driving our conscious behavior, but it's what causes us to feel and be more fragile or to have setbacks a lot of the time when everything else checks out, right? When everything else is good, it's like, why is this happening? So at a very like fundamental level, it's are you willing to accept and step out of that identity into that? I can be fully healed, I can be normal. I don't have to— this is, you know, I say to my students, like, you have to get to a place where you're not special anymore. You're not the, the girl who was chronically ill. You're just a normal person, right? Can you let that go? Because that is a huge part of people's lives, because of course it's a trauma response. Like, you have to interact with your environment in a different way. So that's kind of at the core of all of this. And the beliefs that surround that impact your nervous system in a big way, because if you're operating from fear or shame or anything like that, your nervous system, which is so primitive, is just hearing survival, survival, survival. And so, you know, you could be doing all the things that you see that are shiny and pretty on social media, like the vagus nerve devices and, you know, whatever meditations, and that's fine. But ultimately, it's band-aiding if you're not able to find a place where you can downregulate on your own, where you have a sense of peace to come back to, a sense of knowing that you are allowed to hold on to your health, you are deserving of that, and that is possible. People say they think it's possible. If you thought it was fully possible, I think you would be in a different place. Do you really believe at your core that you get to just be a normal person, that that's not going to happen to you anymore? So That's a part of it. And then there's the brain training part. I'm more interested in the part that I'm talking to you about now, cuz for me I feel like that's the real work. That's sort of like the root cause mind work. You can brain train around it, right? And there's lots of brain training apps and whatever, and they're nice and they're helpful, but I still don't think it's like the root, root cause of why people find themselves in that situation where it's like, why is this happening when everything checks out?

Well, even, and they wouldn't get to the next step of Bright Training because they would kind of create this self-fulfilling prophecy. I think that's so fascinating because a chronically ill person is here, they want to be here, but they can't bridge this gap until they're able to prove to themselves that they're capable 100 times to get here. But if they still keep telling themselves over and over and over, I'm tired, if I do this, I won't be, I'm exhausted, I'm gonna get sick if I'm around a sick person. They're never able to take that next step. And I think it's such a fascinating thing, allowing yourself to prove to yourself that you can trust yourself, right? And you can only do that with leveraged risk, with exposure to these things that are scary. And then slowly but surely, you're like, I'm strong, I'm resilient, I go work out Today, and I'm not going to crash for the next 3 days. I'm going to do it in a way where I won't, because of course you can eat over—

yeah, crash.

But then you're building your trust with yourself so that you can bridge that gap instead of being afraid to take the first step, right? And then you're stuck forever.

Well, 100%. And I think as well, people need to remember, with this kind of work, the body follows the mind. You've done the other stuff, so this is different. This is sticky, and it's harder because we're used to seeing the physical evidence and then drawing our own conclusions. That's how the works. But unfortunately, in this scenario, we have to first kind of, in a bit of a cliché, believe it and then see it. So you might go to the gym and you might then have a little bit of a crash. And then the traditional response would be, see, I can't do it. I'm not as capable due to my history, yada, yada, yada. So this is like brain evolving, if you will, kind of like, no, I'm rooted in this identity and this belief that actually My body is capable, my body is here. And this is an old habit. This is just an old— this is what neuroplasticity is. It's the brain essentially sending these messages because it's something it learned from the past. And so if you could, if you understand that, if you learn about that, then you can have a belief, right? That this is an old habit. This isn't where I am now because look at all the other evidence I have that I'm healed. And then in time you're weakening those pathways that say workout crash, workout crash, and you're creating new evidence of workout, I'm okay. And, you know, you have to rise above the physical sensations, which is hard, and you have to create capacity to hold space for the physical sensations without your nervous system going into that place, or else you're reinforcing it. And it's all subconscious. You're not doing it on purpose. Of course, it's not a thing that a lot of people want to do. You know, I say to my students when they come in, they're super excited and like, so you're going to get to a point where you're going to be like, this is really hard and I don't even know if I want to do this anymore. I don't even know if I believe this. Because actually I've done this for an entire week and I'm still crashing or I'm still, you know, and I'm like, it takes time for the brain to change, right? Like, think about building a muscle. You don't go in, you know, think about with my, like, after childbirth, went in doing like core work and my, my core was just like, I was like, what even is this? It takes time to build that back and you have to be patient. And so, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say it's hard. It's more like, can you hold on to that belief That's the only flex that I think you need.

Yeah. And for all the weeks, months, years, decades that you've told yourself this story when you are sick over and over and over and over again, it takes like 3 times more of that pathway activity to solidify a new way subconsciously of thinking and believing about yourself, about the world. I'm curious if— and I'll give you an example in my own experience. That rings true. But I'm curious if women who come to you—

or men—

but women are like my people, so I see it.

It's just I just work with women, so.

Okay. Yeah, pretty much me too. We see men, but, but largely it's women. If you see a sentence or two, or like a belief or two encapsulated like over and over and over, if you have— if there's such a strong theme— and I'll give you an example in my own work of like a theme when people come to us for their first appointment where they review labs, they've seen 15 other clinicians. You know, we're like their last-ditch resort place usually. When we're reviewing their labs and we say, no, you actually do have a biochemical problem, even though you've been told for umpteen times before this that you don't, they say one of two things. They say either, so you're telling me I'm not crazy, or you're telling me this is— is it all in my head? You know, so that's like a pattern that I see pervasively over and over and over? I know it's a different way that you see it because it's a construct in someone's mind about their experience in the world, but do you see those patterns often? And I'm curious what some of them are.

100%. I've already tried everything is the first thing. Actually, when I've trained my team, when we talk to students before they come to make sure that they're fit because we say, you know, have you tried X, Y, and Z? We want to get a really good understanding. At the top of our like PDF is I've already tried everything because that is the number one thing. I'm sure they say that to you as well though, to be fair. The other thing is, no, but you don't understand my case is it's kind of the exception. I'm too complicated. I don't believe that this could work when I've already tried everything else. I mean, those are kind of the main things. They are beliefs and they're trauma responses from all the times, you know, that they've gone and been brushed away. But equally, like I said, my girls, they for the most part have, you know, 10, 20 years under their belt of not working and being bedbound. But I do have, I do have some girls in your position. It's just usually by the time they get to me, like you said, they're like, they've tried a lot of other things. They're like, all right, fine, let's try this, let's see if there's any merit because nothing else is working. And then they discover, you know, this incredible miraculous thing where actually all the other stuff they did had worked. But because they've been sick for so long, they had these insane, like, neural connections associated with absolutely everything as a trigger. Um, and we've seen people from wheelchairs walking, you know, like, it's amazing what you can do with this kind of work. The same as yours, you know, it's crazy.

Right, I know, we need to somehow create a strategic partnership because our people are the same and together, like, we could do a lot of good. It's so interesting too because your themes in the sentences, the things they echo over and over and over are complete— like, they put a stop to any hope of recovery. You know, like, they want recovery, they want their life back, they're there to see you to do it. But these things that they're telling themselves give them absolutely no hope, right? Like, I've already tried everything, so there's nothing— the subconscious message in that is there's nothing left to try that's ever going to help me. I'm going to be like this forever. Or I'm the exception, right? Meaning you, Faith, will not be able to help me because I'm the exception. I'm different than everyone else. Again, like, it's committing to a lifetime of suffering. And then I can't remember the third, but it was— it got them to the exact same place of there's no hope, this will never change. But they want to change. It's so fascinating that that's what we build our mind around when we want something different.

I know, and it's so hard because there's so much trauma. And, you know, I speak to this a lot as someone who spent a decade so sick. And I say there's a lot of conversations about the trauma that leads to chronic illness, or at least in our space, you know, it's like widely known, but there's not a lot of conversations about the trauma that is chronic illness. And so when I'm talking to people, I'm like, listen, we're not really going into the trauma before your chronic illness. We're going into the trauma that every single day waking up, not having a solution, not having an authority who can tell you and help you to look to that trauma. And that's the trauma that's made and created all of these subconscious beliefs that are ultimately holding you back and kind of being able to visit that in and of itself and deal with that. I mean, nobody's doing that really, to my understanding, my knowledge, in terms of like the mental health support. I think people think they're very intuitive when they're like, oh, you know, we'll talk about like, you know, what happened in your life before this. And oh, there's a link between childhood. It's like, yes, of course. Like, this is old news. We all know this, but this is hugely traumatic and people are stuck in this cycle because of that trauma. Because even again, like they can do the brain training, even download the Curable app. That's a brain training app. That's a good app. It's easy kind of brain training exercises, which are super helpful. But you can do that kind of like you can, I don't know, take a bunch of supplements, your IV drips, and see your chiropractor. But like ultimately this stuff is still underneath and it's deeply, deeply rooted in this specific experience and it's informing your nervous system on a daily basis. Without your awareness. And so until you get to this, you can spend all the money you want, all the fancy, you know, gadgets and supplements and whatever, in my opinion. So that's why I say to my students, I will never recommend you one, because I'm not qualified to do so. Two, because I don't want to be the person— that's not my job to tell you what wellness device or whatever to buy, because I don't actually think that that's needle moving. Like they come to me and they're like, I want to buy this infrared sauna. It's like, Do you realize how it's— you want to buy this thing? Of course it's helpful. Is it going to be the thing that addresses this limiting belief? No. I mean, go for it, you know, if you want to. But I will never, ever put my name to it because I'm like, I don't really think that's the needle-moving thing by the time you get to me. I just don't think it at all.

So many parallels, you know, between what you do and what I do because it's the same. Like, I just went and spoke at Dave Asprey's biohacking conference last in May. And I'm like, listen guys, you can do all the freaking biohacking in the world. If your thyroid is wrecked, it's not gonna get you where you need to go. Like, it's all for naught, right? But I— and I've been guilty of this in my own life. It's like, but what if I don't want to do the internal work right now? What if I just want to passively sit in the sauna, go sit in front of the red light, go even go exercise, like go, you know, move my body, lift lift weights. It is sometimes the internal mindset work that is the most avoided.

Oh yeah, it's hard to face yourself. You know, I think the hardest part is changing a belief, because if you think about it, most people think that their beliefs are truths. So this is what is hard, especially for my students who come in and they're like perhaps really rigid in certain aspects of their thinking, which I feel now more than ever people are so rigid. And just from my perspective, and I'm kind of, you know, out there in the way I look at things sometimes, and I Ooh, all of this rigidity is very bad for the brain because the more rigid you are, the less flexibility you have with your ability to change the brain in general. Like, if you want to do any of this work, you have to be able to see different perspectives. That is literally what this work is, right? It's feeling a symptom and then being like, hold on, this is not dangerous. So you're able to have that perspective shift. And so I say to my students, like, people walk around thinking that their beliefs are truth. They live and die by these what they think are facts, but ultimately they're not, because truths have to be true for everyone, everywhere, all the time. And if we can't prove that, it's not the truth, it's a belief. Someone else handed you a belief, right? And you're living and dying by this, and you're letting it dictate your entire life. And so when you are willing to say, okay, even a thought experiment, you know, I'm just going to let it go and I'm going to choose to experiment with believing this one. So freeing, not just in this but in every single way. And so that's the work that's hard, I think. Like I said, especially now more than ever, and especially when you have a strong opinion and you have trauma, it's like you really need to hold on to that to justify your experience, and it's your safety and your comfort. And it can be— it can feel catastrophic to think, I've been living my life under the umbrella of a set of beliefs that aren't even true. And then what is true, and then what is the point, you know? And it's like this whole existential crisis, and it's like, but that is the truth of life. You can choose what reality you want by what beliefs you have, and that's your power. But can you let go of the ones that are holding you back? And some people don't want to.

Yeah, I mean, it, it echoes through so many aspects of our life, and in terms of relationships, the partners we choose, the food we eat, how we address our physical health, it's doing what's familiar feels safer than the changes that are gonna get you exactly where you wanna go. You know, like thinking this way because it's familiar feels better than trying to think a different way, even if it's gonna change your whole life. 100%.

I mean, this is just a primitive response, and that's why I love to bring it back to like really basic science and basic understanding of the nervous system or of the brain. And it's like, you know, we know how primitive the nervous system is. We know that we are literally wired to do things the same way because that's how we survived back in the day, you know, kind of explaining it. Like, if you look at it this way, just like really pragmatically, you can understand why this is so difficult. Like, it's difficult in your body, it's scary, but if you really think about it from a pragmatic perspective, It's not scary at all. It doesn't change, you know, it doesn't change anything about where you're sitting right now. But if you understand that, I think it makes it easier, or else the failing just takes over. And most people don't understand it. Smart people don't understand it. I mean, everyone I work with is extremely intelligent. It's not an intelligence thing, it's just not common knowledge, right?

And so on your journey and on the journey of a lot of the people you serve, what are some themes to help them on their journey to recovery? Like, what were some key things that moved the needle for you, whether it was I said this one thing over and over? Like, what does that look like in practical terms?

I think first and foremost, if you think about kind of like what I did with my body, which was like, you know, kind of removing the things that weren't serving me before I started supplementing and all this stuff, it's thinking about where in your life are you connected mentally to aspects of your life that you want to change that are like negative, for example. I'm not sure if I said that right, but let's say you're in like Reddit or Facebook groups, or you're following Instagram influencers who have chronic illnesses and all these things. You know, first and foremost, you need to detox in a sense. Um, smart. Stop. Just stop. Like, of course, like, you're gonna find what you're looking for in everything all the time in all of life, especially if you're actively subscribed to it. So stop collecting any evidence in or outside of you that confirms what you don't want and start doing the opposite, right? Like, become delusionally obsessed with finding niche books about people healing that specific condition, or just healing in general, and podcasts and whatever. Like, to the point where you're like, you know, at the beginning maybe even slightly anal about it. Like, if someone is playing it on a podcast or turns it on, you remove yourself, you create a boundary, and you're like, I'm actually not going to be listening to that, or I'm not going to have a conversation about how I'm feeling. Like, you are in charge. No one's going to do it for you if you're not setting those boundaries. If you're not doing those things, you're the only person who's not going to progress. And so it's a really, like, you know, stern— especially with my students when we start, this is like one of the biggest, easiest need movers in my opinion. And then it comes to, you know, what do you want to believe about your health? And what do you want beyond your health? Most people, when they come to me, they say, I don't want to be anxious, they don't have pain, I don't want to be nauseous. Okay, what do you want? I don't know. Okay. You can't achieve something without knowing what you wanna do. Right? So it takes them about 2 weeks, I would say, to actually come up with what they want. And you think, how is that possible when you've been stuck in the mindset for so long where everything revolves around what you don't want? That's the way the brain works. It's very difficult to even think about who could I be on the other side of this? Because again, they don't think it's possible. And even in situations where people are mostly healed, it's like, why are you doing this? Like, what do you want on the other side of this? Okay, so what beliefs does that version have? That version of yourself who has those things? You said that there's this gap between where they are and where they want to be. The only thing that's going to get them there is to adopt her beliefs, her habits, her thoughts, and just start doing those things. Just start believing those things. You're going to become that person. That's what they call a quantum leap, right? It's like you just decide to act like her, you pretend, but because the brain doesn't know the difference between pretending and reality, you start to then become that person, right? So I say to them, again, it feels silly, right? Most people don't wanna do this work. People are familiar with affirmations, visualizations. They're on board with that. That has good branding, right? So this feels a little bit different, but it's the same thing. So those are kind of more like foundational level, like Why are you doing this? Do you want on the other side? And why? What are her habits? What are her thoughts? What are her beliefs? And then collect evidence to support that. So the brain is constantly deleting, distorting, and generalizing any evidence to the contrary of your beliefs. So like, if you believe something like, you know, healing isn't possible for me, but you have a great day, your brain isn't actually going to track the positive parts of your day because it's looking to collect evidence to support your specific belief. So you might go to bed thinking, well, I, you know, was really bloated after dinner. This sucks. I'm never gonna get over my gut issues. But actually there were 99 positive things that happened. You physically don't have the capacity to take in all that information. And so you take in what supports your beliefs. So if you're creating new beliefs and you're looking for new evidence, right, you're gonna start to notice consciously until it becomes subconscious, until it becomes habituated. So these are like overarching, like challenges, but also not challenges in the sense that anyone can do it. It doesn't cost any money. Like we all have access to information. And that's where I would, would start. There's like a lot of granular work within it, which I could go into any direction, but I think getting the fundamental pieces of it right are huge. Like that's a huge needle mover. Yeah.

Yeah.

So interesting. I mean, I could go any direction too. One thought that was triggered when you were talking about one of the first the first step. That's like what I see a pattern in so many people that are struggling kind of in this stuck mindset and belief system is every day they're waking up and they're like, well, how do I feel today? Oh, they're searching, right? They're searching for, do I feel a little bad? Am I a little tired? And then they want to base the construct of their day, their activities what they're going— how their interactions are going to be around that construct that they've now created the first thing that happens when they wake up, you know. And it's like part of that is a reprogramming of, you know what, people wake up, they don't feel great every day. Like, that's normal. It's perfectly fine to not feel 100% every single day when you wake up, and you just keep going. And I know that's different for some people that have like this biochemical issue that's happening that's dragging them down that they can't get out of. I don't want to remove that at all because I've been there. I was that thyroid patient.

Yeah, couldn't get out of it even with the different, with all, all the tools.

But so many people again have recovered, they're doing well, they don't have a biochemical issue and are stuck. But every day they're waking up searching for a reason to reaffirm the fact that they're stuck.

I don't know why I had that thought, but it's, but it's so common and that's just it. Like you will always seek out the evidence you're looking for. Yeah. That's how the brain works. Like it's following your command. You get to decide. And if you don't take control consciously, This all happens below your conscious awareness, and then you think, why am I in this cycle? Why can't I get out of it? You have to develop the capacity— again, back to this word capacity— to allow multiple things to be true at the same time. You might be tired, and there are positive aspects to the way you woke up as well. Turn your attention to that. So in this way, you're not gaslighting yourself. Like you said, like, you, you wake up, you're tired, or something, you know, you bent down and it hurt, or You got a little bit dizzy. Okay, that happened. And what was the win? There's always something there, multiple aspects in your reality. And that's how you change the brain until one day you don't give any attention to the I'm tired. Or even better, you do give attention to it, but it becomes unimportant. So like for me, I say to my students, like you said, not to diminish how intense the sensations are, but equally I'm tired when I wake up. My 3-year-old woke me up no less than 10 times last night. 10 times, right?

Oh, I'm sorry, I do not miss those days.

I mean, you know, she's going through a phase, right? It's not all the time, but it's been this past month. She learned something in nursery, I don't know. So anyways, you know, I woke up and I was tired because I didn't really sleep, and I was like, okay, Addie woke up 10 times. And then I did the next thing, which was both my kids needed to pee and they were thirsty, and so I just went and did that, and then that was it. And, and I went to my workout and like, I'm fine and I know that I'm healthy, etc., but I wasn't before, and I still practice this mindset. And so it's from the identity of a healed person, how would she give meaning to this symptom? Because she experiences symptoms too. And I will experience symptoms when I'm healed, you know, whoever's listening, or when I'm fully healed, I'll still have symptoms. And guess what? Like, you're gonna have a weird cycle and you're gonna be stressed out, and it's normal. To have backlash if you've been running on adrenaline. Like, these things are going to happen. Your goal is never to feel 100% all of the time, right? But it's, are you organizing your identity around it or not? And I think, you know, the fact that I'm at the place where when I have a sickness or whatever, I don't go to, this means something about a chronic illness. I just think, oh, I got something because my kids got it at school, or my baby had me up all night, or whatever. And that's really where they want to try to get to. And then the body responds to that.

Yeah, absolutely. And as people are moving through this work, do you see patterns or themes? Like, is there— they're moving through the work, they kind of level up, they get to a certain stage or phase. What does that look like? They keep going, they get to another level or stage. What does that look like? And what's the normal timeline for people to be able to accomplish this shift in their framework?

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So theoretically, you could experience a significant shift if you had an intense emotional experience in like 30 minutes. It's not common, but trauma, for example, is a singular event that causes a significant impact on your behavior and your nervous system, right, for the rest of your life. So if you experience something emotionally, um, what is the word, like it's jarring enough, yeah, yeah, intense enough in a positive or negative way, you can change the subconscious instantly, right? That's not how it typically happens though. How it typically happens is it takes about 3 to 4 weeks with what I tend to see for the like kind of arduous part to feel over and for the thoughts to start to becoming more habituated. So maybe like you find yourself waking up symptom scanning and then forcing yourself to then, okay, hold on, no, I'm going to stop and I'm going to notice something that feels good. And then you're forcing yourself to continue to redirect your thoughts. It feels a bit arduous, yada yada. So it would take you, yeah, like 3 to 4 weeks until one day and you don't know the moment because it just happens.. And then you look back and you say, oh my God, it's been 3 or 4 days and I haven't done that. My mind, my brain has changed, right? So that's cool. And that kind of applies to any situation that you're trying to target. And then I find with my girls, unfortunately, because it is somewhat of an onion, they'll hit like a huge win and then a few weeks later they'll be like, oh my God, I just had some sort of flare or something triggered me. And so it's sort of the same kind of cliché statement of like healing isn't linear and you have to take a macro view, right? Like you're not losing the skills that you've developed and you're able to confront these situations from a totally different vantage point now because of the skills you develop and the person you're becoming is totally different. And like it's part of the process. Again, sounds cliché because I'm sure, you know, we see— I see this on social media all the time in the chronic illness space and it's like healing isn't linear and it's like that's that's kind of an annoying statement, but it's true. But what I love about this again is like, you don't— your brain didn't go back. Like, you made that change in your brain, physically, the structure of your brain changed, and that hasn't gone away because something triggered. But now you're more sensitive to that trigger. You see it for what it is. You're not consumed by the emotion and the nervous system response. You're now an observer. You're in control. And okay, you're having big emotions. Okay, it's unfortunate. And equally you have more capacity and in that moment you're taking another shift up. And so it's a journey like that, but in that time you're getting your life back or you're achieving your goals or whatever until, like I said, one day the symptoms become unimportant and that's when you'll look back and you'll say, oh wow, I totally forgot to look for them, or I totally forgot to notice or care. And that's when you've done it. Yeah.

And as you hit those hurdles, as you kind of whatever relapse, go into a flare, the stakes are higher, right? Like, that's an opportunity for your perspective, your neural reformation to get stronger. You're building even more trust with yourself. If it was easy all the time, if you just magically woke up one day and felt good all the time, you'd never actually be recovered. You wouldn't have built a lot of trust in yourself because you're not having to work harder to get to the place that you need to be in. But every single step up where it's more and more challenging to leverage the work that you've done builds more trust. It makes your brain synapses stronger.

All of it.

100%.

Yeah, I mean, it's— I hate to say words like nonlinear, it's a journey, but like, it so is a journey. And I think beyond healing yourself, it puts into perspective your life choices and your circumstances and your goals. And you think, oh, okay, well, if I can do this Surely whatever other goals you have for your life, you know, what limiting beliefs do you have around that? Everyone's talking about it in the money manifestation world, right? Like we're familiar with the law of attraction and law of action, all these like how to manifest whatever people are trying to do. It's like these are all coming from these principles in neuroscience and neuroplasticity. And you know, some of it's a little bit my subconscious work. I mean, you can't measure that. You can't, but you can in the lab work that comes after. In their Oura Rings or just how anecdotally, like how you're feeling. So it's like if you can do this, imagine how easy anything else will be for you. Like, and it just puts people on a journey. After I work with them, they, you know, they write a book or they start a business or they have a baby and they just— they're like a different person. And it's so cool, like where it propels you into, right?

Because if you can own your mind and your thoughts, you can do anything. Like everything else is up for negotiation at that point, right? Like you can go exercise, you can go run a marathon, you can skydive. Like if you can dominate the landscape of your mind and how you see the world and how you experience the world, anything's possible.

Literally anything. But like what I say to my girls, like there's so many things I've achieved since doing this work that in a million years I would've never ever— even things like, you know, my second baby, I had a home birth right after I moved here to England.

I got pregnant.

I was like, what am I gonna do in this country that's so different than the US? But just like things that I would've in a million years never trusted myself to do with my business, with my family, with my kid. And like, I do it and it works and it's effortless, like in a way.

Mm-hmm.

But I stay focused in a different way than I would have before. It just, it makes life enjoyable and easy, easier.

Yeah, absolutely. So cool. Is there, I'm curious of your own timeline and when you started this work. What life looked like a year or two in, what it looks like now, and kind of your journey in between.

Yeah, so for my timeline, it was different because I didn't really know very much about this work. So I started— so I was sick until 2018, really. So 2010-ish when I started getting sick, 2018 was like my peak of the worst where I was bedridden and like fully back. Like, I, I tried, you know, I had spurts of like working, and then I, I was in corporate America, back to being bedridden. And I got thrust into functional medicine at that point, which was a real like mark in the sand for me, because then I was able to kind of access the functional medicine testing. And again, like, I did have a healthy lifestyle, but obviously there were so many other aspects that I hadn't considered. And those things were really helpful for me, and I did start to feel better, like I wasn't bedridden. Like, that was huge for me. I was improving in many ways. But the thing that was always a little bit curious to me personally, and this might be slightly controversial, but, you know, I was still limited to a lot of triggers. Like, I still couldn't eat gluten and dairy. I still couldn't lift weights because I had such bad fatigue after. I really couldn't go to work. I couldn't maintain any sort of, like, consistent schedule because I didn't know what it, what I was gonna feel like the next day. And I had anxiety, I had a lot of anxiety. So there was just, there was still like residual things that yes, I was much improved, but ultimately I wasn't free. Like I was still someone who was managing my chronic illness, but in a much better capacity and way better quality of life than before. And so that's when I went to my doctor and she said, you know, not my functional medicine doctor, but another doctor. And she said, you know, this, is kind of what your life should— you should expect your life to be like. Like, you've had so many things happen to you, like, this is how you're gonna feel. So that's what— I'm like 20— was it like 27, 26? I don't like 26. Yeah, I didn't like it either. So that statement got me thinking about my background, behavior psychology, and I had a lot of kind of— we got to study a lot of this in school, and I started diving into it because I wasn't working, and so this was like my full-time job, and I started playing with this work myself. So from that point to getting fully healed, it was 9 months for me. I didn't have like a program. I didn't have, you know, it was like, what is this information? And I'm just doing random certifications. So there was no like consolidated piece of work where I could go and learn this. So I got like a hypnotherapy certification, neuro-linguistic programming, trauma-informed coaching. I started consolidating. I mean, I have like a laundry list of these certifications that I was just consolidating the work and thinking trial and error, trial and error. And the first thing that worked for me was gluten and dairy, as in I was able to eat it without any response, which was insane for me because my responses were just so, so bad. Like, I thought I would never be able to eat this for the rest of my life. And then it spiraled from there because that was my first bit of evidence that like, whoa, like, this is insane that you can do this work. And then from there I just got better and was like, I don't know, you might know who my, do you know Alex Krosko?

Yeah.

Yeah. So she was my first functional medicine doctor and I was having a conversation with her and I was better and I was saying to her, and, uh, I was like, I don't know what to do now. I don't, you know, I've been working in corporate America for so long. I'm now better. I wanna work. And she said, why don't you like start a business and teach people what you did? And I was like, how would I even do that? Like, what is it gonna be like the consolidation of my research and your hands into, you know, And so I made my first course, and Taylor Dukes at the time, if she posted so kindly for me on her Instagram, and then other people started like posting for me as well, and all these like wellness accounts that were my friends, and we were all together, and I started getting thousands of people on there. And all of a sudden I was like, people really want to hear what I have to say. This is a thing. And so now, however many years later, I'm still talking about it, and it turns out people do want to learn this and they care about this amalgamation of experience that isn't consolidated into anything more than that right now. Although I'm working on it, there is a lot of like, like I said, brain training. But what I do is so kind of unique, I like to think that people are interested. They're like, what is this weird thing you're talking about? I kind of wanna learn more. So that's my timeline. But I like to say to other people, don't worry, it's not necessarily that for you. That's why there's like actual curriculum and stuff, for example, that I've put out. I know other people are working in this space. It doesn't have to take 9 months to be able to go on a walk and go to the gym. But for me it did, which was still kind of a drop in the ocean compared to how sick I was.

Right. I mean, in my mind I'm like, 9 months seems great, you know, like compared to forever. So gosh, yeah. Sometimes it's—

but most people don't have the funds or the, you know, I had happened to get engaged and my fiancé at the time was like, you know, for whatever reason he's like, I'll take you on this like sick person who can't do anything and pay for your ridiculous wellness expenses at the time, but I was like, I'm gonna get an imprint on him.

I love a supportive man.

He's— he doesn't even question, you know, it's like that thing where you walk, you see the reels where you walk out with like your red light and like all your stuff on you, and your husband just— he doesn't even like ask like, what is this weird thing that you're doing anymore? That's what I say to my girls, like, I'm a wellness girl, I love those things. I'm not gonna say that they're the things that heal me, but like, I love them and they make me feel good and they have benefits. So yeah, he supported me through all of it. So not everyone has that opportunity necessarily. So I was really lucky to be able to have that time.

I love that. Well, tell listeners where they can find out more about your work, where they can follow you online, kind of keep up with everything you've got going on.

Yeah, so they can find me at @thathealingfeeling. That's my Instagram handle, and I share a lot of free resources every single day on this. I also have a free masterclass. I can give you the link where I go live and I I do like an overview of the principles of my methodology just because I know that it can be a little bit like ambiguous. Like, what do you mean change your beliefs? And so I kind of dive into like how that affects your nervous system, how that, that cascade effect affects you biochemically and hormonally. And so I can like link that just in case anybody wants to learn a little bit more about that.

Yeah, I'll put that in the show notes. Absolutely. Um, is there anything that I haven't asked that you would want people to know, or any final thought you'd want to leave listeners with?

I always like to say that I really believe that unless you are actually an anomaly, like you were born, you know, with a rare condition, you have cystic fibrosis, and you know that we don't work with people who were born with conditions and say that that's something that we would reverse. But if you are someone who's come to this situation where your, you know, clients, your patients are, and they've done this work, you're not an exception to the rule. Like, anyone can do this. Your situation isn't unique. The people I see, they're very complex, and I still don't think it's unique. And that's a good thing because it means you have the infrastructure to do this work. So if you're listening and you're like, oh, but Faith had all this time, or she knew these things, or whatever, it's like, literally every single person can access this. I wasn't special. I'm not special. We all have this. And it really is so much easier than you think if you're willing to put yourself out there and change what you believe to be true. So I hope that like when people hear me, if anything, it instills hope that like literally anyone can do it. You don't have to be special to do this.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for your work. Thank you for taking the time to have this conversation. It was incredibly valuable, incredibly insightful, and I'm excited to share it with my people.

Thank you so much for having me.