BBR #185: Breaking Free from Negative Patterns w/the brain-body connection

Can our thoughts really reshape our physical state? find out in this special throwback episode from August 2021, where we dive into the connection between your thoughts and your nervous system health. 

We'll explore how neuroplasticity empowers our brains to adapt and grow with every new experience, and how our thoughts can directly influence our nervous system. You'll learn the impact that stress and fear can have on our hormonal responses, and learn how shifting your perception of danger can improve your physical health. 

This episode offers practical insights on managing your thoughts as a tool to unlearn harmful behaviors and beliefs. We'll discuss the importance of prioritizing self-growth, changing negative thoughts, and breaking free from environments and relationships that no longer serve you. 

Get in there and give it a listen for more! 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello my friends, and welcome back to the Brain Body Resilience Podcast. I'm your host, jpb, and this is episode number 185. We have got a throwback episode today. For those of you who didn't hear last week's episode first, go check that out. I made an announcement that I will be bringing in two episodes a month from the vault. I've got 185 episodes now and there are some real gems back in the early days and that's a lot to scroll through. So I'm bringing some of these back for a re-listen, for a revamp, for another introduction. Re-listen, for a revamp for another introduction.

Speaker 1: 0:44

First, because we hear things not as they are, but as we are. Our perception changes as we do. It changes according to our current level of energy, our mood, environment, how safe we feel, how happy, sad, angry, any, and all of the other feelings. All of these things change how we interpret something. And so when we hear something we may have heard before, it can land in a totally different way. I know, for me there are things I've heard dozens of times and then one day I'm like, oh wow, that is amazing, it's mind blowing, groundbreaking, and I know I've heard it before. It just didn't land the same. And so today we are bringing back an episode from August of 2021.

Speaker 1: 1:36

All about the brain body connection, really getting into how your thoughts affect your nervous system state. So, without further ado, let's get in there and give it a listen. What is up? Hello there, my name is Jessica Patchenbunch, you can call me JPB, and this is Brain Body Resilience. This is a podcast dedicated to growth, human development and stressing a little bit less so you can go ahead and live a little bit more. Well, hello there, welcome back. I'm excited to be here today. I am talking a little bit today about the brain and body connection, which is something that I am going to start talking more about. This is such a huge foundation for what brain body resilience does, what I do, the work that I do with my clients, and just the message that I want people to hear and understand that your mental and physical health are not separate. Your brain and body are inextricably connected. Your physiology and psychology are one in the same. They feed off of each other. It is a feedback loop. How many other ways I can say that? I don't know? Probably a lot. Your brain, your body, your mind, your body they are working together always, so you can't separate physical illness, from mental illness, mental illness from physical illness, or what you need to be doing to care for both of those aspects of your health. So let's get into this here.

Speaker 1: 3:20

I posted a quote from this book that I am currently reading, neurosculpting, which I will leave the information for in the show notes. It is a beautiful work dedicated to teaching people how to take advantage of neuroplasticity through, excuse me, intentional daily activities in order to heal trauma. And neuroplasticity, my friends, is your brain's ability to adapt and grow. Your brain is constantly changing with every experience you have, with the different experiences you're giving yourself. There are different types of sensory input. Everything you see, everything you hear, taste, touch, smell, feel and think are all contributing to building new or modifying the existing neuropathways that you have. And neuropathways are made up of individual neurons. Those are brain cells, along with glial cells that help kind of structure and guide and protect and clean. They do all kinds of things, all of these neuropathways and the kind of the scaffolding that holds them into place.

Speaker 1: 4:26

And so this post that I, this quote that I that I posted on Instagram. It says it stands to reason that if stress and fear have the power to signal our hormones and hormones have a pervasive influence on all the body functions, then our thoughts play an integral role in the physical state of the body. I'm going to read that one more time. It stands to reason that if stress and fear have the power to signal our hormones and hormones have the pervasive influence on the body functions, then our thoughts play an integral role in the physical state of our body. So when you have thoughts about things that you interpret as dangerous in some way, that you give you a fear response, you get an immediate response from your HPA axis, your hypothalamic, pituitary adrenal axis, and this is what ignites your threat alarm, your fight or flight system, the stress response system. It sends this cascade of chemicals and hormones signaling into your body that there is a threat and that survival mode is needed. But the thing is that is just according to your perception. Danger is a real thing. Danger is very, very real. What we perceive to be dangerous is not necessarily always actually a life or death situation. A lot of it is a lot of it is fear about how we will be perceived in social situations, and a lot of that comes from shame and blame that we turn inward, and so then that perpetuates that and we're creating this, this environment, in this internal environment of fear because of those thoughts.

Speaker 1: 6:20

So it's really interesting to me that there is and I'm not interesting, not in a way that I am surprised by it or I didn't know this existed, but just I don't know. This is what I've always been really interested in people, which is what attracted me to psychology and then neuroscience and like, okay, your brain works this way and this is kind of why humans work the way they do. Because my initial question was always just kind of like, what makes us work the way we do and what makes people behave the way they do and think the way they do, and what makes them think that's okay a lot of the time, how do we justify those things? And my interests have evolved and changed and shifted over the years, but still I'm so fascinated by humans. We are such interesting creatures and it's not always in a positive light.

Speaker 1: 7:15

So it's interesting to me that there is such a resistance to the idea that your mind and your mental health matter. Mind and your mental health matter, that it is actually a real thing and that it's not just an excuse to use when you can't like hack it, which was this narrative that I've heard a lot recently around, these major athletes like Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka standing in their power to protect their own health and, you know, taking agency over themselves and their mental and physical health, their environment, their bodies, and directing that and I think, like everything, there are so many layers to that contribute to the complexity of this. Racism is a big one. Misogyny is another big one. The fact that these Black women have the audacity to take agency over themselves and stand in their power and advocate for themselves is something that I think is really hard for a lot of people to watch when we live in a culture and society that does not support that.

Speaker 1: 8:35

So lots of layers, but the one that I want to specifically look at is these responses that I heard something along the lines of like oh, mental health, is that the go to excuse when, when you can't make it, or some some kind of ridiculous nonsense, and this, to me, illuminates the societal illness we have of self rejection that exists and is largely expected by people of a certain age or certain mindset. I know that, like in a large part, I think it is a there has been a large shift generationally and I see this in, like my, my parents, my mother's generation, and this is kind of the narrative that we what is up? Hello there, my name is Jessica Patchenbunch, you can call me JPB, and this is Brain Body Resilience. This is a podcast dedicated to growth, human development and stressing a little bit less so you can go ahead and live a little bit more. Grew up with was just kind of like you're expected to practice ignoring yourself and hearing these messages and reaffirming these messages that you just have to tough it out and unless you're dying, that you just have to tough it out. And unless you're dying, you just keep going and if you quit you're a quitter and you just kind of work yourself into the ground and like have no regard for yourself. And there's a lot in there to unpack, to unpack and I have strayed a bit from my focus here, but I promise I'll bring it around and I've strayed a bit from my focus here, but I promise I'll bring it around.

Speaker 1: 10:28

So just a couple of thoughts on that. First, being tough doesn't mean ignoring yourself and your needs and your health. It's actually much tougher to sit in your vulnerability and expose the raw parts of you to anyone else and to stand in your truth and to admit that you have room for improvement and want to do the hard work that it takes to grow as a person, to adapt as a person, to admit that maybe, um, you are operating in a way that is not beneficial for yourself or the people around you. That's the real tough shit, like if you want to talk about like, oh, just tough it out, that is much more difficult. Sifting through and unlearning all of your shit, which we all have. Nobody is exempt from this. That is the real difficult work. I think on the other side of that, it's much. It is much easier to just ignore it and shove it down and pretend it doesn't exist, because then you don't have to deal with it, but then you have to live with it every day and that feels worse. That is not conducive to living your best life as your best self with joy.

Speaker 1: 11:42

Um, number two here I've got my notes Unless you're dead or dying, this thing, this is, oh my God, just know to this. I have lived most of my life with this narrative and now I'm on a different level. I'm still unlearning this mindset, but I finally understand that I'm here to live my life, my best life, and that means to thrive, not just survive and scrape by and struggle, because that's what I think that my life is about. And I deserve all of this because I'm a human. And that means so do you. You don't have to earn the right Nobody has to earn the right to deserve to live their best life. That right is always yours, but sometimes we have to. There are layers we have to uncover. We have to unlearn the idea that that's not for us. And lastly, on this point, there's nothing wrong with being a quitter. That whole like, oh, mental health is just an excuse to quit. There's nothing wrong with being a quitter Like.

Speaker 1: 12:48

I remember quick aside I remember my first full-time job. I was 16 and I worked at the movie theater and I literally thought that it would be better to get fired than to quit, because I had this idea in my head that I had learned that quitting was just absolutely unacceptable under any condition and and so I started, like I don't know, I think I wore my slippers to work and I just was just super flagrant and I was just, I was not my best. I was not my best 16 year old self at that point, and eventually I got fired, I think, for coming in late or something, and um, and I felt relieved because I didn't have to quit. The idea of quitting gave me so much anxiety. I just I didn't think that that was an accept, ever an acceptable answer. Um, I just I didn't think that that was an accept, ever an acceptable answer. Um, I think that also led to my first marriage, but that's a whole other story. But somewhere along the way, I think, somewhere in my late twenties, I was reading something that was talking about quitting and how we're shamed for it.

Speaker 1: 13:59

But we should all be quitting all the things that don't serve us all the time. Quit the job that you fucking hate. Yes, I understand there are bills to pay, but, like, figure out how you can get out of that situation. That's not serving you. There are other jobs. Quit treating yourself like shit. Quit surrounding yourself with environments that aren't helping you to grow and build your best self in life. Quit the environments that aren't helping you to grow and build your best self in life. Quit the relationships that aren't serving you. Quit all the things that don't serve you as much as possible, as often as possible. It's okay to try something and then quit. Quitting is absolutely fine if it is quitting something that is not serving your self, your best self.

Speaker 1: 14:43

So this is a good segue back into my original point about your thoughts affecting your physiology. So your mind and body are in almost constant communication all the time between your endocrine, immune and nervous system. They have this shared chemical language and they are all just talking all the time. This is how I'm doing. This is how I'm doing. What's up with you? Okay, cool. Well, this is what's needed over here. Maybe you can send some things my way. That's how they talk to each other.

Speaker 1: 15:12

So the thoughts that you think produce a chemical reaction that has a cascading effect on the rest of your body systems. So when you're shaming and blaming and judging yourself and creating an environment of anxiety and shame around yourself, this is what your cells are born into. 330 billion new cells a day are introduced into an inflammatory and inherently stressful environment. They are not going to feel safe living their best lives, and if your cells are not living their best lives and don't feel safe, they are not going to be creating your tissues and organs and your systems and running efficiently in your body. This is where dis-ease comes from and then, with this, your mental and physical health are always linked. They are dependent on each other and you can't truly have one without the other. You can go to the gym and eat all your veggies, but if you're also swimming in a toxic self view, you will still be sick, you will still feel like shit, you will still be anxious, you will still be depressed.

Speaker 1: 16:18

There's nothing wrong with you. Your body and brain are just creating with the information they are given. They are just following, excuse me your instructions, and so if you need to change the input you're providing, do that. You can. You have that option? Is that easy? Fuck. No, it's not, because you've been practicing these things over and over again, probably for a lifetime. Is it possible? Yes, absolutely. It takes a lot of practice, it takes a lot of work and, like I said earlier, doing that self-work is really hard, but probably the most important thing you can ever do, the most important work you can ever do, because it's your life. So think about the information that you are providing for your brain and body to work with. If you think about I think it's easier to think for me in this context If you think about a child who is loved and supported and encouraged and nourished and looked after, they will thrive.

Speaker 1: 17:17

They will grow to be healthy. And if that same child was growing in an environment with abuse and shame and neglect and criticism, they will develop internal coping defenses and mechanisms called anxiety and depression, etc. You are that child Now that you're grown. Regardless of which of those children you were, you have the opportunity to care for yourself now and give yourself the love and support that you need to grow and develop and continue to live as a person. This is now your responsibility.

Speaker 1: 17:51

This is something that I struggled with for a really long time, because I did grow up in an environment with abuse and shame and neglect and criticism and all of these things, and I tried so hard for so long. I was focused on not being a product of that environment. But where your attention is, that is where your energy is spent. That is where your focus is. That's where your brain is, that's where your body is. So if that is where whether you're focused on not being that thing or you're focused on being that thing, your focus is still on that thing, and it was really profound one time.

Speaker 1: 18:25

It seems very simple, but when you're in that you can't always see it. My therapist said one time. She said what if you focused on what you do want instead of what you don't want? And I was just like mind is blown, um, which always makes sense from like a scientific point of view for me, but again, when you are in the thing, it's a little bit harder to gain that, that perspective. So I'm telling you, you have the opportunity to give yourself the love and support that you need to flourish and grow. It is your responsibility to do that. Now you are the one taking care of yourself. Your thoughts matter.

Speaker 1: 19:01

Pay attention. What is the narrative that you've got about yourself playing over and over in your head? Where might your stories be limiting? Where can you adjust or just totally swap out a harmful narrative for something more useful? That is my challenge for you this week. Take some time to pay attention, to see what stories you have in your head about what you're capable of, about what in your life is stressful, about what in your life is producing anxiety, about how you deal with those things, about your abilities to deal with those things, and then maybe write them down so that you can take some space and then come back and interact with them later. That is where I'm going to leave it for today.

Speaker 1: 19:43

We're getting a little bit lengthy and so I'm going to say goodbye and bid you adieu and, as always, I love to hear from you. So if you enjoyed this, I would love for you to share it on your social media and then tag me so I can see it and so that I can say hi, give you some love and have an interaction. Because I like talking into this microphone. It's a good time. I like to just share my ideas and my thoughts and whatever, and I'm happy that you seem to like it. But interaction is awesome. So if you are so inclined, please do that. That's it. If you like it, share it. Other than that, I will see you next week. I hope you have a beautiful week whenever you're listening to this. Until next time, peace out.