Rising from Entrepreneurship to Bedridden | Battling Autoimmune Challenges

Even though this show promotes alternative, it's not that it works in every situation or for everyone. So there's a matter of that trial and error, not giving up on yourself and finding something that does. And it's not always the first thing that presents to you.

Yeah, exactly. So, um, I will very quickly fast forward because I also want to give you you guys out there listening, maybe being in a similar situation, some hope. Once I discovered brain retraining and nervous system regulation, I healed completely within 4 months.

That's incredible.

You know, that is incredible. I did not believe that. You know, I was like, I was all of a sudden like symptoms started to drop away and then they like disappear. And I was like, oh my goodness, this is working.

Hello and welcome to Beyond Diagnosis, a podcast to raise your awareness, decisions, and voice for alternative practices so you can take back control of your health. I'm Rita De Michele, your host, a mindset and empowerment coach, and the founder of the Onus platform. Join me each week so you can create the health of your dreams. I'm Rita De Michele, and welcome to another episode of Beyond Diagnosis. Once a month, we share a story from women who found the courage, resolve, and personal power to back themselves, to find alternative answers for their health concern, to be able to go from adversity to an inspiration. Many of us have experienced nervous tension and anxiety at some point in our lives, a sense of dread, or like the world is spinning out of control around us. Today's guest knows that living hell all too well. Catherine Life Design is a nervous system coach and founder of Life Design. She went from being an entrepreneur to bedridden with complex trauma, anxiety, and an autoimmune disease to now inspired as all get out. Welcome, Catherine.

Hello, Rita. Thank you so much for having me. And I'm having goosebumps just listening to your intro. That living hell was not that long ago. So I'm happy to share a little bit about that because I am symptom-free and fully healed from over 30 diagnoses and symptoms. So, oh my goodness, just thinking back. Wow. Yeah, we'll get into that a little bit.

Yeah. Well, it's fantastic to have you on the show and these stories are so important to be sharing so other people can learn from someone who has already walked the path, so to speak. So basically, Catherine, you have us all perched on the edge of our seat to hear your story. So maybe you can start with when and how did all this start for you?

Yeah, good point. Um, well, the— what I thought back then was that it started suddenly, but it of course it didn't. Now looking back, I see some more signs that I wasn't aware of back then, but I think it was 2019, and it was a chance diagnosis really of Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune disease.

For the thyroid, right?

Yeah, thyroid disease. Yeah, exactly. And I, you know, the doctor said, well, you have Hashimoto's. And I'm like, no, I don't. You know, I feel fine. I live my life. All is good. And yeah, those kind of things. And I thought he must be an idiot. You know, that's, it's just not true. I don't feel anything. You know, um, yeah, little did I know that the sleep problems that started 5 years prior, the mood swings, um, infertility problems, all those things, you know, I did not put them together. I did not think, oh, I might have a disease or anything like that. I, you know, I just did not know. So once I got diagnosed, I ignored it for a couple more months, and then I got pregnant. With— because it was a gynecologist that I went to and that diagnosed me because I was going there because it hadn't happened so far. So we added some hormones in and, you know, all of a sudden, bam, I was pregnant. And had then a couple of weeks early pregnancy stage, had a miscarriage. And yeah, basically, I think it was like week 8 or 9 or something like that. So early pregnancy, but Going through that pregnancy, an early pregnancy, I've never felt so bad and so sick and so utter hell in my life. The pregnancy itself was just devastating. I was bedridden. I don't know, now if I look back, I would say that it triggered trauma in me as well, like to be bedridden and to be so nauseous and so fatigued and all those things. That actually triggered old childhood trauma probably. So that's my explanation now. Of course, I didn't know that at that point. I had total hormonal chaos after that, and that started to trigger more problems with thyroid, with my hormones, with so many other things. So I was absolutely reeling from coming out of this hormonal fluctuation basically. And then there was a phase where I had acute stress, still reeling from the hormones. Then there was like vaccinations as well. And there was, you know, COVID.

Was this after your miscarriage that you were still feeling all of this hormonal and these symptoms, right?

Yeah, that's right. Oh no, actually, then I recovered from that. And a year later, around the same time, I was pregnant again. Another miscarriage, another, you know, total hormonal chaos. And then I think it was, yeah, then it was 2021, and then we had the COVID vaccination, I had acute stress, and I had some family issues coming up and lack of sleep, and then my health collapsed completely. It's known as a perfect storm in chronic illness because this is what I was heading for, you know, I was heading for chronic illness. It had gone on for like a year or two.

Yes.

And after that perfect storm, I was not the same anymore ever again. Like, I had anxiety, I had my first panic attacks, I was chronically fatigued, I had memory loss, brain fog, oh God, food intolerances, OCD, ADHD, pancreatic insufficiencies, adrenal fatigue. Oh my goodness. I did it.

Were these all diagnosed medically? So they were all diagnosed medically that you had all this?

Yes, yes. Um, not all of them. Not like, uh, chronic fatigue syndrome was just a— it was a late diagnosis, but I already knew, you know, something was wrong. I knew something was wrong with like with my extreme, um, adrenal fatigue. So, um, those are very late diagnoses, kind of confirmed what I already knew. So not like everything was diagnosed, but I would say most of it. Yeah, complex trauma, for example, and was later diagnosed in hospital a year later. Yeah, I also had chronic neck and back pain, sleep problems, sudden blurred visions. My heart rate dropped to like 30, my pulse dropped to 35 one day, and I was like, wow, sure, you know, I didn't know what was going on. Might have been a side effect from medication though, so it's all, you know, it all kind of— All blurred.

Yeah.

You know, like a ball of symptoms and diagnoses was added to that. Not as sudden as I'm making it sound right now. It was more like, okay, so I'm extremely fatigued, so let's look what's going on there. And then, you know, it went from there really. It was almost like another week, another diagnosis. So yeah, that was a crazy time and I barely got up. I barely— I didn't manage to get up anymore. I was kind of bedridden for like a month or two and then went to see a doctor and she said— so she was supposed to be kind of alternative, a little bit more holistic, but still, you know, Western medicine doctor. And I think she was a gynecologist again and she said, well, you know, we got to change your thyroid medication and here are new tablets or whatever that also contain T3, which is sort of, you know, more energy, and it's not— is the active thyroid hormone. Take those. And what you do with the old tablets that only contain T4, which is the inactive thyroid hormone that your body then has to turn into the active one, she said, yeah, just leave that out. Don't take that anymore, and slowly start taking the new pills. She almost killed me with that because I was— if you're on thyroid medication and then you suddenly stop, it's dangerous. It's very dangerous. It's very dangerous. I became so depressed. I almost killed myself over this, you know, because there was aggression, there was complete hopelessness.

There was—

oh my goodness, it was just one of the darkest moments in my life. I couldn't handle my emotions anymore. My hormones were all over the place. Yeah, barely made it through that and almost ended my life because I didn't know how to live anymore. I just felt so, so deep in the trenches. Yeah, so luckily got through that somehow, but by then it had been 2, 3 years and by then I thought, you know, I'm 40, 41, 39, 40, 41. I didn't think I was gonna survive this. I thought I was gonna die at 41, really. And that was just such a horrible time. And by then, you know, there was no more optimism inside me. There was no more, oh, it's gonna get better. If you've been looking for years and years and it just gets worse and you're doing all the things, you know, I changed my diet, I changed medication, I I tried to relax and do meditation. I go, oh goodness, I went to retreats. I, you know, I worked on my mindset. God knows I did so, so many things and nothing was working. You know, supplements, filling up my nutrient deficiencies, vitamin D, you know, God knows what's out there. I did it. Reishi mushrooms.

Yeah, everything, the whole gamut you've had.

Everything, and nothing worked. Absolutely nothing. I felt like I was getting worse by the minute. So yeah, how did that continue after that? Let me think. So basically, I kind of made it through that barely, and then a friend of mine who was a neighbor at the time, she said basically— she's a doctor, she's had cancer. She's been utterly let down by the medical community in so many ways, and she is a doctor. It's hilarious. She told me about brain retraining for the first time, and I thought, brain retraining? What the hell is that? And basically, your limbic system determines your survival response in many ways, and you start retraining your amygdala, which is your sort of alert danger center. The amygdala constantly scans like, are we safe? Are we in danger? Are we safe? Are we in danger?

And the anxiety part.

The anxiety part. And by that, I was— by that time, I was, um, in deep depression as well. I was diagnosed with, um, depression just because a couple of years of this really takes it out of you.

So yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I have here, Catherine, that when you were a child, do you think, like a lot of people, like you did a lot of the mind-body connection there, you were saying? And, you know, you did the breathing, you did the meditation, and all that sort of thing. But as we know, the mind-body connection is very powerful, very strong. And you were saying before that you had a narcissistic and emotional, um, abusive mother that didn't give you any freedom.

Mm-hmm.

Do you feel that— and that, that, that caused a lot of, you know, ADHD and procrastination and perfectionism in you. Do you feel that maybe when you were lying In bed, you know, you've just had miscarriage, having all these hormonal fluctuations, you've got all these issues. Do you feel that maybe some of that emotion— like, you, you kind of feel constricted when you're in bed and you just can't get out. You're like, you're confined there. Like, it's almost like, it's almost like a comfy prison in a way, isn't it? Because you just can't leave it. Do you feel that maybe some of that may have triggered Those symptoms in you.

You absolutely nailed it because now in retrospect, that is exactly what happened. I was lying there bedbound and completely hopeless, you know, hormones raging, depression starting, and I had the feeling I can't get out of this, you know, there's no way of me leaving. And in a way, that was very similar to what I experienced when I was 13, 14. It was actually an emotionally abusive and narcissistic stepfather Oh, your stepdad, not your mother.

Sorry, apologies.

Brainwashed my mother, so she was an enabler in the whole story. But yeah, absolutely. And I remember like later in therapy, I did EMDR therapy later on, later on as in once I became chronically ill. So the past year, basically the past year, I did EMDR therapy and we worked through some of these things. And exactly that, it triggered a complete survival response within me, because I could not like free myself from this. I was stuck in this, yeah, bedridden illness almost, with nausea and complete hopelessness and depression. So that was very similar to what I experienced at 13. I couldn't leave. I mean, I moved out when I was 14, so I did leave in the end, but being stuck—

That's a really young age to leave.

Yeah, it's like I did not want to leave my mother at 14. Of course I didn't. Luckily I had grandparents I then moved in with.

Oh, you moved in with grandparents?

My grandparents, yeah. But you know, the damage of having to make the decision to leave your mother at 13, it was a very serious traumatic experience. I remember that very well. So what I later learned, and this is how my healing began, is How we respond to pressure, to unfortunate events, to bullying, to emotional abuse and trauma is all pretty much shaped and formed when we are a child. So our amygdala, again, our limbic system, which is our survival center, stores the way we respond to threat.

Hmm.

basically. And the amygdala, you know, I was already saying that it always scans, are we in danger, are we not? And if there is a yes, if the amygdala decides we are in danger, it then tells the nervous system to respond. And we only have, you know, I know we're such sophisticated beings, but we only have fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Those are our 4 nervous system states. that our body can revert to, to go to, to try and survive the threat. And as it turns out, for example, my chronic fatigue was nothing more than a complete freeze response. Depression is an extreme form of freeze, pretty much. We, like, if nothing works, we might as well play dead and, like, and try not to do anything, and maybe we'll survive that way. It's such a, you know, we have cats and sometimes they catch little salamanders or little creatures, or even like they caught a mouse the other day and they just played dead as not to give the predators anything more to chase and be excited about. So it works perfectly. But of course with us, you know, when we go into depression and become bedridden, become chronically fatigued, it's a survival response that we play out.

Exactly. And I guess that in you, you were saying, um, well, that you developed perfectionism, you developed procrastination, even in the business. You, you know, um, you, as you said before, you developed ADHD. You fear— you had fear and doubt and you self-sabotage. These are so many emotions that people are dealing with all the time. I mean, I even— I've, I've dealt with many of them. People do, and you don't realize that it's the— it's your past experiences that are actually informing all of that. So yeah, if you can speak a little bit more to how, how you got to do this brain training, because—

Yeah.

If— because you actually started off being in hospital, and if you can speak a little bit to that experience And then get to the brain training, that would be fantastic. Because we've heard, you know, even though this show promotes alternative, it's not that it works in every situation or for everyone. So there's a matter of that trial and error, not giving up on yourself and finding something that does. And it's not always the first thing that presents to you.

Yeah, exactly. So, um, I will very quickly fast forward because I also want to give you guys out there listening, maybe being in a similar situation, some hope. Once I discovered brain retraining and nervous system regulation, I healed completely within 4 months.

That's incredible.

That is incredible. I did not believe that. I was like, all of a sudden symptoms started to drop away and disappear, and I was like, oh my goodness, this is working. But it was more of a side effect really of the brain retraining and nervous system regulation. Because what you were saying, Rita, earlier, I truly believe that this is actually a spectrum. And this is not— please don't take this as medical information or a diagnosis or anything like that, but this is a theory I've been putting forward. this chronic illness that I went through was really on a spectrum. It started with things like self-doubt. Again, this is a response in your limbic system. How do I respond to threats? I'll make myself small so whoever rules my house does not attack me. So it's a survival mechanism. Self-doubt, overwhelm, procrastination, perfectionism— these are all survival mechanisms. I'll use perfectionism maybe as an example, or maybe procrastination is even better. If you are experiencing pressure, again, your limbic system sees that as a threat and goes into a tiny little freeze mode, like trying to push this really uncomfortable feeling away. So procrastination is on the other side of depression on the freeze spectrum, or having lots of fears of failure. It's basically your limbic brain learned, oh God, things never work out for me. I'm gonna fail and that's why I have so much fear of failure. So it's almost like a logical consequence of how your brain, your limbic system, your limbic brain and your nervous system responds. If you think about fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, fawn is people pleasing basically.

Yes.

It's also a survival mechanism. So on the lower side of the spectrum you have things like self-doubt, procrastination, Stress, tension, maybe a little bit of neck and back pain, sleep problems, migraines. And then we sort of evolve towards, you know, I mean, migraines, sleep problems are already very uncomfortable.

Exactly.

Then you have like cycle problems, maybe if you're a woman, food intolerances, irritability, aggression, a lot of shoulds. You're shoulding all over yourself, basically. I should do this, I should do that, but I don't feel able to do that. Fatigue, burnout.

Um, and then you go to shame as well, don't you? Because you haven't done the shoulds, which we should never say should to ourselves. Then we go into shame because I let myself down, I can't trust myself, you know. And it's just a vicious cycle. It's a vicious cycle.

So, and, and thank you for saying what you just said. You don't trust yourself anymore. I let myself down. So it's a message to your brain, to your limbic system that we cannot trust this human running us, so your body takes over. Your nervous system takes over and tries to keep you safe by shutting you down, by creating panic attacks, IBS, leaky gut, anxiety, autoimmune disease, depression, chronic pain, chronic Epstein-Barr virus, chronic long COVID. So it's basically an attempt by your body to keep you safe, or it's— those are no longer survival mechanisms. So especially like long COVID, it's pretty much because your immune system is down. And here comes, I think, one of the most important things I learned on this entire healing journey. When you are in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, when you are in a survival response. Your body shuts down everything non-essential. This is so logical, you know. So if we prepare for a fight because a saber-toothed tiger is sitting behind the bush or whatever, our body shuts down digestion, our body shuts down the immune system, our body shuts down hormonal production for reproduction basically, because we are not going to have a child now. We need We need to survive the fight first. Wound healing, it shuts everything down to mobilize energy for fight, flight, or freeze. And it leaves wound healing and digestion and absorbing nutrients from your food and all that to later. So that's why you see why that is the perfect breeding ground for illnesses and diseases.

Absolutely, absolutely. There's no protection. There's no protection anymore. So you've been so busy trying to protect yourself from the outside world or your perceived, um, um, threats— the perceived threats— that your body shuts down and it's not protecting you anymore. It's not protecting you from bacteria, viruses, and all the rest of it. So you're just an— you're an, uh, a petri dish, really, is what you are.

You are.

Yeah.

I like that. And that's what happened to me. I mean, I had nutrient deficiencies, my thyroid wasn't working any longer, you know, I had a leaky gut and digestive issues, I had hormonal, you know, I mean, some hormones were non-existent pretty much when we measured them. And because my body was, oh no, we're busy, you know, freezing and fighting and flighting. I don't think that's the word, but anyway. We're busy doing that. So that's how everything else got into such a bad state, and that's how it happened that every week I had a new diagnosis. That's why my pancreas stopped working properly. That's why my next diagnosis would have been insulin resistance and diabetes, probably. I was already on the path because that wasn't working anymore either. Hmm. Completely Reverse that in the end.

So yeah, it's, it's interesting how one symptom leads to another, leads to another, and leads to another. And that brings me back to my point when you said that you were in hospital and you had— there's a bit of an experience for you there to talk about. But it's what I found with— they are amazing in hospitals in what they do, and modern science is incredible, but it's all in isolation.

Mm-hmm.

So you would have been diagnosed as diabetic and given a medication. You've been diagnosed as, um, hyperthyroid or Hashimoto's and given that medication. And then you've got something else, and then you've got high blood pressure, you've got that, you've got— you end up on, you know, a suitcase of pharmaceuticals. And what's happening is we're not just joining the dots. We're not joining the dots that that one has led to this one that has led to this one. So can you talk a little bit about your hospital experience there and how that was for you?

That was spot on what you just said. I never in a million years would have thought that perfectionism, a chronic Epstein-Barr virus, um, anxiety, fatigue, depression would have one root cause. I never would have thought so. And none of the doctors think that either because they are trained like a gynecologist knows, oh well, you can't have children because this and, you know, the hormones are low, um, whatever, um, uh, psychiatrists.

Specialties. They have their specialties and they're amazing in their specialties, but because there's so much study and everything that goes into that, you can't expect them to be especially— especially when they specialize. They're not a GP, they're specialists. So when they're specialists, they specialize in that and that's all they know. So that's where you can't join the dots that you can If you step out of that system.

And I truly believe that is our job. I mean, I would love somebody, you know, I love it if it would be somebody else's job or a doctor say, hey, by the way, you have a dysregulated nervous system. I would love that, you know, but that's not what's happening. So in the end, I had to find that answer myself. And I actually have on my website, I have a nervous system test That helps you to connect the dots and shows, is my nervous system dysregulated or not? So, um, it's a resource. It's amazing to use if you want to look.

Yeah. That's fantastic. Can you just step us through just a few steps? Like, this is what— one of the reasons why we share these stories is to encourage people to, um, understand that our life is really on us. So it is on us, it's up to us. We need to take charge and we need to take back ownership of our life. And then we go out and we seek the help. We seek the help whether it's alternative on its own, whether it's medical on its own, or whether, you know, even better, a combination, you know, a combination of both. Can you, can you talk to us a little bit about once you left, you left hospital, uh, everything was seen in isolation and you thought, well, this isn't going to work. So what did you— A, your mindset, and then what did you do to start finding— what were your first steps? How did you go about— that's what a lot of the listeners, I feel, that's, that's where that's what stumps them. It's like, yeah, okay, I've left now. Well, I don't know where to go. I don't know who to go to. I wouldn't know where to— what even what to say or who to look for. That is what I'm hoping we all can learn from this show, is the steps that people take. What did you do? Who did you see? And how did it help?

Yeah, oh, that— yeah, I would have loved somebody to serve that on a silver platter, so here it goes.

Yeah, absolutely. It took 20-odd years for me And for my son, etc., it took 20-odd years. I would have loved it on a silver platter too.

Yeah, exactly. So I think everyone's path is a little bit different sometimes.

Of course.

But for me, it was truly that I took a nervous system test. I took the nervous system test and realized, yes, I have autoimmune disease.

What is that called, a nervous system test? Has that got a name?

Yeah, it's just nervous system test. It's like a quiz online where they ask—

Oh, it's just a quiz online. Okay. So it's not like a neurofeedback or biofeedback or anything like that?

It's not, no medical test or anything. It's literally, they asked me the right questions. So I filled in this quiz and I literally, I realized, shit, yes, I do. I do. Yes, I have had a difficult childhood. You don't even have to have a difficult childhood to have trauma. I want to very strongly distinguish that. I did not feel like I had trauma. I was like, that was such a long time ago. I'm living a beautiful life, dream partner, dream island, dream business, beautiful life, did not feel like trauma. But they asked me all those questions, do you have a little bit of sleep problems? Do you tend towards perfectionism? Things like that. I was like, yes, I do. What an odd question to ask. And the result of that test was, yeah, you are highly dysregulated. So no surprise that you're having all these symptoms. And I then took a brain retraining course that helped quite a bit, but I needed other elements as well because then I did a nervous system regulation course, vagus nerve training, and also adult main personality training. I know those might not be words that make any sense right now, But those things combined are what healed me 100%. I know that sounds so odd. It was literally online courses that have helped me to change not just the way my brain reacts to things, and that enabled me to stay out of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn longer and longer.

Hmm.

This is it. This is it. Once I managed to stay out of fight-flight, my body started to heal and work again. Like, things started to work again all of a sudden. Um, nervous system regulation— there was— there's some body, uh, there's some body work and also some mind work with your limbic brain. Um, this combination was absolutely amazing. This is what healed me, basically.

That's amazing. That's incredible. And that actually gives a lot of hope to a lot of people that do have nervous system regulation, which a lot of people would be thinking, what is that? But as you've explained, it's ADHD in some cases, it's anxiety, it's trauma, it's, you know, uh, health symptoms, it's skin rashes, it's all of those sorts of things. Because a lot of nervous system, um, issues actually can express themselves through the skin, you know. So people isolate that and they'll go, oh, I'll just go to a dermatologist, or I'll just go to a sleep center, or I'll just— but what you're saying is, and what has been proven, is that a lot of this does generate in the brain, and our nervous system is so important to everything else. So to have this retraining to calm everything down, it seems logical that Symptoms will fall away.

Yeah, and it's not like, oh, I do this meditation or I do this exercise or whatever and then this symptom is going away. It's more like I shift myself out of fight-flight into rest and digest, which, you know, the name already says it.

Already says it.

Rest and digest. And what your body does is it just starts to work. It starts to do its job. It starts to build up the immune system. It starts to absorb vitamin C from your food, whatever, you know. That's that's how it works. So it's not a direct correlation, but spending time in rest and digest, which should be our usual state or our normal state, that's what healed me. And a lot of the time, I mean, and even my autoimmune disease Hashimoto's, I mean, my antibodies you measure, so you diagnose Hashimoto's with measuring if you have antibodies.

Yes.

My antibodies just went they completely disappeared. Like, I do not— I no longer have an autoimmune process going on in my body, and I'm now starting to build up my thyroid again. And a friend of mine, she actually had her thyroid grow again. So usually Hashimoto's, the thyroid gets smaller and smaller. I mean, there's also a condition where it's enlarged, but this one, it got smaller and smaller, producing less and less hormones, having like a lot lot of scar tissue and things like that. But she actually increased the volume of her thyroid again and has a completely normal functioning thyroid again, does not have to take medication anymore. That process took 2 years, and I can report back in 2 years because I'm on the same path to actually regenerate this organ.

That's incredible.

That the medical world says, once you have Hashimoto's, that's it. Here's a tablet that you have to take until the end of your life, and nothing can be done about this. That's the, the medical opinion. I mean, it's insane. I know people who have changed this, you know, and, uh, yeah, incredible. Anyway.

Well, that's what we need. We need more case studies. We need more case studies that people have actually done it, and it's not hocus-pocus. It's not, you know, some miracle that happens to one or two people. It's It's the same thing. You give your body what it needs or you allow it to heal and it will. Your body's so, so intelligent.

Yeah. And I never think it's an either or. I, I love Western medicine. I love traditional Chinese medicine. You know, I love, um, psychosomatic approaches like nervous system regulation, brain retraining. It's always an and, it's never an either or because when my immune system was down, I supplemented a lot of things and rather than not giving my body enough vitamin D or enough thyroid hormones, of course I supplemented those things and they kept my body running and functioning so it wasn't breaking somewhere else and creating more symptoms. So You know, you can combine these approaches, and I think that is the most successful thing to do really, because there's, there's so much wisdom in all of these approaches, and you just have to combine and see what, what your body needs really.

Well, that's it. It's been how to give yourself choices, and that's the, that's the hope of this podcast, is that people understand who else is out there, what other approaches are available, And you can seek them out. And if you stay with the medical, which you know is a great thing to do, is to actually combine. Like you say, it's not either or; it's an and approach because you can get so much information from the testing. But if you don't want to stay on pharmaceutical, or you've been given a limited prognosis, well then it's actually up to you. To do something about it. And through information, you can make informed choices and go and help yourself.

Yeah, yeah. And if you're not solving the root problem, the root cause, which in many cases is a dysregulated nervous system, especially for anxiety, panic attack, depression, um, ADHD, these kind of You know, if you're not solving the root cause, you're not going to heal. You can take pharmaceuticals and whatnot, but it's not solving the root cause. So what I always say is, yes, you can have, I don't know, cancer treatment, for example, but having a regulated nervous system is always part of that healing journey too. So you can heal things with traditional methods, but you can't really heal without addressing a dysregulated nervous system on top of everything else. So I healed just by regulating my nervous system. You know, that was the one thing I needed to do. I literally, I believe very strongly that you do need a regulated nervous system to heal, full stop. Whatever measures you take.

I absolutely agree with you because when you think about it, you think I mean, one person will go through chemo with cancer, another person will go through chemo with cancer, and why does one survive so well and the other doesn't if they have exactly the same cancer? And it's usually— even doctors will tell you— it's usually someone who's quite calm and positive and has a great outlook on life, so their nervous system is calm, as opposed to someone else who is panicked, scared, fearful, um, totally like you say, totally dysregulated, well, your body's just always going to be stressed. It's always going to be stressed. It doesn't have that calmness to be able to start healing. So there's that as well. So yeah, then I, I absolutely agree with you. The nervous system plays such an important role. Huge.

Yeah, I never knew. I had no idea. And that's exactly the steps I take my clients through as well. Like, we start to create capacity at first. That is a little bit of bodywork, you know, where you physically create the capacity to deal with threat, stress, worry, all those things. You create capacity to— sorry, something just dropped— You create a capacity to return to rest and digest. at your own will. I was not able to do that. Like, I was upset, I was scared, I was, you know, I did not know how to return to rest and digest with intention when I needed it. So that's the first thing we do, and then we start the process of brain retraining, and we basically retrain the limbic system how it responds to things. We tell it, okay, in the past you've responded this way because you saw this as a threat, and first of all, we look into maybe it is not a threat because if some— I don't know, when our mother shouted at us when we were 8, that was a threat because we depend on her care and love for survival. But if we're like 40, 50, 60, somebody else shouts at us and says, oh, you green-eyed monster, we have to tell our limbic brain, A, we know we're not a green-eyed monster, B, it's not a threat. Who's this person to us? We are adults. We know it's not a threat to us. But none of— like, hardly anybody reparents their nervous system. So we basically— yeah, I love that. The process of reparenting it.

It is repairing. I love that. I haven't heard that before. That is such a good way to put it. And it's true because our nervous systems usually run from what we've learned from 0 to 7, how we've interpreted the world. I love that, reparenting our nervous system. That is such a good one.

I mean, it's a great example. Do you think Donald Trump had an adult nervous system? Definitely not. You know, if he was provoked, he would just respond, you know, and usually we'd fight.

Well, that's where mindfulness comes in, doesn't it? Where— I mean, mindfulness helps us to regulate, because if we can learn to respond and not react to situations, then we always stay with the power with us. It's once we give personal power away, then we become, you know, prone to— we become an open slather, really, to whatever someone else is throwing at us, and we just feel totally assaulted. So yeah. Oh, and that's— Catherine, it's been amazing. Yeah, it's been amazing to have you on the show and to have you share your story. It's been— it's an amazing one, and such an informative one around the nervous system and what you went through and how you've come out so vibrant at the other side and now helping people is incredible. And we are— well, I'm so grateful to have you share your, your personal story here on the, on the podcast.

And please let people know, um, about your program Yes, basically I packed everything that helped me heal into a program because I realized there is demand for this. I mean, I was looking, I was searching for years.

Yes.

So like I'm saying, we go from creating capacity in your nervous system on a physical level and on a mental level, emotional level, and then we go into this brain retraining, telling our limbic system to respond differently so we don't respond to threats in the first place. Because food intolerance is such a great example, you know, gluten or— I mean, maybe gluten is a bit of a different story, but responding to like eating corn, for example. Corn is not dangerous, you know, but our body interprets it as dangerous. So we tell our system what is danger and what isn't, and we tell our system, our limbic system, how to respond to that. So quite often we're not even triggered in the first place anymore, so we spend even more time in rest and digest. And then we go into adult main personality, like strengthening our adult main personality to run the show because one thing we need to start doing again is our limbic brain needs to understand it can trust us to take care of us, that we take care of ourselves, we're adults and we take care of ourselves, so it doesn't have to send the nervous system in as like a fire brigade need to cause symptoms to tell us something is wrong. I know that sounds so weird, but it felt so good to start trusting myself again, to stand up for myself, to back myself with so much compassion and, you know, without any— unconditionally basically. And yeah, so we do a lot of adult main personality training as well and basically anchor all that stuff into our personality. I was a different person a year ago when I came out of hospital than I am now. I can handle anything. Give me a challenge and I live a normal life. And that's so important. You know, I no longer identify as an ill person, as a chronically ill person.

Yeah, beautiful.

I'm a changed person. Yeah. And, um, we do in, in Energy Flow, which is the name of my program. But it all starts with taking the nervous system test, which you can go to on my website. Um, we'll probably link it in the show notes, but I'll just—

All your details will definitely be in the show notes. So anybody wanting to take that test or take this conversation further with you will be able to contact you with all your details in the show notes.

Fantastic.

Catherine, it has been such a pleasure, and I'm so happy to hear where you are now in life from where you were, and it's an inspiration to many. Thank you so much. Thank you. I would love to know what was the biggest insight or aha moment you got from this interview so you can now Now speak up, take action, and make informed decisions for your health. And if you like this episode, get instant access to your free ebook, Alternative Wisdom: Taking Back Control of Your Health, at life-onus.com.