#8 Are You Telling Me to Do Nothing With My Symptoms?

If symptoms are part of healing… does that mean you’re supposed to do nothing?

This is one of the most common questions I get, and the answer comes down to understanding the difference between acute symptoms and chronic symptoms.

In this episode of The Rebellious Healer, Jenny explains why acute symptoms are often part of the healing process, why chronic symptoms mean something deeper is blocking that process, and why real healing isn’t about doing nothing — it’s about doing the right work.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
• The difference between acute and chronic symptoms
• When to trust your body and when to go deeper
• Why fear keeps the healing process from completing
• What real, aligned action actually looks like

Press play if you want to understand the difference between symptoms that are part of healing and symptoms that mean something deeper needs to change.

------------------------------------------------------
Ready to resolve your chronic symptoms and get your life back? 

 START HERE👉APPLY FOR THE EVOLVE PROGRAM 

• Blog: BLOG | Mindbodyrewire (themindbodyrewire.com)
• INSTAGRAM- @themindbodyrewire
• FACEBOOK- Mind Body Rewire

Thanks for listening! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back to the Rebellious Healer. Today we're tackling one of the most common questions I get when people first hear about the work I do. If I'm not supposed to fear my symptoms, and my symptoms are actually part of my healing process, does that mean I'm supposed to do nothing? I totally get why this question comes up. For years we've been conditioned to see symptoms as problems that need to be fixed immediately and aggressively. So when someone like me tells you that your symptoms don't need to be feared, it's natural to wonder, what do I do with them then? The answer to this question requires a key understanding of the difference between acute and chronic symptoms, which is exactly what we'll break down in today's episode. I'm going to explain why your symptoms aren't a threat, how they're actually a part of the healing process, and why real healing isn't about doing nothing. Instead, it's about taking empowered, aligned action that allows you to truly move toward healing. So let me first start with some clarity about symptoms. Symptoms are either acute or chronic. Acute symptoms are the ones that don't stick around for months. They're things like a broken bone, a cut, a cold that lasts for a week or two. Then there are more severe acute symptoms like a heart attack or an anaphylactic reaction that require immediate medical attention. Chronic conditions, on the other hand, are the ones that either never go away or keep coming back. Think about a rash that's lasted for months, or IBS or chronic pain, or daily palpitations. Chronic conditions can be exhausting because they feel like they're here to stay, but they're also the conditions that I focus on in my work. It's important to know that my work isn't necessarily needed for acute conditions, outside of understanding that your body is healing and that there's no need to panic. But of course, common sense applies here. In situations like a broken bone or a heart attack, you absolutely need medical help. That's not where this approach fits. Understanding the difference between acute and chronic symptoms is key to stepping into your role as a rebellious healer. So let's move forward with that distinction in mind. Let's start with addressing acute conditions. Let's say you have a stuffy nose and a cough. A common cold, basically. These symptoms don't indicate that you're broken and that there's something wrong. They show you that your body has gone through an experience where it didn't feel safe. It adapted to survive, it did that all behind the scenes, and now it's in the process of healing. Your symptoms are an indication of that. So here's the thing: just having these symptoms doesn't mean you need to do something to make them go away. In fact, your body is already doing the healing. That's what the symptoms are indicating. Symptoms like a stuffy nose or a cough are simply your body's natural way of processing and moving through the healing phase. It's a sign that your body feels safe and whatever you went through has been resolved. Now your body is coming back into homeostasis, coming back into balance, and your symptoms are a sign of that. Now, when you experience these acute symptoms, this doesn't mean that you do nothing. But what you do looks different than what most people do. You don't need to fight the symptoms or try to make them go away. Instead, you trust your body. As a rebellious healer, you understand that it's healing and you support that healing by resting, staying hydrated, getting some sun, and keeping your head clear out of the lane of fear. And if you do take something, it's not to make the symptoms disappear, but to support your body's healing process. For example, if you're uncomfortable, you can use remedies that ease that discomfort. It might be a nasal spray, an essential oil-based vapor rub that will help you feel more comfortable and that will help you with your breathing. But the goal is to not interfere with your body's natural healing process. Because if you do that, then the body basically says, okay, my healing's been put on pause. I have this remedy come in that completely, you know, shuts down the healing process. And when that thing goes away, I'm going to come back in and I'm going to ultimately finish the healing process. So remedies like that are going to be anything that's going to activate the sympathetic nervous system or something that's going to stop the symptoms from happening in the body. And that is going to basically tell the body, okay, we've been put on pause. And what will happen if you take those types of remedies that interfere with the healing process or stop the healing process is the body eventually is going to go back to finishing it and your symptoms are going to come back again. And it can be a never-ending cycle of people saying, Well, I got get a cold, then I take this thing and it goes away and then it comes back again. Well, most likely in that case, you're taking something that's interfering with the healing process. The body is trying to do its job, and this thing coming in is just, you know, causing this whole loop effect. So when you support your healing by resting, staying hydrated, getting some sun, and keeping your head clear without letting the fear take over, does that really sound like doing nothing? It isn't nothing. It's just a different kind of action rather than reaching for something externally, one that isn't about external fixes. It's about giving your body the time and space it needs to heal. And I used to be the person who would line my countertop with supplements, take a bunch of homeopathics or constantly do something when I had a cold. When my son was sick, my goodness, I would just put supplements all over on the counter and like grab as many as I could to give him, you know, give him the perfect foods when he had a cold and constantly monitoring him. And whenever he would cough, I would feel awful and say, I gotta give him something to stop him from coughing and just all this stuff that I was panicking about, which was part of the healing process. It wasn't an emergency situation, but I sure as heck made it feel that way by coming in there with all this stuff and thinking I needed to interfere as if the body didn't know what it needed to do. But now, as a rebellious healer, I've learned that keeping things simple is actually more effective. I trust my body, I get the rest, stay hydrated, get some sun, stay out of fear. Same thing, you know, if anybody in my family gets sick, work in a different place now. It's so much easier. And my body recovers more quickly than it ever did when I used all those products. Even there's even some times where, you know, if my son has a stuffy nose, they'll say, you know, you want to use this ointment that I have to help open up, you know, and help you breathe a little bit better. No, mom, I'm fine. My body knows what it's doing. It's so different than what it used to be of mom, can you give me something for this? Can you give me something for that? The the whole mindset in our whole household has shifted because we understand what our body is doing rather than trying to fix it or force it all these things to go away. When acute conditions come up, my biggest recommendation is to keep it simple. You don't need to dig into them or try and fix anything. Just like a cut, let your body do its thing. I see so many people that are in the mind-body uh healing space that you know they'll have an acute condition and they'll sit there and say, I'm gonna journal and figure out what's connected to this, or I'm gonna do a meditation and see, you know, see what's what messages come up. And to be honest with you, the message that comes up that your body wants to say is I'm healing. There's nothing to do right now. Leave me alone. There's there's nothing to dig into with an acute condition. Just remember, you have resolved something, your body adapted, your symptoms are an indication that that has been resolved and you are now moving into balance. And those symptoms are part of coming back into balance. And as long as you know that, there's no reason to waste your time being a detective. There's nothing to figure out, just focus on trusting your body. So let's switch gears now and talk about chronic conditions. This is where a lot of confusion comes in. Some people hear me say that their symptoms mean healing, so they assume they should just let them be, like I recommend for acute conditions. But that's not the case with chronic conditions. With chronic conditions, your body doesn't feel safe enough to complete the healing process. Something is interfering with that process, which is why the symptoms are not going away. Chronic conditions typically are not life-threatening for the most part. So you will still apply the no-fear rule here, but this is where the inner work needs to be done. So here's the important distinction. For acute conditions like a cold, you trust that your body knows how to heal. But with chronic conditions, where your symptoms don't go away for months, weeks, uh, years, your body is telling you that there's something blocking it from completing that healing process. It's not about doing nothing in that case, it's about addressing the root cause, which is going to be the deeper patterns, beliefs, and subconscious issues that are keeping the healing from being completed. And when your chronic symptoms persist, it's a sign that the healing process is stuck somewhere. This is where you need to dive deeper. You need to address the inner work. And that's where completing the healing process happens. Now, I want you to take a moment to reflect on your own healing journey. Ask yourself these two questions. Number one, so I want you to think about a recent symptom you had. Was this an acute issue, like a cold or a headache, or has it been something chronic that hasn't gone away? How did you react to it? Did you try to fix it, or did you trust your body to heal? So if this was an acute issue, chances are your body was simply doing its job. You didn't need to fight it, but rather you could have supported it by resting, staying hydrated, all those other things I mentioned. If it's chronic, your body is signaling that something deeper needs attention. That's where the inner work is needed. All right, so the second question is do you view your symptoms as enemies or as messengers? This is a powerful question because how you view your symptoms will determine how you approach your healing. If you see them as enemies, you'll fight against them and you're gonna have this inner war going on, and it's just not gonna be a healthy state to be in for your mind or your body. But if you view them as messengers, you'll understand that they are there to guide you towards deeper healing. Again, this is back to chronic conditions. Your symptoms are showing you where the real work needs to happen. So here's the bottom line. When it comes to acute conditions, trust your body and support its healing process. Again, within reason and within common sense. It's not about doing nothing, it's about doing something different. You're not fighting the symptoms, you're allowing your body to heal, supporting it along the way. Remember what doing something looked like before. That's not going to look the same now. Now, what you do is going to feel like it's nothing because you're not reaching for something externally, but it is something. When you respond to symptoms this way, it's going to feel uncomfortable. You have to remember, you are used to reaching for external things. We're also programmed to believe that we need to aggressively come in and make these things go away. So you're going to feel like it's doing nothing, but it is not nothing, like we talked about here. It is something. It's just looking different. It's very different. And it will feel so simple that you feel like you should be doing something more. Like this is so simple. I'm just going to lay in bed, sleep, drink water, and let my body do this. This is so simple that it feels wrong. And that's the discomfort we have to move through because it's different. And it's something that our body and minds are not accustomed to. It'll be so simple that it feels not so bad to experience those symptoms anymore because it's not another stressful situation. I mean, if you have children and you have these acute symptoms that happen, which happens in a household, if you freak out every time and respond in the ways that, for example, like I used to do, then when a child is coughing or sneezing, you're going to look at that and go, oh my God, I am going to be dealing with such a stressful situation. I can see the cold coming on, and everybody's going to get it. And it's going to be this stress that you feel instantly by just seeing your kid cough or sneeze. But when you shift it and go, okay, whatever. So we'll have a couple of days where we sit and watch movies and relax, and we'll get back to normalcy after that. So what? It's a whole different view. And when you make that shift, your kids are going to make the same shift as well. And everybody in the house is going to experience this acute condition, acute symptom in a much more pleasant way, which is programming them for the rest of their life of how they're going to respond to acute situations. And so when it comes to chronic conditions, it's about understanding that your body is trying to heal, but something is blocking that process. It's time to address those deeper subconscious patterns, and that's where the real work lies. If you're ready to stop managing symptoms and start leading your healing, Evolve is my eight-month high-touch coaching program for women with chronic symptoms who are done experimenting and done trying to figure this out alone. This is not more information. It's structured implementation inside the Mind Body Rewire framework. Daily direction, targeted work, private coaching, real-time feedback. So your blind spots don't stay blind and your body finally gets the green light to heal. If you're ready for healing to stop being your full-time job and start becoming who you're meant to be beyond symptoms, apply for Evolve today. The link is in the show notes. Thanks for tuning in to the Rebellious Healer. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend, tag me on Instagram, or come and say hi. I truly love hearing from you. Until next time, remember, real healing starts when you trust your body and step into your power.