Latest / Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women / #64. You've Lived Through Your Next Chronic Illness Flare 100 Times Before It Happens & Your Body Pays For Every One

Transcript

#64. You've Lived Through Your Next Chronic Illness Flare 100 Times Before It Happens & Your Body Pays For Every One · Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: you and an elite athlete have more in common than you think.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I spent over a decade as a roar and the best athletes I knew rent every race in their heads moment by moment until their brain knew it by heart.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've been doing the same thing every day just not with a race.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why you got sick.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Teclody Francesco, certified mind-body practitioner and certified holistic life coach.
• 0:25
  [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.
• 0:39
  [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.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast shows mind-body education.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not medical advice and is designed to compliment not replace your medical care.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's begin.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, you'll discover what a 1995 piano study revealed about how your brain learns.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: The everyday habit that has been training your brain without you noticing.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And how to borrow the technique elite athletes rely on and use it for healing.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Think about the last thing you had coming up that you were looking forward to.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: A friend's wedding, a weekend away, lunch with someone you hadn't seen in years.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now think about how many times you'd already lived it before it happened.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: You saw yourself walking in and feeling the first wave of fatigue.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: You pictured the food you wouldn't be able to eat.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: The excuse you'd make to leave early.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The drive home where you'd pay for it all.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You played the scene where your symptoms show up halfway through, and the one where you'd have to cancel the morning of.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: By the time the day arrived, you'd been through it a dozen times, and in almost every version, you were sick.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the pattern.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You are mentally rehearsing illness.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most of the time, you don't even notice that you're doing it.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It happens while you're standing in the shower or hanging out the washing.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your mind just goes there on its own because it's been there so many times before, and it isn't only big events.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: On an ordinary Tuesday, you're already picturing how you'll be wiped out by mid-afternoon.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lying in bed at night, you play out how tomorrow will go.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Almost any time you think about the future, the version of you who shows up is unwell.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what that adds up to.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And whatever you practice over and over is what you get good at.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So think about the numbers.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over the years, you've rehearsed the sick version of your life a thousand times.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The flare-up, the canceled plans, the body that lets you down.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, ask yourself how many times you've rehearsed the other version, waking up with energy, staying at the dinner until the very end.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Going away for the weekend and nothing going wrong.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're like a lot of women I work with, the answer is close to zero, which means the life you want is the one you've never practiced.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the life you're afraid of is the one you've been practicing almost every day.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I worked with a woman who did this with every event in her life.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whenever something was coming up, she would go through every possible way it could go.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if she felt awful the moment she arrived?
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if there was nothing she could eat?
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if she needed to leave and couldn't?
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was trying to prepare for every scenario, so nothing could catch her by surprise.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: but all that preparing never got her out the door.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: By the time she'd been through every version, staying home felt like the easier choice.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So more often and more often, that's what she chose.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you've ever talked yourself out of something you actually wanted to go to, you know how that goes.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The obvious cost is everything she missed out on, but there's a second cost and it's the one nobody sees.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every time she rehearsed the worst and then stayed home, she was telling her brain that living is dangerous.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that story didn't get told once.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It got repeated dozens of times.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So her world shrank to a tight circle, her home, the routine she knew, the things she could control, and anything that reached outside that circle, a new place, an unplanned afternoon, an invitation she hadn't seen coming, started to feel threatening to her whole system.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those things were never dangerous.
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: She'd just rehearsed them as dangerous so many times at her body and nervous system had come to believe it.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 1995, a team of researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Health taught a group of people a simple five-finger exercise on the piano.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: They practice for two hours a day, five days in a row.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Each day the researchers used a magnetic pulse over their head to map the part of the brain that controls the fingers.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over those five days, that area grew.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: The brain was making more room for the new skill.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then they tried something different.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: They asked a second group to only imagine playing the same exercise.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: No fingers moving, just playing it in their heads, note by note for the same two hours a day.
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the researchers mapped those brains, the same area had reorganized in a similar way.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when that group finally played the exercise, they'd improved even though they had never practiced on the keys.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their brains didn't wait for the real thing.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagining it was enough to start building it.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: This study was about piano, not chronic illness, but in my work with women I see the same principle play out over and over.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're brain treats what you rehearse in your head as practice and it shapes itself around that practice.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So every time you play out the flare up before the big event, your brain logs it as a training session.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: After thousands of sessions, the sick version of your life is the one your brain is most prepared for.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the version it reaches for because it's the one it knows by heart.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the why this is why we care about this.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what do you do with this?
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your first instinct will probably be to stop rehearsing, to catch yourself picturing the worst case and shut it down.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you've ever tried that, you know how it goes.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The harder you try not to think about something, the more it seems to show up.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you catch yourself mid-seeing for the fifth time that day and you've decided you failed.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now you're rehearsing the flare and feeling bad about rehearsing it.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to stop the scene.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: You just need to finish it differently.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good athletes don't only rehearse the perfect race.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: They rehearse what happens when something goes wrong, and they see themselves handle it.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bad start, falling behind, the moment their body wants to quit, and then pulling it back.
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: That way, if it happens on the day, their brain already knows the way through.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can do the same thing.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Next time you catch yourself playing out the worst case scenario,
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let the scene keep going.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Say your picture in a date the beach and the fatigue hits halfway through the afternoon.
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the old version, you pack up and you go home.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: This time, keep watching.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine lying back down on your towel and closing your eyes for 10 minutes.
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then you feel it ease, you get up, you walk back to the water, and you stay until the sun goes down.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Same scene, new ending.
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the moment you catch yourself stops being proof that you failed, it just becomes your cue to start.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every time you finish a scene this way, your brain gets a rep of the other version of your life.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The one where you get to live it.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: As you start finishing these scenes differently, you'll probably notice something.
• 8:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: The worst case versions your mind plays out tend to circle the same fear.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's missing out.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's being a burden or letting someone down.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: That fear is worth paying attention to.
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: In my experience, it usually points to the emotional pattern sitting underneath your symptoms.
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you want help finding yours, that's what my free chat GPT prompt is for.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It connects your physical symptoms to the emotional patterns that may be driving them in under 30 seconds.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The link is in the show notes and it's free.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Go and download it now while you can.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've spent years practicing and rehearsing the life you're afraid of.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's time to start practicing the one you want.
• 8:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you in the next episode.