Latest / Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women / #31. You'll Never Heal Your Chronic Illness Until You See the One Thing You Do for Everyone but Yourself

Transcript

#31. You'll Never Heal Your Chronic Illness Until You See the One Thing You Do for Everyone but Yourself · Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can be the most love woman in the room, with the most friends, the most family around you, and still feel like not one of them actually knows you.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is Why You Got Sick.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Tecla D. Francesco, certified mind-body practitioner, and certified holistic life coach.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast is for women living with chronic illness, autoimmune disease, IBS, chronic fatigue, PCOS,
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: endometriosis, migraines, fibromyalgia, or persistent symptoms that no one can fully explain.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Twice a week we look at how emotion drives chronic illness in women.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: One episode goes deeper into the pattern beneath the symptoms.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other gives you a quick way to interrupt the cycle.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're done organizing your life around symptoms and flare-ups, this is where that changes.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast shares mind-body education.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not medical advice and is designed to complement not replace your medical care.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's begin.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, you'll discover how a lifetime of not being truly seen may be driving the symptoms no one can explain.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll learn the hidden habit keeping you invisible even to the people closest to you.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you'll learn what changes in your body when you stop hiding and let yourself be seen.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a difference between being surrounded and being seen.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: You are not short on people.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am sure of that.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: because I know the exact type of woman who is listening to this right now.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have friends, family, and most likely a partner.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: People who would show up for you in a heartbeat.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: On paper, you are deeply connected and supported.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: But look at who does the seeing in those relationships.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're the one who reads the room.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're the one who knows something is off with your sister before she's even said a single word.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You are the one people come to when their life is falling apart.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: The one who holds it all together and says the right thing and checks in the next day to make sure they're okay.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know everyone else's inner world inside and out, but you're own you keep to yourself.
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Someone asks you how you're really doing and you give them the version that keeps the conversation moving.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because the true answer is heavy and fucking tough and you've decided that they don't need to carry it.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're going through one of the hardest seasons of your life and the people closest to you have no real idea because you've gotten so good at functioning that nothing shows.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're scared and you tell no one.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because the role you play is the strong one.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the strong ones don't fall apart, at least not out loud.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is the pattern.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's called silencing your own truth.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And every time you do it, it feels like you're protecting everyone around you.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: and it feels like you're taking on the burden so they don't have to.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: But here's what it's actually costing you.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: The people closest to you are not actually close to you.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're close to a version of you that you have built and performed and maintained for years.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: They know her well, they love her, and they have never once met the woman living underneath her.
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: You didn't start hiding your true self for no reason, okay?
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Somewhere back you learned that the real you was too much, or not enough, or a burden, or just not safe to hand over to anyone else.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you tucked her away, and you've kept her there for so long that you've hopped for gotten she's the real you.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is where you've ended up.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Loved by a lot of people, but truly known by none of them.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Carrying everything hard on your own while everyone around you assumes you're fine because you have always made sure you look fine.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And being unknown like that year after year takes a real toll on your body.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your body has been in on the secret the whole time.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Holding everything you never said and it has been keeping the cost.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you about a woman I work with because her story shows you exactly how this pattern develops.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: When she was young, she went through a traumatic physical injury.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what came out of that was a cascade of chronic illness diagnoses that changed the entire shape of her life.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So while everyone around her was living an ordinary, fairly privileged young life, she was dealing with things that were life changing.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Things that were at points, life threatening.
• 4:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: and the people around her, her friends, her family, they were good people, they still are.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: But some of them were young and some of them were emotionally immature, and they had never been anywhere near what she was living through.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was so far outside of anything they'd experienced that they genuinely couldn't meet her in it.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: They couldn't understand it.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: They couldn't even really empathize with it because they had no reference point at all.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So every time she opened up, she came away feeling, let down.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not because anyone meant her harm, just because what she needed and what they were able to give her were miles apart.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this didn't go on for a season.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It went on for over a decade.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: More than 10 years of reaching for support and not being met with the depth she needed.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So eventually, she stopped reaching.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: She started saying, I'm fine because I'm fine
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: easier than opening up and being disappointed all over again.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a part of her that decided she would rather protect herself than keep handing her truth to people who couldn't hold it.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: She shows up fully for her friends.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: She just stopped expecting them to show up for her the same way.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the part I really want you to hear because this is where it lives in the body.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: When we started working together we noticed a pattern.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: She would have an interaction with people and give them a surface level answer.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: The kind of everything's good with me answer, when things were not good at all.
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And afterwards, she would flare.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our reaction would come in her body in the hours and days that followed.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: When we traced it back, what we landed on was this.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: giving that surface level answer felt like the ultimate betrayal, a betrayal of herself, of her own experience, of what she was actually living through, and her body was responding to that betrayal every time.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even when her mind had moved on and rationalized that and called it fine, that reaction was the truth trying to get out, and every time she overwrote it and smothered it over, her body registered the override.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what is actually happening in the body when you do this day after day and year after year?
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a study I come back to all the time.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 2007, researchers at UCLA looked at what goes on inside the body of someone who feels lonely.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: They didn't measure how many people were in someone's life.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: They measured how lonely a person felt on the inside.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then they looked at the activity inside that person's immune cells.
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what they found is the reason I wanted to make this entire episode.
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the people who felt lonely, disconnected, unseen, unknown, more than 200 genes were behaving differently.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: The genes that drive inflammation were turned up.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: The genes that protect you, the ones that defend you against viruses and infection, were turned down.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the body of a woman who feels unseen is running more inflammation and less protection at the gene level every single day.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the part I really want you to sit with because it's the whole thing.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: None of it was based on how many people were around her.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was based on how she felt.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can have a full house, a packed calendar, a phone that never stops ringing, and if you feel like nobody actually knows you, your body responds as though you are completely on your own.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a reason it works that way.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: For almost all of human history, being cut off from your people meant you did not survive.
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the body learned to treat feeling disconnected as one of the most dangerous things that could happen to it, and it still does.
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It cannot tell the difference between physically being alone and sitting in a room full of people you have never let all the way in.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the why, this is why we care about this.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: because inflammation is a driver for almost every chronic illness there is.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you've been generating it from the inside for years, every time you decided the real you was too much to share, that's something to pay attention to.
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: So here's where we start.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I want to be clear.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not asking you to suddenly crack yourself wide open to everyone in your life.
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's not it, but it starts with catching yourself in the act.
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a tiny moment right before you hand someone the edited version of you.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Somebody asks how you are and there's a split second before I'm good comes out of your mouth on autopilot.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want you to start noticing that gap.
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: That half second with a whole pattern lives.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the moment you decide again that the real answer isn't safe to give.
• 8:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to do anything differently yet, just catch it.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And notice how often it happens in a single day.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: For most women, once they start looking, it's everywhere, and that alone is confronting.
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once you can see it, you can take the first step, though.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Then pick one person.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: One person you actually trust, and let them see one true thing.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Something real you've been caring that they have no idea about, because you made sure they didn't.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't have to be the whole story, not every door open at once, just one thing.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you're not handing it to them to fix.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is important.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're not asking them to solve it or save you or even respond perfectly.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The entire point is you're letting them see it.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the entire move.
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Letting one person witness one true thing about what you're actually living through.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what tends to happen.
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: The first time feels genuinely uncomfortable because every part of you has been trained to believe that it's not allowed.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then more often than not, that person meets you somewhere you didn't expect.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: and then your body gets a brand new piece of information.
• 10:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: That being seen did not cost you what you always believed it would.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's how the pattern starts to break.
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: One thing to prepare for here, if the person you choose is a man, your partner or someone close to you, know that he is wired very differently from you.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: His first instinct and his gut reaction is going to be to solve the problem.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: He wants to fix the problem for you.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's not him failing to listen.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just how he works.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if you go to him with this and you choose a man to share this with, go in ready for that.
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can even tell him upfront that you're not looking for a solution.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: You just want him to hear you.
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: That will set you up for success.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's recap what we talked about today.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: First, you can be loved by everyone around you and still go through life feeling unseen, because you're always the one doing the seeing.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Second, when you feel lonely, your body produces more inflammation and weakens anti-viral defenses right down at the gene level.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Third, the pattern starts to break the moment you let one person see one true thing, and then you keep finding something that feels true to your experience and who you really are from here on out.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're still listening, you're at least open to the idea that you're emotions and your chronic illness are connected.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you still might be on the fence because honestly, it sounds like a lot, like one more big hard thing to figure out on top of everything
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I built a free chat GPT prompt that takes your actual symptoms and shows you in under 30 seconds what could be going on underneath them.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to dig, you don't have to already understand any of this.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: You just answer honestly and it does the work of connecting the dots for you.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The link is in the show notes and right now it's completely free but that won't always be the case.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So go and try it before that changes.
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It takes 30 seconds.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you in the next episode.