A Surprisingly Simple Way to Heal Chronic Pain that ACTUALLY Works? | Nicole Sachs, LCSW

Renowned therapist Nicole Sachs shares her revolutionary mind-body approach to releasing chronic pain and anxiety in this profound discussion of her book "Mind Your Body: A Revolutionary Program to Release Chronic Pain and Anxiety." https://amzn.to/4jTpv3i Learn how unresolved emotions manifest as physical symptoms - and Sachs' practical steps to break this cycle. Envision rediscovering an active, vibrant life free from chronic illness. You can find Nicole at: Website https://www.yourbreakawake.com/ | Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nicolesachslcsw | Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/the-cure-for-chronic-pain-a-mind-body-approach-nicole-sachs If you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Bessel van der Kolk https://episodes.fm/647826736/episode/NjczMjUzZWQ5YzNjYzI1Y2RhMmE5M2Ez about integrating trauma. Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel https://jonathanfields.substack.com/aboutVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I needed to be carried to the bathroom. I was in excruciating pain. Sometimes the pain was so sharp that if I moved in a certain direction, I would scream out loud.

• 0:09Jonathan Fields?

  Nicole Sachs is a renowned psychotherapist whose groundbreaking approach to chronic pain is changing the lives of thousands. Her new book, Mind Your Body, it dives deep into the connection between unresolved emotions and physical health, offering a surprising, counterintuitive approach to transforming pain into peace.

• 0:27Speaker 00

  There is a mind-body connection that I understood and then have spent the rest of my career teaching that underlies everything that we feel. And those moments are precious to me because those inflection points in a life where you have an opportunity to do something wild.

• 0:43Jonathan Fields?

  Take me into that.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  I wrote the first line of journal speak ever penned, which was, "I hate being a mother." I sat and looked at that page and I thought... As I woke up the next morning and my back pain was 80% gone, never to return.

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• 1:45Jonathan Fields?

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• 2:27Jonathan Fields?

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• 3:11Jonathan Fields?

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• 4:00Speaker 00

  So when I was 19. I was a freshman in college and my back went out completely. So people understand that experience. I needed to be carried to the bathroom. I was in excruciating pain. Sometimes the pain was so sharp that if I moved in a certain direction, I would scream out loud. So I really do understand the acute pain of that kind of a situation. I was brought home from college and I underwent, rightfully so, all the tests that you should go through if you're going to get checked out. I had x-rays, MRIs, orthopedic surgery consults. And they did find a rather impressive finding, which is that I have and had and still do

• 4:44Speaker 00

  degenerative spondylolisthesis, which means a pretty severe abnormality of the lower spine. And so when they saw this, they made the obvious connection that my severe back pain in that exact area was the result of this spondylolisthesis. And nobody, I mean, this was 1990, but only to say that it's been a minute since this happened. I don't think the situation is much different today, which is when there is a finding that's that clear and that obvious for, you know, any professional, they would imagine that's the reason for your pain. So of course I agreed and bought completely into that. And they were, they told me spinal fusion surgery is the only option we have, but it

• 5:29Speaker 00

  does not come with a guarantee of pain cessation and it will decrease your mobility for life. So at 19, otherwise healthy, they didn't think that they were going to recommend that right now. So they said, if you live in a very specific way, you will be fine probably until you're in your 30s, maybe 40, but you're not going to live your whole life without the surgery. But if you're very careful and there's no more exercise, no more travel unless it's absolutely necessary, sleep in very specific positions as to not destabilize your back. And the kicker was the likelihood that I would have a biological child was slim to none without what they said would be like seven to eight months of bed rest because

• 6:12Speaker 00

  the weight of the baby on my back could be like a really catastrophic situation. So.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  I kind of went on at that point with a heavy dose of denial and just repressing most of the thoughts of the future. And I just like with enough steroids and muscle relaxers and painkillers, I went from acute pain to chronic pain, which meant that I could walk, I could return to school, they put a handicapped sticker on my car so I could drive to class. So I was able to function, but not really the preferable life, certainly for anybody at any age. And I lived in immense fear. I would say fear was my driving force, you know, oh, my goodness, do I have enough pillows underneath my legs to put my back

• 7:00Speaker 00

  in the right kind of position? Or am I riding in the car for more than an hour because they said the bumping motion of the car could also destabilize my back? So there was a lot of, there were a lot of instructions of how I should live. And I lived that way. And I really lived in a lot of, I paid a lot of attention to the things I did, how how heavy was something that I was lifting, right? I think a lot of people can relate to this experience. And so as time went on, I was a psychology undergrad, so I got my bachelor's and then I was in my master's program to become a therapist. And I became acquainted with the work of Dr. John Sarno. And in understanding Sarno's theories, all

• 7:41Speaker 00

  it was at that moment was an opportunity to replace my fear with curiosity. I had no idea if I was indeed going to be helped by the theories of mind body medicine. What Dr. Sarno posited was that your pain is real, nothing is in your head, but there is brain science that involves the nervous system in sustained fight or flight that leads to pain signals being sent mistakenly and confusedly as a form of protection. Because pain in any form is protective. You know, if in the dawn of early humanity, if you were to cut yourself and if it didn't hurt, you could become septic and die from a small cut. We have pain because

• 8:26Speaker 00

  human beings need pain as information for us to know that it's time to take care of ourselves. And what's also interesting about the brain science. Is that the nervous system can giveth, but it also can taketh away. If you are running from a predator and you step in a hole and break your ankle, you will run without pain on that ankle until you reach safety. So let's say, you know, you reach safety, you slam a door, you lock that door, and you are able to have a moment of centering and you know that you're not in immediate danger. That ankle will explode in pain because the pain was not adaptive while you were running from the predator, but the moment that you can take care of yourself, the ankle will explode

• 9:09Speaker 00

  in pain, saying alarm signal going on, there's something you need to attend to. If you don't attend to, this could be a threat to your survival.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  So essentially, I started understanding that. And I just did a science experiment on myself. You know, Dr. Sarno posited that when people are full of repressed emotions, the number one thing that he was calling out was rage. That, and they could not come to a place where they could understand that big feeling if they couldn't, you know, extrapolate it and excavate it. That the nervous system mistakenly would see that huge, big feeling as a predator. And pain signals would be sent to certain muscle groups or bodily systems, inflammation, muscle constriction, spasm, neuropathy was sent mistakenly, was sent as a form of protection that you don't need.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  Because although predators for early humanity were obvious, you know, saber-toothed tiger, predators in modern day society are constant and are confusing. Because the predators are your children, or your parents, or your self-talk, or your money situation, or your boss. And those predators are not easy to escape from, as we all know. And so essentially, I understood it.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  And in the by and by, as I did the work that was explained through the lens of mind, body medicine, I eliminated my back pain completely. And when I say completely, I mean completely. I'm 52 years old. I exercised till the day all three of my children were born. I have never had a surgery, nor have I had an injection. Now, the story, I mean, I think you probably know, if you know my work, the story is much more complex than that. But the truth of the matter is, there is a mind-body connection that I understood and then have spent the rest of my career teaching, that underlies everything that we feel. And it does not take away from the real suffering, but it gives so many incredible

• 11:16Speaker 00

  possibilities for healing that people might not have understood before learning about it.

• 11:22Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting also, because you're in, I would imagine, I'd put you in your early to mid twenties, when you stumble upon Sarno's work. And so at that point, like, you've got, it sounds like you've got a battery of doctors and people in the medical field who've been like, this is the way it is. Right? You're young, you're, what do I know? Like, these are the experts, like, let me believe what they have to say. We've got clear imaging, they can point to a thing on a scan that says this is what's happening. And then you stumble upon Sarno's work. And Sarno, back then, in the early days, very controversial. You know, it wasn't just sort of like, everyone's like, oh, yes, this is incredible awakening, everyone's on board. So it's fascinating to me that

• 12:06Jonathan Fields?

  you had the internal openness to say, maybe all these people who are incredible experts in what they're doing, maybe they don't actually entirely know. Like, maybe everything that they've said isn't entirely right. And at a young, you know, young age, you're like, let me just experiment. Use the word curiosity, which is something you speak about often, like reframing this and saying, okay, I'm not necessarily saying everyone's wrong, but what if I just start asking questions and not buy into what everybody tells me? It's a, like, it's a powerful way to be early in life.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  You know, it's funny, whenever anybody says something along the lines of the energy of what you just said, I actually start getting a little teary because it's so amazing to me, those moments, those inflection points in a life, in a human life, where you have an opportunity to do something wild, to do something full of wonder, that could change the trajectory of everything you thought was for certain. And those moments are precious to me. Because, you know, what are we here for? Right? In my estimation, we are here to feel big. We are here to connect and to love and to celebrate. But the flip side of that is there's suffering and there is

• 13:25Speaker 00

  pain. And there are moments where we are driven to our knees in order to awaken to what is next. And that was that what that was for me. And I don't know why I got it so young. You know, I mean, if you're a spiritual person, you might say, Well, I was being tapped to, you know, carry this message and to help many people change their lives. And maybe that's true. You know, who's to say? But I will tell you that there was a certainty in me, that I didn't know everything there was to know.

• 13:52Jonathan Fields?

  When you start to exploring, explore sort of like Sarno's work, and it starts to make a real difference for you. And then you're sort of like emerging into the world of therapy at this point and saying like, I need to be of service in some meaningful way. It sounds like this becomes like an increasing part of the work that you're actually doing, not just on yourself, but with clients, with patients. You have said, and I've heard you say a number of times, you write this, that the pain, and you actually said a version of this earlier in a conversation, the pain is not in your head, but the solution is not in your body. Deconstruct this for me.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  Okay, so I'll tell you a little bit of the story of Sarno. So when I first kind of hit upon the gold nugget of figuring out how to bring my repressed emotional world, which was causing my nervous system to go into sustained fight or flight and mistakenly send these pain signals, I understood the theory. When I started figuring out a way to excavate my personal stuff, which is one of the things I teach quite a bit. I called Dr. Sarno and I said, "You're never going to believe this." And of course, that's always such a delightful conversation in my line of work because he's like, "Ha ha, try me." And I said, "Um, my MRI is exactly the same. Nothing has changed in my body and I have done this work and I'm completely out of pain."

• 15:08Speaker 00

  And I was really young and I was just newly a practicing therapist. I was like 30. And he said, "Why don't you come into the city and lecture with me on some of these alumni panels at NYU because you have a very good way of explaining it, young, fresh, whatever." So I was doing that on a regular basis and establishing my private practice. And he was then referring into my practice. So I was really building my understanding of everything and how I could explain it. And as I moved through it, I started to understand this wasn't just about back pain. This was about migraines. This was about fibromyalgia. This was about irritable bowel. This was about skin disorders. And then as I grew in my practice, what became really prevalent was pelvic pain,

• 15:52Speaker 00

  pelvic disorders and many other things, neuropathy of all kinds. And then of course, long COVID, which we can get into. So I started understanding that this nervous system dysregulation was behind so many different things that were considered chronic and that were considered without possibility of cure, that could be managed, that could, there were different medications, treatments, diet changes, exercises, but no cure. And then I started hearing all the conversation around these different symptoms and people becoming very offended, like, "I feel like I'm being told through Sarno's theories, as you mentioned, controversially, that the pain is in my head."

• 16:33Speaker 00

  So I started thinking, "How can I boil this down to a way that people with a ton of compassion and empathy from me, understand that's not what I'm saying?" So I began by using my personal story because as soon as I tell people, you know, "I needed to be carried to the bathroom." Like, I under, I screamed in pain when I turned over in bed. I know that the pain is real. But because I've watched people first in my private practice for 18 years, and as soon as I shuttered that in 2018 because I was spending so much time on the podcast and writing and teaching, then I started being open, especially through COVID, to the global community and hearing from thousands and thousands of people around the world.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  And I knew that all of these symptoms and all of these different diagnoses were coming from the same place, this dysregulated nervous system and these pain signals. I was like, I have to find a way to explain it. And so that's when I kind of got into the pain is not in your head, but the solution is not in your body. And the reason the solution is not in your body is because of something called the symptom imperative. So if you are in this place where your nervous system is up to here and it's dysregulated and it's sending all these different pain signals because it thinks you need to slow down the way you would if you had a broken ankle and care for yourself. If you follow the traditional Western model, what you will do is you will attend to the part of the body that is hurting.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  So if you are having stomach issues, you're going to go to a gastroenterologist or a functional medicine doctor. If you are having headaches, you're going to go to a migraine specialist. If you're having back pain, you're going to go to an orthopedist. And I was watching people spend years of their lives chasing these different symptoms and not getting relief. And even if they got temporary relief from one of the symptoms, I was hearing from people, well, I had a hip surgery and my right hip, you know, it's feeling a little bit better. I'm going to tell you something so wild, Nicole, my left hip is hurting now. And so there's always a medical explanation for things. Oh, well, now you're putting a lot more emphasis on the left and, you know, and I know, I mean, I have people who I've worked with that have had four or five surgeries

• 18:45Speaker 00

  before they say, okay, I give up. Why is this pain continuing in my body? And then they're able to come over to where I am, which is there's brain science behind why we feel everything. And, you know, Jonathan, one thing I'll say about human beings, things are a lot easier for us to swallow when we can relate it to something that we already believe. And so oftentimes I say to people, slow down with all of that crazy thinking, that all that stuff that's keeping you stuck and just sit here with me for a moment. Let's just have a moment. I'm telling you something you already believe. I could be lecturing to a hall of a thousand people and I could say, raise your hand if you've

• 19:27Speaker 00

  ever had a stressful day and gotten a headache. Every hand in the room goes up. I don't know one person in life who's never had been stressed out and gotten a headache. And then I say, okay, keep your hands up if you ran to the ER that night for a CT scan of your brain. So everybody laughs and everybody's hand goes down. And I said, I'm teaching you something you already believe. An emotional stimulus can cause a physical reaction. Stress can cause a headache. Panic can cause hives. Having bad news or getting broken up with by your boyfriend, girlfriend, partner can cause you to lose your appetite. Emotional stimulus, physical response. But when things become chronic, people throw that out the window because chronic pain is fueled by fear and meaning.

• 20:12Speaker 00

  And when we think we can't be at that work meeting or be at my son's, you know, baseball game or my daughter's recital or, you know, what have you, and we start to project, well, that fear and that cyclical thinking sends more signal to the nervous system that we're in danger. The fight or flight stays up here. The pain signals are strengthened and we become in this loop of a society in chronic pain and illness. And so when people start getting it, they become willing. And once I have you willing, then I can introduce you to the work that you can do to heal yourself.

• 20:50Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, it's sort of like just that opening move. It's like what you're describing is you don't have to actually buy a hundred percent what I'm saying, but just if you just, if you crack the door open a little bit, so you're just curious about like, well, is there a downside to exploring this? Not really. I've like, you know, so many people have probably spent so many years and invested so much money and so much time and resources and so many other solutions. And if they're coming to you at this point, like it hasn't worked.

• 21:18Jonathan Fields?

  I want to be clear, though, because there'll be people sort of joining this and saying, "Okay, so I have clear as day diagnostic testing, imaging, blood work, whatever it may be, that points to something that is an absolute clear aberration." In your case, it was like a point in your spine. So many people have something similar. And the research says that like, like this can cause the exact symptoms that I have been having. Because I have to imagine those people come to you on a regular basis and say like, "Here's my imaging."

• 21:55Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 21:56Jonathan Fields?

  "How can you tell me that this is not the source of my pain?"

• 22:02Jonathan Fields?

  How do you walk them through dissociating that? And by the way, we're also not saying, "Don't go and do all that other work." We're not like, "Get the imaging, talk to the experts, do all the things," because it may be. And we're not saying, "Don't explore those interventions also." I think what you're saying is, "Get curious about something else at the same time."

• 22:21Speaker 00

  Yes. So the first thing I'll say about that is, picture the moment that somebody said, "The earth is round. It's not flat." Picture, like, bring yourself back to that. How wild that moment must have been. What are you talking about? Look around. The earth is flat. I just drove from X to Y. Hard drove. Probably no one was driving at that point. My horse just brought me from, you know, X to Y. It's flat. It's flat. It's flat. As far as I can see, it's flat forever. I look at the ocean and it's flat, too. And I kind of feel like that kind of a moment of curiosity, it doesn't need to be applied here. But if you really want to wake up, if you really

• 23:03Speaker 00

  want to change your life in a way that I promise you is possible, it's worthwhile thinking about that moment in history. Because-

• 23:12Speaker 00

  I hear you when you say, "Research supports the fact that this could cause this," but I'm going to disagree. And I'm going to say that the newest research that's coming out, and it's coming out of really impressive places, the most recent study I know of came out of Harvard, there is no statistical significance between findings on MRI around bulging discs, spondylitis thesis, even arthritis in a lot of cases, where they can find a statistical link to pain. And when they do these randomized studies and they pull people and people have the exact same experience of pain statistically, if they have no findings, or they can have findings with no pain. And the reason I'm saying this

• 23:56Speaker 00

  is because it doesn't mean you shouldn't get the test. You have to get the test because there could be a tumor on your spine. You know what I mean? There, I know people who had back pain and they found out they had lung cancer. Like, I don't ever want somebody to not get checked out. But there are a certain subset of findings that many people come to me with, where I look at them immediately and I say, "No." Bulging discs, it's like so scary to say it out loud, but I know it's true. Bulging discs inherently do not cause pain. They make a pathway for the nervous system into a place that is like the path of least resistance in order for these pain signals to go. So I'll explain it a little

• 24:37Speaker 00

  bit more. If indeed you are a person living in this long-term fight or flight, which is most of us, this is not an untenable situation, nor is it unusual, nor is it bad news. I mean, here we are. You know, God knows, everybody has a computer in their hand that can stress them out at any moment of the day or night. You know, we're all constantly on call and available. Of course, the human nervous system is going to have to adapt to that level of input.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  So it's not a problem that we're like this, but we have to be in concert with our bodies. We have to understand what might happen to the brain and the nervous system, which are still primitive systems. I mean, huge advances in evolution have happened that we are these incredibly brilliant thinkers. But the primary purpose of your brain and your nervous system, before you get to any of the rest of the stuff, is to keep you alive. And so the way you pull your hand off a hot stove that's a reflex, your systems are not asking your permission or your opinion before they protect you with reflexive things. And unfortunately, when we are up to here with that level of dysregulation, it's the same reflex.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  But if you want to be curious about something that lives in the incredible space of, I don't know, the incredible space of maybe, then I offer a solution.

• 26:00Jonathan Fields?

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• 27:04Jonathan Fields?

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• 27:47Jonathan Fields?

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• 28:30Jonathan Fields?

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• 29:14Jonathan Fields?

  You know, it's interesting. You describe, you know, when Sarn, I remember first reading Sarno's book, you know, like way back when. And he was, he's focused on rage as the primary emotion, underlying so much of what we experience as, you know, like, physical pain and chronic pain. I first learned about it like a million years ago, when I was in New York, listening to Stern on, on, you know, regular radio and, and him saying how he actually became a patient of Sarno's. And he literally was in such severe back pain that he would literally have to lie on the floor in the studio. He couldn't sit anymore. And somehow, like, it all got released. And then, so you start out with this thing, saying, okay, so rage is the thing that, that I remember being talked about the most. But this is now an expansive

• 29:56Jonathan Fields?

  set of emotions and experiences, persistent stressors that can actually be the underlying driver here. What do you say to the person who shows up and says, I get this, and I kind of buy it, you know, like, I'm open to this, like, this, okay, maybe. But if I look at my life, like, I had a great childhood. I have, like, a great marriage. I love my kids, great family. My job is really good. Like, my life is objectively good, but I'm still experiencing all this chronic pain. How could this be a part of what's happening for me?

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Well, first thing I'll tell you is, I know you're aware I have a podcast. The reason I started the podcast in 2018 was because I knew that my voice couldn't be the only voice in the space. I wanted hundreds of people with all different symptoms and all different walks of life to tell their stories from their point of view. And so the reason I'm bringing that up is, when someone comes to me and they say, I had a wonderful life, I say, I know, I can show you a place where X number of people had a wonderful life in their own definition. I can also show you a place where X number of people had capital T trauma, and little t trauma, and everything in between. And

• 31:13Speaker 00

  they find themselves at the same place, because there is no cure for the human condition. There's a cure for chronic pain, because chronic pain is an epidemic of fear and meaning, and this confusion between the dance between the brain and the nervous system and the body. But the human condition is one of huge feelings. So, you know, in the, in the world of nature versus nurture, I'm a big believer in nature and nurture. It is not a either or, it is a both. Anybody who has more than one child knows there is nature involved. I have three children who could not be more different than each other. And they've been raised by the same parents and in the same situation. And so we have sensitive natures. We have natures that are quick to anger.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  We have natures that are quick to be offended. We, we are all, we are multifaceted. We contain multitudes. And so you're coming to this world with whatever your nature is. And then you're raised in a family. And sometimes, even in the most loving and idyllic situations, you are an energetic mismatch to your life. You know, maybe you are raised, you're born painfully shy and you're raised into this very gregarious outgoing family where everybody needs to scream to be heard. And maybe you can even be that. But there's something inside of you that always needs to repress and repress a little bit of who you are. Or you had a generally happy family, but maybe they had situations that were beyond their control.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  Sickness. I, I definitely have people oftentimes say, I had a disabled sibling that got all the attention. Or, you know, I, my parents moved. I was a military brat. I had to change schools a lot. Whatever it is, here we are, soft and chewy, centered, human beings that have to live in a world that is, requires a ton of, of emotional input. Nobody can sustain it all. Rage, deep shame, grief that lasts longer than, you know, the prescribed time of grief societally, which is pretty short. Resentment, you know, all that acid that bubbles in every single human being. Here is the rub.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  When that natural human input reaches maximum capacity and threatens to spill over and inform our conscious minds, the ones that we need to get through the day with, the ones that we need to love our parents with, the ones that we need to be successful with, of how scared and stuck and enraged and full of sadness we are, because we all are at some level, that is considered a threat to your life by the nervous system. It is a problem that the human brain cannot solve for. And the brain loves predictability and it loves familiarity and it will always go toward what is familiar and predictable.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  And so the natural reflex is to repress that stuff, to push it back down. And when the alarm bell goes off because it's getting too big, that's when the pain signals fire. And oddly, that puts you in a position of power. Because if you're calling doctors and getting second opinions and doing doctor Google on the internet till three in the morning, that are, those are action items that the brain feels very comfortable with because we are doing something. Whereas this problem of the emotions feels like it's impossible to solve for. So that is the reason that even, no matter how you define your life, this is a human problem. And, and I actually, when I first created my podcast, The Cure for Chronic Pain, I

• 34:51Speaker 00

  really didn't want to call it that. I want, I didn't want chronic pain in the title because this is human pain. This is everyone. This applies to everyone. But, you know, sometimes you have to make a hard choice because the people that I'm helping that are the most suffering are people that do identify as chronic pain. But, I mean, I can't tell you over the years how this has evolved. People have said to me, I just had no energy for life. I wasn't having enough joy and I've done your work and now I'm like so free and I'm exploring new options, you know? So it's really for everyone. So it doesn't necessarily mean you had to have lived with like serious trauma.

• 35:24Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, it is so interesting as you're describing that, you know, like I'm wondering to myself, I feel like there are so many folks walking through life, especially when you get further into life and you sort of say like, you know, I have responsibilities or certain trade-offs I'd have to make in the way that with my life. And I feel like objectively, again, like I'm living a good life. I have like checked all the boxes and I feel pretty good walking through the day, but for this one thing, which is the chronic pain that dogs me. And, but at the same time, that person is in some way, how do I describe this? Stifling their identity, stifling who they know themselves to be in order to perform the role of whatever they think is like the appropriate way to be in the world and relationship and their work and stuff like this. So they don't objectively feel like

• 36:07Jonathan Fields?

  there's this bad thing happening, but underneath it, there's a hiding, there's a weight of hiding that takes place. I wonder if you see that as a potential genesis in the work that you do at all?

• 36:18Speaker 00

  Not only do I see that as a potential genesis, I see that as maybe the number one genesis, the biggest, most profound thing. And so I'm going to explain to you why. There is an example in one of Dr. Sarno's books that I remember reading about a man whose back went out so severely when his wife had a baby. Now, of course, objectively, having a baby, a healthy baby, a baby that you wanted and planned for is a joyful event. And so he didn't understand why. He literally couldn't walk. He was devastated. He couldn't participate in the baby's early days and all this stuff. And what Dr. Sarno explains is huge identity. And he was speaking in the terms of the man. So for this moment,

• 36:58Speaker 00

  I'm just going to speak in terms of the man, of a man who did not carry the baby, who did not participate other than helping to make the baby and then wanting to father the baby once it was born, what he loses when the baby's born, how he loses that immediate and instant attention from his partner, how he now loses his choices because there's guilt around, you know, if you want to go out and do what you want, I mean, there's a baby, it's a shared responsibility. And so it's not always obvious when you are having to hide. You know, hiding is obvious if you are closeted in some way, you know, in all the ways that we can be closeted. Hiding is obvious if you're lying about something

• 37:43Speaker 00

  and you're having to live a lie. But hiding is not obvious in the million human ways we have to cover up that which is unacceptable to unabashedly feel, meaning

• 37:58Speaker 00

  Inside, we are all five years old. Okay, we might be grown up and we look responsible, but we are all kicking toddlers inside if we have the opportunity to really tell the truth. I don't want to get up and go to work. I don't want to not eat those three doughnuts. I don't want to listen to what my partner cares about. I don't want to compromise. I don't want to take care of my children. I don't want to care about my ailing parents. I don't want to. And that energy in every person who's honest with themselves knows it's in there about everything. But that's not the way society works. And so because of being, and there's nothing wrong with that.

• 38:42Speaker 00

  Nobody's doing anything wrong. It's just the way it is. You know, one of the things I teach often when I teach like multifaceted retreats and workshops is radical acceptance, but not in a way where you're agreeing, in a way that you are just not fighting everything and everyone anymore, because there are certain things are the way it is. And another thing that is really key to point out here is life is a choice between what hurts and what hurts worse. And it might sound negative on its face, but it is the most relieving theory, once you realize what I'm really saying. And let's talk about having a baby, because we just have been on the topic. You decide, I want to have a baby.

• 39:26Speaker 00

  Or maybe you're on the fence and you're trying to decide whether or not to have a baby. Having a baby hurts like hell. And I'm not talking about the delivery. I'm talking about my 22, 20 and 17 year olds are annihilating me on a daily basis for reasons that have nothing to do with bad behavior, because they are living, breathing humans in the world that could be hurt, that could be suffering, and that is an excruciating existence for any parent.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  However, in the world of what hurts versus what hurts worse, for me personally, it would have hurt worse not to have them. I was a person who wanted to have children. And even though it is so painful that they live and breathe, I know in my heart, it would be more painful if I didn't have them. So I chose to have them and I live in what is. I live in the reality of there was something that hurt worse and so I chose what hurts. And that is as real for a huge thing like having children as it is for the very small thing about whether to have the donut. You know, I look at the donut and I say, that really looks good. I could have it and I could have that instant gratification. And sometimes I do. And sometimes I say, no, it would hurt worse to have it. It's gonna make me feel like crap. I just don't want to eat that right now.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  Everything in life comes down to what hurts versus what hurts worse. And when we expect it not to, and when we expect one of our decisions to be pain free, that's when we start to have to repress. That's when we start to have to hide. Because we are not clear that life is what it is regardless of what we wish it would be.

• 40:58Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, it's such a powerful frame. It also, it's on the one hand, when you first say it, you're like, but I don't want it to be that way.

• 41:06Speaker 00

  I know.

• 41:07Jonathan Fields?

  And we don't, you know, like, human nature is like, no, like, what about the thing where like, life is just awesome, all that? And you're right, like, that doesn't exist for, you know, like, for anybody that I know. I mean, this is like fundamental Buddhist philosophy.

• 41:19Speaker 00

  Yes, I was just about to bring up.

• 41:21Jonathan Fields?

  Life is suffering, you know? And like, I kicked and screamed the first time I started studying that. I'm like, no. But then you start to realize, um, well, maybe yes. And also, maybe life can still be really good in the context of that. That doesn't mean that you can't love and give and receive and just have the most extraordinary existence. It just means this is a part of the human condition as you're describing. We don't get to opt out of that. But we do have our agency in the context of. Choosing between, you know, and I think that's such an interesting point. So at some point, you're diving deep into this and deep into this and building your practice and working with so many people.

• 42:03Jonathan Fields?

  And you start to develop an evolution, you know, like you're deep into your own work and your own research and like working with so many people that your own ideas start to evolve and you're starting to see what does and doesn't work in all these different contexts and really expanding upon the fundamental early work of this is about one emotion and one manifestation of it in the body. And you develop a modality that's come to be known as journal speak. Take me into what this is and how it came about.

• 42:29Speaker 00

  So I'll tell you a little story about how it came about because I know that it really does help people break it down to hear how I lived it. When I first met Dr. Sarno, he explained to me all the science that we've been talking about thus far. And he said, I know it sounds crazy and maybe too simple to be true, but one of the best vehicles for understanding your emotions is journaling. So I was like, okay, I'm excruciating pain and you're going to tell me to journal? Like, I really was as dismissive as I imagine people could be. And he said, yes, because you do need to understand how you feel. You need to understand your rage. And that was another thing that was kind of hilarious to me because I was raised by

• 43:14Speaker 00

  a very rageaholic father, a very unpredictable, daily drinking. He wasn't an alcoholic mess. It was actually harder because you couldn't really tell, like, he drank enough to be emotionally unstable, but not enough to for it to be one of those classic stories where he was passed out. So I didn't really, I was very confused as a child. I didn't understand what was coming at me and it was very unpredictable and it could go from zero to 100 in one second. So I was and sort of still am, I'm working on it still, the least angry person you've ever met. I am so understanding. I never want to lose my temper. So when Dr.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  Sarno told me I was full of rage, I was like, that's the one thing I'm not full of. And he was so cute. I loved him so much and he was so adorable and he said, oh, honey, you're full of rage, all right.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  I said, okay.

• 44:11Jonathan Fields?

  He's like, the more you deny it, the more I'm sure of it.

• 44:13Speaker 00

  I know. And he was just like, and this is the thing that I think a lot of people do have, they struggle with, but they do need to understand. This kind of pain comes not from what you know you feel, but from what you would prefer not to feel. So you reflexively keep it repressed. And this is all under the cover of unconsciousness. You know, we have to celebrate our unconscious bodies. Because if you had to sit around and think about circulation and respiration all day, if you had to keep on it, better circulate or else, you know, you're in for it. That would not be a way that a human being could survive. So our reflexive processes are mostly helpful,

• 44:56Speaker 00

  but our reflexive repression is no longer. We've reached a tipping point in modern society where the studies have caught up and the ability of people like me to explain it has caught up. So that's why this is the flat earth to round earth moment that I offer people. They can choose to see this differently. And so I was full of rage, indeed. I was full of rage that I wasn't allowed to be full of rage, that my father had stolen all of the opportunity to feel that with his own damage. And then that was, I inherited that. So that's sort of an aside, but I think it's important to mention.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  So when I started this quote journaling, I felt like it was a whole lot of nothing. I was doing everything he said. I was making these lists, taking these inventories of childhood and daily life and my personality. And I was doing it. And I just felt like, I know this stuff. I've been in therapy. I'm a goddamn graduate student of this stuff. I'm a therapist. Like, I don't want to continue playing my tapes. And similarly to me saying, you know, if you're a person that is a spiritual person, maybe you would call this a spiritual moment. I don't know, but I was journaling about motherhood. At the time, I had a two and a half year old daughter and, you know, few months old son.

• 46:21Speaker 00

  And I was journaling about motherhood and I was playing my tapes. And I just got this consciousness, this voice, this message, whatever you want to call it, this thought, you're lying. And I was like, I'm not lying. I am tired and I do have two babies in cribs and diapers and all these things. And the voice just, the thought just said, no, this is not your repressed rage. This is not what's sending your nervous system into long-term fight or flight. What is it? And on that page of my journaling, I was writing longhand at the time. Now I do all my journal speak typing, but you can really do it either way. I started just asking instead of answering. This is where the curiosity comes in. Instead of saying, I am, I said, what is it?

• 47:05Speaker 00

  What is it? And I was using all my language, all my F bombs, all my everything. And I said, what is it? And then I wrote the first line of journal speak ever penned, which was, I hate being a mother. And I sat and I can never tell the story without wanting to cry. I sat and looked at that page and I thought,

• 47:30Speaker 00

  because I loved it. I loved it. I loved it. I had wanted it since I was 10. I had been denied it by via MRI when I was 19. I was in my late twenties. I was in my early thirties. I had it. And I wrote down, I hate it. And then I just went hog wild because I was like, screw it. This is the answer. There are things in there that I don't understand. Let's do this. And I just started saying, I made a mistake. I shouldn't have had children. I'm a failure. I'm a miserable mess. My parents screwed me up. I don't know how to do this. Everyone, everyone else can do this, but I can't do it. I hate my kids. They don't look enough like me. I had the wrong babies. I don't like this.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  Like I was like a baby. I was a child and I didn't care. I didn't care. I was just like, screw it. Let's see where this goes. And I started writing and I went at my parents and I went at myself with a tremendous dump of self-loathing. And I was crying and I was raging and I was all the things. And I came to the end of this one particular journal speak session, which I didn't know was a journal speak session. And I was so full of compassion. It was a place I did not know existed. It was a worn out, wrung out, cried out, on my knees, full of curiosity and wonder like, oh, my goodness. Look at you, you sweet little thing who's trying to be a grown up

• 48:57Speaker 00

  and have babies and figure out how to mend the wounds of your childhood. And I really figured out in a way that I had no idea that I believed that having these children was going to fix my heart, was going to mend that lonely little kid who didn't understand why her dad was screaming. It was a really profound moment. But the reason I tell this story and the reason it's important is I woke up the next morning and my back pain was 80% gone, never to return. And I went hog wild then on every part of my list. And I journal spoke about my self-worth and I journal spoke about my weight and I journal spoke about my fear of money and my fear of not having it and my fear of having it.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  And I journal spoke about my marriage and my relationship. And I was unafraid. And little by little, over the course of that next period of time, my back pain decreased and then it was zero. And I've never felt back pain again in over 20 years. And I understood that there was a key to this kingdom, that if we could stop trying to be so sure of what we know and stop being so sure of what works and what matters and what affects the human system, that we could see the round earth for the flat, for the flat that I can see still everywhere I look. It doesn't look round to me. But I lived something that I know to be true. And then I took it on the road and I wrote books

• 50:24Speaker 00

  and I did podcasting and I did YouTube and I had online communities and I did all the things I've done. And I started hearing from the leagues and leagues of people that were like, oh, my God, Nicole, you're never going to believe it. And I said, I don't know, try me. And they said, my migraines of 10 years. I haven't had a migraine in a year. My, you know, I was bed bound on disability for seven years. I'm doing your work and I'm back to work full time. I'm getting married. Like, these are boring, normal stories in my work. And so, you know, it's like, this is your life. What's it worth? Are you willing to think about things differently?

• 51:02Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

• 51:07Jonathan Fields?

  Your Life Project is sponsored by Vinted. So here's a question that I have been sitting with. How many things in your closet were bought for, let's say, a version of you who never quite showed up? Maybe it's the tailored jacket for the dinners you were gonna go to, or someday pieces with the tag still on them. They're lovely clothes. They're just not yours anymore. That's where Vinted comes in. So Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where everyday people sell the clothes that they're not wearing to people who actually will. Listing on Vinted is quick and simple. You take a few photos, write a short description, and you're done. Once something sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. There are also no seller fees on Vinted, so whatever your piece sells for, you keep.

• 51:49Jonathan Fields?

  What I love about that is how it turns letting go into something that actually feels good. You get more room, a little extra money, and maybe a closet that reflects who you are right now. So see what's hiding in your closet. You might be surprised how much you can earn with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing with no seller fees, so you keep everything you earn. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Ah, fall, that cozy season where we swap the swimwear for sweaters and sunnies for scarves. But before the Halloween decorations are put away or Thanksgiving table has been set, there's already holly jolly music playing in the grocery store, reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear.

• 52:33Jonathan Fields?

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• 53:00Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is sponsored by Bombas. So my wife Stephanie has been one of the great gift givers in our family. And her secret is that the best gifts often aren't the flashy ones. So the ones that people reach for on any given day without even thinking about it. That's why so much of my list ends up at Bombas. Fuzzy Sunday slippers for the friend who lives in sweatpants from November to March. Merino wool and cashmere blend socks for anyone who runs cold. That would be me, by the way. Ski and running socks for the ones who refuse to slow down. Also me, by the way. And water resistant suede booties. So cushy, my executive producer Lindsay actually more or less lives in hers. And here's what else makes it a good life kind of gift. For every item you purchase, Bombas donates an essential clothing item to someone facing

• 53:45Jonathan Fields?

  housing insecurity. One purchased, one donated. Over 200 million donations and counting. So every gift you give is really two. So head over to Bombas.com/goodlife and use the code GOODLIFE for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash good life, code GOODLIFE at checkout. So walk me through how we would approach doing this. Cause you've now, I mean, you did it yourself. You've now developed and really refined over a period of years through like a huge amount of feedback also from people. A process, a sort of like systematic process. Granted, it's very individualized to each person, the way that actually showed up.

• 54:28Jonathan Fields?

  Give me sort of like the basic instructions here.

• 54:31Speaker 00

  So essentially my work, like three legs of a stool, has three main facets. And like three legs of a stool, without one of those legs, it will not stand. So it's important for people to understand, there is a bit of a larger view to this. It's not just like journal and you'll feel better. The three legs, in the simplest way I can say them are believe, do the work, and patience and kindness for yourself. So under the umbrella of believe. This can be a completely new paradigm for people. Mind-body medicine is not what you have been raised with unless you're in my house, my poor children. But no, they're my poor children, my fantastic children. And I write about them in the book, you know, how they have gone through so many different things that could have become chronic

• 55:16Speaker 00

  because we are human and we will hurt. And they understood the brain science and the mindset. So that's the belief. And I spend the first third of my book talking about it. I spend my podcast talking about it. It's the reason I platform so many different people. Pretty much every other week, I'm interviewing someone from around the world because believe involves marinating in the material and understanding the brain science. And like you said, everybody is different. So some people are real science wonks and they want to read the studies. I have them in my new book. They're all linked. Everything is indexed, so you can go and you can sit with them. And that is totally great if that's for you. Some people are like, screw it. I don't want to waste my time with that. Just give me some human stories.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  Give me some people who are just like me, who have healed. And what's really funny about the just like me is we are all so much more similar than we are different. It doesn't honestly matter who you are. The, the parent standing over their dying child in the best hospital, in the best city is the same exact parent standing over their dying child in a refugee camp. We are the same when we suffer. The man with his back out where he can't go and be the CEO feels the same as the man with his back out where he can't go to the mailroom and support his family with that job. We are the same. And I've found this over and over again, being in the space of humanity over the years. So sometimes that's what people need.

• 56:41Speaker 00

  They want to go to the podcast and just listen to these conversations and be with these people. Or whatever it is that takes. Maybe just listening to me, listening to my personal story, but believe is huge and really important to set the stage for doing the work, which is why I was painstaking in my explanation and my dedication to it in this new book. Do the work is a journal speak practice and a meditation practice. Like you said, I've spent years and years hearing feedback, adjusting it, teaching retreats, doing it in real time. And what I've come down to is this perfect, well, perfect is the wrong word, but it is the best possible boiling down of the process, which is a 30 minute a day process.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  And that might sound like a lot, but I promise you, you do 30 minutes of a lot of stupid crap each day that you don't need to do, like scrolling on Instagram or, you know, whatever. 20 minutes of journal speak, followed by 10 minutes of any sort of a meditation that centers you. It does not have to be traditional meditation. Some people go take a slow mindful walk in the sun. Some people take a bath. Some people do singing bowls. Some people sit in silence. Some people like a guided meditation. Whatever it is where you are honoring the fact that you are doing this work to save your own life and you are regulating as much as possible. Some people do breathing exercises during that time to bring yourself from the necessary

• 58:08Speaker 00

  emotional excavation of a journal speak practice back into your daily life. And also understanding that you are meant to feel big and it's okay if you have to journal speak for 20 minutes about your partner or your kids or your boss and go right back into that situation, you're the compassion that you know you're taking care of yourself. And then the third leg of the stool, the patience and kindness is really just to alert people to something that I spent my whole life not understanding, which is the way we talk to ourselves matters, the way we treat ourselves matters. Actually scientifically, it matters in terms of the way our bodies and our brains function. And doing any sort of journal speak or any sort of meditation while you are

• 58:52Speaker 00

  Annihilating yourself emotionally and mentally unconsciously throughout the day without a mindful self compassion practice is like bailing the water out of a boat with a hole in it. It's just so much harder than you realize. And so I teach specific self compassion practices. I've learned a lot from Dr. Kristin Neff, who I think is the preeminent expert in it. And just teaching people the importance, the third leg of the stool, that actually being kind to ourselves and being, understanding and accepting of ourselves is essential in the process. But when it's all done together, I see the most remarkable transformations in people. They're, and I see them all the time and it's really stunning.

• 59:36Jonathan Fields?

  So, and those three sort of like legs of stool make a lot of sense to me. Because they acknowledge the larger context of you, your life, sort of like enters your inner workings, your psychology. I had the opportunity to sit down with Jamie Pennebaker not too long ago and talk about his expressive writing therapy, which has now been replicated literally in thousands of studies. And I asked him why he came up with his very specific protocol, which most people know as sort of like four days. Sit down for 10 to 15 minutes, pick a single thing that's on your mind that's affecting you and basically just free write about it. And he kind of giggled at me. And he said, honestly, he said, I was a young professor in the university. We could only get the rooms on certain days and for a certain amount of time.

• 1:00:20Jonathan Fields?

  And we need to run a certain amount of students through this to run the experiment. That was what determined what the protocol was. So he's like, it ended up being like, you know, we could take 15 minutes per student. They'd have to sit down, like they could do it, you know, because we'd have to get the next one in there and like come back over four days. And he said, the magic is that, you know, this has been replicated, his work has been replicated so many different times, so in different people. And the protocol has been changed in so many different ways and it all works. So he's like, it's less about, and he's like, what I want you to know is like everyone focuses on, you have to do it for this many minutes, this many days, and this is what you need to do. He's like, I've come to not believe that really anymore. They're just, it's more about the core understanding and there are so many ways that you can make it yours.

• 1:01:05Jonathan Fields?

  With your specific protocol for the do the work part of it, when you sit down and you do the actual 20 minutes of journal speak, how do you look at how rigidly you step into that? Is there a very specific protocol and instruction and question? Or is it more free form?

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  It's a great question. It's I really want to honor both what I'm about to say and what you just said. I do believe that everything true is the same. I believe that he and I are teaching the same thing. I respect his work quite a bit and I've also heard all about it. The only reason I say 20 minutes is because what I have found is that the resistance to feeling what we need to feel is part of the brain science as to why we are hurting in the first place, because we're going to hit onto certain topics that are danger. The alarm signal starts go off. No, don't talk about your mother. Don't talk about that day. Don't talk about the way you still feel about it because she's living with you.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  And when you hit that, I've often found in my many studies with people that it's about minute 11 to 15 that you're going to run out of all the kind of easier things to say. And I don't want people to give up because that's where the magic happens. And so over the years, refining it to 20 minutes has felt like a sweet spot where you it's manageable. You won't say, I refuse to do it. But it brings you to the place where those epiphanies have a safer way of coming. And another thing I forgot to mention is that journal speak is an exercise. It is destroyed the moment you are done. So this is a purging. Like I had a client who used to say, it's like blowing your nose in a tissue. You don't have to look at it again.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  Like we're getting something out. We're not looking for it to keep a record of it because journal speak does not stay true. It is a rant in the voice of the inner child. It is unbridled. It is immature. It is unreasonable. It is impolite. It is everything it needs to be and then it's gone. When I said I hate being a mother, I needed the freedom to say that because I freaking love being a mother. But my little kid, living inside of me. At that point was like, who cares about me? Nobody loves me anymore. Like, that person needed to be heard, but it was all bullshit. It's not bullshit, but it is.

• 1:03:31Speaker 00

  It's you really have to hold both at the same time. Journal speak in certain ways is a celebration because you're letting parts of yourself speak and just go, just go, honey, just go wild. It's okay. We're just gonna throw this out after. We don't want anyone to ever read it because learning journal speak is like learning a foreign language. If the person can't speak it, they're certainly not gonna understand it. And even if they can speak it, they don't need to know the deepest and darkest because the deepest and darkest change and evolve. And the reason that I've not veered from it is because when I look at my primary purpose,

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  I want people to stop being afflicted and limited by the pain in their bodies and by the symptoms. Long COVID is a huge example. I have thousands of people at this point that have written to me that said, no doctor could help me. I was absolutely disabled. I have done your work and I am completely well. And that is something that frustrates me every time a big paper puts out another article about the hopelessness of long COVID or chronic pain in general. It makes me nuts because this is something, when done consistently with the right mindset and the right self compassion, is effective beyond.

• 1:04:51Jonathan Fields?

  And that makes a lot of sense to me. It's funny, I'm a longtime meditator and I generally meditate for 25, 30 minutes every morning. And literally like 15 years into it, I still kind of laugh at myself at the fact that I know full well that the first 15 to 20 minutes of that 25 minute meditation, my mind is just all over the place. It's just like, and finally the last couple of minutes, I'm like, oh, okay. I was just dropping into it and somebody's like, well, you should extend it to 45 then. I'm like, I'm pretty sure I would then spend 35 to 40 minutes just spinning. So I'm like, it's just more efficient this way.

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:05:28Jonathan Fields?

  I want to ask you about one other thing. Yeah, it's just I kind of know this way I'm wired at this point. I do want to ask you about one other thing before we start to wrap up. And there and this is I've heard it come up in your conversations with other people over the years, too, which is you described that, you know, like when you did this exercise, you know, your pain was 80% gone. And then fairly soon after that, it was gone, gone, and has remained gone. That's not the story for everybody. And so rather than setting people up for failure by saying, well, I did this, it went away. And then six months later, it's back again. It must not work. How do you address that?

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  Okay, well, let me first say that my back pain never returned. I've had every symptom imperative on the planet. I had migraines until I figured out, oh, wait, this is all the same thing. And this is all in evolution. I mean, this was over 20, almost 25 years. I have had random stuff that has come up. I once tried a yoga practice that I was feeling bad about because I didn't feel good that I couldn't I'm not flexible enough. And I'm bad at yoga, but you're not allowed to say you're bad at yoga because the yoga instructor will yell at you for that. I got horrible elbow pain to try to protect me and say, don't go to yoga. You can't. And I am so well versed. I speak journal speak. I have a PhD in journal speak. So don't necessarily use me as an example, because

• 1:06:45Speaker 00

  I spent my entire life studying this, practicing this, working with other people. We are living a human life. There is no cure for human pain. You will have new, same, different, whatever, things that move throughout your body at any point. Sometimes we feel things in our heart. And sometimes we feel things in our body, and they are literally interchangeable. And like I said, what I'm teaching you, you already know, you know, that when you get a phone call at 2:00 in the morning, and you see your mother's phone number, your stomach goes sick. You know, you know that there are so many physical responses that come from emotional stimuli. The ultimate goal and success of this work.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  Is to be able to flow with life, to flow in and out like the ocean tide, to know that we can't stand on the shore and stop the waves, but we can get on a raft and flow in and out with them. We can feel our pain. I can, I go through, headache is one of my big symptom imperatives. If I am getting put upon by 10 different people and then my kid calls me from college and says something or other, I can start a headache going and I can go one of two things. I could say, I'm not interested in having this headache. I'm going to really attend to my emotional world. I'm going to really extrapolate kind of what's going on with me. I'm going to reveal enough that my nervous system can calm down.

• 1:08:16Speaker 00

  Or I pop a couple Advil and I go, screw it. I gotta get on with my day, headache or no headache. Sometimes that will make it go away and sometimes I just sit and my headache is my friend and it's there to protect me or it's trying or it's confused. And in my headache and I, we spend the day together. But I am never afraid. So the one thing I will say to people who say, Nicole, but you're all better. The reason I'm all better is because nothing can become chronic if you are not afraid of it. And if I have something happen to me that makes me afraid, I do what needs to be done to get checked out. A few years ago, let's call it now like five to seven years ago,

• 1:09:00Speaker 00

  I woke up one morning and my whole mouth felt like it was on fire. I felt like I had eaten a piece of hot pizza and it burned out the whole roof of my mouth, but I hadn't eaten the hot pizza. And I was like, okay, I'm definitely dying. Like I'm, something is deeply wrong with me. I'm probably going to drop dead. I ran to the doctor. I told her all of my symptoms. She did all of my blood work. And when the blood work came back normal, she said, I have to tell you something. I don't want to say this to you. She didn't, she doesn't know what I do for a living. Medical care, it's not the family doctor anymore in town with the briefcase. Like I, she probably knew me as a number and she said, I gotta tell you something. You have what I would diagnose as burning mouth syndrome. She said, but.

• 1:09:47Speaker 00

  I have another patient who has burning mouth syndrome and she has been all over the country. She was at Mayo, she was at Hopkins. They keep telling her that it could be like emotional, like stress and oh my goodness, that's all I needed to hear. I literally danced out of that doctor's office with my clean blood work and said, I see what's happening. I need to pause. I've been going like a freight train. What's going on that my body is trying to get my attention? Why do I have an alarm bell ringing? And I started to journal speak about it and I don't know how long it took me, not long for me. I mean, like I said, I'm, I've got a PhD. What I came to at the time was, I feel like I'm full of life-saving, life-changing information and nobody wants to listen. My mouth was

• 1:10:31Speaker 00

  literally burning with the concept of how I felt powerless to do what I felt like I needed to do in the world. Now, did it change my life to know that? I mean, in the by and by, life keeps changing, but no. But did it go away? Indeed. While it was subsiding, did I need to like eat a lot of gum and you know, suck on a lot of lifesavers to like get my mind off of it? Yes, because I didn't want to continue to lapse into fear, what if this continues? I'm just human like everybody else. But as soon as I did what I needed to do for myself medically, and I did the work, I mean, I haven't really felt it since. Once every so often, if I'm really frustrated and I feel like people aren't like hearing

• 1:11:15Speaker 00

  me, I'll get like a little tinge on my tongue or like in my mouth and I'll go, uh huh, there you are. And that's where we are full of compassion. We're just human. Okay, there's something I obviously need to deal with in myself. We don't always have the power to change our circumstances, but we have the power to know how we feel in a very substantial way that allows the nervous system to go from fight or flight to rest and repair and allow us to just live our human lives, our imperfect, beautiful, heartbreaking human lives. And that's where you have it all. Like earlier, when you were talking about Buddhism and you said, if you can accept that life is suffering, then maybe you have a chance to, you know, really enjoy what you're doing.

• 1:12:00Speaker 00

  I am going to even take that further and say, that's the only chance you have to really enjoy what's going on here. If you accept that it's never going to be perfect, and it's never going to be without pain, and loving someone means it hurts, and all the things that are true, then you have the opportunity to really be present and celebrate your moments.

• 1:12:21Jonathan Fields?

  I so agree with that. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase "to live a good life," what comes up?

• 1:12:31Speaker 00

  Ah, to live a good life means to pause as often as you need to and tap into what is. You don't have to like the truth of the moment. You don't have to agree with it, but you don't have to fight with it. And if you don't need to fight what is, you have so many opportunities to expand. You know, life is a series of expansions and contractions, and we live and we grow. And sometimes expanding is hard and hurts. But if you can tap into what is and be with it with compassion for yourself, the possibilities are limitless.

• 1:13:10Jonathan Fields?

  Thank you.

• 1:13:13Jonathan Fields?

  Hey, before you leave, if you loved this episode, safe bet, you will also love the conversation we had with Bessel van der Kolk about integrating trauma. You'll find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Troy Young. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And special thanks to Shelley Del Bliss for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube, too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did, because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a seven-second favor. Share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome, too.

• 1:13:57Jonathan Fields?

  But just one person even. Then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

• 1:14:18Jonathan Fields?

  Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet Wealth Partners. Are you on track for financial independence? If you're on track, the same way you're getting back to the gym, as in, maybe next year, then this one's for you. NerdWallet Wealth Partners offers free tools for high earners who'd like an actual answer instead of a vibe, like their calculator that estimates if you're on track for financial independence. Plug in a few numbers to see how your savings path may support your goals. Think of it as a fitness test that you can take sitting down. Or their wealth building checklist for high earners. It's a step-by-step guide for prioritizing your dollars once you're making six figures. And if you still have questions, you can connect with one of their financial advisors who specializes in working with high earners in their 30s and 40s. Good news, this is one workout you can actually finish.

• 1:15:02Jonathan Fields?

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