108: "Chronic pain led me to healing in ways I didn’t know were possible" with Jennifer Johnson

[00:00:00] chazmith:  Welcome to Our Power Is Within Podcast. I'm your host, Chazmith, and my mission for this podcast is to inspire you to take your power back to realize that you are the healer that you've been looking for all along. We are capable of healing in mind, in body, and in soul. 

I wanted to start this week off once again sharing another Apple Podcast review that someone shared because it's fun and I appreciate it.

So Winter Ling's music says in the depths of Neuroplastic pain recovery, hope is something. Sometimes, sorry, all that we have and this podcast brings an ocean of it. Thank you. Winter Link's music. Thank you too. I appreciate you taking your time to leave kind words and support this podcast so that other people can discover it and find hope as well.

A new week equals a new challenge. But before I get started on the new challenge, I do wanna ask if you guys have had a chance to connect with someone this past week. If you do remember and you listened into last week's episode, the challenge was to reach out to someone that you care about whether it was a significant other, a friend or a family member, and set up a time to connect with them.

And that could have been in person or on the phone. It could have been out. Doing some activity or in your home, whatever worked for you, wherever you're at in your recovery stages. So let's see, what did I do this week? I actually had the best time connecting. I really feel like I really put myself out there and.

Had a good time doing a few different things. So one of the things I did was I went to a coffee tea, wine bar with four other girlfriends. A couple of them didn't know each other, and I brought them all together, which was really fun. I went and played video games with another friend at an old school arcade, which is something I just love to do every once in a while.

I love to just take an hour and just go act like a big kid playing those old school games like Pacman and Gallagher. And then I also went and caught a sunset with a bike ride. With my neighbor, and it was actually her first time to see a sunset at the dock here in town, so that was really cool to get to share that experience with her.

And then the last thing I got to go back to work after quite a bit of time off. That's a long story, but I was so excited to be back at work and I realized how I left every single night smiling and just feeling so satisfied. I love getting to work in hospitality and being a part of people having a wonderful experience and celebration. It really lights me up. Yeah, feel grateful. Those are a few ways that I was able to create some enriching connections this week. If you had any connections this week that you want to share with me, feel free to send me a message and yeah, let me know how it went for you.

This week's challenge is going to be simple. We're just gonna take it all back to breath. Anytime that you start to feel nervous or anxious, or worried or fearful, or perhaps you notice a story playing in your head, just try to come back to breath. Just see if you can slow your breathing down. Begin to pull the air into your belly.

And just become aware of your breath, because when we're aware of our breath, we can begin to be in the present now moment. And if we're in the present now moment, we aren't stuck in those stories, that fear or those worries. So I don't have a set agenda this week. It's not five minutes a day. It's not a set time or a set style of breath.

It's really just you beginning to become more aware of the undertone of your emotional being or the stories that are playing in your head, and then use that tool that we call breath to bring you back to present. Our guest today is Jennifer from Thought By Thought Healing, and Jennifer joins us today to share her personal story of overcoming and recovering from a laundry list of chronic symptoms.

And she shares how this journey has changed her life. She now continues on her journey of growth while also supporting other people along the way as a coach and. I love testimonials. I love hearing all the different ways that people approach healing and the different journeys and the different trials and tribulations and how we've overcome them and the growth that we experience through this healing journey that far supersedes the relief of physical symptoms.

I'm excited to share this one with you today. So let's go ahead and introduce Jennifer. All right. I have Jennifer with thought by Thought healing with us today to have a fun conversation about healing. 

[00:05:26] Jennifer: Thanks for having me. 

[00:05:27] chazmith: Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for being here. Yeah, I wanna actually get right into You.

So Perfect. I think a really good place to start is, I know that you're now doing your own podcast and you have your own coaching practice, but obviously you had to get there somehow. And so I'd love if you could share with the listeners a little bit about your journey, maybe where like the bulk of it started and what you spent time recovering from, and just what that recovering and healing journey was like for you. 

[00:06:01] Jennifer: Yeah it's always such a interesting thing to start talking about your journey because. For me, I'm like, where did it start? When did this start? And I think that my first symptoms that I can remember now that I understand symptoms was probably, let's see, I'm 42 now and I was probably like 21.

And they were like stomach symptoms, but I didn't understand what was happening at all. And then fast forward and Probably about seven years ago is when it got to the point where it was stealing my life from me and it's this interesting thing of talking about the symptoms without describing them in too much detail, but I will just talk a little bit about some of the symptoms that I had and the diagnoses that I had.

So I had the diagnosis of fibromyalgia, central sensitization, which is just a fancy word for TMS, torn rotator cuff, INS, carpal tunnel,  SIBO, which is small intestine bacteria overgrowth TMJ stress, headaches, back pain, foot pain, high arches, or too high of arches. Plantar fasciitis. I'm reading from a list right now.

I feel like I can go on forever. forever, I just had whole body pain. And I didn't understand what was happening and so I just kept making my life smaller and avoiding doing the things that I loved because because I thought it was the things that I was doing that was causing the pain.

And I think we can probably all relate to that, right? 

[00:07:37] chazmith: Yeah, absolutely. It's, yes, smaller and smaller because of the fear factor. Tis is a huge list. So was this just like a slow build? Did it all come on at once? Were you what was the timeline like in terms of getting these diagnoses and experiencing this list of symptoms?

[00:08:17] Jennifer: Yeah, I think that most of it was a slow build and then a bunch of them hit at the I'm gonna say at the same time, but meaning they moved around and one, was worse than the other during certain months. And the fibromyalgia, the central sensitization, which means all over full body pain. That was more the five, seven years ago piece. And the rest of it was just things like the TMJ and headaches and back pain. Those were things that were more of a slow build and I think it's really easy with TMJ and stress headaches. Even like the “torn rotator cuff" which was not what it was, the carpal tunnel, all those things, because I, “had a reason for them”.

So yeah, like you mentioned, I'm a chronic pain coach, but I'm also an interpreter for the deaf and hard hearing, and so I use my hands a lot. So they just told me you probably have carpal tunnel from using your hands so much so I had thought I had these reasons for all of them.

The torn rotator cuff was from camping. There was something that I could point to. It didn't quite send me into the pain or the fear cycle as to when I started getting the full body pain and I didn't have an answer for it, what was causing these things. And so once I started getting symptoms that the doctors didn't really have a reason for, that's when I went into fear mode.

And then there was just this huge onset of symptoms. Does that make sense? 

[00:09:52] chazmith: Absolutely. And thanks for just clarifying that. So we understood.

[00:09:57] Jennifer: Yeah I think just some of those things I just wanna mention like the carpal tunnel, I wanna be clear that I did not have carpal tunnel, right? So I was diagnosed with it and I had pain that was that was similar.

The description was the same as carpal tunnel, but I did not have a pinched nerve. And so that is true also of SIBO. I tested positive for SIBO, small intestine bacteria overgrowth. But once I started applying TMS or mind body methods to it, I realized that I didn't actually have those things.

[00:10:28] chazmith: Yes. And I'm so glad you clarified that because that's a thing and I'm sure we'll either get into this or I'm sure you've read like some of Dr. Sarno's work, right? At this point I don't know anyone who knows TMS and hasn't. And he even says in one of his books how we call things or we've come to understand things like Carpal Tunnel and it's all widespread and we think everybody has it now yet everybody's getting all these specialized computer stations.

But then he gives that example of what's the excuse then? 50 plus years ago when women would sit for 10, 12 hours at a time on these typewriters that are definitely not user-friendly and yet no one had it, no one even knew what it was. 

[00:11:11] Jennifer: Yeah. I find this concept of there being popular pain syndromes to be really interesting.

[00:11:18] chazmith: Yeah. Yeah. Popular or as he said in Vogue. Yeah. Like the brain learns what's popular right now.

[00:11:25] Jennifer: Yeah absolutely. 

[00:11:26] chazmith: So you had this journey where you started getting all these symptoms and you started minimizing your life essentially making it smaller because of fear.

You thought that it was your life and these things you were doing that was causing all this. So what happens next? 

[00:11:44] Jennifer: Yeah  it just became tiny. I used to do west Coast swing dancing, which is like modern swing dancing. And so I did back in the day what I'm gonna call, low level competitions.

And  I loved it. I loved dancing and as my feet became the central point of my pain. And when your feet are your pain, you can't walk. And so I clearly had to give up my passion of dancing. So I stopped dancing. My social anxiety went through the roof. And that was because, and we haven't got into what is the perfect storm of what's actually really the root of all these TMS symptoms I have. But I began to make my social life smaller and smaller also because I was no longer confident in who I was as a person. My identity had been lost, I'm gonna say at this point in time because of the pain, but it wasn't really the pain.

And so my social life just dwindled. My passions, I lost them. I used to like to work with tools and create things with wood, and I just stopped doing any of that and just allowed the fear of what if I remember one day thinking, what if I only have 10,000 steps left?

How do I wanna use those 10,000 steps? And so I just stopped walking as much as I possibly could because that fear had just taken root in me. And so I made my life as safe as I thought that I could make it by removing things from my life. And literally, as we know in doing that, made my life more dangerous by making it smaller and trying to make it safe.

I actually taught my brain that life was dangerous in every area. I got like a handicapped parking pass and 5 0 4 plan at my work and all this stuff cuz I really thought my life was coming to an end when it came to movement. And all of that was fear-based. So it's, so at this point in time, my story, my, I have all these symptoms and my life is very small and I have no idea of kind of the the emotional backing of any of it.

[00:13:55] chazmith: And what about gosh, loss of joy. Now the things that you're most passionate about, you can't do, correct? 

[00:14:03] Jennifer: Yes, absolutely. So it's real. I do remember at one point in time, and I'm actually staring at it right now, thinking I'm going to take my water bottle and I'm gonna put stickers on it of everything that I can do.

And so I, there was this sliver of hope that I still had of what can I do with this pain? And so I have things like go camping and I have coffee and flowers and campfires and ferries things and my, and a cat. So just things that even while I was in pain I could enjoy. But as far as what are the things that I can do, it definitely.

It definitely gotten much smaller. I, as you can tell, I had a lot of things and still, and do again, have a lot of things that I enjoyed doing. But part of safety for me had been removing those things and so therefore there went joy. And happiness, laughing and all those things. Yeah. I'm 

[00:14:56] chazmith: glad that you had that positive attitude still where you did focus on what you could do.

That's really cool. And I did wanna highlight and say that how you explained that in your effort to make your world small, in order to make it safe, actually made it more dangerous. That is such a wonderful. And simple explanation for what we are actually teaching our brain. That is, that's awesome. I've never heard it explained that way.

[00:15:21] Jennifer: Yeah. It's just the, 

[00:15:23] chazmith: the fact that 

[00:15:25] Jennifer: avoidance teaches our brain that the thing that we are afraid of is in fact dangerous. And so then life just becomes, Dangerous and we reaffirm it by our actions and then that wires it and it becomes true in our bodies. It's crazy. I heard in one of your in one of your podcasts you just talked about how you never would've expected that you were so into brain science, and I just love brain science.

It's so fascinating and very cool to me to realize as your podcast is called, how much power that we do have over. So many things, 

[00:16:06] chazmith: right? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So where did you first learn about Dr. Sarno and just mind body medicine and kick this, like the healing into gear? Yeah, 

[00:16:19] Jennifer: it's all backwards for me.

I heard of Sarno last so let's see. How did it all start? It, I'm gonna start with at one point in time realizing that journaling and my relationship with God, so I'm a Christian had become dangerous for me. And they were, it was really toxic for me to write or to journal. And I had these journals, like seven years of journals that were full of repetitive fear.

So just writing about shame and guilt and fear and judgment and just all these really distressing emotions. I had seven years of journals and I realized at some point in time uhoh something's wrong here and I need to get I need to burn and get rid of these. These journals that are full of this wi And now I know now that every time I wrote about it, I just wired it.

And so I decided to go camping by myself and I went camping and I took my seven years of journals with me and I went out and I took each of those pages that had all like these emotions on them. And I ripped each one out and summarized the emotion that I was feeling. Shame regret fear whatever, anger, and I ripped it up.

Crumpled it in a ball and threw it in the fire. And I, that was my way of giving it to God and just burning it up and just saying, I don't wanna carry, I don't wanna carry these emotions anymore. And it was really during that trip, I just really realized that my emotions were were really powerful in my body, but I still didn't realize that they were related to my pain.

And but then I was reading a neuroscience book by a Christian author about just emotions. And I started thinking wait a second. There's some power in my emotions. I think I had always thought that emotions were something to avoid and they were not good. They were not something that we were to move towards.

We were, they were something to get rid of. And Which I think is pretty common of people with t m s. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:18:22] chazmith: Did you I'm gonna ask you two questions. One, d, being a Christian, having faith in God, at any point when you were just on this kind of downward spiral, did you ever doubt God? Or did you ever have that mindset like, why are you doing this to me?

Why is this happening to me? Or were you, did you like stay steadfast in your faith and trust that there was a reason behind it 

[00:18:46] Jennifer: all? A hundred percent doubted it, Uhhuh. When I work with client clients, which I know we're not there yet, but I, there are so many areas that we can have danger in and fear.

And if you fear the God that loves you or you fear your religion, then it no longer is a safe place. And so for me, part of healing had to do with realizing that I had a concept of my God that was not true. And I feared him. And in that fear also came doubting. What if he's not real, first of all?

And if I feel this shame and anger and frustration from my personal life what does that say about God? So a big part of my journey does have to do with whether or not God was good and whether he was dangerous for me or not. And I actually think that is some, like we all have groups of people that we click with.

And so for me I like to work around. Work with people who are Christians that are struggling with that. Yes, to answer your question, I think that was a big part of it. In the same way as if you grow up with a family that Is dangerous. If you are in a relationship with a God that is dangerous, then it's gonna have the same effect on your nervous system and on your pain level.

Absolutely. 

[00:20:07] chazmith: That's a really good point. Thank you for making that. And also, isn't it so interesting how unique everyone's healing journey is and what really resonates or works for one person versus the next? Because here you are having this. Epiphany realization early on before you even realized it's connected to your physical symptoms, that your journals are heavy and not serving you.

And yeah, so you release them. Yet so many of us actually find value in to grabbing the pen and paper and doing exactly what you had been doing in order to actually get more connected to their emotions and express them. So it's interesting how, what one person did. Was like almost opposite of what might work for somebody else.

[00:20:53] Jennifer: Yeah. And I wanna clarify too, that my story ends up changing and writing ends up becoming the most important tool I had. So in this I believe that in the same way our brains can perceive one thing as dangerous, like for me, walking or using my hands or sitting in the same way our brain can perceive and operate within something like writing as dangerous. And the way that I wrote in the past was just something like, I have shame. I have shame, I have so much shame. What do I do with the shame?  I just wrote myself into victim mode. And taking more distressing emotions. There was no relief out of it.

Whereas now when I write it's completely different story and it's freeing and it has truth in it. It helps me to find so for me, healing is about being known. So it's about me getting to know myself, my fears, my emotions my shame, my, all these things that I was carrying, getting to know myself because I never was willing to do the work, to get to know myself, getting to know myself, and then allowing myself to be known by God who loves me in that state.

And for me, the way I describe it is I discovered the false me. The raw me, and the true me and the raw me often reflects whether I'm living in my false identity or in my true identity. And my false identity is full of shame and it's fear and all this anger and yuckiness whereas the true me, I don't have to live in fear.

I can be afraid and for me, I go to God with that. But I can have these emotions, but they don't get to be my identity. So I feel like a lot of the work around healing had has to do with identifying what is the false narrative. I think we all know that the way we talk about ourselves, the way we describe ourselves matters.

And I can become a danger to my own brain by the way that I like talk about. The things I hate about myself and the things that reflect poorly and And so a lot of the work for me was discovering, oh, I'm claiming and viewing myself in these really toxic ways and that those are all lies about me.

That is not me, that is not, that is underneath all that fear and those emotions is a true raw me, the me that I was created to be. And that's how I get to live, So it was empowering of getting to know what false pretense I was living under.

[00:23:28] chazmith: That is really awesome. And so writing became a pivotal component for you.

 Through that process as things started to unfold and you started to learn more and understand the mind body connection, what else was really powerful for you? 

[00:23:42] Jennifer: Yeah, so I think I'll go back just a little bit. And after that camping trip I was just once again researching, what causes foot pain and, trying to find like what was the source of this pain that I had.

And I found this physical therapist had a description. He basically said central sensitization is is when your fight or flight nervous system is activated chronically, and you don't have to get your rest and digest to be engaged. And I read that and I was just like, that is a hundred percent me.

I am completely in fight or flight all the time. And so, literally in that moment, I knew I can heal then. I can do this. That's me. I didn't know it was called TMS ,I didn't know it was neuroplastic pain. I didn't know about the mind body connection. I barely knew about the fact that our autonomic nervous system has two parts.

I didn't know any of this really. And so from there I remember I had scheduled an appointment with a new doctor and that week I met with her cuz my old one had retired and she was aware that you can heal from chronic pain, which I had not gotten really that message yet. And then I remembered that somebody a year passed had mentioned DNRS to me, dynamic neural retraining systems, I think, is that right?

Yep. You got it. 

Okay. And so I I bought that Program and went away for three days and just threw my all into that program knowing, and I just knew that I was gonna heal and I think that served me well because I never, once I heard of it, I wasn't like, oh, maybe.

Well, that was a false statement. I did still think my stomach issues because I had a SIBO test that was positive. So I thought that my stomach issues were probably structural, but everything else was going to be what they call it limbic dysregulation or something.

So I took the program and I saw maybe 20% decrease in pain maybe. But it was enough that it reaffirmed to me, yes, I can do this. So I did that for a couple months and it was, I. Helpful, but I knew that the tools that were involved in that were a good start. But I could tell they weren't enough for me.

I needed to do more of their emotional work. So then I started telling a friend of mine, as we all do, we try to save our friends. And so I tried to save one of my friends who also has neuropathic pain and she did some research and came back and told me about curable. And so then I was like what is this thing?

So I looked up curable and got on the curable app and then found out about Howard Schubiner. And so I did the book, Unlearn Your Pain and so that's how I discovered writing. That's where I got to writing, being a tool. And it was just it was just life-changing for me to realize all these emotions, all these past experiences were.

We're still playing out in my nervous system because I hadn't really dealt with them. So I think that writing was my favorite tool.  I do a lot of talking to my pain. So just getting quiet, quieting my brain and having short, Internal conversations with my symptoms about being safe.

And it is similar in like body posture, if you will, to somatic tracking, although t is definitely different. The somatic tracking helps, but that those conversations with my pain were just really helpful for me to be able to reassure myself that I'm safe, I'm healing, I am okay, things are getting better.

And just having that daily dose of truth even though it was from me to me, really started to send my body and brain into the right direction. 

[00:27:47] chazmith: That's awesome. So wait, how long did you do DNRS? 

[00:27:51] Jennifer: Gosh, I think I just said two months, but I actually think I only did it for a month.

[00:27:58] chazmith: Oh so you didn't even stick with the full six months? 

[00:28:01] Jennifer: I didn't because all of our brains are wired differently. For some people, I think the long visualizations work, but for me I love a five second visualization. So I didn't mention insomnia. Insomnia was absolutely one of my worst symptoms.

And so I would use visualization to just visualize myself sleeping for five seconds and I found that to be really powerful tool. But the long visualizations of DNRS wasn't. I know it is for a lot of people, so I'm not tearing down DNRS at all. But for me, that didn't quite work and I knew that I needed to do more, emotional work, and that's why I switched to Unlearn Your Pain.

[00:28:50] chazmith: Yeah, absolutely. Like I said earlier, everyone has their own unique journey and it's not one size fits all for sure. Ultimately we wanna do things that we resonate towards, rather than putting more pressure on ourself to show up and do things that we think we should do, even though we're miserable doing them, or forcing it, that doesn't help.

Yeah. And Unlearn Your Pain is such a fantastic, I have that book. It's so thorough and it's such a great guide. 

[00:29:16] Jennifer: Yeah, in traditional TMS methods or personality traits,  I definitely did everything in that book from first page to last page. 

[00:29:29] chazmith: That makes sense. Hence the laundry list of symptoms. 

[00:29:34] Jennifer: Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And so I think a little bit just about my personal story and I'll Just dip into this a little bit, is that that perfect storm? Everybody's is different, but for mine I was going through I was in a relationship where there was the, my partner had an addiction. And I'm not talking negatively about him at all, but I am saying that I taught myself and I learned how to be hyper-vigilant and how to look out for ways that I might potentially be hurt in the future.

And I basically taught myself how to be on the lookout and on the alert for ways that I might That I might hurt in the future. And so I taught myself to be paranoid almost. And then at the same time I ended up ending that relationship, which I had a great amount of fear around the fact that I.

That I ended it. And so there was this big there was just this big kind of blow up of life wasn't quite safe. It didn't feel safe, but I taught my brain how to perceive it as even more dangerous than it was, if that makes sense. 

[00:30:48] chazmith: Absolutely. And I love how you are speaking. From a place of responsibility, and it's not about fault, blame, shame or guilt.

It's just it's just like literally looking at how it's not like you were conscious, like I'm gonna teach myself to be hypervigilant. It was more like this undertone and through actions and reinforced patterns. Like you're strengthening certain neural pathways and yeah, you're just speaking from such a place of responsibility, which is so powerful, right?

Because when we take that personal responsibility standpoint, and we take our power back,  then that's where the magic can happen because we are literally taking back our ability to heal. 

[00:31:32] Jennifer: Yeah. Blaming doesn't help us at all in healing from chronic pain. 

[00:31:37] chazmith: No. Yeah, and I think unfortunately, that there's often a misconception I've seen and heard and witnessed this often, that when there are teachers, coaches, influencers, and people in the healing community that talk about personal responsibility and how we are where we are because of  our own actions, choices, decisions leading up to this moment. A lot of people get very defensive about that, and they think that it's about blaming or fault. And I just think it's so important to highlight that we're never ever saying that we're to blame or we're at fault. But that we're responsible.

And the coolest thing about that is if you can sit here and say, I taught myself hypervigilance. I taught myself through this, I led myself into like somewhat of a paranoia. The powerful part of that statement is that if you taught yourself. How to be hypervigilant. You can teach yourself how not to be hypervigilant.

[00:32:36] Jennifer: Yep, absolutely. And I also wanna note that again I was teaching myself what I thought was safety, right? There's this really interesting and oftentimes people don't get this, but there's really big difference between fear and wisdom, and yet sometimes they get confused. So I felt like it was wise to be hypervigilant.

But really it was self-protection and fear. Absolutely ruling my thought life. And so I think it's really important to look at what are we avoiding or what are we fearing? And is our, are our, is the motivation for our actions, is it is it fear or is it love and freedom? 

[00:33:20] chazmith: When you started really getting in the DNRSS and then the curable and then Unlearn Your Pain, at what point did you really start to begin to experience freedom from symptoms and start to really get relief where that belief system got stronger and stronger?

[00:33:39] Jennifer: I remember at one point in time turning to my sister and saying, this is way harder than I thought it was going to be. Not that it's hard. It's not hard. It is a commitment and it is being comfortable in it taking a little bit longer than you want it to be.

It's having the hope through the times that it doesn't seem to be going as quickly as you want it to go. And so I think, yeah, in that first month I probably saw 20% which was enough. And then I think at six months I was like 60% pain free which means 60% reduction in intensity.

And 60% reduction in amount of time that I was in pain. So I was having chunks of four or five days without pain and then it would come back or whatever. And. At that point in time, I remember thinking even if this is as good as it gets, I am so thankful for it. I will take this I can live my life.

I can continue to work. Cuz that was in question for me. And I think I had reintroduced dancing? No, I had not reintroduced dancing because it was the beginning of Covid. That was definitely not part of that. But I had started to reintroduce a lot of movement so I think I just had so much gratefulness for the things that I was able to do.

And I call myself healed now, which I actually asked Dr. Howard Schubiner about this one day and I believe it was actually his assistant that responded, so I wanna make sure that I quote the right person, but she said that at around 90%. Is where you wanna start claiming I'm healed.

Because we don't heal as, how does Nicole Sachs put it? You don't heal from the human condition. I think she says. We don't heal from the autonomic nervous system. We don't heal from having a danger signal. These are things that we are created with and we have. So there are times in my life that I feel slightly not safe emotionally and and so I occasionally have a symptom that I now know how to handle, but I would say at about nine months is when I was healed. That's when I would say that life was exactly what I wanted it to be without having the symptoms hinder any anything that I wanted to do.

[00:36:05] chazmith: Yeah, I mean I think this comes onto the podcast all the time as a discussion, which is when to say you're healed does not mean to say that you're never gonna have a condition or a symptom again. And I think that's so important to highlight, cuz I think it’s a misconception sometimes in the healing community where people, again, going back to pressure, put all this pressure on themselves and they see other people that share testimonials or stories or who are coaches, and they assume that because somebody says they're healed, that they just never experience a symptom of pain and ache or a distress in their stomach again.

And then if they have these symptoms sometimes present themselves, It’s like they feel like they're failing or they're not doing good enough, or they're doing something wrong still, and it's no, you're just being a human. But the cool thing is having the tools and then being able to like have the awareness to be able to notice when you're having an experience and then rather than reacting in fear, you probably now are just approaching it with so much more ease and faith. 

[00:37:10] Jennifer: Yes, and I just today I was realizing that when I get these little symptoms, I actually think I treat them like a toy. Where I'm like what can I do with this symptom? What's behind it? How can I play with it?

How can I shape it? How can I change it? Just in this exploratory sense. Most of us who have healed also see it as a gift of some sort. And it's so true cuz when I do have a symptom, it means that I'm living out of a false ID identity of something I'm not. That is normally for me based in some sort of fear.

And so it's a gift, but it's also just interesting. And so no, I don't respond in fear to it 90% of the time. I'm human. So on occasion, I will be annoyed and not want it at that point in time. This last weekend I was trying to multitask for 24 hours.

I was trying to do two things at the same time, and I'll spare you the details, but  our brains are not, they're not intended to do that. And I was trying to get literally two really important, pressured things done at the same time. And at some point in time I was like, I can't do this.

And my body was saying this is not good for you. And so I listened and just let go of one of the things and my symptoms got better. But I had to play around with it and think about okay, what's happening here? Oh, Yeah I'm feeling pressured to get too much done, and I think most of us who have field also have discovered there's something around urgency and time that we struggle with.

There's some sort of feeling that we have to accomplish or get a lot done. Was that part of your story at all?

[00:38:51] chazmith: Oh my God. Times 1000. I think there's two components to that, one is a learned behavior. Maybe stemming from childhood upbringing, parents.

I don't know who or how, but sure, there’s always a sense of urgency. Although I was with my mom recently and I realized she is always in a hurry. She's always come on, let's go. And then she walks really fast when there's not a reason to, and then it's rush to make a decision. So I thought, oh shit.

Maybe that's where I learned it from, but set that aside. I think we exasperate it and reinforce it often when we are in physical pain or, anyone who has like chronic fatigue or, just any kind of pain, any kind of dis-ease in the body that limits us because, On the days or moments you feel good, you like get into this mindset that you gotta get it all done because you don't know when you're gonna crash next.

You don't know when you're gonna not feel good again, or you're thinking about the last five days you spent in bed and didn't do all the things you wanted or needed to do. 

[00:39:54] Jennifer: That's interesting. I have not thought about it from that perspective.

[00:39:58] chazmith:Yeah. Absolutely. So  it's definitely reinforced. I think there's a thing, I don't know if you had any experience with fatigue, I know a lot of people who say they, when they're fatigued and going through healing almost to manage their energy units.

So it's like part of that getting small. You cut things out and you like try to prioritize like what's the most important thing that I can get done while I have energy today. But yeah, I think on the good days, What you also try to see how much you can squeeze in. Yeah. Get it done. Cuz what if I don't feel good tomorrow?

[00:40:29] Jennifer: Yeah. And I think that's similar to what I was talking about with if I only have 10,000 steps then I'm gonna have to limit how much I do or walk. Yeah. I think too there's this personality trait that we see in TMS of people that are driven and that’s totally me, and I don't, I think I just got that from culture.

I don't see that in my I don't see it in a negative way in my childhood, but yet there's something about not being able to rest while not producing that I had to work really hard on that. How do I rest? How do I have peace if I'm not doing an accomplishing five things off of my life to-do list and 12 off of my daily to-do list?

And so I really had to learn to slow down and do things slower and be okay if I didn't. Get as much done that day as my nervous system kept yelling at me that I had to do.  

[00:41:32] chazmith: Absolutely. So speaking of that, I. Do you feel like through this whole journey you're, rewiring your brain, you're learning about your emotional state, your healing elements you're learning that rest is okay that you don't always have to have everything accomplished at once.

When you're looking at your life today and you're looking at your life, let's say seven years ago, do you live a different life? Do you approach life differently or did you get better and just default back into the old habits? 

[00:42:01] Jennifer: No, and this is, I think we'll have this in common. once you start to understand, oh, I have power over whatever this pain or I can understand, let's just say I can understand the science of what this pain is and how to work with it, then you end up being able to apply that to so many things in your life. So the fact that I have my own YouTube channel / podcast and a coaching business Is not who I would've been seven years ago. My fears absolutely would've stopped me from that. And so being able to use this work to embrace life, to embrace the real me that God made me to be and to let those fears go.

Cause fear of symptoms is like, for those of you listening, we empathize. It is, it's not an easy thing to let go of that, the fear of the symptoms, but if you can do that, you can definitely let go of other fears and things that are stopping you and really just embrace other areas in your life that, that danger signal is affecting.

So I would not give up. Ooh, this is hard to say but I think it was worth what I went through -to be who I am now, and to not live in emotional fear barring all the physical pain. It's empowering. And clearly from your podcast, you have discovered that also. 

[00:43:29] chazmith: Absolutely. That's awesome.

So as far as your coaching practice, how do you take what you've learned through your journey and integrate it into a practice to support other people? Do you do group coaching or just one-to-one? And is every person a unique experience? 

[00:43:48] Jennifer: Yeah, I don't do group coaching. I do all one-on-one and I I have a seven session course.

I also have a two session course, but I don't actually suggest it because I don't know. I feel like we need more, but we work on things like your relationship with your pain subconscious emotions, personality traits I feel like is just a huge one and really powerful if we start getting into personality traits because they're with us all the time.

And so starting to look at that and look at each of my clients, like their personal personality traits that are playing into pain. So that's how I address it. And I like to pretend like the sessions are like, two are for this and two are for that, and one's on this. But really I just meet my client exactly where they are and work on whatever whatever underlying.

Emotional component is is contributing to the pain at that time. I use all the tools based on my client and what works with them, whether it's somatic tracking or talking to pain or journaling. I have something called somatic redemption that I use. And all the many different tools as that every doctor and coach has their own sets. 

[00:45:01] chazmith:  And I know because we've very briefly mentioned, but we know that you have a faith base and you're a Christian. Yes. And I know that That your faith definitely was an integral part of your healing journey. Now, as a coach, do you primarily work with faith-based clients, or do you work with anybody of any faith and religion or spirituality?

[00:45:24] Jennifer: I definitely work with anybody. I will say that most of my clients that come to me are Christians, cuz they're drawn to that. They want that perspective. They want that scriptural backing because I just the more and more I understood the mind body connection and how our beliefs and our thoughts and our emotions and our behaviors play into our bodies, the more I just saw how that paralleled with.

Scripture with the Bible, with Jesus. And so I talk about that a lot on my YouTube channel. And so that, that is, tends to be the demographic that reaches out to me. But I have definitely worked with people who are not Christians. I think God created us in this way that we, he does give us the power within. So my program does is not exclusive to christians. 

[00:46:14] chazmith: Awesome. And you mentioned very early on that there was a Christian neuroscience book, which was one of the first things that you stumbled upon to learn about this stuff.

What was that? For anybody who's listening that might be interested? 

[00:46:27] Jennifer: Yeah, it's called Anatomy of the Soul and It is by Kurt Thompson Anatomy of the Soul. And he does not talk about pain, although he does talk about the nervous system and a few symptoms. But he more gets into the importance of emotions and that part of our brain, the limbic system and how that is really important to pay attention to.

Cause I think we often ignore our emotions and think they're not important and things to be shoved under the rug. And it is in fact, Opposite. Yeah it's a really great read for anybody interested. 

[00:47:04] chazmith: Awesome. And I do wanna ask you before we have to go, the question I ask every guest at the end of the show, which is, if you could only share one message with the world for the rest of your life, what message would you wanna share?

[00:47:24] Jennifer: I have to say God is good and he loves you. I just, that is the message I have to say. Cause I think there's a big misconception, especially even in the Christian community that there's just so much shame around it. And I think that's a lie. And Yeah, you're loved. You're loved. 

[00:47:41] chazmith: Yeah, I think that is really good cuz you're absolutely right. There is sometimes a misconception, and especially in a lot of the religious sectors, like you're almost taught to fear God and you're, you become so afraid of doing things or sinning or making a mistake or something that would be considered a sin or, and then you are, there's judgment and shame and guilt and so yeah.

But it's, there's a different way to see it too. 

[00:48:06] Jennifer: A more beautiful way. Yeah. I think that, that idea of fear in God I found this to be really interesting is more about an awe of God, being in awe of God and being in awe of God, versus being scared of God is going to have a completely different response in your nervous system.

Awe actually has like this peace and all these really healing chemicals that are released into our bodies. And so when we are in awe, just like when we're outside on a hike or we're looking at something beautiful that is very calming and peace giving, but when we were in fear, we're full of stress hormones and that obviously contributes to the pain.

And so I think that misunderstanding of fear versus awe is a big deal. 

[00:48:49] chazmith: Yeah, absolutely. And you could even transfer that and see that as being, could we learn to replace? Cuz they always say it's awesome to release something like fear, but replace it with something. Yeah. Could you replace the fear with awe even when you're looking at your body?

And rather than being afraid of symptoms, be in awe over the idea that your body is actually always working towards balance, harmony and healing. And that it. That symptoms don't necessarily mean that something is bad happening in your body.

[00:49:18] Jennifer: That's beautiful.

[00:49:20] chazmith: absolutely.So they correlate. I am going to post in my show notes all the links and ways for people to connect with you. And did you have any final thoughts or comments that you wanted to share? 

[00:49:37] Jennifer: I think just don't put yourself on a time pressure, a allow. I think just allowing the healing to take the time that it needs, that pressure just really gets in the way.

So don't give up, but don't also, don't put yourself on in that rush, that urgency mode. 

[00:49:55] chazmith: Yes, absolutely. Thanks for sharing that. Because even though it might sometimes feel like we got sick overnight, we sure shit didn't get sick overnight. This was a long process and we don't get to heal overnight either.

And maybe we can, I don't wanna limit us. Maybe sometimes there are certain miracles and things where that happens, but. To not rush. It is a very valuable lesson. Jennifer, thank you so much for being here with me today. I really appreciate what you're doing in the community, and I appreciate that you have stepped outta your fears and that you're living this new life, that you're leading by example, and you are creating this willingness within your own heart to be seen.

I know that is gonna provide so much value moving outward and flowing into the Universe.

[00:50:35] Jennifer: Awesome. Thank you and thanks for having me. 

[00:50:38] chazmith: And that is a wrap. If you have found any inspiration out of today's episode, please share it with a friend or share it on your social media. And tag me at Our Power is Within.

Also don't forget, there is a link at the bottom of the show notes where you can make a monetary donation to the podcast future episodes. If you found value in this podcast over the years, you can donate as little as 99 cents a month. Remember to come back to breath. And until next time, make this week great.