Latest / Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women / #3. The Silent Belief Women With Chronic Illness Can't Escape — And Why It's Showing Up in Your Body

Transcript

#3. The Silent Belief Women With Chronic Illness Can't Escape — And Why It's Showing Up in Your Body · Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: At some point, you've probably replayed a moment in your head and thought, I shouldn't have said that.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I should have handled that better.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: At first, it feels like regret, but if that thought keeps looping, something shifts.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: It stops being about what you did and it starts becoming about who you are.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: That shift is shame, because shame isn't I did something bad.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Shame is when the mind decides, I am bad.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why you got sick.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Teclody Francesco, certified mind-body practitioner, and certified holistic life coach.
• 0:36
  [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.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Twice a week we look at how emotion drives chronic illness in women.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: One episode goes deeper into the pattern beneath the symptoms.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other gives you a quick way to interrupt the cycle.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're done organizing your life around symptoms and flare-ups, this is where that changes.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast shows mind-body education.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is not medical advice and is designed to complement, not replace your medical care.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's begin.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this episode, you'll discover why shame isn't about doing something wrong.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the belief that something about you is wrong.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: How high-functioning women quietly carry shame without realizing it, especially when they feel responsible for everything.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And how that internal belief can show up physically as exhaustion, pain, and chronic symptoms.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about how shame actually forms, because it doesn't start with the belief that you're a bad person.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It usually starts with a moment.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: You say something you wish you hadn't said.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: You lose patience with someone.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: You react in a way that doesn't match the person you're trying to be.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: In a healthy emotional process, the brain registers that as information.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't like how I handled that.
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's guilt.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Guilt stays attached to the behavior, but shame does something different.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead of evaluating the behavior, the mind starts judging the person.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: It moves from, I shouldn't have said that, too.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: What kind of person says something like that?
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if that question keeps looping long enough, it lands on a conclusion.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm the bad person.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the shift.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now the situation isn't just about something you did.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's about who you believe you are.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And once that belief takes hold, it changes how you interpret everything else.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: You start holding yourself to impossible standards.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: You expect yourself to be endlessly patient, always composed, always understanding, always the bigger person.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when you inevitably fall short of that, the mind doesn't just register it as a mistake.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: It treats it as confirmation.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: See, this is who you are.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now here's why this matters.
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the brain believes something about your identity, it keeps scanning for evidence to support it.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So every moment where you feel impatient or frustrated or reactive or overwhelmed, it doesn't just feel like a normal human response.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: It feels like proof that something about you is wrong.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that internal conclusion carries a huge emotional load.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: it's heavy emotion.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The kind that makes you shrink and stay small.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: The kind that makes you second guess yourself.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: The kind that makes you constantly monitor your behavior so you don't become that person.
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the pattern.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about how this shows up in real life.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most of the time, shame isn't attached to something small.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's attached to something bigger.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: A moment in the past that you look back on now and you think, I should have handled that differently.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it was how you reacted in a relationship.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Something you said to someone you cared about.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: A decision you made during a time when you were overwhelmed, younger, or just trying to survive what was happening in your life.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the time, you did the best you could with the awareness you had.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: But years later, you look back at that same moment with a completely different level of perspective.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're older now, more emotionally mature, more aware.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: You understand things differently.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And because of that, your mind starts rewriting the meaning of that moment.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: You think how could I have acted like that?
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: How could I have said that?
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I should have known better and slowly the conclusion shifts.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: It stops being about the situation and the context you are in.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: It stops being about what you knew at the time and it becomes something much harsher.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a bad person for doing that.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I see this constantly with women who are thoughtful, reflective, and highly self-aware.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: They look back at earlier versions of themselves through the lens of who they are today, and instead of seeing growth, they see evidence.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Evidence that they weren't good enough, evidence that they hurt somebody, evidence that something about their character is flawed.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Before I reversed my diagnoses, I carried pieces of that too.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: There were moments from earlier in my life that I replayed in my head thinking about how I would have handled them differently now.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And every time I revisited those memories, I wasn't just remembering the event.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was judging the person I had been.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when that kind of judgment lives in your mind long enough, it stops feeling like something you're thinking, and it starts feeling like something you are.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So why does this matter for the body?
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because the body doesn't just respond to what happens in your life.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: It responds to how your mind interprets what happens.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And shame changes that interpretation in a very specific way.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: When someone carries the belief that they're a bad person, the brain starts filtering experiences through that lens.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: situations that might otherwise feel neutral or manageable, start to feel more threatening, more personal, more emotionally charged.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your mind is constantly asking a version of the same question.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did I do something wrong again?
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did I hurt someone?
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Did I mess this up?
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: That kind of internal scrutiny keeps the brain in a heightened state of monitoring.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's always evaluating whether you cross the line or failed to meet the standard you've set for yourself.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when the brain stays in that kind of a value would have state for a long periods of time, the body treats it as ongoing stress.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Stress hormones remain elevated more often than they should be.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Inflammatory activity increases, immune responses become more reactive.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: None of this happens because the body is broken.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It happens because the brain is constantly signaling that something is wrong and needs our attention.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over time, the constant signaling begins to affect how the body regulates itself.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Energy becomes harder to maintain, recovery takes longer, symptoms become easier to trigger.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Different people experience that in different ways, for some women it shows up as digestive issues, for others it's fatigue, migraines, autoimmune symptoms, or widespread pain.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Different diagnoses but the same underlying dynamic.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: The body is responding to a mind that has been living under the assumption that something about it is fundamentally bad.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when someone carries that belief for long enough, it starts shaping how they treat themselves.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: They start trying very hard to be a good person.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: They become extremely careful with other people's feelings.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: They over-explain themselves.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: They apologize quickly.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: They try to be patient, accommodating, understanding.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes far beyond what the situation actually requires.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time, they become much harsher with themselves and they would ever be with someone else.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: They start to ignore their own needs.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: They push through when they're exhausted.
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: They compromise boundaries.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: They assume that if something is going wrong, it must somehow be their fault.
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you step back and look at that pattern, three things are happening all at the same time.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're self-rejection because you're constantly judging yourself as not good enough.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's compensation, because you're trying very hard to prove that you're a good person.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's disconnection from your own authenticity, because instead of responding naturally in situations, you're constantly editing yourself.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So instead of feeling safe inside your own mind, you're always correcting yourself, always trying to be better, and caring that kind of internal pressure for years, creates a really heavy emotional load for the body to live under.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is the why.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why something that feels emotional or psychological can eventually show up physically in the body.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because when the mind spends years believing that something about you is fundamentally bad, the body ends up living inside that pressure.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And over time, the pressure starts showing up as fatigue, inflammation, pain, flare-ups, and chronic symptoms.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what interrupts this?
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because if shame is the belief that I am bad, the shift has to start there.
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Most people try to solve shame by analyzing the past even more, so they replay the situation again and again, trying to understand it better, trying to explain why they acted the way they did.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that usually keeps the loop going.
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: The interruption happens when you recognize something much simpler.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: The person you are judging in that memory is not the person you are today.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You are judging a post-version of yourself with a present day mind.
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're looking back with more awareness, more maturity, more understanding than you had at the time.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's not a fair comparison, because the earlier version of you didn't have access to the education or knowledge or experience or resources or the hindsight you have right now.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course you would handle it differently today.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the whole point of growth.
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what's scary about shame is that it collapses time.
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It takes something you did years ago and treats it as evidence of who you still are now.
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the interruption is separating those two versions of you.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead of asking, how could I have done that?
• 10:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You start asking a different question.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: What did that version of me know at the time?
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: What was she dealing with?
• 10:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: What resources did she actually have in that moment?
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I worked with a woman who carried deep shame about how she treated her sister when they were children.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: As an adult, she said she started blaming herself for some of her sister's struggles later in life.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the story she'd built in her mind was that those childhood moments meant she was a bad person.
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when we slowed down and looked at the situation through the lens of who she was actually at the time, something shifted.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was a child.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: She didn't have the emotional tools.
• 11:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: She didn't have the awareness she has now.
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when she finally looked at that younger version of herself with the same understanding she would give anyone else, the story began to change.
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not I'm a bad person, it became, I was a child who didn't know how to handle what I was feeling.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when that shift happens, the body feels it, because the mind is no longer holding that memory as evidence that something about you is wrong.
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: It starts seeing it for what it actually was, a moment in human life.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when you step back and look at this pattern, you can see what's really happening.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: A moment from your post gets reinterpreted through the lens of who you are today.
• 12:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And instead of recognizing that growth, the mind turns it into a judgment about your character.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not a handle that badly, but I'm a bad person.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then that belief sits in the background reshaping how you treat yourself, how much pressure you carry, and how your body responds to that pressure over time.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And once you start recognizing that pattern, something important changes.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: You stop assuming that the story your mind built about that moment is the truth.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: because shame isn't the only emotional pattern that can show up physically in the body.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to start identifying what emotional patterns might actually be sitting underneath your chronic symptoms, go to the show notes and click the link for access to my free chatGBT prompt.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It will help you connect your specific physical symptoms to possible emotional roots in less than 30 seconds.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's free.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, that's all for today.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will see you in the next episode.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a mini, just a few minutes and one practical shift you can start applying right away.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: See you then.