Latest / Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women / #43. You Think You're Remembering the Past. Your Body Is Reliving It. And Every Replay Fuels Chronic Illness.

Transcript

#43. You Think You're Remembering the Past. Your Body Is Reliving It. And Every Replay Fuels Chronic Illness. · Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: The women I work with who can't stop playing often have one thing in common.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It isn't their diet, it isn't their labs, it isn't their protocol.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a moment from years ago that they still visit every single day.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why you got sick.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Teclody Francesco, certified mind-body practitioner, and certified holistic life coach.
• 0:22
  [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.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Twice a week we look at how emotion drives chronic illness in women.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: One episode goes deeper into the pattern beneath the symptoms.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other gives you a quick way to interrupt the cycle.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're done organizing your life around symptoms and flare-ups, this is where that changes.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast shows mind-body education.
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not medical advice and is designed to compliment not replace your medical care.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's begin.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, you'll discover why revisiting a moment from your post that you can't change takes a real physical toll on a body already dealing with chronic illness.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll learn how going back to that moment again and again quietly drives your symptoms and your flare-ups.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'll share one simple shift that breaks the loop and takes the physical load off your body.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a moment from your post you keep going back to and every time you go back,
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: You take it apart, piece by piece, what you said and what you wish you had said.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: How you handled it when you're certain now you could have handled it better.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The way you showed up compared to the version of you who would have shown up differently.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: You go over it from your side, from their side.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: You run 25 other endings, other things you might have done, and it feels like you're getting somewhere.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what keeps you in it.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every pause feels like you're one angle away from finally understanding it and putting the whole thing to rest.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you never actually arrive anywhere.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: That moment is over, it already happened, and there is no version of going over it that changes a single thing about what occurred.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that constant re-analyzing never reaches a conclusion.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And without a conclusion, your mind doesn't close the file.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It opens again.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is not reflection.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Reflection has an endpoint.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: You learn something and you carry it forward.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: What we're talking about is a loop.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You return to the same moment, run the same angles, hit the same dead end, and then go back and do it again, sometimes for years.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what's actually keeping you trapped in that cycle.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not that you want to understand it.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's that part of you is still trying to win it.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: To finally say the thing you never got to say.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: To lend the version where you come out understood, where they finally get it, where the whole thing resolves in your favor.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're not reviewing the moment.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're still fighting for a different outcome inside it.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you can't have one because it's already gone.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the pattern.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know this loop from the inside out because I lived it in myself for many years.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are moments in my past that I've gone back to over and over again.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And even now, I can still catch myself falling into that loop sometimes, running through what I would have said if I had the courage.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: What I would have done then if I'd known what I know now.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: where I would have stood up for myself, where I would have set a boundary.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: The million things I would have done differently if I could go back and do it again.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I can tell you with complete certainty now that that loop never served me, not once.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't make me wiser.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: It didn't hand me closure.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: All it ever did was exhaust me and drain me.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It kept me trapped living in the past mentally and physically, which I'll get into more in a minute here.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I see the same thing in the women I work with again and again.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: For them it often shows up in feelings of guilt or shame or regret.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: A moment or a whole season of their life where they wish they had acted differently, responded differently, shown up differently.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they carry all of it forward into now, into the present long after the moment itself is over.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I always bring them back to.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: The time has passed.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's gone and they're never getting it back.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what they're actually doing, every time they return to it, is punishing themselves for not being able to change something that doesn't exist anymore.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I want you to sit with that because it might be the most important thing I say to you in this entire episode.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're pouring your real energy into a moment you cannot reach, trying to fix something that is already finished.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And while your mind is back there, your body is back there with you, every single time.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what is actually happening in your brain when you do this, and once you understand it, you can't unsee it.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a part of your brain called the amygdala, and it's whole job is to keep you safe.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's fast, it runs automatically underneath your conscious awareness, and it reacts before you've had a single deliberate thought.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it has two limitations that matter enormously here.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: One, it has no capacity for logic, and two, it has no concept of time.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sit with that second one, because it changes everything.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: This part of your brain cannot tell the difference between something happening right now and something you are only remembering.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Two, that part of your brain, there is no years ago.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is only now.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when you drop back into that moment from your past and you start rehearsing it and running it again, the amygdala doesn't file it away as history.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It reads it as an event that is happening in this moment, a live situation and something to respond to.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the next part is not just a theory.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's measurable physiology.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: A thought is never just a thought.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every time you think something, your brain fires a signal, and that signal has a physical consequence in the body.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the thought is a threatening one, your brain triggers the release of real chemicals, adrenaline and cortisol.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The same stress hormones it would send out if the danger were unfolding in front of you right now.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your heart rate shifts, your muscles activate and are primed.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your body floods with the chemistry of an emergency.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it is well established that your body cannot tell the difference between a real event and one you are only imagining or replaying in vivid detail.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: To your body, the memory and the moment produce the same physical response.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Look at what that means for the loop.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every time you go back and run that moment again, you are not simply remembering it.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: You are re-triggering the whole cascade.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Real hormones are real physical reaction for a situation that finished a long time ago.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: The mind is treating a finished event as a problem it still has to solve.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you cannot resolve something that no longer exists.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the loop never closes and your brain keeps generating a physical response to a moment that is already gone.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: The only part of you that can tell what time it actually is, the part that can look at the memory and recognize it's over is your thinking brain.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the moment you're lost in the replay, that part goes offline.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the why this is why we care about this.
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every trip back into that moment isn't just wearing you out mentally.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's asking your body again and again to physically survive something that has already passed.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here is what you actually do with all of this information, but first a quick recap of what we just learned.
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a part of your brain that cannot tell the past is over.
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has no concept of time, so it treats the moment you're replaying as if it's happening right now and your body responds accordingly.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: The way out is simpler than you'd think.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: You remind that part of your brain what time it actually is.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: The next time you catch yourself back in that moment running it again, I want you to stop and say this to yourself.
• 8:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can say it out loud or in your head, either works.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is going to be your little mantra moving forward.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: The post does not exist.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: The future does not exist.
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: All that exists is this present moment.
• 8:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And right now, I'm safe.
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing to do, fix or change.
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You might be thinking, wait, you just told me this part of my brain has no capacity for logic.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So how is talking to it supposed to change anything?
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's exactly the right question.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the answer.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're not reasoning with that part of your brain.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't speak that language.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: What you're actually doing when you put words to what's true right now is waking up your thinking brain.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The rational part that went offline the moment you got lost in the replay.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when you're thinking brain comes back online, it does something the fearful part will actually respond to.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It signals clearly and calmly that you're safe.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: that is the part your body registers.
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the words aren't there to win an argument with your fear.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're there to bring the one part of you that can call off the alarm back into the room.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every time you catch the loop and interrupt it in this way, you're handing this steering wheel back to your thinking brain.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: The one part of you that can tell it's over.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The more you do it, the faster you catch it next time.
• 9:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're simply reminding your whole system what is actually true.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: That this moment right now is safe.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I want you to be ready for what happens next because it will save you a lot of frustration.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: You will say this, you will feel your body settle.
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then a few minutes later, you'll notice your right back in that same moment running it all over again.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's not you failing at this.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is exactly what this part of your brain does.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has been returning to that moment for a long time, and it will keep pulling you back there out of pure habit.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you catch it, and you say it again, and maybe you say it doesn't times in a single day.
• 10:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good.
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every time you do, you're handing the steering wheel back to your thinking brain, and it gets a little quicker to respond, and a little easier to reach.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: The loop that used to run for hours starts breaking up in minutes.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're not doing it wrong because you have to keep repeating it.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: The repeating is how it requires.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a deeper level to this.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: That loop didn't start today and it doesn't run because you're choosing it.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It runs on its own.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Underneath your conscious awareness out of pure habit because that is where patterns like this actually live.
• 10:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Catching it in the moment is powerful, but imagine not being pulled back there in the first place.
• 10:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what my seven-day audio series is designed to do.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It works at the level underneath the thinking mind.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Rewiring the internal story your body has been responding to, so you're no longer trapped replaying across the keeps your body stuck in a state of illness.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are the exact shifts that set the foundation for me to reverse my two chronic diagnoses.
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Go and read the stories of women like you who saw real change in seven days, one week.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: The link is in the show notes.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you in the next episode.