Latest / Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women / #33. A War Is Going On Inside You That Started Long Before Chronic Illness — And You're Paying the Price Every Day

Transcript

#33. A War Is Going On Inside You That Started Long Before Chronic Illness — And You're Paying the Price Every Day · Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a kind of attention you pay to your body every single day.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It runs so constantly you cannot feel it anymore.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It feels normal, like something every woman does.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But normal and harmless are not the same thing.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And while it might feel like it's all in your head, it's actually having a far greater impact on your physical body than you realize.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why you got sick.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Teclody Francesco, certified mind-body practitioner, and certified holistic life coach.
• 0:30
  [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.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Twice a week we look at how emotion drives chronic illness in women.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: One episode goes deeper into the pattern beneath the symptoms.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other gives you a quick way to interrupt the cycle.
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're done organizing your life around symptoms and flare-ups, this is where that changes.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast shows mind-body education.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not medical advice and is designed to complement, not replace your medical care.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's begin.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, you'll discover how a lifetime of judging how you look has been physically draining your body, not just your confidence.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll learn why you cannot heal a body you're at war with, and why no protocol will ever reach this part of the puzzle.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And how your symptoms change when you stop analyzing and inspecting your body and start partnering with it instead.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's dive in.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: You try on the dress, and the first question that comes to your mind is not do I like this.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: it does this make me look big.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: You stand in the mirror and turn to the side and check whether your stomach is sticking out.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see a photo of yourself in before you take in anything else before you even register who you were with or what you were doing, your eyes go straight to your own arms, your own thighs, and you're already deciding whether to delete it or not.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Someone takes a group shot and you're not looking at the memory.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're looking for your love handles.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can you see them?
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is this the angle where they show?
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: You walk into a room and within seconds you have measured yourself against every other woman in it.
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: She is more put together than I am.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: She has the body to wear that but I never could.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me be clear.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: You did not decide to do any of this consciously.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: This commentary is running automatically nonstop.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're having an experience, but you're not fully living it.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a version of you who is in the moment, eating the meal, having the conversation, being touched by someone you love, and there is a second version of you standing just to the side.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just remove from the moment, watching you live it and judging how you look while you do it.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: To review at the same time, one engaging in the moment, the other one watching and checking the angles.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Does my arm look fat resting like that?
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is he noticing my stomach?
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do I look as tired as a feel?
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: All of these thoughts are looping, so you're never quite all the way in your own life.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Half of you is living it, and half of you is monitoring it.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: This has been the background noise
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: and every woman around you for the most part is doing the exact same thing which is why nobody stops to ask the real question.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not how does it look?
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: What is it doing to you?
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the pattern.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to talk about this today because it hits really close to home for me.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of the reasons my physical body fell apart is that my body and I were not on the same team, for a very long time.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, as far back as I can remember, I just felt different.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I felt bigger than all the other girls around me.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I felt like I didn't belong, and the reason was always the body I was in.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: That came with me into adulthood, and then I walked it straight into the most concentrated version of it I can imagine.
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I rode at an elite level.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was fighting for a full scholarship, fighting to be in the top boat, and that environment is a war on all three fronts.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's you, there's your body, and there's everyone else.
• 4:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have to be lighter, fitter, stronger, and there is a constant monitoring coming at you from both directions at once.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: The voice inside your own head and the eyes and the assessments from the outside.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: After a while, you cannot tell the two a part.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: They become one sound.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And here is what happens when you live like that.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your entire sense of worth moves outside of you, whether it is you judging yourself or someone else measuring you, the verdict always comes from the outside.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: You stop being a person and start being a thing that is being evaluated.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll be straight with you because I think it matters.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was a point where the body noise and the food noise were so loud I couldn't personally think pause them.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: They drowned out everything else for me at the time.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I went and did four months of intensive outpatient therapy.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And at that time, it was exactly what I needed.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's not the right move for everyone.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just want to be clear and transparent.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's what I did at the time.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're listening to this, and that noise is the loudest thing in your head right now, it might be something to consider, getting really serious about more support.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's not what this episode is about, but I'm not going to talk about my body and skip pause the truth of it.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the part I need you to hear because it's the thing that took me years to understand.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: While you believe your body is not enough, it never will be.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no amount of changing it that will ever land you in the place you're trying to reach.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: You think you're chasing a body you can finally be at peace with when your five pounds lighter or less sick or more fit or more strong and you think you're going to be excited to live in it.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're not.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're chasing a feeling and the feeling does not live on the other side of the body changing.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It never did.
• 6:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that gap, that war, you on one side and your body on the other, it comes at a cost.
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Think about what it's like to live with someone who is constantly disappointed in you.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Someone who watches everything you do and finds fault.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's a toxic relationship.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is the relationship you've been having with your own body every day for years.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It wakes up and it's already getting judged.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the person delivering that verdict is not a stranger.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not another woman in the room.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's you.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've been withholding your own approval from your body for your entire life, and your body has been holding that emotional load this entire time.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to tell you why this matters and why it matters specifically for your body and your healing.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is so much about body image and worthiness and about being seen and being loved that never gets talked about in connection with chronic illness.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: and that is a real problem because until you and your body are on the same team, the deep healing you are after, the kind that actually lasts cannot happen.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You cannot heal a body you are at war with, whether that's over physical symptoms or weight or how it looks.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: you can manage it, you can medicate it, but you cannot fully heal inside a relationship or one side is treated as the enemy.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here is the concrete cost and it is not vague.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: When your attention is always pointed at how your body looks from the outside, you stop being able to feel it from the inside.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a whole stream of information your body sends you all day long.
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you're hungry, when you're full, when you're holding tension, when you're tired, when something hurts, when something is starting to go wrong.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: That inside signal is how you know what your body needs.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when you spend your life watching yourself from the outside, that inside channel goes quiet.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can be so busy assessing how you look that you genuinely cannot feel what you need.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sit with that and what it means for a woman who is unwell.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The exact information your body is trying to give you about how to care for it is the information you have trained yourself not to receive.
• 8:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're not ignoring your body's needs on purpose.
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've just spent so long looking at it that you have lost the ability to feel it.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you cannot respond to a body you cannot feel.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Underneath all of it, the assessment never ends because it's all subjective.
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no score you can hit.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no version of your body that finally passes because the checklist was never real to begin with.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can spend your whole life chasing the body that earns your approval and never arrive, because approval was never about how the body looks.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So here is the decision, and it's a real one.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you willing to be in partnership with this body that you have right now, knowing it will never be perfect?
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your body may always look different to other women.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: It may never match the picture in your head, and none of that says a single thing about your worth.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The partnership is the thing that is going to heal you.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not the way it looks.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: The decision is to stop fighting and to get back on the same side.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the why this is why we care about this because you do not just get to make peace with your body.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: You get to live in it.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: You get to have fun in it.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: You get to feel it again from the inside and let it carry you through life and support you instead of standing across from it like an opponent.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And your body finally back in contact with you can do what it has been waiting to do this whole time.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Start real healing.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not going to give you a technique today or an exercise or anything to add to your list.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because the thing that changes this is not another practice.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a decision.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything I've said today comes down to one question and I want you to actually sit with it.
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you willing to be on the same team as your body?
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not once it looks the way you want, not after it changes, now as it is today.
• 10:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the decision, and it's not a feeling.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a choice you make before the feeling shows up.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: It means the next time you catch the assessment running, the reflection, the photo, the comparison to the woman across the room, you just notice it for what it is.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a truth about you.
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just an old habit running the way it always has.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you have a choice and you do not have to pick it up.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can let it be there and you can choose in that moment not to take it side against your own body.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're not going to get this right
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The goal is that you stop treating your body as the enemy and start treating it as the one thing that has been on your side this entire time, carrying you through every single day, including all the days you spent wishing it were different.
• 11:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is the shift this week, not something you do, something you decide.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's recap what we talked about today.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you spend your life watching how your body looks from the outside instead of living inside it, that focus cuts you off from feeling what your body actually needs.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't heal by changing your body.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: You heal by deciding to stop the war with it.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: If this episode really spoke to you, here is where you take it further.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: The worry you have been in with your body is one of the patterns sitting underneath your physical symptoms, but it's almost never the only one.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is exactly why I built my free chat GPT prompts to help you uncover.
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It connects your physical symptoms to the emotional patterns that may be underneath them in 30 seconds.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the piece of the puzzle.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: No protocol will ever outline for you because they're not designed to do that.
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Chronic illness is not just a physical breakdown in the body.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's always an emotional component, and until you find it, your healing journey will be harder than it needs to be.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: The link to that is in the show notes for you.
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Go and grab it while it's free.
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you need more support with any of the topics we talked about today, including body image or food noise or eating, I've linked international resources for you in the show notes.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to do this alone.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, goodbye for now.