#45 Is Your Support Group Slowing Down Your Healing?

When you're dealing with chronic symptoms, one of the first things most people do is look for support. We want to be around people who understand what we're going through.

But what if the very environments you've turned to for support are reinforcing the patterns that are keeping you stuck?

In this episode, I share some surprising experiences from my own healing journey and explain why not all support actually supports healing.

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

START HERE👉GET YOUR HEALING AUDIT

Thanks for listening! 

• INSTAGRAM- @themindbodyrewire
• FACEBOOK- Mind Body Rewire

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Support. It's something we all need when we're healing. Whether it's family, friends, a coach, or a support group, we naturally want to surround ourselves with people who understand what we're going through. But here's the question I want you to think about today. What if the support you're getting is actually making it harder to heal? I know that's not something most people think about. In fact, support groups are often considered one of the best things you can do when you're dealing with chronic symptoms. But looking back on my own healing journey, I can honestly say that some of the most supportive and best decisions I made were walking away from the places that called themselves support. Not all support actually supports healing. Some environments create hope, others create fear. Some keep you moving forward, others keep you emotionally attached to being sick. Today I want to talk about how to recognize the difference because the people you surround yourself with and the environments you immerse yourself in are teaching your brain what's possible, whether you realize it or not. So no matter what symptom or diagnosis you have, you can probably find a support group for it, whether it's Lyme disease, POTS, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, autoimmune disease, mold illness, you name it, there's a group of people somewhere who understand exactly what you're going through. And that's not a bad thing. As humans, we're wired for connection. Our brains naturally seek out people who understand us, especially when we're scared, struggling, or feeling alone. There's safety in feeling like you belong to your survival brain. When you're dealing with chronic symptoms, that need for connection can become even stronger because so many people around you don't understand what you're going through. Maybe your doctors have dismissed you, maybe your family doesn't really get it. So when you finally find a group of people who say, I've been there too, it can feel like you found your people. And in many ways, that's exactly what support should provide. It should help you feel seen, understood, and remind you that you don't have to walk this journey alone. But here's where we need to be careful. Because while your brain craves connection, it also learns from the environments you repeatedly expose it to. And those are two very different things. Just because an environment makes you feel understood doesn't necessarily mean it's helping your brain believe healing is possible. So when I was in the middle of my healing journey, I did what I think most people do. I started looking for support. I joined several Lyme disease support groups because I wanted to connect with people who understood what I was going through. My family, of course, loved me, but they couldn't truly understand what it felt like to wake up every day wondering if I was ever going to get my life back. So finding people who got it felt comforting. At least in the beginning, it did. I remember one day someone in one of the groups recommended that I watch a documentary about a woman with Lyme disease. I assumed it was going to be inspiring. I thought maybe it would be the story of someone who had healed. Instead, it followed her journey until she died. And I remember sitting there thinking, if that's what happens to people with Lyme disease, then maybe that's what's going to happen to me. And I spiraled. I became depressed after I watched that. I couldn't sleep. And for days I just couldn't stop thinking about it. I was crying, I was having anxiety. It just amplified everything. And looking back now, I realized what happened. My brain wasn't seeing it as one woman's story. It was seeing it as evidence that Lyme disease is going to automatically end this way. Evidence that healing wasn't possible, and evidence that this could become my future. But I want you to remember something. Your subconscious doesn't know the difference between the story you're living, the one that you're presently living right now, and the stories you are rehearsing every day. The things that you're making making up in your head that you are saying that might happen or could happen or what if, it doesn't know the difference. Your subconscious doesn't say, oh, that's fake and this is real. Doesn't know. It just acts as if it's all real. So these stories that we're making up by watching this stuff or, you know, hearing these stories of things going bad for people, they're not supportive to our healing. And then there was another support group I belonged to. Every time someone with Lyme disease passed away, someone would post their obituary for the entire group to see. Now I finally spoke up and said, is this really helpful? We're all here because we're trying to heal. What does repeatedly sharing stories of people dying actually do for the people in this group? And of course, I was removed from that group for speaking up. And then there were the anxiety groups. After I healed my panic attacks through subconscious work, I shared my story because I genuinely wanted people to know healing was possible. And instead of asking how I did it or celebrating, I was told that healing wasn't possible using the mind, that I must have just been lucky because no one else had experienced that kind of recovery. Now, those experiences in those groups taught me something incredibly important. Many people consciously want to heal, but subconsciously are resisting. Every time healing asks them to let go of an identity, a belief, or a familiar way of thinking, subconscious resistance shows up. Instead of moving towards healing, they unintentionally, unconsciously move back towards what's familiar. That's why you often see support groups become environments where resistance patterns are running the show. The conversations stay centered around symptoms, fear, and why healing isn't possible instead of helping people move toward change. If the majority of people in a group are unknowingly reinforcing these patterns, that becomes the culture of the group. And culture shapes what everyone else begins to see as normal. And your subconscious doesn't just learn from your own experiences, it also learns from the experiences you're repeatedly exposed to. If every day you're reading stories about people getting worse, if every week you're seeing another obituary, if every conversation reinforces fear, hopelessness, and decline, your brain starts collecting those stories as evidence. And remember, the subconscious operates based on evidence. The more that that bigger stack of evidence that it has, that's what it's going to go to, not the small stack of evidence. And when every day you're being exposed to this, they start becoming your normal. And what your brain sees as normal, it eventually begins to expect. So this is the moment that I realized that simply feeling understood wasn't enough. I needed to be in environments that reminded me that healing was possible. So I left all of those groups. Another thing I noticed when I was in these groups was the constant flood of information. Every single day, someone had discovered a new supplement, a new practitioner, a new protocol, another documentary, or something that they read that completely changed the way they looked at healing. And before long, everyone is thinking, well, maybe I should try that too. I would see these posts and think, maybe this is the piece I haven't found yet, or maybe I should try that. Every time I logged into the group, there seemed to be just another answer, another solution that person was putting on there, another recommendation, and another reason to question what I was doing already. And it just never stopped. It was continuous. So before long, you're trying 20 different things, all because everybody's saying you should try it. Your attention is scattered. Your focus is all over the place. You lose confidence because every opinion seems to contradict the one before it. And instead of feeling like you're getting closer to healing, you end up feeling more confused than when you even started. The reality is that everyone in these groups is at a different place in their healing journey. Some people are just beginning. Some people have been sick for years, and others are just sharing things that they have read and not actually tried themselves and just passing on information. The problem is that when you put hundreds or even thousands of people together, you end up with hundreds or even thousands of different opinions. That doesn't necessarily mean the advice is wrong, but it does make it incredibly difficult to know what's right for you. This is one of the biggest reasons people stay stuck. They're constantly searching for the next answer instead of committing to a clear direction. Their attention is pulled in so many different directions that they never feel confident enough to stay the course. So looking back for me, one of the best decisions I made was to quiet the noise. I stopped believing that every new piece of information applied to me, and I became much more intentional about who I allowed to influence my thinking. And I realized I didn't need more opinions. I needed to take focus action long enough to create change rather than bouncing from protocol to protocol every single week. So support doesn't only come from support groups. Sometimes the people who unintentionally reinforce illness the most are the people who love us the most. I know that was true for me. My family cared a lot about me. They wanted me to get better. They weren't trying to make things harder, and they simply wanted to know how I was doing. So every time I saw them or they called me, the conversation always started out the same way. How are you feeling? Are your symptoms any better? How have you been this week? Again, there was nothing wrong with those questions. They came from a place of love. But I started to notice something. Every time someone asked me how I was feeling, I immediately shifted my attention to my symptoms. I replayed everything that had gone wrong that week. I thought about what was hurting, what hadn't improved, and everything I was still struggling with. Without realizing it, I was rehearsing my illness over and over and over again. Eventually I realized I needed to set some boundaries. And that came from realizing that when I got off the phone, that I felt completely different, like worse than when I got on the phone. And I would just be in this rabbit hole after the conversation and Debbie Downer and gloom and doom after having a conversation with family members that were just concerned, but we ended up having a conversation all about what I was trying and my symptoms and how bad they were. So I realized that wasn't healthy, that I really just felt like shit after those phone calls and something needed to change. And it wasn't that I didn't appreciate their concern, but because I didn't want my illness to become the center of every conversation I was having. So I started to change those conversations. Instead of spending 20 minutes talking about my symptoms, I talk about something funny that happened or I share something that I was learning. I'd ask them about their lives. I'd shift the subject or focus on things that had nothing to do with being sick, you know, just completely shift it. And I wasn't pretending everything was okay. I was just simply refusing to let my diagnosis become my identity because I found that every conversation that I was having was always about my quote unquote illness. And I think that's an important distinction. There's a difference between acknowledging that you're struggling and making your struggle the primary way you relate to the people around you. We don't need to pretend that your symptoms don't exist. It's about making sure they don't become the story your brain hears every single day. Because remember, your subconscious is always paying attention. Everything we listen to, whether it's TV, on our phones, on the radio, it doesn't matter. That's all programming into your subconscious mind. What you're paying attention to, you are programming. The conversations you have, the people you spend time with, the things you repeatedly talk about, they're all becoming evidence for what your brain believes is normal. And you will become that normal. That's why it's so important to surround yourself with people who care about you, but who also help you remember that there's more to you than your symptoms. So if I'm telling you that some environments can unintentionally keep you stuck, the obvious question becomes: where should you find support? For me, one of the biggest shifts was becoming much more intentional about who I allowed to influence my thinking. Instead of constantly surrounding myself with people who were talking about being sick and stuck in that rut of being sick, I started listening to people who had actually healed. Listening to podcasts, reading books, reading testimonials, watching testimonials of people that have actually healed. And I wanted to know what they believed, how they thought, what they did differently, and what helped them move forward. Because if my brain was always collecting evidence about what was possible, I wanted to give it evidence that healing could actually happen. And that didn't mean I ignored people who were struggling. It simply meant I stopped allowing struggle to become the loudest voice in my life. And I also realized the value of having someone who could keep me focused as well. Whether that's a coach, a mentor, or community that's working towards the same goal. There's something incredibly powerful about being surrounded by people who aren't just talking about healing. They're actively doing the work. One environment consistently asks what's wrong. And another asks, what's your next step? And that's really important. I mean, we hear that a lot from our students when they first come into the Evolve program. You know, they're surprised that we don't focus on symptoms. They're surprised we don't sit and talk about them, that we're, you know, not having a one-on-one just talking about symptoms and what they're doing. No, we're taking action. We're taking the next right action to create change. Sitting and talking about your symptoms doesn't create change. Otherwise, we all would have been better a lot sooner than what we are, right? Because we loved to talk about our symptoms. The environment that's asking what's wrong is going to keep you searching for another answer. And the environment that's asking what's your next step keeps you taking action. As I look back on my healing journey, I can see that healthy support always left me feeling differently than when I arrived. I felt more hopeful instead of more discouraged, more focused instead of confused, encouraged to take meaningful action instead of chasing the next thing, and more confident that healing was actually possible. And on the other hand, if I consistently left an environment feeling more afraid, more overwhelmed, more hopeless, or more attached to my diagnosis, I had to ask myself a difficult question. Was that really supporting my healing? And I encourage you to ask yourself those same exact questions. Asking yourself the question, do I feel understood here? Okay, that's a good question. But I think there's a better question. Who am I becoming by spending time here? Because every group creates a culture, every environment teaches you something. Some cultures create hope, others create helplessness, some normalize healing, others normalize staying sick. And your subconscious is paying attention to all of it. It doesn't just learn from what you intentionally study, it learns from what you repeatedly experience. So choose your environments carefully, choose the conversations you have carefully, choose who you listen to carefully. Because every conversation, every group, every podcast, every coach, every friend, and every person you spend time with is becoming part of the evidence your brain uses to decide what's possible. If you're serious about healing, don't just surround yourself with people who understand where you are. Surround yourself with people who remind you where you are capable of going.