Heal with Grace

56. Q & A - your questions answered!

• Grace Secker • Episode 56

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In this episode of the Heal with Grace podcast, host Grace answers listener questions about healing and navigating the complexities of mind-body health. Topics include managing perfectionism tendencies, handling the disappearance of chronic symptoms, maintaining a mindset when struggling to feel understood, and dealing with IBS and complex PTSD. Grace also announces new individual coaching spots with her and therapist Liana, emphasising the importance of personalised support in nervous system regulation. Tune in for practical advice and compassionate guidance for your healing journey.

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Hello, beautiful souls. And welcome back to the heal with grace podcast. This is the space where we dive deep into all things, healing, growing and finding your calm, amidst the chaos. I'm really excited for today's episode. We have a Q and a episode. I asked all of you to send in your questions and we have some juicy thought provoking and really wonderful topics here today to dive into that I know, whereas is going to help everyone. 

Not only the people that just ask the questions. So we have questions from navigating mind, body to healing, chronic illness and just finding balance. Before we get started. I want to take a moment to remind you. That 2025. I feel like as the year, there's going to be some deep stuff coming out this year, but it's really the year to prioritize your healing. I know I'm doing it in a pretty radical way and learning how to really settle the waves of life. 

Like learning how to be, not be so up and down, but learn to like really settle my nervous system and know, and trust that no matter what happens, I'm totally safe and can handle it. And I know that this work is so important for all of you as well. So if you're ready to dive deeper and really get more personalized support, I'm really thrilled to announce that myself and my other therapist, Liana are opening up quite a bit more. 

Individual coaching spots starting this January. And so if you've been thinking about it, this is your chance to work one-on-one with us to heal your nervous system, because it is truly like, we love doing individual work because we can really get in and dive deeper with each person. So we can learn, like what's actually specific to your journey, your symptoms, your healing, your trauma, and help guide you and coach you along the way. You know, we, our therapist, so we can help you process and we, you know, can help you recognize what's happening and point out the patterns that you may not be seeing for yourself. 

So, if that sounds like the next step for you, check out the details below. 

There's a link below. on the website, elevate therapy, wellness.com. You can fill out that form on the contact page and we will get back to you same day. Okay. 

Let's dive in today's episode. And answer your questions and find some healing and grace together. 



All right. So let's get into the questions first and foremost. If your question is not answered on this episode. Tune into the next one. We just don't have time for all of them. but we get to them. And also I have not prepared these answers. These are going to come at you from, I'm going to read the question and then I'm going to answer like I would, if this were live or if I were having a session with you. 

So These are really great questions. First one. My symptoms have dissipated, although still there. Okay, we're going to pause there because. Wow. That's so cool. If you've learned to help yourself and you've had symptoms change dissipate, go away. That's amazing. Okay. So I just, you. Congratulate yourself, if you have not already, or even if you have keep doing it.but I haven't fully explored or resolved my personal perfectionism tendencies. I find it difficult to connect to these parts of me during therapy, because I'm feeling more upbeat and positive, but I'm concerned that if I don't work on my perfectionism, it'll stagnate my healing. 

But I'm also concerned that if I keep searching for my end resolve parts, it's just going to reactivate my physical symptoms. What would you suggest? I do. Alright. I love this question because it's a place where I think many of us find ourselves. And first of all, this is amazing. Like you have gone far. 

If your symptoms have dissipated. So what I'm going to tell you is that. 

First of all perfectionism is coming out in this question. It's already coming out, so you don't need to go looking for it. So when perfectionism shows up, I want you to get really clear on what does it feel like? What are your thoughts? What are the sensations around it? What happens? Do you ruminate over and over and over about something? 

Do you feel really like tight and controlled in your body? Do you feel blocked in your body? Do your shoulders go up to your ears? So you feel like really, do you think readily rigidly knows their judgment or shame? Some of those things that I want you to explore when. It's already popping up. Like first, the first step is to get really clear on what does it feel like to be in perfectionism to have that be there? 

Because again, you don't have to go looking for it. It will show up. And I also don't want you to get in the habit of needing to go look for something like dig deeper. Right. Sometimes that's helpful. And. W I'll kind of get to that, but. It's already coming up. Like the material you need to work with is right in front of you and happening day to day, week to week, whatever it's, it's being activated. 

So. Again, first get clear on what it feels like and what it is to be in your, in that perfectionism. Then when you recognize that the first thing you do is not to figure it out, not to understand it. 

But to exhale. And come back to yourself. 

Breeze. Give yourself. Self-compassion. And love and grace and flexibility. 

It's the way to work with it. 

Really tune in. To how does it feel to be. In this space. Be with those feelings and thoughts. When it comes to the thoughts, you are not your thoughts. Perfectionism thoughts are not truth. You do not have to do more to be good. You do not have to do X, Y, and Z or half of this thing. Be perfect. Or that thing be perfect to be good, to be enough. To be worthy to be loved you. 

Don't at all your soul, your person who you are is perfect. And in and of itself. And you don't have to do anything. To D two. Feel that to be that. It's your birthright. 

So. What you can do. Once you really given yourself some breath and compassion is then you learn where that's coming from so that you can actually work with it on a deeper level. So why do you feel the need to be in control? Where did you learn that pattern? Did you live in a house that everything had to be a certain way? Or you had to be on top of things all the time. 

You had to make the best grades you had to do best in your sports or. All of that. Like where did you learn this patterning that you have to do more and be perfect to be okay. So once you learn that patterning and what you learn, where that came from, you can see it a little bit more and you keep on giving that part of yourself that. That younger part. Your compassion. And you keep giving that younger part flexibility and love so that it doesn't have to feel like it has to be perfect all the time. That's what I want you to do with this, because it's already there. 

You don't have to keep looking and searching. And material is always going to come up. This is a lifelong practice, just meaning like this is really self-development work. Right. So keep giving yourself that, that curiosity, you just keeping curious. Ooh. When does this pop up here? Oh, interesting. 

I just felt really tightly controlled over this thing over here, or like, man, I was thinking about that all day long and I couldn't stop. That's where you start to notice. Oh, okay. There's the material coming up. I'm going to give myself compassion. And I'm gonna see where that came from. Ooh, that reminds me of being, you know, a little kid and I had to always get it right. 

Or like, I always felt like I could never get it. Right. I always got it wrong. Right. Things like that. Okay. I hope that helps. Okay, we are going to go to the next question. 

What practices do you recommend when someone is at the point of their healing, where symptoms have just started to disappear? Amazing. I love that you all are in this place. And again, congratulate yourself. A lot of the recorded sematic practices on YouTube asks you to locate and describe the symptom or pain. While that was really helpful while I did have symptoms or pain, I felt like there were no real resources to help me when I just, just started to have no symptoms. Or pain. Every time I reached that point of my healing journey. 

I get stumped because actively searching for symptoms or pains feels like I was going backwards. And my healing journey, but stopping all of the somatic tracking, that's helped me before felt wrong to. So I'd love to hear some options or resources, so I can push past this hump. Okay. 

Great question. First and foremost, you don't have to push past anything. This isn't a hump to push past you're in a really wonderful space. This healing journey is a journey for a reason. You're always doing the work. And remember that the point of somatic tracking, which if you don't know what that is, it's one of the primary tools in pain, reprocessing therapy. 

And then the whole point of it is to tune into our bodies and just be with whatever. Is there eventually what ends up happening? It's kind of a paradox because the whole point of it is. Just to tune in and not trying to change anything, but just be aware without judgment of what's happening in your body. And. Sometimes when that happened or sometimes when you go through that, And you be with, it ends up the symptoms don't need to be there anymore. 

So they go away. So the pain goes away. So it sounds like your pain has gone away. As you've done this, which is amazing. But again, there isn't a place to get to necessarily remember that the whole point of somatic tracking is to tune into yourself. And you're right. I don't want you to go looking for more symptoms. 

That's not helpful. So I would recommend you continue to do sematic tracking if it's helpful for you, but just remember the whole point is just to be, if you're doing it and all you experiences, just being with your heart center, being with your body, just being with you, yourself, your soul. That's fantastic. 

Keep doing it. You don't need to figure anything out or try to move past some kind of symptom in your body. You just be with yourself. In addition, it can be really helpful to do grounding practices. So like,any kind of grounding meditation, I think you said you were on YouTube, so there's plenty out there, right? 

So many different meditation apps, any kind of breath practice, some more like somatic movement with your body. And again, the whole purpose is just to be with an experience and allow, allow the emotions to be there. Allow the sensations to be there without any kind of, judgment or shame or criticism or meaning, or trying to figure it out. 

It just is when you do. Do this, when you allow yourself to just be with. You open up your space, the space in your heart and your body for more flow. Less rigidness, less hyper sensitivity in your nervous system. So your nervous system capacity expands. Tolerance. Right. So much of this is tolerating. What's going on in our bodies and what's going on in our symptoms. 

So you've learned how to tolerate, which allows it to actually go away. So now you just keep doing that because you're human and you live in this life. You're going to have things that come up. You're going to feel hard emotions. You're going to have hard experiences or go through something painful. Emotionally painful, physically painful, and you have the skills to help yourself move through it. 

So that's amazing. So I would just continue to do some of this work and, You know, keep leaning into your heart center, keep leaning into grounding practices. If you're spiritual, you could do some more spiritual. Meditation's connecting with your higher self things like that. Just to keep tuning into you. Yeah. Okay. 

[00:13:04] microphone-1: Okay, next question. How do you manage mindset with symptoms that you feel no one else understands and you don't feel You will ever get rid of them. Oh, first of all, I just want to empathize with you and resonate that this is, sometimes it's a hard place to be when you feel like no one understands you and you don't know what to do and you.

Just feels like you'll never get rid of them. Maybe you've been, maybe you've never really gotten an answer. maybe you're just plagued with it every day. You know, I don't know your specific details, but I know that this is a tough place and that many of us have been there. And so, So, you know, it's a good question because you can tell just by your question asking about mindset, you can see that you're aware that like the way you think or, and how you see things matters, right?

It does. So, here's what I'll say to this is that first helping you understand how to move through some of this. It's going to be tuning into some type of program or coach or, learning modules or meditations, like educating yourself so much more around mind body is going to help. And I don't know if this is true, but if you're sitting there like I have, I've listened to this, I've read this book, blah, blah, blah.

There's more. And. And if you're learning but you're not actually doing and experiencing the work, that's the mishap here. So, I mean, I'm still learning things and I'm, I don't even know, seven, eight years into this. And so, It takes really tuning into your reaction to your symptoms. So mindset happens like difficult or negative mindset, if you will, when you're judging yourself, shaming yourself, feeling really hopeless or like totally out of control, like never, nothing's ever going to get better.

I want you to recognize that place and give yourself so much compassion and love because it's in, you're in pain and No amount of shame or judgment or hopelessness is going to help you get out of that, but it makes sense why you're feeling that or you're thinking it. Now, again, I'm just kind of assuming this is maybe the mindset stuff you're talking about because I don't know specifically, but it is very common to feel those things and to think those things like, Oh, this is never going to get better.

I can't understand it. It's scary to not feel understood. So of course your brain's going to try and protect you with all of the worst case scenarios. It's going to, you're going to feel hopeless. You're going to think hopeless thoughts because it's just easier to do that sometimes when you don't know what else to do.

So I want you to feel, or I want you to really hone into So, compassion, self compassion, listen to recovery stories, listen to people that have come out of it. I mean, even the two questions that I answered before this, I hope gives you hope that you can get out of what you're in. And I will specifically address that again, I don't know exactly what your symptom is that you feel no one else understands.

But remember this mind, body symptoms are not just like some specific niche. It is every human, every human on this planet has mind, body symptoms because our physical body reacts to our emotional and mind, our emotional body and our mental body. So symptoms are just. They just are. They are a reaction of our emotional state and our mental state.

Also our physical state, right? If you, like, fall off your bike and break a bone, obviously that's a physical injury. But the lasting effects of that have to do with your mental and emotional health as well. So, If you feel like no one understands your symptom, see if you can see symptoms as a broad, general avenue.

I answer questions all the time about what is this? Is this my body symptom? Is this my body symptom? Is this my body symptom? Is this pain, my body neuroplastic? And pretty much every single time, my answer is yes. Now, it doesn't mean I'm always going to give, like, an additive to, okay, yes, and, you know, yes, and there might be a physical component you want to go check out.

But more often than not, it's always my body, or many times my body, I don't want to say always. And so if you can see that about your body, like, okay, I'm probably reacting in these ways because of a, a mind body of like a mental state that I've been in, an emotional state that I've been in, then I hope that gives you a little bit of resonance of like, yes, this, I, I do fit into this category, but again, I can't know for sure because I don't know exactly what that symptom is.

If you want to submit another question and clarify, happy to answer, but I'm sure that. Because if you have never been able to get rid of it or like figure it out, that already points to it being neuroplastic.

I know it's a tough place to be. So just keep giving yourself grounding compassion and like really find support. However that might look, whether it's a program, a coach, a therapist, it's really helpful to have outside feedback. All right. Next and last question for today. So this question is around IBS and the nervous system, and I'm going to summarize it a little bit, because I don't want to give out all these details.

So this person says that they've had ME CFS for almost 17 years now. And a few years later, also developed IBS and recognizes that. There's a diagnosis of complex PTSD and they have done therapy, medication, vagus nerve, journaling, EFT, NLP, like so many different things and never really understood how to regulate the nervous system. 

They also mentioned that. They have difficult relationships with their parents and brother, and feel like they're hostile or unsafe. So. Really never had the opportunity to have a regulated nervous system. And they ask or they say my IPS seems to flare up a lot more as I do the work to regulate my nervous system. 

I was wondering if I should continue or slow down. I'm not sure if my body is trying to tell me it's too much or not. And is it even possible for someone like me to have a regulated, nervous system and heal? And. First and foremost, I want to say yes, it is possible. If you are in a situation relationship that feels unsafe. It is. Not impossible, but yes, it is hard. To feel like you can settle. In your nervous system, just settle in your body and in your life. 

So. You know, I always say first and foremost, like if you are in an unsafe situation, please try to. Do what you can to get out, find resources in your community, whatever that might be. And no that too. When you're doing this work. You are, we're bringing up everything to the surface that your body and your nervous system has tried to control and push it down by way of giving you physical symptoms. 

So IBS is a very common one. Where. It's a, it's a mechanism to keep you. Distracted essentially. it's a dysregulated gut and bowels and nervous system when it comes to IBS. And so I also have noticed that. There's always seems to be like one symptom that just sticks around and likes to come out and likes to be the one that's. I'm just going to like pop a Ted out or just be like, Hey, I'm here whenever there's a time of stress. 

So this might be for IVs. Might be the one for you. Meaning that you've done a lot of things. You've worked on symptoms. You've probably made some progress. And you just noticed that this one keeps popping up every now and then. And, or am I be getting worse? Like you said, as you do this work, remember that's totally natural for it to get a little bit worse before it gets better. 

Because again, we are bringing up to the surface, the things that. Our nervous systems have deemed dangerous and don't want to feel or think about or change. Change in our life is scary. Right? So if you even think about setting boundaries or start to set boundaries with this. These people that don't feel safe. It's scary. 

It's not, it's, it's scary for your nervous system because it likes to stay in the same place. And even if that place is toxic or not, On objectively, a good place to be your nervous system, likes to know what's happening and what's going on. And it's known the same patterns that you've been in for a long time. So as you work on shifting them, yeah. 

You might have some more symptoms pop up, but that's what your skills are for. You expand your window of tolerance to feel the uncomfortable, to feel the quote unquote dangerous and to. Move through the scary situations in life. When you can tolerate that better, you don't need symptoms. So it's an ebb and flow. 

So give yourself as much compassion as possible. If he's been in these difficult situations and relationships and you might be stuck in them. I don't, I don't know the. Exact scenario, but if you are. Those are hard to change. I mean, that's, you know, relationships are sometimes the hardest thing to change. But sometimes they're the most needed to be honest. So. 

Yes, it's possible. And. Yes, it's possible to also have symptoms that pop up more when you do this work. So. It does not hurt to slow down. You might want to, you might need to slow down. You don't want to rush this. You don't want to push it. You don't want it to be your whole life. You don't want to focus on it all the time. That's can be a lot. But take it slow. 

Take it step by step. And. Give yourself. Grace and compassion along the way. 

Okay. They hope that was helpful. 

So again, if your question was not answered, stay tuned for next time. I will answer it. I'm going to have these regularly. And we'll just keep moving along. I. Just know that think first, all thank you for submitting your questions because they're so helpful. Not only to you to everyone. I guarantee you, if you have a question, it's not just for you, there are plenty of other people that are wondering the same thing and having the same issues. So keep diving into community, keep asking her questions and showing up and doing this work and just given to you, you deserve it. 

And if you want support along the way again. Myself. And my other therapists, Liana would love to support you. This work is so special to us. And, we would just, you know, be happy to support you on the along the way. So find the link below. The send in your form. Your application form is just a quick few questions on our website. And we'll get back to you with a time to connect. And until then keep doing you. And heal with grace.