June 23, 2026 • 23 mins
Your body can hurt in a way that is completely real while your tests still come back normal, and that gap is where so many women get dismissed and mislabeled and start doubting themselves. We talk about chronic pain, chronic illness, and psychosomatic symptoms without the insult that often comes with those words, and we name the real enemy: the belief that mind-body factors make suffering “not real.”
I break down how nervous system dysregulation keeps you trapped in survival mode, with high cortisol and adrenaline shaping sleep, inflammation, gut function, headaches, fatigue, and flare ups. We connect the dots to familiar diagnoses and symptoms like migraines, fibromyalgia, IBS, POTS, and chronic back pain, and we make a key distinction: this isn’t about imagining symptoms or thinking your way out of disease. It’s about subconscious threat detection, meaning making, and the patterns of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn that once protected you but now keep your physiology on edge.
We also get honest about why the medical system often doesn’t address this, from training gaps to time and insurance constraints, and we touch the research landscape, including the ACE study and the need for stronger trials on trauma treatment and physical health outcomes. If you’re ready for responsibility without blame and practical reframes that teach your body “the danger is over,” hit play. Subscribe, share with a friend who feels unseen, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway or question.
I invite you to join The Ummi Collective. It is a weekly coaching program for Muslim mothers raising children on the autism spectrum.
Inside, you learn how to support your child’s development in a way that builds independence, confidence, and long-term success... without losing yourself in the process.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast.
Apply tools that you learn inthis podcast and your life will
be unrecognizably successful.
Now your host, Dr.
Kamal Akhtar.
SPEAKER_01 (00:16):
Hello, hello, hello everyone.
Peace and blessings be upon allof you.
Today I'm going to be talkingabout chronic pain,
psychosomatic illnesses, chronicillnesses, and it's one of those
topics that's been in the makingfor a long time.
But here we are.
Imagine waking up exhaustedafter eight hours of sleep.
Your joints hurt, some days yourstomach hurts, or you're the
(00:39):
person that has on and offmigraines and it's unpredictable
when you'll be functional andwhen you will not.
And you go to the doctors andyou're getting everything
checked and everything is comingback normal.
And every doctor tells you thatstress is not helping you.
And you might be hearing fromtime to time that it's in your
head.
If this applies to you, thenthis podcast is for you.
(01:02):
Because what if they wereaccidentally right?
Accidentally but not in a waythat either you or your doctor
thinks they're right.
And today we're going to betalking about this exact topic,
chronic pain and illness fromdysregulation and unhealed
nervous system.
Now every problem that has acomplex system behind it has a
(01:22):
few villains.
This topic has three villainsthat are fighting each other.
That's the medical system, thetrauma, and the confusion behind
your own healing journey.
And while these are the threeobvious villains, there is
actually a bigger hiddenvillain, and that is the
misunderstanding.
The misunderstanding is if theillness is affected by your
(01:45):
mind, it must not be real.
That's the real enemy here.
A psychosomatic illness isdefined by a physical disease or
symptom in which psychologicalfactors play a significant role
in its development.
They can also play a role inexacerbation.
They work through realbiological pathways that affect
(02:05):
the endocrine and immunesystems.
But the nuance here is that mostphysicians would not say
psychological factors play arole as a cause of these
illnesses.
Rather, they're considered moreof a contributing factor, one
among many contributing factors,alongside your genetics,
environmental exposures,lifestyle, infections, and other
(02:26):
biological mechanisms that canbe proven.
Here I'm only focusing on themind body aspect and
purposefully not talking aboutany of the other factors that I
mentioned, and I'm doing this inthe spirit of simplicity and so
that you have practicaltakeaways from this podcast that
you can use.
Also just to clarify, ingeneral, the medical community
(02:47):
distinguishes psychosomaticillness from fictitious
disorders, malingering, orsomatic symptom disorders, where
the excessive distress orpreoccupation with symptoms
becomes the primary clinicalissue.
In psychosomatic illnesses, amedical community acknowledges
that the emotional andpsychological state produces
(03:09):
genuine physiological changes.
And the examples you might haveheard are stress worsening your
blood pressure or your bloodsugar.
Overall, a very under recognizedsign of nervous system
dysregulation, of you living inan unhealthy mental state is
chronic pain and illness,meaning it's hardly ever
(03:30):
considered that trauma isplaying a role in this.
And these symptoms andphysiological illnesses can be
anything from migraines,fibromyalgia, chronic back pain,
IBS, even POTS, which ispostural orthostatic tachycardic
syndrome.
It could be other pain syndromeslike reflex sympathetic
dystrophy.
(03:50):
It can range all the way up toheart attacks that happen
because of a hyperactivatedadrenal pituitary axis and high
cortisol states that createsinjury to the vessels and the
arteries that then leads toplaques and heart attacks.
I want to be clear when we talkabout your mental state
contributing to your physicaldisease, an underlying dangerous
(04:13):
assumption here is that I'msaying that you're imagining
these things and that you'remaking them up, which is not at
all what I'm saying.
Imagining these things impliesthat your conscious mind can
take control over what youthink, and then you can think
your way out of these diseases.
It implies control.
It implies a certain sovereigntythat you are lacking on your own
(04:35):
body, therefore you have thisdisease.
It implies that I'm accusing youof not utilizing mental health
resources to help yourself outof these diagnoses.
Again, all of these aredangerous assumptions and
extremely harmful.
So I'm explicitly mentioningthem here in case you fall into
this.
A lot of medical providers fallinto this trap and start calling
(04:59):
women with symptoms like this assupratentorial, a very
derogatory, a very demeaningterm.
At the same time, I am alsosaying that these things are the
signs and symptoms ofdysregulation of your nervous
system, and that your nervoussystem is in a chronic state of
hypervigilance or in a chronicstate of being checked out that
(05:21):
creates physical ailments.
So your mind is creating them,or contributing to them at
least, but not in a sense thatimplies conscious control.
Like if you're excited aboutyour engagement party coming up,
but when the day of the partyarrives you get GI problems, or
the stress of an exam gives youloose bowels or abdominal pain.
(05:43):
Reason I know that an engagementparty or exams don't cause the
bowel problem is because that ifthat was the case, everyone
facing these situations willhave the same symptoms.
So the difference underlyingonly lies in how you're dealing
with the situation at asubconscious level.
So while the initial injury, thewounding, the trauma, the
(06:05):
initial insult of your nervoussystem that might have happened
to you is not in your control,how you navigate this in the
future is in your control.
If you become the victim of thecircumstances, that then
manifests in chronic pain andillnesses.
If you are able to healthilytake control of how you heal
your mind and your body, and youlearn to regulate yourself
(06:28):
through thought based and bodybased practices of healing, this
is in your control and that canchange the outcome.
I want to do whatever I can toconsciously take out the
insulting nature of theaccusations that are made by
some medical professionals andnon professionals towards women
who are carrying these chronicbody-based diagnoses.
(06:50):
And I also want to placeresponsibility towards the women
and on the women who are facingthese challenges.
And if you got here one way oranother, you are also able to
get out.
If you are at the doorstep oflearned helplessness, then you
can unlearn it as well.
I want to take it from anaccusation or an insult to
(07:12):
giving you a responsibility andempowering you because a lot of
these chronic diagnoses havebeen successfully linked to
chronic nervous systemdysregulation.
So while it is a part of yourmind that creates it, and the
mind is an extremely powerfultool, when I say the mind, I
mean the mind and the heart, thethought and the feeling pair,
(07:35):
your thoughts and emotionstogether.
Overall, basically your nervoussystem, including your conscious
and your subconscious mind.
And while this mind is thedriving force behind your body's
illness and the diagnosis, it isnot a fault, it is a
responsibility.
So if you as a woman suffer fromchronic migraines and we have a
(07:56):
lot of scientific data and termsand knowledge about how that
happens, vasodilation and thetryptophan medications that can
be used to alleviate thesymptoms and how to prevent them
and how to abort them, there arefull neurological subspecialties
dedicated just to managingheadaches.
There are people who spend theirentire careers helping other
(08:18):
humans facing these types ofchronic headache problems.
So while there is a lot ofscientific knowledge behind
them, I'm going to narrow thisproblem down to a specific
example again to make itapplicable and to take out the
generic language and to zoom ina little bit on the problem.
If you are this woman and you'rehyper vigilant about, let's say,
(08:41):
your husband being upset withyou because you spent an extra
hour with your friends whileyour intention was to have fun
and unwind, your husband thinksthat you're out there neglecting
your domestic responsibilities,and you come home and you go to
bed stressed that your husband'sgoing to be upset with you.
This stress is going totranslate into inner
(09:03):
hypervigilance state.
This is going to translate intorumination, each thought
creating further stress, andthis mental cycle fueling
itself.
Your unmanaged mind adds fuel tothe fire by collecting data from
the past and by creating theworst case scenario for the
future.
(09:23):
Basically, in this specificexample, while we're zoomed in,
if the details don't apply toyou, I want you to pay attention
to the message behind thisexample and extract from the
similarities that apply to youin your life.
If your mind is used to one ofthe four default behaviors of
dysregulation like fight,flight, freeze, or fawn, and it
(09:47):
does it with the perceived senseof threat, in this case the
threat being your husband'supset, and the threat coming
from you not wanting him to beupset, you taking responsibility
for his upset, you takingownership of his emotions, and
he expecting that you changeyour behavior so that he doesn't
feel upset anymore.
(10:08):
This also perpetuates by you notreceiving education around how
his upset is not yourresponsibility, his emotions
come from his thoughts, yourfear, your upset, and your
frustration comes from your ownthreat detection mechanisms that
come from your mind and from adysregulated nervous system.
(10:30):
This dysregulated nervous systemthen creates the high internal
cortisol levels and highadrenaline levels that you're
living under, and that's whatcontributes to disease or
flare-ups of the disease.
In other examples, let's sayyou're a woman who's terrified
to open text messages, a womanwho can't relax on vacation, a
(10:51):
woman who gets migraines everytime ETH planning comes closer,
or every time who getsfibromyalgia flare because your
in-laws are visiting.
Or if you're a woman whoseautoimmune disease flares while
you're facing difficulties ofrunning a business, hiring and
firing.
The physical manifestations ofthis hypervigilant state
(11:13):
combination of freeze, fight,flight, appease responses could
be a migraine, could befibromyalgia, could be IBS,
could be vasovagal symptoms andsyncopizing and passing out.
Usually, generally speaking,fight becomes anxiety, freeze
becomes fatigue, fawn becomesautoimmune self abandonment, and
(11:39):
flight is high adrenalineactivities like constantly
leaving a situation.
Again, these are the generalmanifestations and symptoms of
these states.
I'm not saying that any of theseare directly causing diseases.
These are the symptoms that areshowing you how these patterns
are keeping your physiologydysregulated.
(11:59):
Because while every survivalresponse was brilliant while it
was needed, it's no longerbrilliant because it's not
needed in your life anymore.
None of these responses wereflaws.
They are masterpieces ofadaptation.
Fight protects you, flightprepares you, freeze preserves
(12:19):
you, fawn keeps yourrelationships intact, which is
necessary for your survival.
Your nervous system resorts tothese responses because at one
point in your life they worked.
The tragedy is not that youlearned them or that you used
them.
The tragedy is that your bodynever received the memo that the
danger has ended, and you canheal from them.
(12:43):
So under that premise, the bodycontinues to fight battles that
are no longer there.
Healing is not you convincingyour body that it was wrong.
Healing is finally you givingyour body evidence that it no
longer has to survive a lifethat it already survived, that
time is past.
This is when your physiologybegins to shift from protection
(13:06):
towards repair and you go fromhypervigilance towards peace.
So now let's say that you're awoman who has any of these kinds
of chronic illness, symptoms ordiagnosis, and you go to a
modern Western medical provider.
While they've spent their entirelife in learning about this
issue and are literally expertsat it, very rarely will your
(13:28):
conversation ever go why are youtaking responsibility for your
husband's emotions?
Why are you in a state ofhypervigilance?
How are you going to heal fromthat?
Almost no one in the currentWestern medical profession will
ask you these questions.
Because we are not trained inthis.
So what this means is that it issafe for you to assume that your
(13:52):
doctor is not going to knowthis.
And I'm not saying this to throwshade at the medical profession.
I admire the medical profession.
I practice it every day.
I wouldn't exchange my medicallicense for anything in the
world.
I am saying all of this to shedlight on the fact that you have
to stop being disappointed inyour physicians when they don't
(14:13):
know this correlation.
Unless you are aware and you'regoing to a trauma informed
physician who is going to have acompletely different training
and background.
And of course these types ofmedical providers are very hard
to come by.
And it is because it doesn'thelp that the payment system of
a physician does not incentivizethem to spend time in coaching
(14:34):
or therapy type of modalities.
So even if a physician is eagerto practice and join the
modality of acute care medicine,preventative medicine, and
somatic therapy based medicine,they cannot sustainably do so
because at least in US there'sno insurance provider that
recognizes all theseinterventions and pays the
(14:55):
doctors for her services.
So if someone is passionateabout combining these
approaches, then they have nochoice but to resort to cash pay
systems, which a lot of timesare not reachable by many who
need these services.
So I'm saying these things toprepare you mentally so you stop
being surprised or angry whenyour PCP or your specialist that
(15:18):
you're going to doesn't adoptthis approach with you.
And when you're not angry at thesystem, you can actually look
for resources that are withinyour reach that will help you
heal.
This podcast being one of them,inshallah.
So the part of the treatment ofthe chronic seemingly
untreatable diagnosis is youtaking responsibility and not
(15:41):
continually adding insult toinjury.
Meaning your original trauma orhurt happened, your
hypervigilant state kicked intogear to help protect you, and
now you can let go of that.
You can release that responsesystem.
Continuing to interpret theworld through the lens of
survival has now becomemaladaptive, and it keeps you
(16:05):
bound to your illness becausethese are high adrenaline, high
cortisol states that are nowshowing up as diseases.
You do that, you participate inyour healing by training your
nervous system and masteringyour perception of the situation
so that you can perceive it in away that is helpful to you
(16:26):
rather than harmful, helpful toyour physical health and your
mental, emotional, and spiritualwell being.
I have been talking about thiscorrelation this whole time
about your perception, yourinternal environment of high
cortisol and then manifestationof disease.
This is a correlation, but whatmakes this association difficult
(16:47):
to prove is that it is not acausation.
Correlations themselves areimpossible to prove factually.
There are very well designedexperiments out there that take
psychosomatic issues intoaccount, especially in the field
of PNEI,psychoneuroendoimmunology.
There is an ACE study that Ifrequently reference in my work,
(17:10):
which is adverse childhoodexperiences.
This was conducted by CDC andKaiser Permanente in late 1990s.
This study reveals a powerfulcumulative correlation between
childhood trauma and adultchronic illness.
It provides insight into mentalhealth struggles and premature
death, but this study or anysubsequent commentary of this
(17:33):
omits to mention the role ofyour nervous system in the
healing process.
There's minimal to no way ofproving that healing your
nervous system reduces yourintensity or frequency of
migraines.
But if we studied a thousandwomen and noted the modalities
they use to heal themselves andcreated a correlation between
nervous system healing andimprovement of migraine
(17:55):
outcomes, there's no money to bemade from that study.
There's no pharmacologicalbenefit where you can write the
idea of this study up, submit itto the government or a private
entity who will give you moneyto pursue this research.
Because how is it going to helpthem make money?
It's not.
So in modern medicine, thethings that get funded and the
(18:16):
research that gets done isaround what has the promise of
turning around and being able tobe profitable, depending on the
results of the study.
So then the question becomes whydon't psychosomatic
practitioners, mind bodyhealers, start to fund these
types of studies?
And there are people who aredoing that, but the barrier here
(18:36):
is that the result issubjective.
It depends on a woman's reportof telling a scientist through a
form or a questionnaire thatshe's feeling better.
There's no lab proven markerthat you can follow to prove to
the scientific community thatthe woman is objectively feeling
better.
So this barrier in theavailability of good data is
(18:57):
from the lack of objectivelymeasurable data that current
scientific community reliesheavily on.
Subjective interpretations ofimprovement of disease are not
given as much weight asobjective data that can be
proven and replicated.
The correlation literature thatI already described like the A
(19:17):
study that correlates childhoodtrauma to poor health outcomes,
this type of literature is muchstronger than the treatment
outcome literature.
A big gap is the lack of largerandomized controlled trials
with hard physical healthendpoints after trauma
treatment.
We still need studies askingwhether effective trauma
(19:39):
treatment reduces incident ofdiabetes, recurrent
cardiovascular events,autoimmune flare frequency,
migraine days, inflammatorydisease progression, or all
cause mortality.
These types of studies are stillmostly observational data.
So all of this information feedsback to my original point around
(20:03):
when you as a woman go to seekhelp for this type of a
diagnosis, you're afraid to belabeled crazy, you're afraid to
be labeled emotional volatile,and this fear is legitimate
because a lot of times there'sjudgment behind the mask of
caregiving.
And I also want to remind youthat there are also very
empathic providers out there,the ones that understand this
(20:26):
correlation and provide youcomplete compassion.
So if you're somebody who islooking to take more
responsibility towards yourhealing and empowerment, don't
come to it through guilt orshame, because that's going to
make the original problem worse.
What is your responsibility inthis whole situation is your
mind's meaning making.
(20:48):
What might have counted as athreat in the past is no longer
a threat.
Your husband's upset is not athreat.
Your boss's comment is not athreat.
Your friend's delayed text isnot a sign of abandonment.
Your children's defiant behavioris not a threat to your
parenting.
Learning that and internalizingthat and living your life with
(21:10):
peace and joy, that is theoutcome we want, inshallah.
This elevates your internalfrequency, that upgrades your
overall operating system thattakes you out of chronic
dysregulation, which means thatit ultimately helps you with
your migraines, your autoimmuneflare ups, or things like that.
All this time your body becameexceptionally good at surviving,
(21:33):
surviving a world that itbelieved is dangerous.
Now it is your responsibility toteach it that not everything is
dangerous.
Firing an incompetent employeeis not dangerous.
Your husband's emotions are notdangerous.
Your attempt to discipline yourchild towards maintaining their
salah is not dangerous.
(21:54):
The ability to teach your mind,your heart and your nervous
system that not everydisagreement is abandonment and
not every criticism isrejection, this ability is what
takes you out of the highcortisol state.
This is what provides thebeneficial outcome.
If your body becameexceptionally good at surviving
(22:15):
the life you lived, now your jobis to become exceptionally good
at living the life Allah hasplaced in front of you today.
With that I pray to Allah, OAllah, heal what physically ails
me.
Teach my heart what is trulysafe, quiet my nervous system,
and replace my fear with trustin you.
(22:38):
Help me release what no longerprotects me.
Strengthen me to takeresponsibility without blame and
let every step towards healingbring me closer to you.
Amin Yarabul Amin.
Please keep me in your da'as.
I will talk to you guys nexttime.
Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast.
Apply tools that you learn inthis podcast and your life will
be unrecognizably successful.
Now your host, Dr.
Kamal Akhtar.
SPEAKER_01 (00:16):
Hello, hello, hello everyone.
Peace and blessings be upon allof you.
Today I'm going to be talkingabout chronic pain,
psychosomatic illnesses, chronicillnesses, and it's one of those
topics that's been in the makingfor a long time.
But here we are.
Imagine waking up exhaustedafter eight hours of sleep.
Your joints hurt, some days yourstomach hurts, or you're the
(00:39):
person that has on and offmigraines and it's unpredictable
when you'll be functional andwhen you will not.
And you go to the doctors andyou're getting everything
checked and everything is comingback normal.
And every doctor tells you thatstress is not helping you.
And you might be hearing fromtime to time that it's in your
head.
If this applies to you, thenthis podcast is for you.
(01:02):
Because what if they wereaccidentally right?
Accidentally but not in a waythat either you or your doctor
thinks they're right.
And today we're going to betalking about this exact topic,
chronic pain and illness fromdysregulation and unhealed
nervous system.
Now every problem that has acomplex system behind it has a
(01:22):
few villains.
This topic has three villainsthat are fighting each other.
That's the medical system, thetrauma, and the confusion behind
your own healing journey.
And while these are the threeobvious villains, there is
actually a bigger hiddenvillain, and that is the
misunderstanding.
The misunderstanding is if theillness is affected by your
(01:45):
mind, it must not be real.
That's the real enemy here.
A psychosomatic illness isdefined by a physical disease or
symptom in which psychologicalfactors play a significant role
in its development.
They can also play a role inexacerbation.
They work through realbiological pathways that affect
(02:05):
the endocrine and immunesystems.
But the nuance here is that mostphysicians would not say
psychological factors play arole as a cause of these
illnesses.
Rather, they're considered moreof a contributing factor, one
among many contributing factors,alongside your genetics,
environmental exposures,lifestyle, infections, and other
(02:26):
biological mechanisms that canbe proven.
Here I'm only focusing on themind body aspect and
purposefully not talking aboutany of the other factors that I
mentioned, and I'm doing this inthe spirit of simplicity and so
that you have practicaltakeaways from this podcast that
you can use.
Also just to clarify, ingeneral, the medical community
(02:47):
distinguishes psychosomaticillness from fictitious
disorders, malingering, orsomatic symptom disorders, where
the excessive distress orpreoccupation with symptoms
becomes the primary clinicalissue.
In psychosomatic illnesses, amedical community acknowledges
that the emotional andpsychological state produces
(03:09):
genuine physiological changes.
And the examples you might haveheard are stress worsening your
blood pressure or your bloodsugar.
Overall, a very under recognizedsign of nervous system
dysregulation, of you living inan unhealthy mental state is
chronic pain and illness,meaning it's hardly ever
(03:30):
considered that trauma isplaying a role in this.
And these symptoms andphysiological illnesses can be
anything from migraines,fibromyalgia, chronic back pain,
IBS, even POTS, which ispostural orthostatic tachycardic
syndrome.
It could be other pain syndromeslike reflex sympathetic
dystrophy.
(03:50):
It can range all the way up toheart attacks that happen
because of a hyperactivatedadrenal pituitary axis and high
cortisol states that createsinjury to the vessels and the
arteries that then leads toplaques and heart attacks.
I want to be clear when we talkabout your mental state
contributing to your physicaldisease, an underlying dangerous
(04:13):
assumption here is that I'msaying that you're imagining
these things and that you'remaking them up, which is not at
all what I'm saying.
Imagining these things impliesthat your conscious mind can
take control over what youthink, and then you can think
your way out of these diseases.
It implies control.
It implies a certain sovereigntythat you are lacking on your own
(04:35):
body, therefore you have thisdisease.
It implies that I'm accusing youof not utilizing mental health
resources to help yourself outof these diagnoses.
Again, all of these aredangerous assumptions and
extremely harmful.
So I'm explicitly mentioningthem here in case you fall into
this.
A lot of medical providers fallinto this trap and start calling
(04:59):
women with symptoms like this assupratentorial, a very
derogatory, a very demeaningterm.
At the same time, I am alsosaying that these things are the
signs and symptoms ofdysregulation of your nervous
system, and that your nervoussystem is in a chronic state of
hypervigilance or in a chronicstate of being checked out that
(05:21):
creates physical ailments.
So your mind is creating them,or contributing to them at
least, but not in a sense thatimplies conscious control.
Like if you're excited aboutyour engagement party coming up,
but when the day of the partyarrives you get GI problems, or
the stress of an exam gives youloose bowels or abdominal pain.
(05:43):
Reason I know that an engagementparty or exams don't cause the
bowel problem is because that ifthat was the case, everyone
facing these situations willhave the same symptoms.
So the difference underlyingonly lies in how you're dealing
with the situation at asubconscious level.
So while the initial injury, thewounding, the trauma, the
(06:05):
initial insult of your nervoussystem that might have happened
to you is not in your control,how you navigate this in the
future is in your control.
If you become the victim of thecircumstances, that then
manifests in chronic pain andillnesses.
If you are able to healthilytake control of how you heal
your mind and your body, and youlearn to regulate yourself
(06:28):
through thought based and bodybased practices of healing, this
is in your control and that canchange the outcome.
I want to do whatever I can toconsciously take out the
insulting nature of theaccusations that are made by
some medical professionals andnon professionals towards women
who are carrying these chronicbody-based diagnoses.
(06:50):
And I also want to placeresponsibility towards the women
and on the women who are facingthese challenges.
And if you got here one way oranother, you are also able to
get out.
If you are at the doorstep oflearned helplessness, then you
can unlearn it as well.
I want to take it from anaccusation or an insult to
(07:12):
giving you a responsibility andempowering you because a lot of
these chronic diagnoses havebeen successfully linked to
chronic nervous systemdysregulation.
So while it is a part of yourmind that creates it, and the
mind is an extremely powerfultool, when I say the mind, I
mean the mind and the heart, thethought and the feeling pair,
(07:35):
your thoughts and emotionstogether.
Overall, basically your nervoussystem, including your conscious
and your subconscious mind.
And while this mind is thedriving force behind your body's
illness and the diagnosis, it isnot a fault, it is a
responsibility.
So if you as a woman suffer fromchronic migraines and we have a
(07:56):
lot of scientific data and termsand knowledge about how that
happens, vasodilation and thetryptophan medications that can
be used to alleviate thesymptoms and how to prevent them
and how to abort them, there arefull neurological subspecialties
dedicated just to managingheadaches.
There are people who spend theirentire careers helping other
(08:18):
humans facing these types ofchronic headache problems.
So while there is a lot ofscientific knowledge behind
them, I'm going to narrow thisproblem down to a specific
example again to make itapplicable and to take out the
generic language and to zoom ina little bit on the problem.
If you are this woman and you'rehyper vigilant about, let's say,
(08:41):
your husband being upset withyou because you spent an extra
hour with your friends whileyour intention was to have fun
and unwind, your husband thinksthat you're out there neglecting
your domestic responsibilities,and you come home and you go to
bed stressed that your husband'sgoing to be upset with you.
This stress is going totranslate into inner
(09:03):
hypervigilance state.
This is going to translate intorumination, each thought
creating further stress, andthis mental cycle fueling
itself.
Your unmanaged mind adds fuel tothe fire by collecting data from
the past and by creating theworst case scenario for the
future.
(09:23):
Basically, in this specificexample, while we're zoomed in,
if the details don't apply toyou, I want you to pay attention
to the message behind thisexample and extract from the
similarities that apply to youin your life.
If your mind is used to one ofthe four default behaviors of
dysregulation like fight,flight, freeze, or fawn, and it
(09:47):
does it with the perceived senseof threat, in this case the
threat being your husband'supset, and the threat coming
from you not wanting him to beupset, you taking responsibility
for his upset, you takingownership of his emotions, and
he expecting that you changeyour behavior so that he doesn't
feel upset anymore.
(10:08):
This also perpetuates by you notreceiving education around how
his upset is not yourresponsibility, his emotions
come from his thoughts, yourfear, your upset, and your
frustration comes from your ownthreat detection mechanisms that
come from your mind and from adysregulated nervous system.
(10:30):
This dysregulated nervous systemthen creates the high internal
cortisol levels and highadrenaline levels that you're
living under, and that's whatcontributes to disease or
flare-ups of the disease.
In other examples, let's sayyou're a woman who's terrified
to open text messages, a womanwho can't relax on vacation, a
(10:51):
woman who gets migraines everytime ETH planning comes closer,
or every time who getsfibromyalgia flare because your
in-laws are visiting.
Or if you're a woman whoseautoimmune disease flares while
you're facing difficulties ofrunning a business, hiring and
firing.
The physical manifestations ofthis hypervigilant state
(11:13):
combination of freeze, fight,flight, appease responses could
be a migraine, could befibromyalgia, could be IBS,
could be vasovagal symptoms andsyncopizing and passing out.
Usually, generally speaking,fight becomes anxiety, freeze
becomes fatigue, fawn becomesautoimmune self abandonment, and
(11:39):
flight is high adrenalineactivities like constantly
leaving a situation.
Again, these are the generalmanifestations and symptoms of
these states.
I'm not saying that any of theseare directly causing diseases.
These are the symptoms that areshowing you how these patterns
are keeping your physiologydysregulated.
(11:59):
Because while every survivalresponse was brilliant while it
was needed, it's no longerbrilliant because it's not
needed in your life anymore.
None of these responses wereflaws.
They are masterpieces ofadaptation.
Fight protects you, flightprepares you, freeze preserves
(12:19):
you, fawn keeps yourrelationships intact, which is
necessary for your survival.
Your nervous system resorts tothese responses because at one
point in your life they worked.
The tragedy is not that youlearned them or that you used
them.
The tragedy is that your bodynever received the memo that the
danger has ended, and you canheal from them.
(12:43):
So under that premise, the bodycontinues to fight battles that
are no longer there.
Healing is not you convincingyour body that it was wrong.
Healing is finally you givingyour body evidence that it no
longer has to survive a lifethat it already survived, that
time is past.
This is when your physiologybegins to shift from protection
(13:06):
towards repair and you go fromhypervigilance towards peace.
So now let's say that you're awoman who has any of these kinds
of chronic illness, symptoms ordiagnosis, and you go to a
modern Western medical provider.
While they've spent their entirelife in learning about this
issue and are literally expertsat it, very rarely will your
(13:28):
conversation ever go why are youtaking responsibility for your
husband's emotions?
Why are you in a state ofhypervigilance?
How are you going to heal fromthat?
Almost no one in the currentWestern medical profession will
ask you these questions.
Because we are not trained inthis.
So what this means is that it issafe for you to assume that your
(13:52):
doctor is not going to knowthis.
And I'm not saying this to throwshade at the medical profession.
I admire the medical profession.
I practice it every day.
I wouldn't exchange my medicallicense for anything in the
world.
I am saying all of this to shedlight on the fact that you have
to stop being disappointed inyour physicians when they don't
(14:13):
know this correlation.
Unless you are aware and you'regoing to a trauma informed
physician who is going to have acompletely different training
and background.
And of course these types ofmedical providers are very hard
to come by.
And it is because it doesn'thelp that the payment system of
a physician does not incentivizethem to spend time in coaching
(14:34):
or therapy type of modalities.
So even if a physician is eagerto practice and join the
modality of acute care medicine,preventative medicine, and
somatic therapy based medicine,they cannot sustainably do so
because at least in US there'sno insurance provider that
recognizes all theseinterventions and pays the
(14:55):
doctors for her services.
So if someone is passionateabout combining these
approaches, then they have nochoice but to resort to cash pay
systems, which a lot of timesare not reachable by many who
need these services.
So I'm saying these things toprepare you mentally so you stop
being surprised or angry whenyour PCP or your specialist that
(15:18):
you're going to doesn't adoptthis approach with you.
And when you're not angry at thesystem, you can actually look
for resources that are withinyour reach that will help you
heal.
This podcast being one of them,inshallah.
So the part of the treatment ofthe chronic seemingly
untreatable diagnosis is youtaking responsibility and not
(15:41):
continually adding insult toinjury.
Meaning your original trauma orhurt happened, your
hypervigilant state kicked intogear to help protect you, and
now you can let go of that.
You can release that responsesystem.
Continuing to interpret theworld through the lens of
survival has now becomemaladaptive, and it keeps you
(16:05):
bound to your illness becausethese are high adrenaline, high
cortisol states that are nowshowing up as diseases.
You do that, you participate inyour healing by training your
nervous system and masteringyour perception of the situation
so that you can perceive it in away that is helpful to you
(16:26):
rather than harmful, helpful toyour physical health and your
mental, emotional, and spiritualwell being.
I have been talking about thiscorrelation this whole time
about your perception, yourinternal environment of high
cortisol and then manifestationof disease.
This is a correlation, but whatmakes this association difficult
(16:47):
to prove is that it is not acausation.
Correlations themselves areimpossible to prove factually.
There are very well designedexperiments out there that take
psychosomatic issues intoaccount, especially in the field
of PNEI,psychoneuroendoimmunology.
There is an ACE study that Ifrequently reference in my work,
(17:10):
which is adverse childhoodexperiences.
This was conducted by CDC andKaiser Permanente in late 1990s.
This study reveals a powerfulcumulative correlation between
childhood trauma and adultchronic illness.
It provides insight into mentalhealth struggles and premature
death, but this study or anysubsequent commentary of this
(17:33):
omits to mention the role ofyour nervous system in the
healing process.
There's minimal to no way ofproving that healing your
nervous system reduces yourintensity or frequency of
migraines.
But if we studied a thousandwomen and noted the modalities
they use to heal themselves andcreated a correlation between
nervous system healing andimprovement of migraine
(17:55):
outcomes, there's no money to bemade from that study.
There's no pharmacologicalbenefit where you can write the
idea of this study up, submit itto the government or a private
entity who will give you moneyto pursue this research.
Because how is it going to helpthem make money?
It's not.
So in modern medicine, thethings that get funded and the
(18:16):
research that gets done isaround what has the promise of
turning around and being able tobe profitable, depending on the
results of the study.
So then the question becomes whydon't psychosomatic
practitioners, mind bodyhealers, start to fund these
types of studies?
And there are people who aredoing that, but the barrier here
(18:36):
is that the result issubjective.
It depends on a woman's reportof telling a scientist through a
form or a questionnaire thatshe's feeling better.
There's no lab proven markerthat you can follow to prove to
the scientific community thatthe woman is objectively feeling
better.
So this barrier in theavailability of good data is
(18:57):
from the lack of objectivelymeasurable data that current
scientific community reliesheavily on.
Subjective interpretations ofimprovement of disease are not
given as much weight asobjective data that can be
proven and replicated.
The correlation literature thatI already described like the A
(19:17):
study that correlates childhoodtrauma to poor health outcomes,
this type of literature is muchstronger than the treatment
outcome literature.
A big gap is the lack of largerandomized controlled trials
with hard physical healthendpoints after trauma
treatment.
We still need studies askingwhether effective trauma
(19:39):
treatment reduces incident ofdiabetes, recurrent
cardiovascular events,autoimmune flare frequency,
migraine days, inflammatorydisease progression, or all
cause mortality.
These types of studies are stillmostly observational data.
So all of this information feedsback to my original point around
(20:03):
when you as a woman go to seekhelp for this type of a
diagnosis, you're afraid to belabeled crazy, you're afraid to
be labeled emotional volatile,and this fear is legitimate
because a lot of times there'sjudgment behind the mask of
caregiving.
And I also want to remind youthat there are also very
empathic providers out there,the ones that understand this
(20:26):
correlation and provide youcomplete compassion.
So if you're somebody who islooking to take more
responsibility towards yourhealing and empowerment, don't
come to it through guilt orshame, because that's going to
make the original problem worse.
What is your responsibility inthis whole situation is your
mind's meaning making.
(20:48):
What might have counted as athreat in the past is no longer
a threat.
Your husband's upset is not athreat.
Your boss's comment is not athreat.
Your friend's delayed text isnot a sign of abandonment.
Your children's defiant behavioris not a threat to your
parenting.
Learning that and internalizingthat and living your life with
(21:10):
peace and joy, that is theoutcome we want, inshallah.
This elevates your internalfrequency, that upgrades your
overall operating system thattakes you out of chronic
dysregulation, which means thatit ultimately helps you with
your migraines, your autoimmuneflare ups, or things like that.
All this time your body becameexceptionally good at surviving,
(21:33):
surviving a world that itbelieved is dangerous.
Now it is your responsibility toteach it that not everything is
dangerous.
Firing an incompetent employeeis not dangerous.
Your husband's emotions are notdangerous.
Your attempt to discipline yourchild towards maintaining their
salah is not dangerous.
(21:54):
The ability to teach your mind,your heart and your nervous
system that not everydisagreement is abandonment and
not every criticism isrejection, this ability is what
takes you out of the highcortisol state.
This is what provides thebeneficial outcome.
If your body becameexceptionally good at surviving
(22:15):
the life you lived, now your jobis to become exceptionally good
at living the life Allah hasplaced in front of you today.
With that I pray to Allah, OAllah, heal what physically ails
me.
Teach my heart what is trulysafe, quiet my nervous system,
and replace my fear with trustin you.
(22:38):
Help me release what no longerprotects me.
Strengthen me to takeresponsibility without blame and
let every step towards healingbring me closer to you.
Amin Yarabul Amin.
Please keep me in your da'as.
I will talk to you guys nexttime.
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