Latest / Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women / #51. You're Terrified of the One Thing You Want Most and It's Fueling Your Chronic Illness

Transcript

#51. You're Terrified of the One Thing You Want Most and It's Fueling Your Chronic Illness · Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your chronic symptoms ease.
• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: You get a run of good days in a row.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And somehow that makes you more and easy than the bad ones ever did.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why you got sick.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Tecla D. Francesco, certified mind-body practitioner, and certified holistic life coach.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast is for women living with chronic illness, autoimmune disease, IBS, chronic fatigue, PCOS,
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: endometriosis, migraines, fibromyalgia, or persistent symptoms that no one can fully explain.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Twice a week we look at how emotion drives chronic illness in women.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: One episode goes deeper into the pattern beneath the symptoms.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other gives you a quick way to interrupt the cycle.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're done organizing your life around symptoms and flare-ups, this is where that changes.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast shows mind-body education.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not medical advice and is designed to complement, not replace your medical care.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's begin.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, you'll discover why a good stretch can leave you more on edge than a flare does.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll learn what your body is actually doing in the moment you can't let yourself enjoy.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll give you one shift that lets you finally enjoy good day instead of anxiously awaiting something to come and ruin it.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's something that sounds backwards until you've lived it.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: For a lot of women with chronic illness, the good days are harder to be in than the bad ones.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not harder physically.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Physically, they're a relief.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your symptoms settle.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: The fatigue lifts.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The pain quiets down.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And for a stretch, you get to feel something close to normal again.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: But watch what your mind does with it.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Almost the second you notice you feel good, a second thought shows up right behind it.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Don't get comfortable.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: This won't last, something is coming.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you don't actually get to enjoy the good day.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: You spend it waiting for the end of it.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're one eye on how you feel and one eye on the horizon scanning for the first sign it's about to be stripped away.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you can't find a reason it might end, you'll go looking for one.
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: You had a good morning so you tell yourself you're probably about to overdo it and pay for it later.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: You felt almost normal at lunch, so now you're watching for the crash your shore is coming.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You start treating the good day itself as evidence that a bad one is on the way.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is you rehearsing the loss before it happens.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Living out the disappointment in advance, so that if the good stretch does end you, you already saw it coming and it can't blind side you.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it feels like you're protecting yourself.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like if you stay ready for it, the fall won't hurt as much.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: like enjoying it fully would be naive and you're too experienced with your own body to be naive.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: But here's what it's actually costing you.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bad days already take so much from you and now you're giving up the good days too.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: The good ones are spent waiting for the bad ones that haven't even arrived.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And ultimately, you're just not able to be present and enjoy anything about your life.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is the pattern, not the flare-up.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: The inability to be in the good stretch because part of you was already grieving the end of it.
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: The clearest version of this I've seen was a woman I worked with who was more than anything just terrified of being okay.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I know how strange that sounds when you say it out loud, because being okay is the entire thing she wanted.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what every woman listening to this wants, to be symptom-free out of pain back to your life, and that was her goal too, and then she'd get a stretch of it.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: A run of days where the symptoms weren't consuming her, where she could get back to living.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And instead of relief, it felt off.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unfamiliar, almost wrong.
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's why.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you've spent months or years completely consumed by healing and some demandagement, that becomes the thing you know.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's what's familiar.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when a good stretch shows up and all of that quiet down, you're suddenly in unfamiliar territory.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: An unfamiliar feels uncomfortable.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even when the unfamiliar thing is you feeling good.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: She couldn't rest, and she couldn't be present in it.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: The whole time she felt good, she was terrified of the next thing coming around the corner to wipe her out.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was so sure the bad was coming that she stayed locked onto it, waiting.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when you say locked onto the bad like that, it has a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're expecting it, you're watching for it, and you're waiting for it.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then a symptom shows up inevitably, and it feels like proof.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: See, I knew it.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: What you don't see is that you've been setting the expectation the whole time that this is the constant in your life.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what I mean by a fear of feeling good.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Her body had started to treat feeling good as a sign that something was wrong, because feeling bad was what it had come to know.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And here's the thing I had to be really honest with her about.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: You cannot want something for yourself and be scared of it at the same time and expect to get it.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of those always wins.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: You want to be well, but if you're more scared of being well than you want it, the fear is going to win every time.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: With her, the fear was blocking everything.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: She couldn't see her progress, she couldn't feel it.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: She couldn't enjoy a single good day because the fear got their first and consumed all of it.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll say this to you as plainly as I can.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing about your situation is going to change while your scared of change itself.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: hand on heart.
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: You cannot heal while you're scared of healing.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So why does this happen?
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why would a body start to treat feeling good as something to be afraid of?
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It comes down to one thing your brain cares about more than anything else.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Millia Erity.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your brain is always trying to predict what comes next.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It takes all this information and catalogs how you've been living, decides that's your normal, and then it works to keep you there.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not because your normal is good for you.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just because it's familiar, it's known.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And to your brain, known equals safe.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So sit with what that means for a woman who has been sick for a really long time.
• 6:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: If symptoms pain, management, and bad days have been your reality for months or years, that is what your brain has filed away as normal.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the baseline it's defending.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then a good stretch arrives, no pain, your energy is back, life feeling almost normal again.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: To you, that's everything you wanted.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: But to a brain that's been predicting the opposite every single day, this good stretch doesn't register as safe.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It registers as unfamiliar, as a break in the pattern, as something it didn't predict.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And anything the brain didn't predict, it treats as a possible threat.
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even when the thing it didn't predict is you finally feeling well, that is the strange trap you end up in.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bad days feel almost comfortable in a way you'd never admit out loud because at least they're familiar.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the good days feel deeply unsettling because they're not.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the why.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why we care about this.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because as long as feeling good reads as unfamiliar and unsafe, your brain will keep steering you back to what it knows.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It will keep you scanning, keep you waiting.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Keep you unable to settle into the exact thing you've been working so hard to reach.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And a good stretch you can't let yourself enjoy is a good stretch your body never fully gets to benefit from.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: The way out isn't to feel good and hope it sticks.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's to make feeling good, familiar enough that your brain stops treating it like a threat.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So here's the shift and it's a rewiring technique.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: The fear of feeling good is a story that plays on repeat.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you can't rewrite a story you can't see.
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: So first we're going to get it out where you can look at it.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Get your journal out, get a piece of paper, and write down the story you've been telling yourself about good days.
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: The real one, the unfiltered one, whatever actually goes through your head.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: A good day means I'm about to relapse.
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: something always comes along and ruins it.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Get it out of your head and onto the page because most women have never once looked at this story directly.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: They just live inside it.
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then right underneath you write the new one.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not a fantasy, not I'm completely healed, something true that you're choosing on purpose.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: a good day's my body showing me what it's capable of.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a preview of where I'm headed, not a warning of what's coming.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Find the version of that line that feels true and possible for you.
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's your new story.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And here's where the rewiring happens.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: The next time you're in a good moment and you feel the old story start to stir up, here it comes.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: You catch it and you counter it with a new one.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't argue with the fear and you don't try and talk yourself out of it.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: You just hand your brain the other ending.
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: The first few times, this will feel forced, like you don't fully believe it.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're not trying to believe it yet.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're just giving your brain a second option, a second story to choose from because right now it only has one.
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the story your brain hears the most is the one it starts to run on its own automatically.
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you keep feeding it the new one, one good moment at a time, until the day it reaches for that story without you having to.
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the shift, not forcing the good days to last.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Rewriting what a good day means.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So your brain stops treating the best thing that's happening to you, like a threat.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the thing about the fear we talked about today.
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't rewrite a story you can't see.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the fear of feeling good is almost never the only story feeling your symptoms.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: So before you can change any of them, you have to see them.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly what my free chat GPT prompt does.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: You put in your physical symptoms and it shows you the emotional patterns that might be connected to them in 30 seconds.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: The link is in the show notes, go and download it now while you can.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's recap what we talked about today.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: You learn that for a lot of women with chronic illness, the good days are harder to be in than the bad ones, because part of you is already waiting for them to be taken away.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: You learn that your brain treats whatever is familiar as safe, so after a long time being sick, feeling good registers as unfamiliar and gets treated like a threat.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: and you learned that the way through isn't forcing the good days to last.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's catching the story you run about what a good day means and deliberately handing your brain a new one.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, that's all for today.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will see you in the next episode.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Goodbye for now.