The Link Between Anxiety, Depression & Chronic Illness

Have you ever felt like you're chasing symptoms across your body—from anxiety and depression to gut issues, chronic fatigue, or autoimmune flares? In this episode, we discuss the direct biological link between your mental and physical health. We explore how a dysregulated nervous system can be a root cause of both chronic anxiety and chronic illness, and why healing requires a whole-person approach that looks beyond siloed symptoms to support the entire system.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How chronic anxiety and stress can directly lead to physical issues like gut problems, hormone imbalance, and low immunity.
• The common root causes—like past trauma and gut health—that can trigger both mental and physical symptoms at the same time.
• Why mindset work alone often isn’t enough to heal symptoms that have a physical root cause.
• A whole-person approach to healing that addresses your body and mind as one interconnected system.

3 Takeaways:

1. Your mental and physical health are deeply intertwined. Nervous system dysregulation can trigger physical illness—and physical illness can reinforce dysregulation.
2. Healing one area supports healing in others. When you do nervous system regulation work, you're supporting immune function, reducing inflammation, and creating optimal conditions for physical healing.
3. A "both/and" approach works best. The most effective healing combines nervous system support with appropriate medical care, emotional healing with physical treatment, and symptom management with addressing root causes.

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Looking for more personalized support?

• Book a FREE discovery call for RESTORE, our 1:1 anxiety & depression coaching program (HSA/FSA eligible & includes comprehensive bloodwork)
• Join me inside Regulated Living, a mental health membership and nervous system healing space (sliding scale pricing available)
• Order my book, Healing Through the Vagus Nerve today!

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Website: https://www.riseaswe.com/podcast

Email: amanda@riseaswe.com

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Transcript

Amanda Armstrong  0:00  
Amanda, welcome to regulate and rewire an anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong, and I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now, let's dive in. 

Amanda Armstrong  0:25  
Today, we're going to talk about the connection between anxiety and depression and chronic physical illness. There is a very well documented bi directional link, or relationship between mental health struggles like anxiety and depression and physical health struggles, things like chronic pain, autoimmune conditions, digestive issues. And for some folks, it starts with the prior maybe you get diagnosed with an autoimmune condition or IBS, and then you start to notice anxiety and depression, or maybe you know you've been struggling with anxiety and depression for a while, and now all of a sudden, you're getting sick all of the time. You have chronic fatigue, then the IBS or autoimmune diagnoses show up. So if any of this sounds familiar for you or a loved one, today's conversation is for you. And what we're going to explore today is how your nervous system, your immune system, your overall physical health, how they are so intimately connected and you cannot separate. You absolutely cannot separate mental health from physical health. They are part of the same system. This is something that I talk about more extensively in my book healing through the vagus nerve. If you haven't grabbed a copy of that yet, I will post a link for it in the show notes. I also just found out this week, it's being translated into, I think, its 10th language, which feels so exciting that there are people all over the world interested in this conversation and taking this whole mind, body, mental, physical health approach to healing. 

Amanda Armstrong  1:58  
And so today, we're going to talk about why these chronic stress states like anxiety, depression, that activation and shutdown that happens in your body, why this isn't just emotional why it's not just a mental health problem, but when we are in those states, especially for extended periods of time, it can create conditions in Our body that make us more susceptible to physical illness. And we'll also talk about in the reverse how chronic physical illness can dysregulate our nervous system, creating these stress, these threat signals from inside our body that can then manifest as anxiety and depression symptoms. And I want to preface this conversation with an understanding that understanding these connections isn't just about explaining why you might be struggling with both mental and physical health issues. It's also about recognizing that when you support one area, you're also supporting the other. When you do nervous system healing work, you're not just addressing anxiety and depression, you're also supporting your body's entire capacity for Health and Wellness and Resilience, and when you address your physical health by getting comprehensive blood work done, by doing a detailed gut analysis, by getting the proper diagnoses and the proper treatment for it that can reduce overall stress load, which then can improve and decrease symptoms of anxiety and depression as well. 

Amanda Armstrong  3:26  
So we're going to break down what's really going on, why it's not all in your head or not all in your body, and ultimately, what you can do to support healing both mental and physical health. Because again, in my opinion, and well backed up by research, it's at the heart of our regulated living approach to anxiety and depression, is that these things are inseparable. It is not uncommon for me to hear something like I have been treating my anxiety, but now I have gut health issues or migraine or chronic fatigue, I have been dealing with autoimmune flare ups, and my depression is worse than ever. Something that we tend to do is to silo our symptoms, and the medical system often does this as well. Go to a GI specialist for your stomach issues, go to a psychiatrist for your mood, a rheumatologist for your pain. But your body doesn't work in silos. It works as one interconnected system. And when one part of that system is under strain, the other parts will shift, will change, will compensate, and oftentimes anxiety and depression are early warning signs of deeper, system wide stressors. 

Amanda Armstrong  4:37  
This is one of the main reasons why, within the past year, we have started to include comprehensive blood work for all of our one on one coaching clients. Because what we were realizing is you can be in talk therapy for months years, and still have some of the same anxiety symptoms, if the root cause of those symptoms are you. Or a vitamin deficiency, a hormone imbalance, an undiagnosed thyroid issue, could be a gut issue, and so it all comes back to what we've talked about a lot here on the podcast, which is the stress bucket concept, whether those stressors are coming from your past lived experiences, your current life stressors, or these internal stressors of deficiency or imbalance, it all adds up, and it all contributes to this overall stress load on the body that can wear down our internal system, making us more susceptible to chronic illnesses, but also reads as an overall stress or threat load that can trigger us into states of chronic activation or shutdown, and so this whole human, whole life approach means that we have to consider both putting somebody on psych meds for years and years and years without ever having the conversation or testing hormones and micronutrients and gut feels negligent to me, because we are band aiding symptoms that could have very measurable, clear root causes. And this isn't an anti medication statement, it's hey, if your symptoms have a root cause, let's do our due diligence. Let's collect your personal health data to create a really personalized and strategic path forward that's informed by things that we can test. 

Amanda Armstrong  6:26  
And at the heart of this mind body connection is your nervous system, especially your autonomic nervous system, which governs your stress response, digestion, immune function, hormones, energy regulation, mood and emotional processing. And so if your body is constantly perceiving threat again, whether that's from trauma, stress, inflammation, toxins, poor sleep, even blood sugar, crashes throughout your day, it is going to get stuck in survival mode. And in survival mode, your body makes trade offs. It Down regulates digestion. It pauses reproductive hormone production. It alters immune activity. It deprioritizes emotional processing or long term repair. So while you might be dealing with anxiety, what is actually happening is that your entire body, over time, is becoming overworked, under resourced, dysregulated for the sake of trying to protect you. 

Amanda Armstrong  7:32  
So let me expand on this a little bit. Your nervous system and your immune system are in constant communication. They are not these independent systems that occasionally check in with each other. Think about them more like, oh my gosh, I don't know. Like intimate dance partners. When one moves the other moves, they are constantly responding to each other's shifts and changes and movements. So when you are in chronic activation, that is your sympathetic nervous system state, which we've talked about in many, many episodes in the past. Your body is activated. It is mobilized. Your body is essentially constantly preparing for danger. And when your body thinks there's danger, it makes very specific choices about how to allocate its resources. So think about it this way, if you are being actually chased by a tiger, what would be most important for your survival? It would be running fast, fighting hard, staying alert. And the things that would not be important would be digesting your lunch, fighting off a cold healing a small cut on your finger. So when you are in this sympathetic activated state, what's happening is that your body is suppressing what we call non essential functions to focus all of its energy on immediate survival. So your immune system gets dialed down, your digestive system dialed down, your body's repair and healing processes take a back seat. And what's important to know is that this is okay to happen occasionally for short periods of time. That's how we are designed to work, that we have these bursts of stress or threat or danger or things that need to get handled, and then we settle back into what we hope is our default, what we hope is the majority of our time spent in that regulated Green Zone state where all of our internal functions are turned back on in an optimal way. But when you are dealing with chronic, long term anxiety, your body is getting the like, quote, tiger, Chase signal, day after day, week after week, sometimes for years. And this chronic activation floods your system with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which, again, in small doses, these hormones are really helpful. We need them. But. Having chronically elevated cortisol suppresses your immune function. It increases inflammation throughout your body. It disrupts your sleep. It interferes with your body's ability to heal and repair itself. 

Amanda Armstrong  10:12  
Think about it like a race car, right? A race car is designed to go fast, to go really, really fast, but for short periods of time, if you run a race car full pedal to the metal for hours, days, weeks, things are going to break down. And our body is no different, and this is why people who are chronically stressed, they get sick more often, and when they get sick, they take longer to heal. Their injuries. We know that people who struggle with chronic stress, their injuries take longer to heal. They're more susceptible to autoimmune conditions, even food sensitivities. But it's not just activation that affects our physical health, because remember, we also have this other state when we get stuck in shutdown, that dorsal vagal state where your system essentially goes offline to conserve energy. When you are in chronic shutdown, your body is also making very intentional resource allocation decisions. In shutdown, your immune system gets suppressed in a different way, instead of the inflammatory response that you might see with chronic activation, shutdown often creates a kind of like immune weakness, your body is conserving so much energy that it doesn't have enough left to mount an effective immune response. And so what we often see in people who have chronic shutdown or depression, they often report getting every single cold that goes around feeling like they can't fight off infections. They have wounds that heal slower. Your nervous system state doesn't just affect your mood, it impacts your inflammation levels, digestion, hormones, immunity, pain receptors, and that is why people with IBS or chronic bloating often have a history of anxiety, why people with autoimmune disorders often have high trauma or chronic stress histories, why people with chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia also often show symptoms of shutdown or freeze. This is not a coincidence. It is biology, and when we again silo these symptoms, treat these diagnoses as separate things, we do an immense disservice to our overall healing potential. Now for the sake of awareness, I want to share some other often co occurring conditions, specific examples of how mental health and physical health conditions commonly occur together, because I think recognizing these patterns can be really, really validating if you are experiencing them. It can be really informing to maybe a shift in how you want to approach treating them. Let's first talk about autoimmune conditions and mental health. They are incredibly common to see together conditions like thyroid disorders, arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease often occur alongside anxiety and depression, and this makes sense again, when you understand that autoimmune conditions involve chronic inflammation, and chronic inflammation directly affects brain function and mood and chronic stress can also create chronic inflammation. The same inflammatory processes that cause your immune system to attack healthy tissue. They also impact your neurotransmitter production. They impact your brain chemistry in a real and measurable way. We also see digestive issues and mental health symptoms go hand in hand so often that a lot of gastroenterologists are now routinely screening for anxiety and depression, conditions like IBS, SIBO Crohn's disease are strongly, strongly linked with mental health struggles, partly because of the gut brain connection that we've talked about before. There's a whole section on this in my book. Your vagus nerve is this gut brain access. They are in constant communication. The stress in our head plays out in our gut. The stress in our gut plays out in our head as well. We also see chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia almost always involves some degree of anxiety or depression, not because people are making up their physical symptoms or their mental health symptoms, but because these conditions involve dysregulation of multiple body systems, multiple body systems and the nervous system. 

Amanda Armstrong  14:50  
And then we have to talk about chronic pain. Chronic pain conditions often lead to anxiety or depression. Somebody who has chronic pain is five times more likely. You to struggle with anxiety or depression symptoms. And one of the interesting things here is that anxiety or depression can also make pain worse, because when your nervous system is dysregulated, your pain perception oftentimes increases as well. And so there is a bi directional link here, chronic pain more likely for anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depression can contribute to making that chronic pain even worse. 

Amanda Armstrong  15:25  
A couple more connections. Again, I want to list as many as I can, because I have such a diverse audience who's listening, and I want something to ping as oh my gosh, I didn't put these two things together now I might, and I think that that can have a huge impact in your trajectory towards healing. Research links cardiovascular disease and mental health, so much so that cardiologists now consider depression a risk factor for heart disease. Again, chronic stress and anxiety directly impact heart health through multiple pathways, through inflammation, blood pressure, heart rate variability, and through lifestyle. 

Amanda Armstrong  16:01  
And then the last one I'll touch on is diabetes and mental health. These can often occur together as well. Chronic stress affects blood sugar regulation and unstable blood sugar can create symptoms that feel exactly like anxiety, racing, heart sweating, shakiness, difficulty, concentrating. Also consistently unstable blood sugar levels is a threat. It's an internal threat that can create a chronic state of anxiety on a day to day basis. 

Amanda Armstrong  16:30  
And what I think is really important to understand is that these are not just unfortunate coincidences, these conditions. They cluster together because they share common underlying mechanisms, nervous system dysregulation, inflammation, immune dysfunction, disrupted communication between our body systems, chronic stress. And I actually think this is good news, because it means that addressing these underlying mechanisms can potentially improve multiple aspects of your health at once. 

Amanda Armstrong  17:03  
And another key player to talk about in this conversation that I have briefly nodded to, the key player I wrote an entire book about, is the vagus nerve. So if you are not familiar, this incredible cranial nerve is like a super highway between your brain and the rest of your body. It doesn't just help to regulate your nervous system, but it also directly influences inflammation, immune function, gut health. So when your vagus nerve is functioning well, we say you have high vagal tone. So when you're spending time in that regulated Green Zone state. It is actively supporting reduction of inflammation, healthy immune function. It keeps your digestive system working properly, but when your vagus nerve isn't functioning well, when you have something called Low vagal tone, when you're stuck in these chronic stress states, again, this goes without saying. I'm getting a little bit repetitive here, but inflammation increases, immune functions disrupted. Digestive issues become really common, and this is why so many people notice that their physical symptoms improve when they start doing nervous system regulation work, because they're not just addressing anxiety or depression, they are literally improving the communication between their nervous system and immune system at a shared root cause, and many of the root causes of chronic anxiety and depression are also root causes of chronic physical illness. 

Amanda Armstrong  18:33  
These are not, and I cannot emphasize this enough, these are not separate problems that just happen to occur together. They are often different expressions of the same underlying imbalances. And now I want to take the next handful of minutes to talk about maybe five or six of what some of these underlying imbalances or causes might be. And let's start by talking about trauma and chronic stress. We know undeniably that trauma and chronic stress dysregulates the nervous system, that it can lead to anxiety, depression, freeze and shut down states, but trauma and chronic stress also directly impact your physical health. Let's, for example, take adverse childhood experiences, childhood trauma, whatever label you want to give it, we know that those are linked not just to higher rates of mental health struggles, but also to higher rates of autoimmune disease, heart disease, diabetes, early death, the same experiences that teach your nervous system to stay in survival mode, especially as a young kid, also create chronic inflammation and immune disorder. 

Amanda Armstrong  19:47  
Then we have our gut health. Your gut is often called your second brain because it actually has its own nervous system, the enteric nervous system, that is in constant communication with your brain, again, via the vagus nerve. So. So when your gut health is disrupted, whether that's from stress, poor diet, medications, infections, it directly affects your mood and mental health. About 90% of your serotonin, that neurotransmitter crucial for mood regulation, is made in your gut, but gut disruptions also impact your immune system. Your gut houses 70% 70 plus percent of your immune system. So when your gut health is compromised, your entire immune function suffers, and this can lead to food sensitivities, autoimmune conditions, increased susceptibilities to infection. So like I've mentioned, all of our one on one clients get comprehensive blood work, but they all also have the option to do an add on of gut health testing. The provider that works for us that gives the lab reviews with all of our clients and helps them to come up with a personal health protocol based on the findings. She is also very, very well trained in GI maps and protocoling to help people improve their gut health, because that has such a critical ripple effect on other body systems and mental health systems. 

Amanda Armstrong  21:12  
The other thing to talk about here is sleep. This is a huge factor. Research shows us that poor sleep directly contributes to anxiety and depression, it also suppresses the immune system, increases inflammation, disrupts hormone production. When you are not sleeping well or enough, your mental and physical health will suffer. Sleep is something that we often get in the weeds with with all of our clients to help them figure out, in given their unique circumstances, how to make that a priority. 

Amanda Armstrong  21:42  
Another common root cause is nutritional deficiencies. These can cause symptoms that look exactly like anxiety and depression, but it might just be a B, vitamin deficiency, low iron, vitamin D, magnesium, again, the same deficiencies that might show up as anxiety or depression symptoms also impact. Immune Function, energy production, your body's ability to repair itself. 

Amanda Armstrong  22:06  
Something else we've got to talk about is hormone imbalance. This could be thyroid, adrenal fatigue, blood sugar, instability, all of these same thing, anxiety, depression, brain fog, mood swings, fatigue, weight changes, digestive issues, increased susceptibility to illness. 

Amanda Armstrong  22:21  
And here's what's so, so fascinating, your nervous system state directly impacts all of these factors. Chronic stress affects your gut health. It disrupts your sleep, it depletes your nutrients, it throws your hormones out of balance. So sometimes what can look like multiple separate health problems might actually be a nervous system struggle, a nervous system that is not getting enough of what it needs to be in a more regulated state, a nervous system that is stuck in chronic survival mode. And at the heart, at the heart of what we do with our clients, again, is this unique stress bucket assessment, so that they can see what is contributing to their unique chronic stress load? Is it past lived experiences? Is it current life circumstances? Is it blood work? Is it their habits? Because once you get clear on what is contributing to your load, a clearer path towards more sustainable root cause, healing begins to take shape. 

Amanda Armstrong  23:22  
And another thing that I want to name or talk about in this discussion, gently but clearly, is that if you are in talk therapy, which, again, can be so so supportive, but are still dealing with persistent symptoms like fatigue, gut issues, insomnia or anxiety and depression, symptoms that aren't really easing up no matter how much talking you do, it might be because the root of your symptoms are not only psychological. They might be physiological. You cannot mindset, think or talk your way out of a nutrient deficiency. You cannot CBT your way out of hormone collapse. You cannot meditate your way out of chronic inflammation. This doesn't mean that mindset or that type of support doesn't matter. It does. It just means that we need to support the body as much as we try to support the mind. We need to consider the body, our biology, our physiology, as much as we consider the mind to be part of the problem. 

Amanda Armstrong  24:30  
And one other thing I want to touch on before bringing this all together is not always that it's anxiety and depression that creates a stress response in the body that then leads to these other conditions. Sometimes we do have physical conditions. Maybe they're genetic, maybe they're environmental, maybe they're lifestyle oriented, that start more physiological, and then can create symptoms of anxiety, depression, activation or shutdown. If we have. A physical condition or limitation that goes on long enough. Or if you feel hopeless about recovery, it makes sense that you might shift into more of a shutdown, numbing state to cope with ongoing distress. Living with chronic illness also involves very real losses, loss of energy, loss of activities you used to enjoy loss of certainty about your future. Sometimes loss of work or relationships, and grief is a natural response to these losses, and if that grief doesn't get processed, it also can contribute to us getting stuck in this state of distress or shutdown. There's also something I hear a lot about, the stress of navigating the medical system, dealing with doctors who might not understand your condition, facing financial strain of medical bills, feeling like your symptoms aren't being taken seriously. All of this creates additional stress that can further dysregulate your nervous system. 

Amanda Armstrong  25:56  
And then I think something that's probably not talked about enough is that sometimes the treatments for chronic illness can also impact your mental health. There are certain medications that can cause anxiety or even depression as a side effect. There are invasive procedures or hospitalizations that can be really traumatic, even necessary dietary changes or lifestyle restrictions that feel like losses that need to be grieved. But the other layer that's also really important to understand is that sometimes what gets labeled as anxiety and depression in someone with chronic illness is actually a normal and intelligent response to an abnormal situation. If you are dealing with a chronic health condition, again, it makes sense that you are anxious about your future or sad about limitations, and these aren't necessarily mental health disorders that need to be medicated away. They might actually be appropriate emotional responses that need to be acknowledged and supported. 

Amanda Armstrong  26:52  
So kind of wrapping this all up with a question of like, so what? What can we do with all of this? In my opinion, it starts with shifting how we view the problem, not as these independent symptoms to play Whack a Mole with in a fragmented doctor's office, but instead to start seeing these symptoms as likely interconnected things. And when we do that, or at least when I did that in my own healing journey, I felt a glimmer of hope come back. I felt a little bit more empowered in understanding that this connection existed, and that when working at a particular symptom in one arena wasn't gaining traction, I could try another and try another and try another. And that when you support one area of your health, you are often supporting multiple areas simultaneously. And so this is what we, at regulated living, refer to as our whole human approach, whole human, whole life. It's why we have the comprehensive blood work, the optional gi test. We test every single one of our one on one clients for inflammation, autoimmune cardiovascular health, thyroid hormones, micronutrients, so much more. It is one of we were able to put together a completely customized blood work panel that is one of the most comprehensive that you'll find in both traditional and functional medicine practices. We've even included specific biomarkers that we know that New research has directly linked to increasing anxiety and depression symptoms, random things like leptin. 

Amanda Armstrong  28:38  
And then, as I shared, I have an incredible practitioner on my team who all of our clients meet with to review their labs, to contextualize those labs within the greater ecosystem of the program, their past lived experience, their current life stressors and their personal health data, to put all of these pieces together To create a truly personalized whole human, whole life approach to healing. And so I'm going to take a minute and put in a little shameless plug for this program, because when I tell you that what you find at regulated living are the programs and the support that I wish I would have had in my healing journey. I mean it I got tossed from one specialist to another over and over and over again, before finding a place that helped me put these pieces together. And I don't think that I would be on the other side of my anxiety, depression, adrenal fatigue, ADHD, IBS, or any of the other labels that were slapped on me over that decade. Our restore program takes the multifaceted approach that I so desperately needed earlier in my healing journey. This program includes psychoeducation. We teach you about the nervous system, and then in one on one coaching sessions, we help you explore yours to identify the unique patterns, the unique tools that work best in your daily life. So. We talk about the basic foundational physiology pillars, and we check in, how's your sleep, your blood sugar regulation, what do your relationships look like, your environments, all of these things that we know are crucial to humans and their wellness. What does that look like in your life? Can we get a clearer picture and then, can we choose a specific area of your life that feels manageable and accessible right now to start to shift in, our coaches are also all extensively trauma informed and trauma trained to help you do the emotional processing the parts work because holding unprocessed pain is a physiological stressor. 

Amanda Armstrong  30:42  
Our approach is always a both and not an either or. We help each of our clients zoom out and say, Hey, what's contributing to your unique stress load, what past pain, what past lived experiences are still there? What are the current life circumstances or lifestyle habits that are sub optimal? And then we're going to get a snapshot of your blood work. We are going to use your personal health data to inform a path forward. This is this whole human, whole life model that is at the heart of regulated living. Because no one heals in pieces. We heal by bringing the whole system back into balance, because nervous system work is not a cure all. Some chronic illnesses require medical treatment, medication interventions, but what nervous system work does is that it creates optimal conditions for your body to respond as favorably as possible to those treatments. It is about working with both this holistic whole human approach and medical care, my dream and my hope is that we all had easy access to medical care that understood this interconnectedness, but that unfortunately, at least based on my experience, is not the norm within our current medical model, which is why we have jumped through countless hoops to make it the norm inside the regulated living ecosystem. Because to support our body's natural capacity for healing, we have to look at both mental and physical health. Deserve an equal seat at the table. 

Amanda Armstrong  32:18  
And if this is an approach that resonates with you. My promise is that those discovery calls, if you want to learn more about restore our one on one coaching program, I always have a link in the show notes to book a completely a financially free, but also pressure free, initial discovery call, consultation with me specifically. And on that call, it's usually about a 20 or 30 minute call. I get to hear your story, hear your struggles. What have you tried that's worked? What have you tried that hasn't worked? What are you looking for? What are you hoping for? What questions do you have about the program? And there's never any pressure on that call to make a decision about whether you're joining or not. You get space. You get time to take that information, get your questions answered, and then decide if this is an approach that might be the right next step for you in your healing, and oftentimes for clients who hop on that call with me, it is, and sometimes it's not. And what I also am always ready and willing to offer is to help you figure out, okay, if it's not us, then what might it be? 

Amanda Armstrong  33:21  
And so my promise is that you never leave those calls empty handed. So if you've been listening to this episode and you're thinking like, this is me, I've been chasing symptoms. I don't know. I don't know. It's too hard to put it together on my own. I want you to know you're not broken. Your symptoms are not random, and I believe that healing is absolutely possible with the right lens and layered support, so bringing this all together with three takeaways for today. 

Amanda Armstrong  33:53  
Number one, your mental and physical health are deeply intertwined. Nervous System dysregulation can trigger illness, and illness can reinforce dysregulation, which also leads us to... 

Amanda Armstrong  34:04  
Takeaway number two, which is that healing one area supports healing in the other. When you do that nervous system regulation work, you're not just addressing mental health. You are supporting all of your physical body symptoms as well. Similarly, when you address your physical health, it can decrease the overall stress load and significantly improve the activation or the shutdown the mental health symptoms that you experience. 

Amanda Armstrong  34:31  
And number three is that both and approaches always work better than either or the most effective path towards healing combines nervous system support with appropriate medical care, emotional healing with physical healing, symptom management with addressing the root cause. 

Amanda Armstrong  34:53  
I so deeply believe in your mind and body's capacity for healing. I see it. Every single day in the 38% average symptom reduction between the pre and post assessment for people who go through the restore program, I see it every day in improved labs over time with the clients that we work with. I see it every day in just the shared experience from the people who listen to this podcast, who spend time with me inside the membership, or who go through our programs, who just share that this insight and the application of this insight in a unique way for them, makes their lives better, makes their symptoms smaller, and their resilience and their hope and their capacity larger. Be gentle with yourself as you navigate this. It is hard. There's a lot of moving pieces, and if you'd like support in that,.

Amanda Armstrong  35:48  
thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside Rise, my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space, or apply for our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program, restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes, again, thanks so much for being here, and I'll see you next time you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai