Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
This isn’t a breakup pep talk. It’s a full-body recalibration.
Welcome to Dear Divorce Diary—the only podcast for women navigating the messy aftermath of divorce who are done with quick fixes and spiritual fluff.
I’m Dawn Wiggins, therapist and homeopath, and I’m here to give you something the divorce advice space rarely does: real healing.
Through somatic therapy, EMDR, IFS, and homeopathy, we go deeper—into your nervous system, your unspoken grief, and your buried rage.
Every week, we hold the tension: the body-based anxiety you can’t shake; the hormonal upheaval no one warned you about; the unresolved longing for identity.
You’ll hear raw solo episodes, real voice notes from women in the trenches, and intimate interviews with experts who do more than perform healing.
Here, you won’t be asked to “just move on.”
You’ll be asked to feel.
If you’re tired of tutorials that leave your nervous system humming and your heart disconnected, hit subscribe.
Your nervous system already knows the truth—it just wants a safe space to embody it.
Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce
269. Dating After Divorce: All the Good Men Aren’t Gone—Here’s Why You Can’t Find Them Yet
If you’ve been swiping after divorce and it feels like all the good ones are gone—or worse, you’ll just pick another version of your ex—pause. That’s not a dating problem. It’s a healing problem.
In this episode, we’re unpacking:
- The lies we tell ourselves about “no good men”
- Lori Gerber’s 3H Method (head, heart, hoo-ha) for clarity in dating
- How breadcrumbing + settling are really nervous-system issues
- Why your body flashes red lights during dates (and what it’s really about)
Because if love still feels unsafe, your body will tell you—loud and clear.
“You can’t fake safety. If you don’t believe love is possible, your nervous system will keep proving you right.”
Your body isn’t just reacting to texts, swipes, or dates—it’s showing you the deeper nervous system + hormone patterns that still need healing. If you want to understand your patterns, take the free Divorce Recovery Nervous System Type Quiz. You’ll discover the type of wiring that’s quietly running your love life, plus the hormonal layer underneath—and what to do about it.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MyCoachDawn
Instagram: (@dawnwiggins)
Instagram: (@coachtiffini)
On the Web: https://www.mycoachdawn.com
A podcast exploring the journey of life after divorce, delving into topics like divorce grief, loneliness, anxiety, manifesting, the impact of different attachment styles and codependency, setting healthy boundaries, energy healing with homeopathy, managing the nervous system during divorce depression, understanding the stages of divorce grief, and using the Law of Attraction and EMDR therapy in the process of building your confidence, forgiveness and letting go.
Post Divorce Road Map : 21 Days of Journaling
Promo Code: MAGICDROP
If you've been dating after divorce and struggling with the swiping and the not being able to find a good one, let alone the one, it's time to know what your nervous system is still doing at the idea of someone getting close and knowing what you actually want and claiming it, because I don't think you do. If you believe all the good men are gone or you're scared, you'll just pick another version of your ex. That's not actually a dating problem. It's a healing problem. Today we're going to talk about the patterns that are quietly sabotaging you and the shifts that you have to make in order for love to feel safe again. Hi, love, welcome to Dear Divorce Diary, the podcast helping divorcees go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence. I'm your host, dawn Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee. Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce. Good morning ladies, hey, hey, good morning. I loved that one, so sing-songy. It was like Belle was welcoming us to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we are going to talk today about some super fun stuff. Right, we're going to talk about the lies we tell ourselves when we are approaching dating and love and relationships. Right, because we often think we're being picky or we can't find a good man. Right, but what we have learned as a team is that we actually most women lack enough self-confidence and enough self-awareness actually, right, to be attracting the kind of man that they say they want, right, and so there's a clear path to being able to attract a quote unquote good man. But most women and the three of us missed that path. Right, like the three of us. We're going to talk about it today. Right, because it involves Lori Gerber, our internal dating expert, who you know has been the dating expert for like. Who did she work for?
Speaker 3:Gosh, her resume was so impressive. Matchcom, like her resume, was yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So we're going to talk about the system that she uses, right. That really exposes the lies we tell ourselves about dating and good men and attracting the right man, right. So we're going to get into that. Then we're going to talk about the way the body keeps the score on dates right, Like when we think about dating, when we're swiping, when we're actually on dating because, right, that late night text that doesn't come through, or the pause, or the way our bodies respond when we see those three dots, or the micro moments right where we have somatic flashbacks. And so the danger of what happens for most women is that all of their past shit about love is getting triggered in those moments of dating and they're misattributing it to that present moment dating experience, right. And so we're really going to talk about helping women recognize is it a then issue or is it a now issue? And then at the end of the pod, we are going to talk about the specific ways our bodies keep the score right and we're going to sort of get into this one belief that I think is very hard for women to really really believe is true. But we're going to talk about how our nervous system reflects our deepest wounds and our biggest growth edges and the very specific ways our bodies show us when or if we're still afraid love is unsafe. And I think all three of us have examples right of how our bodies show us specifically that love is unsafe, and we definitely want our listeners to know very specifically for them when their body is showing them so that they can take the action they need. Right, all right, so let's do it to it.
Speaker 1:The lie we tell ourselves about dating right, there's no good men. What are some other things we hear women say about dating? There's no good men, can't find them.
Speaker 2:They just don't believe in love anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, but do you?
Speaker 3:think yeah, I've had my happiness. Like I had my shot, I'll just be with my children, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but but would they say that to us if we were, if we're sitting with them Right? Are they saying like oh, I don't deserve in love divorce? Through an action. I think that they're the ones that carry well, I already screwed it up.
Speaker 2:Why should I deserve somebody that's actually good for me? Because you know I wasn't loyal, or I wasn't, you know whatever.
Speaker 1:Or he screwed it up and I can't trust again.
Speaker 3:I believed that, like I bet, I had given him my best years. Like nobody's going to want me now. You know, like my youth, I had given him my youth.
Speaker 1:And nobody's going to want you now. I think that is probably the way most women think about it. Yeah, is I'm going to be used up soon or I already am?
Speaker 1:So, I'm not going to be able to attract anybody good Again, like wanting, like more focused on being chosen than choosing. Right, right, yeah, and that's the thing that's really sabotaging most women right Like A. They haven't fully healed or recovered from their heartbreak and so love doesn't feel safe, right, and so they don't believe in love or they don't believe they can trust men or whatever. Right. And then maybe even going back to childhood, there's like stuff about how their parents rejected them or abandoned them that maybe they're aware of, maybe they're not. And so then love it just reinforces right, it just gets stuck in. That same neural pathway of love doesn't work out for me. I know I definitely still tackle that here and there in my life.
Speaker 1:But one of the things we learned from working with Lori Gerber right, our internal dating expert, who has just helped thousands and thousands and thousands of people like learn how to date effectively. Yeah, um, she talks about the 3H method, right, that when you are dating someone, you first have to identify for yourself what is it that you want in the realm of head right, Like intellectual attraction. Heart right In the world of love attraction. And hoo-ha in the world of, like sexual attraction. What are the things that you want that make you feel excited in eight out of a 10?
Speaker 1:If you were scoring head, heart and hoo-ha, right, what are the things that we, as women, need or want in those three categories in a man? None of the three of us were able to sort of look at those lists and say like, oh yeah, we're super clear. What really lights us up in the realm of head, heart and hoo-ha, whether it's with work or our husbands or whatever. It is right, because you could use this 3-H method to like pick a dress or pick your dinner off a menu at a restaurant right, we get in our heads and we talk ourselves into and out of like 10 million things.
Speaker 1:Right, and women. She showed us that women who have been able to identify not only what they really really love and want and head, heart and hoo-ha, and understand why that was sort of the key right Is understanding why Brings such a different level of attraction and man into the realm, right. And she tells the story about how, when she got clarity on this, like she met her husband, like the next day. So interesting, so interesting. What do you, what do you ladies, notice about just sort of your own approach to you know, um, love or making big choices in life, or what you've seen other women struggle with in terms of really getting clear about what you want to choose, versus constantly waiting to be chosen.
Speaker 2:I think in the beginning I was so attention starved in my marriage, so when I got divorced I would just wanted attention from anything for anyone and I feel like a lot of women feel this way and I call it that breadcrumb mentality.
Speaker 2:When you go out and you're basically just putting up with shitty men because they send you a good morning text or they take you out on a date every once in a while or you know they throw a few compliments your way and so I felt like that was very much me in the beginning, that I was just basically going on dates to feel anything at that point, because it had been forever since I felt any type of connection or adoration or oh, he thinks I'm hot or you know whatever. And then I don't. Really I never went through the three H's. I really really wish I would have. But I think for me what started to happen is my scope started to get more narrow and more narrow and I couldn't really pinpoint when I would go on a date with people why, I didn't want to continue, but I
Speaker 2:just knew that something was off. I always felt like what I was looking for was just genuine connection with somebody and that chemistry. And I feel like, you know, when I stopped getting physical right away, when I stopped doing other things like that or that attention seeking behavior, it allowed me to sit back and really look at this man and say, Okay, is this somebody that I can really see myself with? And so I didn't have those checkboxes or lists, but I feel like I had a good idea of what I was looking for, and the more and more that I dated, the better I got at being able to discount and dismiss the ones that.
Speaker 2:I just didn't feel like were going to be a match for me, so for me it was a process over a really long time.
Speaker 1:I thought it was so interesting how she talked about um, that we all have like a default pattern, you know, and mine is definitely head Like I will over-prioritize, like it making sense on paper versus really paying attention to how it feels and or write that breadcrumb thing and I probably toggled between those two things post-divorce, like it needed to make sense on paper, or, if you would give me any attention, like great, I will fall on a sword for you because dang yeah, which is totally an attachment trauma issue and I always feel like I went for men who never made sense either geographically they were way too far away and that that's a protective thing too is self-protective over and over.
Speaker 2:Yes attract men that there will never be a future with because of whatever reason. That's also a protective thing, and I did that all the time.
Speaker 3:I went for um, I always gravitated towards men who were emotionally unavailable because it was a comfort zone for me. Not being, you know, like, not being chosen, not being prioritized, was like how I felt comfortable, cause that's what I knew from, you know, my childhood, so like when I had he would, what I knew from you know my childhood, so like when I had he would, you know, like, dangle a little carrot and just send that one text of like hey, just thinking about you, and then swoon right, I would absolutely, you know, like, so my, the the level of emotional unavailability, the more emotionally unavailable he was, the sexier he was to me, because then I was like it's my comfort zone right, it's where I'm used to it, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's also the women that go for men who are like avoidant. Also the women who are caregivers and protectors normally, and so they go for men who need them as a deflection from having to go deep and share their own shit. Like he has all this trauma he's dumping on me. Great, I can fix him instead of me having to share anything that goes deep.
Speaker 1:Feel attacked yeah, wow, yeah, and so, right, true closeness, really like to really let one's guard down and relax into love, like that requires being able to attract someone who, you know, has a truly a safe vibration. But that means we have to get to a place vibrationally where we also feel safe, and that is the mission that we're on around here, right, and that means being able to identify, like, what are the things I want to need, and not settling, right, because I think what we've all described, that we all do over and over again, consciously or unconsciously, is settle and talk ourselves into something because we don't believe in love, because we don't believe in ourselves, because we don't believe in our worth, because we don't believe in love, because we don't believe in ourselves, because we don't believe in our worth, because we don't believe in whatever, right, and that is just a recipe for either aloneness or to be hurt all over again. And so, no bueno, no bueno. We have absolutely just loved, like looping Lori's process into our 12-month program, right, because so powerful.
Speaker 1:So then, the next thing, right, that we see happen about love being safe is our flashbacks, right, this idea that the body keeps a score when we're dating, right, and so really getting in touch with what is your body doing, and do you recognize when you're having a somatic flashback during the dating process, or even considering or approaching the dating process, right, like when you're messaging with someone, when you're swiping with someone, when you're on a date with someone? Are you able to recognize the micro moments when you're, when you're having a flashback? And I think one of the things that maybe we don't talk about quite enough we do talk about it, but I think we could do better is helping people understand when a flashback is about then and it's not about now, right, I think that people in general.
Speaker 1:I mean I got into a fight with my husband this weekend because he got so mad at our daughter and like maybe she was being a shit right, like maybe maybe not like whatevs. But like the amount of upset he was feeling was not about now, it was about his childhood right. And I was like bro, like that's a lot of responsibility to have your 10 year old like try to make up for all of the emotional pain you felt when you were a boy man.
Speaker 1:Maybe, like playing Mario is just not that serious, you know. But I think that this is the man who edits this podcast and, like, lives with me, right, and he didn't realize he was having a flashback and that it was really about then and not about now. So let's talk about helping women really understand that while they're dating right, these flashbacks are coming up left, right and center.
Speaker 2:It happened to me a lot in the relationship that I'm in now, in the very beginning, anytime that I was in a social setting and I know I've talked about this before, but you know where we live. Breweries are a thing you know and it's a very family oriented thing. People bring their dogs or kids, whatever. It's a very safe environment.
Speaker 1:But because of my experience in bars and I was going to say you spent a lot of time in a bar as a kid, right Like yeah, like we always did Right, like and it, like that, and so that environment just always became part of my thing.
Speaker 2:I play pool, I learned to play. I could build a mean card castle with playing cards. I could probably still do it, you know, but that was kind of the environment, but then you know and all of that got collapsed with your childhood stuff.
Speaker 1:right All your wounds, yeah.
Speaker 2:And like so sometimes you would see things or whatever. And then, of course, when I chose relationships with men who were big drinkers, you know, and they would kind of lose themselves in that process when we were out and they'd either get loud or they'd, you know, look at somebody else, or whatever a little flirtation. So all of that was like ingrained in me.
Speaker 2:So, coming into this relationship, when I started trying to go out and be social again with him, I would shut down and I would sit in a corner and just freeze, because I felt like I had no control over my body, my emotions, and I was kind of reliving it and I started to dissociate like very, very heavily. And so what did it for me was that we did a workshop in our program on somatic breath work. And I had a huge break during that workshop where I was able to tap into the emotions in my body that truly indicated when I was unsafe truly.
Speaker 2:Not because of the anxiety I was feeling yes, and I remember feeling this way as a child. I remember that we had a family friend. He was older than me, always a little flirtatious, right Like whatever, and this was when I was in a late teenager. Like it's not like.
Speaker 1:I was a kid or anything like that.
Speaker 2:But I remember one time him and I were having a conversation. I told him that I was stressed out and he came over and started rubbing my shoulders and the feeling that I got it was like my whole body got hot and I was like something is not like I felt sick you know what I mean and I was like there is something. So that is what I learned in the workshop is that my body has clear indicators to me when I am not safe.
Speaker 2:When there's danger, correct, and that's the same thing I felt at times in my marriage and other relationships, where somebody was lying or somebody was doing something behind my back and I knew it, even if they weren't telling me. I wasn't feeling anything like that in my current relationship. For me it was more of an immediate dissociation, and the scary part was I had no warning.
Speaker 2:We would be in a situation and all of a sudden I would just freeze boop and I would sit in the corner, and then he's looking at me, like what happened? And I couldn't explain it. It was like my brain automatically had a road way back to that and I just shut down.
Speaker 1:I think being able to read the cues of our own body, it's so magical, right, so magical.
Speaker 3:Tiffany, can you, can you? I just have a question, just because I do think that listening to our bodies is something that the general population is kind of coming to. It's starting to become a conversation. But what did it feel like, like I've described on the podcast, when I'm feeling, when I'm starting to dissociate or when I'm feeling something. But like, what does your body feel like when you are in that moment?
Speaker 2:Like dissociating so for me I go into freeze mode. It's a freeze, so I immediately numb out and I will dissociate to the point where, if you ask me what I said or did in those times, I won't remember, like my body literally blanks out. So even if I'm having a conversation and I'm triggered heavily in a conversation and I freeze. I will not remember what I said to you the next day.
Speaker 2:My brain just shuts off. So for me it is a feeling of complete weightlessness and literally numbing out like nothing makes sense and I just shut down and it happened quick and it took me a long time to learn the cues and myself to where I could prevent that from happening because it would happen so fast. I had about three seconds to rationalize in my brain before I was going to ruin my day and probably everybody's around me.
Speaker 1:And joy. Yours feels like a tingle in your arms.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So when I feel like I am unsafe, or like when we in the episode we did the IFS session and I started justifying because I was talking about my parents, right, and I started justifying like, okay, what if they hear this? What, what would I say? Or what you know, I felt it like I get, um, I feel it, I feel it in my arms. Or like when I get the rush of anxiety of, let's say, I am walking to the store and I see someone who would have pre-homeopathy, pre-emdr, triggered me, I still go yellow, like I still there, um, in terms of that, person is an unsafe person to me and so I I get tingly is probably a good word for it, tiffany like my whole body is like um on fire, almost fire almost.
Speaker 2:And I could see it physically on you that day, like your arms lit up red Right yeah.
Speaker 1:And like my chest will get red and so right.
Speaker 3:So like I have a body sensation, I think you know, like I have a friend who gets a wave of headache when she is emotionally triggered or something she's in process with something. She gets a headache, so like it's very interesting. That's why I wanted to ask, because I think that when people hear other people's they connect, they can connect the dots of like oh, I feel that too, that's what that means.
Speaker 3:Or just kind of put the pieces back together or, you know, help them, help our listeners, kind of piece together if they're not aware. And I do think that it's become a conversation and becoming aware, especially with our listeners, because we talk about it all the time, right, but I like examples, Now that you're talking about it.
Speaker 2:So it's jarring me now. The first sign for me it's disorientation. It feels, like my brain starts to slow down. I get in an insane brain fog where I feel very disoriented, like I'm about to pass out. It'll be like my breathing gets heavy, like my heart starts, like I literally feel like I'm about to have a panic attack. But it's that brain fog where everything starts to slow down and my brain is like here we go, we're just going to start to shut off.
Speaker 1:So that's when I've learned is the biggest sign in my body that I need to use my tools, because I'm about to go out, get grounded.
Speaker 3:Okay, cool, I like that, yeah, really interesting.
Speaker 1:Right To hear the stages of flooding into shutdown, right, because I do think we experience. Well, there's a flooding right before there's a shutdown, that's so. I love that you're able to articulate that, tiffany. But to see where everybody lands, right, do you land in flooded or do you land in?
Speaker 3:you know, collapsed. Yeah, right, right, and being able to spot it. So you can use a tool, you can use a practice, you can use a breathing technique or a vagal release or like something to kind of catch it, and then that piece about how does one tease out is the nervous system activation that you're experiencing right now?
Speaker 1:is it actually about now or is it a flashback? Right, because, realistically, unless someone is holding you at knife, point right, like like a true physical threat, right, right, most triggers are really flashbacks.
Speaker 3:Right. So it goes back to that, lori. What Lori said was the why, like why am I feeling threatened in this moment? Why am I wanting to check out, like what is? Because if you're walking through Target and you see an unsafe person in your mind, are they really unsafe.
Speaker 3:Like why am I reacting? Because is it my body telling me things Right, yeah, right, but like in reality it's going to be something from the past, most likely just because, like they're, they're not going to cost me in target. Like something is happening in my body that's telling me, and so being able to ask yourself why, then you can kind of loop back Like I really am safe, this is past stuff, this is yeah, asking yourself why, I think is a big, it's a big step in the direction.
Speaker 1:So many of us would be able to justify and defend that. No, it's about what this person in front of me is doing right now. Right, like my husband was convinced this weekend that my daughter was rejecting him, and I promise you she was not. Like not really. You know what I mean. I think we really fall way too easily into the trap of thinking like because, like, let's say, you're dating right and this guy isn't, he's not hitting the eight out of a 10 and head, heart and hoo-ha.
Speaker 1:He's got behaviors. He's inconsiderate or he's rude or he's not really asking questions or he's not engaged or he's not available or whatever it is right. It's like oh okay, move on, thank you next, right, but rather than thank you next, we get into a spiral about what he's doing or not doing and what I'm doing or not doing, right, and we get in the weeds about all of that stuff rather than just like, move on. And that sort of getting in the weeds about it says like no, actually I am triggered about the past and I am doing this repetition compulsion with this person in front of me. It's not about them.
Speaker 2:But I feel like it's also having this mentality or this assumption that we're still stuck like in our marriage, right? So it's like when your husband would do things that would trigger you tremendously. It's like there's a different sort of reaction because you're married, you are in this with him, and so it's like having to endure that over and over. But when you're dating it's a very temporary situation.
Speaker 2:If somebody does something that you don't agree with or that you're not okay with, you can very simply say this person is not for me and move on. You don't have to sit in that space where you tolerate it, and that's where so many women sit in that space.
Speaker 1:Subtle Because they're afraid that they're not going to get a better shot right. They don't believe in love or they don't believe in their worth or they don't believe that good men are out there. Right, then their belief system gets hijacks, their nervous system yeah.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, what would you? This is something we love to do, like stand on the couch and all. But, like, what would you say to that woman who is coming to you, your girlfriend, who's stuck in this relationship? That's just like. And then I texted him and he waited four days. Text me back and da, da, da, da, da. Like, what would you say to her? She's married or she's dating, just dating, oh, yeah, move on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not an eight out of a 10 in head heart or hoo-ha if he's not responding for four days and I call it that breadcrumb mentality. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'd love to be that last week, when they texted me about lack of response and things like that, I said look, the longer you stay in the breadcrumb mentality, you're never going to meet a man on your level ever You're just going to stay very bare bottom, because that's all you think you deserve at this point.
Speaker 3:The bare minimum, like celebrating the bare minimum. Yeah, he, the bare minimum, like celebrating the bare minimum. Yeah, he texted me back and it only took three days this time instead of four days.
Speaker 2:And yeah, and here's what I want you to understand in here too, because this was a huge shift for me when I went from being in the breadcrumb mentality to actually dating men who, on paper right, who actually started to be better men quote, unquote, right they were not attracted to me because I was still in a breadcrumb mentality, so it's like they could also see that. I was not in a place where I was ready to receive and be on their level, because I was still so needy.
Speaker 1:Or.
Speaker 2:I would pick fights, or I would be like pick me, pick me.
Speaker 1:Like I was so desperate, that desperate intention it just like wafted off of my energy and it made them run it is a vibrational game, right, and you cannot fake confidence, you cannot fake trust, you cannot fake faith, you cannot fake these things right. And so that's why we're saying today that this isn't a dating problem, it's a healing problem.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I would do this every time in my relationships or my dating Like I would start out and I would feel super confident, super in control, super powerful, but then something would happen and it would shift and they would get too close, and then I would start exposing the worst parts of myself. And then I was like well, peace out, cause I screwed that up every single time. That was my routine.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about how all of these patterns have shown up in our bodies and how they show up in the bodies of women, right. So we want women to be able to know. We want them to be able to do a body scan, right, and say like, oh, something is profoundly activated, not just triggered right, not just nervous system activation. We're going beyond that, right, like dating and the idea of dating, the prospect of dating, right, is this mirror for our deepest wounds and our biggest growth edges? Right. And so we want women to be able to do a body scan and say, nope, I have trauma layers or pain layers right, still stuck in my body. And so I think that this next thing we're going to talk about is very, very hard for women to sort of accept or recognize, because mainstream medicine does not teach this. In fact, it teaches the exact opposite of this. So it can continue to rate your prescriptions, right. So, from Bessel van der Kolk's work, the Body Keeps the Score right, gabor, mate, like the doctors, the MDs, right, who have studied trauma and how it lands on our cells, have helped us learn and understand. And then homeopathy and everything about it right, and EMDR and IFS, and how things get locked in our subconscious mind in the way that our memory is stored, right? We know that the majority of physical symptoms we experience as humans started in our mental, emotional sphere. The bulk, the majority of physical symptoms we experience started as mental, emotional pain or a negative belief about self. And people really have trouble believing that. They really have trouble buying that my back pain, my neck pain, my UTI, my yeast infection, my hip pain, my foot pain, my fill in the blank, is not about my mind, my emotions or my beliefs. But there are three particular areas we want to help women really dial into today right, we want to talk about our own experiences with it. That when we have neck pain or stiffness, that is about things that you have not spoken or processed right Anger, swallowed words, swallowed words, swallowed words. And that does not mean you have to work it out with the person it's about right, but it means you have not released it from your body. Neck pain and stiffness. Throat issues right, not just neck like, as in your cervical spine, but also like throat related issues. Right, tonsils and throat pain. And all of this right Is about swallowed emotion and words.
Speaker 1:Pelvic pain so anything in the pelvic region, whether it's constipation or diarrhea or things in the uterine region or UTIs or yeast infections or BV or all these things in the pelvic region Is 100% stuff related to love and sex that is stuck in your body, stuff related to fear that's stuck in your body, right, because that pelvic region gets into that root groundedness, right. Fear, anxiety, all that right. And then hip pain is very, very hip pain, and stuckness and tightness is very, very much about not being able to trust oneself and fear of moving forward, making decisions. And so what would y'all say or ask of the women who are listening? And it's like what the bulk of my physical symptoms are to do with my mind, emotions or beliefs. Like get out of here the women who are, you know, peeing all the time. Like what that's about my mind, that's about my beliefs, like what I'm going to share?
Speaker 1:a crazy story and I can't believe I'm about to share this, but I'm going to share it.
Speaker 2:So when I was going through a massive amount of stress and I know I've shared this before, just never in this context my 15 year old cat was passing away, I was felt like I was losing my best friend anyway, like all of these things of stress, right, and so I started going to the bathroom all the time, like I would pee every two seconds. I started feeling like my bladder was on fire. They put me on six different types of antibiotics. Nothing was working. So they sent me to urologist. So I went to the urologist and she was going to perform this procedure or whatever it was, this test, and so what they have you do is they have you pee and then they bring you back into the room, they insert a catheter.
Speaker 1:Like a balloon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, and just to see how much is left after you've peed. So she was sitting there, she was holding the like kidney shaped bowl that they have in the hospital and she was seeing how much pee would come back out of me. Ladies, she was screaming down the hall at one point for the nurse to come help her because I was about to overflow after I had just peed and she said there is something like so.
Speaker 2:then I had to go get a CAT scan. You know they had to shoot me up with dye because they were afraid that I might've had a tumor or something that was restricting my bladder from fully opening and I was retaining all of this urine. So, ironically, once I started dealing with the stress and once I started being treated homeopathically, I have never had another flare ever. And this is where I went to multiple doctors who told me you have to avoid these foods.
Speaker 2:You know you can't eat pineapple anymore, or onion or the things that, or coffee, and I was like, oh my God, I can't have coffee anymore. But they would tell me to stay away from all this acidic stuff. So once I started getting on homeopathy, I have never had a flare since then. Or another IC issue, and when I tell you that that was so telling for me that how stress manifests itself in the body, it was insane.
Speaker 1:And grief, would you say. Grief, especially in that moment. I mean, you had a lot of things going on, right, but the grief is like what pushed it over the edge. Loss, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'd never experienced stress physically to that effect, to where it was literally getting in the way of my everyday life and I was not connecting the two at all.
Speaker 1:I could tell a bajillion of those stories about my body. But, um, you know, I see it over and over with patients right, neck, hip, pelvic issues Like those are the ones I think that in relationship it's like and I have certainly had, I guess, me more neck and pelvic related stuff. Like my neck, you know, has been such a challenge for so many years. It's super stable now but like that took a lot to really purge all the suppressed emotion from my body, right from my neck, to get really nice and stable and fluid and moving and whatever. But I see it over and over again with women who need to rage, need to scream, need to say the things that they've just been swallowing for so many years. I see a lot of women too with hip pain, right and men. It's not just women right, but so much hip pain and like fear of moving forward.
Speaker 3:I think I've been between. Out of the three of us, I think I'm the one that has taken the longest to kind of get on board with the emotions manifest in your body. But recently, like I had a huge fight with my husband and I woke up to severe pelvic discomfort, but it was like a safety issue, slash emotion. That wasn't support right, that I wasn't facing or verbalizing or working through, and you and I kind of argued a little bit about it because I was like no, there's something physically wrong with me. And you were like get it together.
Speaker 1:And there was. You know, there is right, the body is experiencing. Right. Because, you know, when I heard people talk like, let's say, a decade ago or like even longer, right where, when I'm studying trauma and I'm becoming a trauma-informed therapist and people are talking about psychosomatic symptoms, I'm like no, I don't think you understand, like my head hurts right, right, right.
Speaker 3:No, like it really is an issue it really hurts yes yes, right, and that's true.
Speaker 1:Like there are very real. Like I have heart damage. That heart damage is real, that came from trauma. It like, right, like these mental and emotional symptoms can damage the body. There are very real symptoms. They're not in your head, right, they're not, but they originate in our minds, right, they originate in our minds, yeah, or our emotions, our beliefs. They originate in our minds, yeah, or our emotions, our beliefs. And then that's the design is for the body to say, hey, here's something you're not working through.
Speaker 1:And I think that we are such a suppressed society and we've just been thrown prescriptions, right, and then we have side effects from the prescriptions and like all the things, right, but we can't see the forest from the trees. When we first start this work, right, because we have so many symptoms, and then we think that we've been told that's just about aging or it's just what it is and I don't know, right, but it really is one for one, right, we have these unresolved mental, emotional and belief system issues and they land square in our bodies. And that's the design, and it's a beautiful design, but we can't tolerate. We get so scared of symptoms and then we got to engage with the medical system, and the medical system is such a nightmare to participate in. Right, and then that's its own stressor.
Speaker 3:Right, right, or you're just told it's normal. It's normal, yeah, get used to it.
Speaker 2:In the specials of sinus, they said it's an autoimmune disease and when I would look at it, it said something about the brain perceiving pain or there's something wrong with the nerves that are misfiring to where your body feels like you're in pain, but technically you're not, and I was like that's crazy. But you were in pain Because I feel like I'm on fire right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you were in pain, right, it was mental and emotional pain, and then it showed up in your body. That's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know the region of our brain that processes, it processes pain. It doesn't distinguish between mental, emotional, physical pain right, it's a pain center. There's a pain center in our brain. That's right and it's. Everything is linked together and you cannot separate the bladder from the brain, from the heart, from the whatever. Right, they are interconnected systems that function together and it's beautiful system. And I, my wish for women is that they would really take a look at what is your body telling you right now, because all the chronic symptoms you have, right, every chronic symptom you're experiencing, one that has been reoccurring, whether that's anxiety or it's a physical pain, right, says there's something unprocessed, there's something you have not dealt with yet.
Speaker 2:What do you think about menstrual pain and how that associates? And here's why I'm asking Because prior to taking sepia, I would always have stabbing pains during my period I would have really heavy cramps. I'd be very tired, like energy wiped. And so after taking sepia for about three months during my cycle now I don't even know when my period's coming Like. There's literally no symptoms. I get no cramps. I can work out during my period, which is foreign to me. So that's pretty wild.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I am sure that Joy is going to have some feedback here, right, but yeah, so I am sure that Joy is going to have some feedback here, right, but cramps are going to be a combination, a layered combination of mental, emotional issues, demineralization and endocrine overall, right, like endocrine dysfunction. So it's not any one thing, but absolutely cramps are 100% related to I'll just say overall how we're supporting ourselves or not. I read this reel, or I watched this reel this weekend, was like fascinating how we'll sell so many women's supplements to help them feel less tired rather than just support them so that they can be less tired.
Speaker 1:Right, it's like yeah, we're so depleted in general, right, and that's why cramps. And then you know, when you see teenagers start with such horrible painful periods, like yes, there's inherited stuff, there's like inherited dysfunction, right, endocrine dysfunction, and then we immediately add a suppressive medication, aka like birth control pills, and then it just goes deeper into the body. And so, you know, one of the remedies we've been using lately in our family is semisafuga, and that is a remedy that has a lot of cramps, right, but related to birth trauma, and you know, some depression and some, just right, like impending doom stuff, and that one leads to a lot of uterine cramping and so like if you're adequately mineralized, if you're getting enough rest, if you're eating healthy foods, and you're still having cramps, like absolutely it's a mental, emotional sphere thing inherited, or, yeah, from your lived experience. And I know, joy, you've well, I don't want to pull up your spot, I don't think you care. You've dealt with a lot of PCOS, right, like we've really been working to recover you from PCOS.
Speaker 1:And so that journey has been remarkable. Yep.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the amount of times that I have gone to a highly, highly respected, highly educated, highly competent doctors and told them my symptoms and they run all the tests and I do all the things. They're like oh, you're within normal range, but I knew something was right, because I should not be, it's not. I knew there was something better than being like in the fetal position with 800 ibuprofen every four hours. I was killing my kidneys and my liver and all the things because I could not function.
Speaker 3:So and then you know, dealing with all of those symptoms, I mean I've been on birth control since I was 16 because I had ovarian cysts and so, like, I had ovarian cysts and I had this. But then, because I had three babies in two years, they're like oh, you don't have it because you got pregnant easily, naturally. I'm like but why does everything else fit? So I was constantly in massive amounts of pain. I was constantly in massive amount of symptoms that the medical community just was just like oh, it's normal. So, working homeopathically, it's gotten drastically, drastically, drastically different and better. But I have been, you know, like I've noticed, with my daughter, my 13 year old daughter, who is already struggling with those same things because they were inherited, so like right.
Speaker 1:Right, cause she's never been on birth control, right? So we can't say like, oh well, we suppressed her system with birth control. Right, it's not that, but she inherited that suppressed system from you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, right, right, and like what I was going through when I was pregnant with her and what what you know she genetically came with.
Speaker 3:um, you know, like sorry girl, but us working through that homeopathically has made such a difference. But it's also helping her be body aware and, you know, helping her feel her body and kind of articulate what's going on. But yeah, man, those PCOS it's awful. And so working through the emotions, like how much of that was my childhood or my marriage or all these things because of my emotions and I didn't know how to process them, didn't even know they were there in emotional sphere, right that awareness. So working through somatics and my friends know that I'm going to be throwing pillows or I'm going to be like I go like this a lot when I'm.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Regulating regulating Right.
Speaker 1:Helping my body process and work through those emotions is, along with the homeopathic has been a game changer for my, so I want to circle back to something, because you said that you've had providers tell you that your hormone levels are normal A whole life, your whole life, and because that is fascinating. So there's a remedy that we recently started, just this week. Right, I ordered it and I knew that you and I both needed it. But this is so, so interesting, because I would say that my hormones have not been normal. Right, I've had the opposite, where it was clear that they were all tanked. But then how to get them up to appropriate levels? Right? So you're saying yours have been at appropriate levels, but obviously you're having symptoms that say they're not Okay.
Speaker 1:So this really, really niche remedy, we've been working with sex hormone binding globulin. We're in the weeds right now. But, ladies, what I want you to hear from this right, is that your body is telling the story that it needs to be told, right? So sex hormone binding globulin is a chemical that indicates whether or not, whether you have too much of it or not enough of it, right, dictates whether or not the sex hormones you have in your body are being utilized or stored. And so you can I didn't even realize this Joy that you are someone who the doctors will tell you. You have enough of it, but it is not being utilized properly, right? Perhaps it's being stored, or perhaps it's being right, and so when we put sex hormone binding globulin in your body, now those hormones are being metabolized appropriately, and then you have even more of those.
Speaker 1:PCOS symptoms. Pcos so super duper, duper, duper interesting, there is always a solution. There are several different types of PCOS too. Pcos so super duper, duper, duper interesting, there is always a solution. There are several different types of PCOS too.
Speaker 3:We've really gotten in the weeds on this particular episode, but I think it's probably very relatable to how many women you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, right. And so if you're having insulin resistance or you're having histamine issues, if you're having PCOS stuff right, know that your body is keeping the score. It's related to all of the inherited trauma that your parents experienced, that you have experienced, and if you especially have neck pain, pelvic issues or hip pain, know that it's a mental, emotional sphere, stuff that has to, has to, has to be processed in order for you to really have the kind of healthy love you crave.
Speaker 2:I would say the first time, like after I went through that with my doctor, clearly I dismissed my whole medical team and kind of moved on. But I will say that kind of what changed for me when it comes to quote unquote, modern medicine was seeing an osteopath when I went to see her, and they are trained to treat the person, not just the symptoms. So when I sat there with her, and she spent 20 minutes with me and her first question was can I ask you what homeopathy you're taking?
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh my God, like I felt seen in that moment, mds think that DOs are idiots, you know, and and I get that because she was the one that helped me the most, though I know, I know, but they they think they're under trained and whatever. And then some DOs will prescribe so many supplements, right that then the liver and kidneys get really, really stressed because it's too many supplements. So it's like, yeah, I know, it's rough out there.
Speaker 2:It is, it is.
Speaker 1:All right, we love you so much. Peace.
