Latest / Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women / #7. The Real Reason Your Immune System Is Working Against You — What Women With Autoimmune Disease and Chronic Illness Are Never Told

Transcript

#7. The Real Reason Your Immune System Is Working Against You — What Women With Autoimmune Disease and Chronic Illness Are Never Told · Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So many women with chronic illness believe their body has turned against them.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your body isn't attacking you.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's responding to how often you've been abandoning yourself.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why you got sick.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Teclody Francesco, certified mind-body practitioner, and certified holistic life coach.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast is for women living with chronic illness, autoimmune disease, IBS, chronic fatigue, PCOS,
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: endometriosis, migraines, fibromyalgia, or persistent symptoms that no one can fully explain.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Twice a week we look at how emotion drives chronic illness in women.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: One episode goes deeper into the pattern beneath the symptoms.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other gives you a quick way to interrupt the cycle.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're done organizing your life around symptoms and flare-ups, this is where that changes.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast shares mind-body education.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not medical advice and is designed to complement not replace your medical care.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's begin.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, you'll discover what self abandonment actually looks like in women with chronic illness.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: How repeatedly, overriding yourself can start showing up physically in symptoms and flare-ups.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And why the body can begin reflecting that pattern in conditions like autoimmune disease and other chronic issues.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about a common pattern I see showing up again and again.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most women don't recognize self abandonment in real time.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It shows up in moments that feel completely normal.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You wake up tired, but you tell yourself it's fine and push through the day.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your body feels off, but you ignore it because you don't have time to deal with it right now.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Something doesn't sit right in a conversation, but you brush it off and move on.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing about those moments feels extreme.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: They actually feel responsible.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: They feel like you're being productive and disciplined, or you're just getting on with things.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you slow it down, there's always a moment right before the override.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: A moment where your body gives you information.
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: You feel the fatigue.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: You notice the discomfort.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: You sense that something isn't right in your gut.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then almost immediately, your mind steps in and talks you out of it.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a big deal.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll just deal with it later.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I just need to get through today.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: That moment right there is the pattern.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because what's happening isn't just that you're pushing through.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're choosing not to respond to what your body is telling you.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when that happens repeatedly, something starts to shift in the relationship between your mind and your body.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: The more often you override what you feel, the less you trust it, and the less you trust it, the less you listen.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's not just about ignoring your needs.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's that the connection between what your body is communicating and how your respond starts to weaken.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And once that connection weakens, you're no longer really working with your body.
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're working against it.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what does this actually look like in the body?
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you zoom out, the pattern becomes very clear.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: In autoimmune disease, the body is quite literally attacking itself.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: The immune system, which is designed to protect you, starts reacting to your own cells as if they're a threat.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when you look at that through the lens of self abandonment, there's a parallel that's hard to ignore, because internally you've been doing something very similar, ignoring your own signals, overriding what you need, dismissing what your body is telling you.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not in a glaringly obvious or dramatic way, in small repeated moments.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: An autoimmune disease is just one expression of that pattern, because even outside of autoimmune conditions, you see the same dynamic show up across chronic illness.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It can look like widespread inflammation in the body.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Flare ups that seem to come out of nowhere.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Joint pain, body pain, stiffness that just lingers.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Digestive issues that cycle in and out.
• 4:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: fatigue that feels disproportionate to what you've actually done.
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Symptoms that make you feel like your body is working against you.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you slow it down, those flare-ups often don't come out of nowhere.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: They tend to follow periods where you've been pushing past your limits.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: where you've ignored what your body needed, where you've stayed in something longer than you had the capacity for.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I see this constantly.
• 4:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Women who are doing everything that've been told to do for their health, but at the same time, they're repeatedly overriding themselves throughout the day, and the body responds to that.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because the pattern it's living inside is one where it's not being listened to.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: so the signals get stronger, more persistent, harder to ignore, until eventually it feels like your body has turned against you.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So why does this translate into physical symptoms?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Because the body doesn't respond to what you do occasionally.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: it responds to what you do consistently.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: One moment of pushing through doesn't create a systemic problem.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when you override yourself and that becomes a daily pattern, the body starts adapting to that as its baseline.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: It starts assuming that what you feel won't be responded to, that its signals won't be acted on, and that if something is going to change, it has to push harder to get your attention, and the body adjusts to that.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It changes how energy is regulated, so you feel more depleted even when you rest.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It changes how quickly you recover, so things linger longer than they maybe should.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It changes how reactive the system becomes so small little stressors create bigger responses.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because it's adapting to the pattern it's been exposed to over and over again.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: In autoimmune disease, you see this in its most extreme form.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: The system designed to protect you becomes reactive toward your own body.
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But even outside of autoimmune conditions, the same principle applies.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Repetition shapes the internal environment.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the body responds to that environment accordingly.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is the why.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not about a single moment of self-abandonment.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's about what happens when that becomes the pattern your body learns to live inside.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've seen this very clearly in my own experience.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I was training as an elite athlete, I had a really high tolerance for pushing past my physical limits.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mentally, I could keep going.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I could push through discomfort fatigue, even the point where my body was clearly over its limit.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would often train so hard that I'd end up vomiting, and even then my instinct was to keep going.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: My mind would always push more.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But my body was the thing that would eventually stop me.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the time, I saw that as discipline and strength.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But looking back, it was a pattern of overriding what my body was telling me.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that didn't stay contained to sport.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: That same pattern showed up later in a very different way.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I became very restrictive with food, very focused on weight, and increasingly disconnected from what my body actually needed.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It took a long time to work through that phase of my life.
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Through proper treatment, eating disorder programs, and lots of rebuilding that relationship with myself.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when I look back now, the pattern is obvious.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't just about training.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was a learned way of relating to myself.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where my mind would push and my body would get left behind.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how do you start to shift this pattern of self abandonment and actually rebuild that connection between your mind and your body?
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because if you already have chronic illness, unfortunately, the reality is that connection is already likely very weak.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: For most women, it's not that they're ignoring their body on purpose.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's that they don't know how to hear it anymore.
• 8:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: The signals are either too subtle or they've been overridden for so long that they don't feel reliable.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you have to start much simpler than you think.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not with big changes, just basic reconnection.
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: The first step is just noticing, not fixing or analyzing, just noticing what your body is doing throughout the day.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where do you feel tension?
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where do you feel fatigue?
• 8:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where do you feel like something is off?
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most people skip this and go straight into trying to change things, but if you don't notice, you can't respond.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: The second step is naming it.
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Putting simple language to what you're feeling.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel tired.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: My body feels heavy.
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Something doesn't feel right.
• 9:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, we're not diagnosing or creating a story.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're just acknowledging the signal.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the third step is responding in a small way.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Not perfectly and not all the time, just one step that shows your body you're listening.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: That might be taking a break.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It might be pausing instead of pushing through.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It might be adjusting what you're doing instead of forcing yourself through it.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's where the shift starts because you're no longer trying to override your body.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're starting to rebuild a relationship with it.
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's how the connection begins to come back online.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Before we finish, let's bring this together.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: First, self-abandement isn't big and dramatic.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the small repeated moments where you override what your body is telling you.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Second, when that becomes a pattern, the connection between your mind and body starts to break down.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And over time, the body adapts to that.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And third, rebuilding that connection doesn't start with big changes.
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It starts with something much simpler.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Noticing what your body is telling you, acknowledging it, and beginning to respond in small ways.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because the goal isn't to force your body to heal, it's to stop working against it.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're listening to this and thinking, I don't even know what my body is trying to tell me.
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's exactly where you can start.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Go to the show notes and click the link for my free chat GPT prompt.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It will help you connect your physical symptoms to the emotional patterns that may be underneath them in less than 30 seconds.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you in the next episode.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a mini just a few minutes and one practical shift you can start applying right away.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Goodbye for now.