Latest / Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women / #37. They Still See the Person You Used to Be — and Proving You’ve “Changed” Is Feeding Your Chronic Illness

Transcript

#37. They Still See the Person You Used to Be — and Proving You’ve “Changed” Is Feeding Your Chronic Illness · Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are people who met you or witnessed you at your lowest.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And to this day, they refuse to let you be anyone but that version of you.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And caring that, being frozen in someone else's memory of you at your worst, has a physical cost almost no one connects to their chronic symptoms.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why you got sick.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Teclody Francesco, certified mind-body practitioner, and certified holistic life coach.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast is for women living with chronic illness, autoimmune disease, IBS, chronic fatigue, PCOS, andometriosis, migraines, fibromyalgia, or persistent symptoms that no one can fully explain.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Twice a week we look at how emotion drives chronic illness in women.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: One episode goes deeper into the pattern beneath the symptoms.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other gives you a quick way to interrupt the cycle.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're done organizing your life around symptoms and flare-ups, this is where that changes.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast shows mind-body education.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not medical advice and is designed to complement, not replace your medical care.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's begin.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, you'll discover why being defined as your worst moment has a real effect on your physical health.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: How trying to constantly prove you've grown connects to your real physical symptoms.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what changes in your body when the only opinion of you that matters is your own?
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a difference between the people who know you and the people who only know who you used to be.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Somewhere in your life, there was a version of you that other people witnessed.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you were at your lowest.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you were going through something you had no tools to handle, and you didn't show up the way you would now.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you made a decision or reacted in a way that the people around you never forgot.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And whether they're still in your life or they walked away, they took that version of you with them and they froze it in place.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: You mean while kept growing, kept living, you did the reflecting, you changed how you handled things.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: You became someone that earlier version wouldn't even recognize now.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: But every time you're around those particular people, you can feel it.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're not responding to who you are now.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're responding to who you were then, and no amount of change on your part seems to update the picture they're holding.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you start doing something without even realizing it.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: You start trying to prove you've changed.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: You over-deliver around them.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: You watch how you come across.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You correct the record before anyone can bring anything up.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: You work quietly and constantly to show them you are not the person that they remember any more.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And all that work doesn't really register or get recognized as work by you consciously because it's been happening for so long.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It just feels like that's what it's like to be around your family or that one person or in that particular dynamic.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's become so normalized you don't even notice you're doing it.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: But underneath it, your body is emotionally taxed with every interaction.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because every interaction with someone who only sees the worst version of you becomes a performance.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: At case you're building, again and again for a verdict that was decided a long time ago and never gets overturned.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the pattern.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: The ongoing low-level work of trying to prove you are more
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you where I've lived this myself.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've been in friend groups where the friend group turned on me.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're a couple of people decided on a version of who I was, and that version took on a life of its own.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then me that existed at that time couldn't stand up for myself.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have it in me to interrupt the narrative, so I was a bystander.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had to just let it run.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: People who had been close to me were now certain they knew exactly who I was.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: the worst possible read of me.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there was no version of events I could offer that would land.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And here's what I want you to hear because it's the part that took me a long time to understand and lots of inner work.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: My intentions in those friendships were always good, always.
• 4:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did that come across in every moment?
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Probably not.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm human.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the gap between who I actually was and the person they decided I was, that gap was enormous.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I knew with total clarity that there was nothing I could do to close it.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they weren't interested in closing it.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I left.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not because I gave up on myself, but because I refused to spend my energy clawing my way back into good graces of people who had already decided.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think part of them expected me to fight for it and to prove myself and reinsert myself to earn my place back, and I just wasn't willing to do that.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: because the people who actually want you in their life and are worth having in your life let you make a mistake, let you take accountability for it and let you grow and move on together.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was never given that opportunity despite asking for it.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was just written off.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: and reclaiming my worth in the eyes of people who had worked that hard to take it from me was never going to be worth my mental emotional or physical health.
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I still feel confused when I look back at those times.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I genuinely don't always know where it all went wrong, so to speak.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when I catch myself spinning in those past memories, I come back to what's true.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did the best I could.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: My intentions were good, and that has to be enough.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: because the verdict those people reached was never mind overturned.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I see a version of this with a woman I work with right now.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Her daughters consistently bring up moments from when they were younger, moments where she was parenting the best she could with the knowledge the tools and the resources she had at the time.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what they don't acknowledge is everything she's done since.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: how much she's grown.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: The work she's put into becoming a different person, a better version of herself.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: The step she's taken to repair and do better.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: None of that updates the picture.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: So she lives in the state of constantly having to try and make up for the past that she can't change.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: To people who won't let her escape from it,
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: and her body has been caring every bit of that.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So why does this become physical?
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why does being around someone who only sees the worst version of you actually affect your body?
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the research.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is what it shows.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's one kind of stress that hits your body harder than almost anything else.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Harder than heavy workload.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Harder than a stressful day.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the feeling of being judged by other people.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Scientists call it social-evaluated threat, a situation where some important part of who you are could be judged and criticized by someone else.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we know how powerful this is because researchers pulled together more than 200 separate stress studies and looked at them all at once.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: They wanted to know what drove the biggest stress response in the body, measured through cortisol, your main stress hormone.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The answer was the same across the board.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cortisol spiked highest in the situations where a person could be judged by others.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Being judged lit up the body in a way that a hard talk or a demanding task on its own simply didn't.
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: and it gets more specific.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: The response was strongest of all when two things were true at the same time.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you could be judged and when you had no control over the outcome, when there was nothing you could do to change the verdict.
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sit with that for a second because it's the exact situation we've been describing this entire episode.
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Someone has decided who you are.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't control whether they ever see you differently and you keep being around them anyway.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: So every time you're in that dynamic with the family member, with the old friend, with the person who froze you in your worst moment, your body reads it as one
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there is a study that takes this one step further, done with healthy women.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the important part, healthy women.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were put through a stressful task, either in front of people judging them or not.
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the women who are being judged, a marker of inflammation in the body went up.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: in the women who weren't being judged, it didn't move at all.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But here's the part that matters most for you.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your body has a built-in break on inflammation, a way of switching it back off once it's done its job.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in the women who are being judged, that break worked less well.
• 8:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: The inflammation turned on and the body got worse at turning it back off.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sit with that for a moment because it's the exact experience of chronic illness.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Inflammation that fires up and then won't settle.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Being judged by someone is one of the things that drives it.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this isn't you being too sensitive.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your body is doing exactly what it's built to do.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: In a situation it was never meant to sit inside of for years.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the why this is why we care about this.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: and for those that want to dive into these studies, they are linked in the show notes.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what do you actually do with this?
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's where most people get stuck because they keep trying to win the case.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: They keep trying to build evidence and keep showing up to prove that they've changed and keep waiting for the day that the other person finally sees it and updates the verdict.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you already know how that ends.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't control whether they ever change their mind.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: That court was closed a long time ago.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And every time you step back up to argue your innocence, your body pays the exact price we just talked about.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to do something differently.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to take the verdict out of their hands completely.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And to do that, you need to understand how your brain actually works in those moments.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: The moments you look back on and feel like you should have shown up better or known differently.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: The ones that keep getting thrown in your face, that people keep holding against you, the ones you've been caring shame or regret or guilt about ever since.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: People think about decisions like a branch in the road.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like your brain stood at a fork, saw the good option, and the bad option side by side and picked the wrong one.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ladies, that is not how your brain works.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the moment, your brain doesn't lay out a menu of different options.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It takes everything it has.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every experience, the tools you've been given, the exact state your body was in in the moment, and it produces the one response that makes the most sense to it right then.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Almost always, it's in service of something, keeping you safe, protecting you, getting you out of the situation.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was never a better option sitting next to the one your brain took just waiting for you to choose it.
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was only one option.
• 11:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: The one your brain could actually reach the one that was available.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: You didn't pick the worst version of that moment.
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: You did the only thing you could.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: So here's the shift and it isn't something you say to them.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's something you decide on your own.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: You become the one who issues the verdict.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: You look back at that moment, you see your brain doing me only thing it could to get you through, and you make your ruling, not guilty, and then when you look at everything you've done since, the growing, the repairing, the becoming, you decide that too.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not the same person, and I don't need them to agree with me for that to be true.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's recap what we talked about today.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: First, some people only know the worst version of you, and you've spent years trying to prove you're more than that.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: That effort is emotionally taxing and draining even when you don't consciously notice it.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Second, being judged is one of the hardest things on your body.
• 12:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cortisol rises, inflammation switches on and gets harder to switch off.
• 12:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Third, understanding how your brain makes decisions in those moments being held against you is what helps you finally let them go.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything we talked about today, constantly trying to prove your worth, trying to change how someone sees you.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those are emotional patterns.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as we've covered, they're connected to physical symptoms.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have a real physiological impact on the body.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if this pattern is something you see in yourself, there are almost certainly other emotional pattern showing up in your body too.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: What can change your healing journey is seeing those patterns clearly and what each one is connected to.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: A specific list tied to your symptoms, your history, and what you're living with right now.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly what my free chat GPT prompt is for.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: You put in your physical symptoms and it shows you the patterns underneath them in about 30 seconds, without you having to untangle any of it on your own.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The link is in the show notes.
• 13:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you in the next episode.
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Goodbye for now.