Latest / Love Your Gut / Ep. 129: Why Busy, High-Achieving Women Freeze on Their Own Health

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Ep. 129: Why Busy, High-Achieving Women Freeze on Their Own Health · Love Your Gut

• 0:03
  Dr. Heather Finley: Welcome to the Love Your Gut Podcast.
• 0:05
  Dr. Heather Finley: I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:06
  Dr. Heather Finley: Heather Finley, registered dietitian and gut health specialist.
• 0:10
  Dr. Heather Finley: I understand the frustration of dealing with GI issues because I've been there and I spent over two decades searching for answers for my own gut issues of constipation, bloating, and stomach pain.
• 0:21
  Dr. Heather Finley: I've dedicated my life to understanding and solving my own gut issues.
• 0:25
  Dr. Heather Finley: And now I'm here to guide you.
• 0:28
  Dr. Heather Finley: On this podcast, I'll help you identify the true root causes of your discomfort.
• 0:33
  Dr. Heather Finley: So you can finally ditch your symptoms for good.
• 0:36
  Dr. Heather Finley: My goal is to empower you with the knowledge and tools you need so that you can love your gut and it will love you right back.
• 0:43
  Dr. Heather Finley: So if you're ready to learn a lot, gain a deeper understanding of your gut and find lasting relief.
• 0:48
  Dr. Heather Finley: You are in the right place.
• 0:50
  Dr. Heather Finley: Welcome to the love your gut podcast.
• 0:56
  I wanna start today's episode with a question, and you don't have to answer it out loud.
• 1:00
  But is there something sitting in your life right now that you paid for, that you were excited about, that you fully believed could help you, and yet you haven't opened it?
• 1:12
  Or maybe it's a program, maybe it's a protocol that a practitioner wrote for you.
• 1:18
  Maybe it's collecting virtual dust in your inbox.
• 1:21
  Maybe it's a supplement order that is sitting in the Amazon box on your counter.
• 1:26
  Maybe it's a lab kit.
• 1:27
  Maybe it's that appointment that you keep meaning to book.
• 1:31
  And if you said yes to any of those I would bet money that the word that you've been using to describe yourself is maybe lazy or undisciplined, or maybe you've had the thought,"I just need to get my act together." But today, I wanna offer you a different explanation, and probably the more accurate explanation, because what you're experiencing has a name, and it's a nervous system state, and it actually has a purpose.
• 1:59
  Your body has a very specific outcome that it is trying to protect you from.
• 2:04
  If you have tried something for your gut issues or for your health, something that you've already lived through, and the outcome wasn't what you expected, trying, hoping, being disappointed, discipline is not the variable here.
• 2:19
  Your body is trying to protect you from disappointment.
• 2:22
  And I know this personally for many different reasons, but I wanna just tell you a story.
• 2:28
  So I remember when I was newly postpartum with my daughter, I was going back to work and really struggling because I really wanted to be with her, and I also loved my work so much.
• 2:45
  And I knew that there was a way that I could do both, but I had a lot of fear, right?
• 2:52
  I had, I had a lot of fear because of past disappointments or past investments that I had made, not even really related to my business.
• 3:01
  But I knew that if I wanted to change things, I needed to get help.
• 3:08
  I needed to work with someone who could help me so that I could get there faster.
• 3:13
  And it took me until I was 11 months postpartum when I was finally...
• 3:18
  I was out on a walk.
• 3:19
  I remember that feeling so clearly, and the feeling was dread.
• 3:23
  I was dreading going to work, and not because I didn't like my clients or my work.
• 3:29
  I was just dreading being exhausted because I was seeing so many clients, and as you know, having a baby is really taxing.
• 3:39
  And I, I remember that feeling so specifically of like, I would come home from seeing clients, a full day of clients, and I just felt like I had nothing left to give.
• 3:49
  And I felt like it was unfair to my clients and it was unfair to my family, but yet I didn't know what to do.
• 3:57
  I knew that something needed to change And I could have told you what the next step was, right?
• 4:02
  Like getting help, hiring a clinician, hiring even a VA.
• 4:08
  Like I knew, but yet I wrestled with it for months.
• 4:13
  It was months before I finally booked a call with a business coach and made a decision.
• 4:20
  And if you know me, we're probably very similar.
• 4:24
  We're disciplined people.
• 4:25
  We get things done.
• 4:26
  We are doers.
• 4:27
  So this like dragging my feet was not about effort.
• 4:31
  It wasn't that I didn't know what to do.
• 4:34
  The decision meant that I was leaving something secure, even if it wasn't what I actually wanted.
• 4:41
  There was possibility that something could go wrong in front of everybody who thought that I was a little bit crazy.
• 4:48
  My body knew exactly how much that could cost, so it just put the brakes on.
• 4:55
  So the day that I was on the walk, something finally changed in me, and I was frozen at first, but it took...
• 5:05
  What is the saying?
• 5:06
  Disruption follows intention.
• 5:08
  It took a specific intention and actual disruption for something to actually change.
• 5:15
  Because the part that is like interesting here is that nobody would have looked at my life from the outside and called it freeze.
• 5:23
  I was working, I was parenting, I was functioning, I was checking every box, I was exercising, I was up at five AM.
• 5:30
  I was checking every box that somebody else was holding me accountable to.
• 5:35
  I was providing great care for my clients, but the thing that was actually just mine sat there.
• 5:41
  So if you have a goal or a program or something and you haven't opened it, or maybe a protocol that you haven't start, or a plan from a practitioner that's just sitting in a folder, today's episode is for you because I want you to understand what's actually going on underneath that, and I promise you it's a much kinder story than the one that you have been telling yourself So I wanna give you just a really simple map, because once you see it, you'll start noticing it everywhere.
• 6:12
  So your nervous system has three basic states that it moves between all day long.
• 6:17
  The first one is regulated.
• 6:19
  You've probably heard that term.
• 6:21
  This is where you feel safe.
• 6:22
  This is where you feel connected.
• 6:24
  You can think clearly.
• 6:25
  You can be present with your kids.
• 6:27
  You can actually digest your food.
• 6:29
  This is the state where change is possible.
• 6:31
  Your body is willing to try something new when it feels safe.
• 6:35
  The second one is sympathetic, which you've probably heard called fight or flight.
• 6:40
  This is like mobilized energy, urgent, wired, go, go, go.
• 6:44
  Your heart rate is up.
• 6:45
  Your to-do list is long.
• 6:46
  Everything feels like it needed to happen yesterday.
• 6:51
  And the third state is what we call, or what is called, not we, I didn't coin this term, dorsal shutdown.
• 6:56
  So this is freeze.
• 6:58
  It can look a lot like collapse, numbness, flatness, immobility, that, that feeling of like,"I want to, but I just can't make myself." So here's what I want you to think about freeze.
• 7:10
  When your body senses a threat, it asks a quick question below your conscious awareness,"Can I fight this?
• 7:17
  Can I run from this?" And when the answer to both is no, when the threat feels too big to fight and too inescapable to run from, the body just chooses the oldest, most protective option that it has and stays still.
• 7:32
  So your freeze state is actually a good thing.
• 7:35
  It's protection.
• 7:36
  It's, it's one of the most sophisticated responses that your body has.
• 7:40
  It's that brake.
• 7:42
  And the brake is there for a reason, right?
• 7:44
  If you are driving down the road and something comes in your way, you need to be able to brake.
• 7:50
  So freeze is actually an active response happening below the level of conscious choice.
• 7:56
  So you- you're not necessarily deciding to wait.
• 8:00
  Your body is making that call.
• 8:02
  So where it gets really sneaky, and where I think a lot of you are gonna recognize yourselves, is there's something called functional freeze.
• 8:09
  Now, functional freeze doesn't always look like just lying on the couch all day.
• 8:14
  You're probably still answering emails, running a household, hitting deadlines at work.
• 8:19
  You're showing up for every single thing where someone else is counting on you, and from the outside, you look like you have it together.
• 8:27
  And the one thing that's actually for you, that program, the protocol, the appointment, stays untouched.
• 8:34
  So high achievers, like many of you listening to this podcast, are exceptionally good at hiding freeze under productivity, because being busy becomes camouflage.
• 8:46
  You can't possibly be stuck, because look at everything you've done.
• 8:50
  But if you look closely, everything you're doing is something you're accountable to for somebody else.
• 8:57
  That, the thing that's only accountable to you Is the thing that doesn't actually move.
• 9:02
  So I've heard an analogy for this, like a hot stove.
• 9:06
  So you touch a hot stove once, and the next time you get near it, your hand pulls back before you even thought about it.
• 9:12
  Nobody is calling that a lack of discipline.
• 9:15
  You're...
• 9:16
  That's learning, right?
• 9:17
  That's being self-aware.
• 9:19
  So think about what happens when you've done a protocol, a gut protocol, that didn't work, and then another one, and a third one, and a fourth one, and you might even find that your spouse is getting into this as well.
• 9:30
  Every time you go in hopeful, every time you got burned, your body starts pulling back from protocols the same way that your hand pulls back from that stove.
• 9:41
  So that reflex is your body doing exactly what it was designed to do because it learned something, and it's just trying to keep you safe.
• 9:49
  So we see this pattern constantly in women who come to us, and I wanna talk about why gut stuff in particular is such a setup for freeze.
• 10:01
  Most of you listening didn't just wake up with bloating last Tuesday.
• 10:05
  Like, you have been dealing with this for years, some of you decades, and you've probably tried a lot.
• 10:11
  Elimination diets, SIBO treatments, probably more than once, probiotics, enzymes, cleanses, the GI who said your labs looked good.
• 10:20
  You were sent home with fiber and MiraLAX and all the things, and every single time you tried something new, you had hope, and that's the part that people underestimate is you didn't just spend money.
• 10:33
  You spent your hope, and so you let yourself believe maybe it's this one.
• 10:39
  You know, maybe, maybe it's this time.
• 10:42
  So repeated disappointment really is like an injury.
• 10:46
  So every protocol that didn't work taught your nervous system that hope actually costs something.
• 10:53
  So when a new plan shows up, starting it means risking that grief all over again, and then not starting it, like not starting the, the protocol or whatever, actually protects you from that grief.
• 11:07
  So if you never open the program, it can never let you down, right?
• 11:10
  So that little voice says,"What if I try this and it doesn't work again?" That is a protective belief, and what I think is helpful to understand here is that your nervous system is just doing its job after years of evidence, and given everything that you've been through, that is a reasonable conclusion, right?
• 11:30
  It's trying to keep you from getting hurt again.
• 11:33
  So one thing that I would ask you is when you have had symptoms for a long time, they can really just become a part of who you are.
• 11:42
  I'm the constipated one.
• 11:44
  I'm the girl with the tummy ache.
• 11:46
  I'm the one who can't eat at restaurants.
• 11:48
  Your family knows it, right?
• 11:50
  Your friends plan around it.
• 11:51
  It's part of how you move through the world, and I wanna ask you, who would you be without it?
• 11:58
  And if you have a hard time answering that question, that is okay because your body has a reason to not let the symptoms go because they have be- become, like, load-bearing almost.
• 12:12
  They're holding up something in your identity, and pulling that out can feel risky even if logically you know,'I don't wanna be the girl that's constipated.
• 12:22
  I don't wanna be the person who can't eat that.' It does feel risky to give up a part of your identity So something that really surprises people is that feeling better feels unfamiliar.
• 12:36
  And so to your nervous system, unfamiliar registers as unsafe.
• 12:40
  So I see this all the time in our clients.
• 12:44
  They start to improve, and then suddenly they panic.
• 12:47
  They pull back.
• 12:48
  They all of a sudden go MIA.
• 12:49
  They stop logging.
• 12:51
  They stop chatting.
• 12:52
  And it's actually not because the plan stopped working.
• 12:54
  It's because the body hits the brakes because that change is new territory, and it feels like too much, too fast.
• 13:03
  And then there's, of course, that, like, achiever piece, which I know a lot about from personal experience.
• 13:09
  Many of us were raised on the belief that our worth is tied to our output.
• 13:14
  I think that's a lot of women that we work with.
• 13:18
  And when healing becomes one more thing to get right, or you have to follow the plan perfectly, every missed supplement or every off day just becomes evidence that like,"See?
• 13:32
  You can't even do this." And that self-judgment just pushes you deeper into shutdown.
• 13:38
  I have had to unlearn this so many times myself, and it's a constant work in progress.
• 13:43
  And this is why we have nervous system coaching in the VIP portion of our program because When you have gut issues, it's not just about, like, getting rid of your constipation.
• 13:56
  It's how do you actually, like, allow your body to change and not resist the process, and also how do you get out of your own way?
• 14:05
  So if you have spent money on something that you've never used, you have probably called yourself lazy and maybe a lot.
• 14:12
  I want you to just try on a different belief.
• 14:16
  Maybe your body has been protecting you from another disappointment.
• 14:20
  That's probably a lot more accurate.
• 14:22
  I guarantee you are probably not lazy, right?
• 14:27
  All right.
• 14:27
  So if freeze is a body state, then the obvious next question is, well, why can't I just decide my way out of it?
• 14:34
  Like, I am a smart person.
• 14:36
  I understand all of this.
• 14:38
  Shouldn't just knowing that I'm in freeze be enough?
• 14:40
  So we have a nervous system coach, like I said, and she is amazing at calling out these patterns in our clients and teaching them a new way.
• 14:52
  And I've just learned so much from her.
• 14:55
  You can fully understand your pattern.
• 14:57
  You can explain it to your husband, your therapist, whoever.
• 15:02
  Because you can't think your way out of what is stored in your body.
• 15:06
  The work is rewiring that pattern through repetition and experience rather than just, like, swapping in a better thought and, like, changing your mindset, right?
• 15:18
  There's so much stuff about, like,"Just pick a new thought.
• 15:21
  Change your mindset." And while that is so helpful, you have to actually be able to move through those patterns, and that's a lot of what Cara helps our clients do.
• 15:32
  The second piece is that capacity comes before action.
• 15:35
  So regulation is the prerequisite, not the reward.
• 15:39
  So a lot of high-achieving women are trying to execute from a depleted and dysregulated place.
• 15:46
  They're running on fumes.
• 15:47
  They aren't sleeping enough.
• 15:49
  They're mineral depleted.
• 15:51
  They are underfed, and they're judging themselves harshly for the results.
• 15:56
  It's like trying to drive a car with the parking brake on and then getting mad at the car, right?
• 16:02
  The, th- there is a world where this can overlap.
• 16:07
  So that dorsal shutdown state that we talked about, that is also where digestion goes offline.
• 16:14
  So what I wanna connect for you here is that when your nervous system is in protection mode, digestion is not a priority.
• 16:23
  Why would your body spend energy breaking down lunch when it thinks it's in danger, right?
• 16:28
  So stomach acid production will drop.
• 16:30
  Digestive enzymes will drop.
• 16:31
  Motility slows things down, and things will just sit there.
• 16:35
  So if you are constipated, you're bloated, you're unbuttoning your pants by 5:00 PM, you feel like food just sits in your stomach.
• 16:43
  What I want you to hear is that the state that's keeping you from starting is the same state that is keeping your gut stuck.
• 16:52
  It's one system.
• 16:53
  So the freeze that has your protocol sitting unopened is the same physiology that is suppressing your stomach acid and stalling things out.
• 17:04
  That's why I think that this conversation is so important because we cannot separate the two.
• 17:10
  And the loop that I see so often is you notice that you haven't started, then you get frustrated with yourself.
• 17:17
  You decide to buckle down, right?
• 17:19
  You apply more willpower, and what that produces is just more shame, and shame is one of the most powerful drivers of shutdown that there is.
• 17:28
  So now you're just more frozen than when you started, and that cycle just goes over and over and over again.
• 17:34
  And it's what happens when you use a tool that is designed for a regulated nervous system on a nervous system that's in protection mode.
• 17:42
  So you just need a different tool.
• 17:44
  So how does this actually work?
• 17:47
  I wanna give you a handful of things that will help you to move out of this state.
• 17:53
  I am not a nervous system expert.
• 17:55
  I am just sharing what has worked for our clients and things that I have learned from people in my life that are.
• 18:02
  So the first one is just acknowledging it, like,"I am in freeze about this." It almost sounds too simple, but just naming it changes the state more than any strategy that we could give you.
• 18:17
  The moment that you name it, you're just observing it instead of feeling, like, judgment around it, and that does give you back a little bit of agency.
• 18:26
  So you can just notice it.
• 18:27
  You don't have to judge it.
• 18:29
  The second one is shrink the step until it's almost embarrassing.
• 18:34
  So not, like, start the protocol.
• 18:37
  Open the first module.
• 18:38
  And if open the first...
• 18:39
  opening the first module feels like too much, just log in.
• 18:43
  Literally, like, write that on your to-do list.
• 18:45
  Log in.
• 18:45
  That's it.
• 18:46
  Log in, close the tab.
• 18:48
  That step is small enough when it doesn't, like, trip your threat response, right?
• 18:55
  You're showing your nervous system in tiny doses that it is safe to take action.
• 19:00
  The next one is, or the third one is to regulate before you execute.
• 19:04
  So you probably have tools for this.
• 19:07
  Many of you have heard me talk about them.
• 19:09
  So humming, humming very loud, gargling, the 4-7-8 breath, a walk before meals, getting morning light in your eyes.
• 19:17
  You don't have to do all of these, but one of those things can help just give your body a little bit of safety.
• 19:23
  Another one that I teach my kids is, like, if you feel, not necessarily for shutdown, but if you feel activated, you can, like, rub your hands together just, like, very slowly back and forth, and that can help.
• 19:35
  The fourth one is a really big one, and honestly, one of my favorites if I'm feeling in a dorsal state or shut down, and that is co-regulation.
• 19:44
  So your nervous system regulates off of other nervous systems.
• 19:48
  That is just how physiology is.
• 19:51
  That's why a baby calms down when you hold them.
• 19:54
  It's why one calm friend in the room can totally change the energy of the room.
• 19:59
  And it's also why I see women who did absolutely nothing for years start moving immediately once they have support.
• 20:06
  So doing hard things next to someone is a physiological intervention A simple example of this is like if you are feeling unmotivated or like you can't do anything, go sit at a coffee shop.
• 20:21
  This is one of my favorite things to do.
• 20:23
  If I'm feeling tired or like,"Oh, I have so much to do," but I'm not feeling motivated, I will just go work from a coffee shop and co-regulate and it's amazing how much that can help.
• 20:33
  And then the last thing is just knowing that setbacks are information.
• 20:37
  So when you miss a day or a week or you fall off, like it's not failure, it's just information.
• 20:43
  And so not judging that.
• 20:46
  So if you take one thing from today, I want it to be this.
• 20:51
  It's that freeze or that freeze state is protection.
• 20:55
  So your, your body wants safety and it wants support and it gets worse with pressure and shame.
• 21:03
  Your body has just been doing its job and now it just needs a different kind of help to move.
• 21:09
  And if you are in freeze about your gut specifically, I don't think the answer is another protocol that you white-knuckle by yourself.
• 21:18
  The answer is the right plan with people beside you.
• 21:22
  That is exactly why we built Gut Together the way that we did.
• 21:25
  It's a one-on-one program where we use functional testing to find out what's driving your symptoms built around a plan that works for your body and walking through it in sequence.
• 21:37
  You're not just handed a PDF.
• 21:39
  You have a practitioner in your corner.
• 21:42
  You have check-ins.
• 21:43
  And then in the VIP option, there's a reason for this, we have weekly live support calls with other women where you can co-regulate, you can chat, you can hear what's working for other people.
• 21:56
  There is a reason for that.
• 21:58
  There's also a reason for the nervous system calls as well because our goal is for it to be the last program that you ever need.
• 22:06
  So if you have been sitting on a decision to get support for your gut, I want you to just take one step, whatever that is.
• 22:16
  Maybe reading the website, opening the application, booking a call, whatever it is, take one small step and if you need to borrow a belief, you can take mine that healing is possible, that you don't have to have symptoms forever and that you are not undisciplined for feeling stuck.
• 22:38
  Your body is just trying to protect you.
• 22:40
  So I hope that this episode is helpful to just understand a little bit about why maybe you feel stuck and why you do the things that you do.
• 22:50
  So I would love any feedback.
• 22:52
  If you're listening to this and you found it helpful, please send me an email or a DM on Instagram.
• 22:58
  I would love to hear and I'll talk to you next week on the next episode