Latest / Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women / #57. You Keep Avoiding Things That Would Help Heal Your Chronic Illness & It’s Not A Discipline Problem

Transcript

#57. You Keep Avoiding Things That Would Help Heal Your Chronic Illness & It’s Not A Discipline Problem · Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: woman invested a ton of money with me for one-on-one support.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: She booked a single session and never came back.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what I suspect stopped her is the same thing standing between you and progress.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why you got sick.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Teclody Francesco, certified mind-body practitioner, and certified holistic life coach.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast is for women living with chronic illness, autoimmune disease, IBS, chronic fatigue, PCOS, endometriosis, migraines, fibromyalgia, or persistent symptoms that no one can fully explain.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Twice a week we look at how emotion drives chronic illness in women.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: One episode goes deeper into the pattern beneath the symptoms.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other gives you a quick way to interrupt the cycle.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're done organizing your life around symptoms and flare-ups, this is where that changes.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast shows mind-body education.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not medical advice and is designed to complement, not replace your medical care.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's begin.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, you'll discover why wanting to heal has never been enough to actually get you there.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll learn the reason you keep avoiding the things you know would help you, and how to get the part of you that resists change on your side for good.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every woman who comes to me wants to see improvements in her health.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: That part is real.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: but wanting something and being willing to change for it are two completely different things.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: You want to be well.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: You want your energy back, your life back, your body back.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You want it desperately.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time, there's a part of you that is not on board.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: A part that resists the very things you know would help you.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: You book the appointment and cancel it.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: You buy the program and never open it.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know exactly what would move you forward, and you find a hundred reasons not to do it.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then you call yourself undisciplined, lazy, self-sabotaging.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: You decide something is wrong with you because you want this so badly and still won't do the things that get you there.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: But nothing is wrong with you.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're not lazy and you're not sabotaging yourself.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: The part of you that resist is not working against you.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's working for you.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is protecting something.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because staying sick gives you something.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Something real, something you have no other way to get right now.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know how that sounds, confusing.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: No woman consciously wants to be sick.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody chooses this.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: You did not decide to hold onto your illness.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not your fault, and it's not a choice you consciously made.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Underneath your awareness is a part of you that has a need, and your illness has become the way that that need gets met.
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe being sick is the only reason you're finally allowed to rest.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it is the only time anyone takes care of you.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it is the only acceptable reason to say no.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever it is, that part of you has learned that illness serves a purpose.
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: So every time you reach for real change, it pulls back.
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because on some level getting well would mean losing the thing it depends on.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you end up in a strange kind of stalemate.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: One part of you reaching for change and the other part is holding the door shut.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you cannot understand why you keep stalling, why you keep avoiding, why you want this more than anything and still can't seem to move.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is the pattern.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was never that you didn't want it enough.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is that part of you needs the very thing you're trying to get rid of.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you more about this woman from the start of this episode.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: She invested a ton of money with me for one-on-one support.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was not a small decision.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was the kind of commitment you only make when you genuinely want something to change.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then she booked one session, just one, and never came back.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't tell you with certainty what was going on for her, but I have worked with enough women to have a strong suspicion.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I think happened.
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: In that first session, she got a glimpse of what was actually underneath her illness.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: The thing she would have to look at.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: The parts of her life she would have to be honest about.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The stuff she had been managing to avoid for a very long time.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: because staying sick had protected her from all of it.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: As long as her energy was going toward managing her symptoms, she never had to turn and face the harder things sitting underneath them.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the moment healing meant walking toward those things instead of away from them, a part of her pulled back.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: and this is the part I really want you to hear because it's not what it looks like from the outside.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was not a woman who didn't try.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was not laziness.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: She wanted to heal and she had just spent a significant amount of money proving that.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is that healing was going to ask her to face things she wasn't ready to face.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: and the illness had become the thing that let her keep avoiding them.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So she disappeared.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I imagine she told herself something completely reasonable about why.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was too busy, the timing was bad, she'd come back to it later.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: But underneath that reasonable story was something much more human.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: A part of her simply wasn't ready to turn and face what healing would have asked her to address.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not telling you this to judge her because I understand it completely.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm telling you this because there is almost certainly a version of you in it.
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: The support you know you need and keep putting off.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: The change you say you want but keep finding reasons to delay.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is rarely because you're not trying.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's that some part of you senses what healing would ask you to face and staying where you are has been protecting you from it.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So why does this happen?
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why would a part of you fight to hold onto something you desperately want to be free of?
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It comes down to how your brain learns.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And once you understand this, you will stop blaming yourself for it.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your brain is always paying attention to one thing.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: What helps you and what hurts you?
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: When something brings you relief or meets a need or makes a hard moment easier, your brain takes a note.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It files that thing away as useful.
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it wires itself to do that thing again.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is one of the most basic ways the brain works.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not complicated and it's not a flaw.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the same mechanism behind every habit you have ever formed.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Something works so your brain repeats it.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now apply that to being sick.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Somewhere along the way your illness started meeting a real need.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it gave you a way out of a relationship or a job you didn't know how to leave.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it lowered the impossible standard you had been holding yourself to your whole life, because now finally nobody could expect that of you.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you felt lost for a long time, unsure of who you even were anymore, and being sick finally gave you something that defined you.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever the need was, your illness met it, and your brain noticed.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it did exactly what it was designed to do.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It logged that relief as something valuable and it wired to protect it.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: The relief was real, the need was real.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your brain was not working against you when it held onto this.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was doing a job.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It found something that eased a genuine pain and it moved to keep it.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: This means the resistance you feel toward change is not weakness.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a lack of willpower.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a learned loop running underneath your conscious awareness, protecting a payoff that has been working for a long time.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that is why wanting to heal has never been enough on its own because you're not fighting a lack of desire.
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're working against wiring.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: A part of your brain has learned that staying exactly what you are keeps meeting a need.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't know how to meet in any other way.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So every time you reach for real change, the wiring pulls you back.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not to hurt you to protect you.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the why.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why we care about this because until that need gets met in another way, the loop keeps running and your body stays trapped in the exact state you're trying to escape.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So here's where we start and I want you to actually do this one because it matters so much more than anything else we've ever talked about.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want you to get a piece of paper and I want you to answer one question.
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: But before I give it to you, I need to prepare you for it because your first reaction is going to be to dismiss it.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The question is, if you woke up completely healed tomorrow, what would you lose?
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now your immediate answer is going to be nothing.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course nothing, who would lose anything from being well?
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'd give anything to be well.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Stay with me.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because the quick answer is exactly the thing keeping this hidden from you, so we're going underneath it.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead of asking what you'd lose, make it real.
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Picture actually waking up tomorrow with full energy and no symptoms and walk through your day and notice what changes.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you were completely well, what would you have to say yes to again?
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: The plans, the commitments, the work, the career, the pace of life you've been lit off the hook from.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is there anything in there you are secretly relieved you don't have to do right now?
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you were completely well, who in your life would treat you differently?
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is there care or softness or attention you get right now that your afraid would disappear the moment you didn't need it?
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you were completely well, what would you no longer have an explanation for?
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: The dream you haven't chased, the relationship you haven't left, the life you haven't built.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right now the illness helps to explain why.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Without it, what would you have to look at?
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you were completely well, who would you even be?
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because if being sick has been a big part of your identity for a long time, healing doesn't just give you your body back.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It asks you to figure out who you are without it.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that can be genuinely terrifying.
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to be clear about something.
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: None of this means you want to be sick consciously.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It means a part of you has been getting something real from this, and that part has never been asked what it's afraid of losing.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So sit with those questions.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let the uncomfortable answers come up.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: The ones that make you go, oh God.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: That answer is not something to be ashamed of.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is the most useful thing you can discover because you cannot meet and need in a different way until you know what it actually is.
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: You need to see it first.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: You need to bring it into the light so you know what you're working with.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: The answer will not come by forcing yourself to change harder.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: You need to find the thing illness has been giving you so you can finally start to give it to yourself in another way.
• 10:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: The questions I gave you today are a great start to tackle this.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It cracks the door open.
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: But a pattern like this, one that's been protecting you for years, doesn't fully shift from one exercise.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: This goes deep, and to actually move through it, you have to go deeper too.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So let me ask you something.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: How much longer are you willing to wait?
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: How many more appointments, protocols, supplements?
• 11:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: How many more mornings waking up in a body that takes over your whole day before you're willing to look at the part underneath it?
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because you can keep doing what you've been doing.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: You already know where that leads.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've been on that road for years, and it's the reason you're listening to this.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: or you can let me help you.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine opening your eyes and instead of running at the full body scan and checking for what feels off, your first thought is about the coffee you get to have, and what you've got planned that day because you're actually looking forward to it.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine going to brunch with the girls feeling like yourself and staying present the whole time without half your attention on your body.
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine booking a spontaneous weekend away just because you can, and because you have the energy without doing the mental math on how you're going to pack all your supplements and get through your 6-step healing routine while you're away.
• 12:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is what's on the other side of my four-month healing experience.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now she heals.
• 12:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is where you stop being a full-time patient and become a full-time person again.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is where we find the emotional patterns and limiting beliefs actually fueling your symptoms and move through them together.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So your body can finally come out of survival mode, and into the state where repair is actually possible.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you do all of this with me right beside you the whole way, in a group of women who understand exactly what you're moving through because they are too.
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what you need to know.
• 12:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm opening the door soon to just 10 women.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: 10.
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this may be the last time I opened them this year.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: If any part of you realizes you're just stuck in this pattern of waiting and hoping and thinking, I'll get to this later.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Don't.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Waiting comes at a cost.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: A cost of putting your life on hold.
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I know you don't want to do that for one second longer.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Get on the wait list.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the only way to learn more and secure a spot before they're all gone.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alright, let's recap what we talked about today.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: You learned that wanting to heal has never been enough on its own to create real change.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: You learned that staying sick has been meeting a real need your brain wired itself to hold on to.
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you learn that once you find what it's been giving you, you can start mating that need in another way.
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's all for today.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Head to the show notes to get on the weight list for now she heals, and learn all the juicy details because this experience is unlike anything out there right now.
• 13:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you in the next episode.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Goodbye for now.