47: Is Your Home or Workplace Keeping Your Body in Survival Mode? Why No Supplement or Diet Will Fix What Your Environment Broke

What if the reason your body still feels loud is not because you need another supplement, routine, or wellness tool?

What if your environment is the missing piece?

In this episode of Beyond Wellness Culture, Dr. Brook talks about the environmental inputs that impact your body more than most people realize.

Your schedule.

Your pace.

Your screen time.

Your relationships.

Your work environment.

Your connection with God.

All of these can shape how your body responds, heals, and communicates.

Inside this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why your environment matters when your body stops responding
• How a pace with no recovery keeps your nervous system stuck
• Why nighttime screen stimulation can affect your ability to rest
• How toxic or tense relationships can show up as body symptoms
• Why your body cannot heal if it is always bracing for the next thing
• How prayer and time with God help ground your system
• Why saying “you are safe” to your body feels different than “my body is safe”
• How to build one small buffer into your day
• Why simple rhythms are more effective than intense protocols

A key reminder:

You can eat the healthy food.
Take the supplements.
Drink the water.
Do the modalities.

But if your environment is loud, rushed, tense, or overstimulating, your body may stay loud too.

Dr. Brook shares how her own past relationship affected her gut and how not using her voice created a physical response in her body. This episode is a reminder that body signals are not always only physical. They can be connected to the physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental pillars.

Simple practices from this episode:

• Spend time in prayer and the Word
• Use daily safety cues with your body
• Reduce nighttime scrolling by five minutes at a time
• Build one recovery buffer into your day
• Take a short walk after a stressful day
• Ask your body what recovery looks like today

Body cue to try:

Place your hand on your chest and say:

“You are safe.
We are okay.
We are going to get through this.
I want to listen to you.
I want to honor you.”

This helps create a two-way conversation with your body instead of speaking about it from a distance.

Final reminder:

Rigidity is not relationship.

Your body needs rhythms.
Your body needs safety.
Your body needs room to settle.

And sometimes the next step is not adding more. It is quieting the input around you.

✨ Your body has been trying to tell you something.

Find out what it's saying with the free 30-second Body Signal Decoder Assessment. Pick your signal, get your personalized guide straight to your inbox, and finally start making sense of what's going on inside.

Get it here: os.drbrooksheehan.com/decoder

🎧 And if you caught the mention of the Talk to Me, Body affirmation card deck during the episode, here's where to grab yours. 63 scripture-anchored cards to help you trust the body God designed for you.

Get yours here: drbrooksheehan.com/talk-to-me-body/

📱 Come say hi on Instagram: @drbrooksheehan

⭐ If this episode spoke to you, would you take a second to leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify? It helps more women find this show. And more women learning to listen to their bodies is exactly why I do this.

Transcript

Dr. Brook Sheehan (00:00)

I've seen people literally stack these health tools that I'm talking about, myself included. And their environment stayed really loud. Their workplace never changed. Their relationships never changed. Their relationship with God never changed. And their body stayed loud no matter what they were doing. Your environment plays a role in this.

Are you doing everything right for your health but you still feel off? Does the wellness world have you overwhelmed, second-guessing your body, or chasing yet another fix? You’re not alone. I’m Dr. Brook Sheehan, and welcome to Beyond Wellness Culture, a space where we step out of the noise and rebuild trust with our body. This is where we stop overoptimizing, find clarity instead of confusion, and approach our health in a calmer, more grounded way. Take a deep breath, and let’s dive in. 

Dr. Brook Sheehan (00:00)

Welcome back to another episode of Beyond Wellness Culture. So excited you are here with me, friend. We have another beautiful topic to unpack today. And in light of everything we've been talking about just over the course of these last three weeks in really setting the stage for what this Beyond Wellness Culture is, and how to really move past it.

And we talked about this a lot last week, about really getting away from a lot of this pressure and these routines and these rigid protocols to really work through and move your body into a state of peace and rhythm and listening and building that trust and having that beautiful relationship, so you can hear what your body has to say. Today's topic, we cannot not speak about, I know that was a double negative, but we cannot not speak about this. And this is the environment.

Now, a lot of us who have been working and pursuing and doing and striving to try to have the perfect health and to get our bodies to respond better and to make ourselves look the way that we want to look on the outside and fit in certain clothes and all of this. And we're doing all of these protocols. We cannot overlook our environment, because our environment has a major part to play in all of this. It is not simply just doing the foods and simply just doing the supplements and just doing the water and just doing whatever it is you're doing in terms of modalities.

Because I know there's a lot of people out there doing red light therapy and hyperbaric chambers and cold plunges and all of the things that we find ourselves doing because we've been exposed to it. Now that exposure being from social media or other outlets that are just telling us we need this, this and this in order to function, we start adding these routines into our day to day lives.

And then our body stops responding. We hit that wellness plateau. We're trying something new. That doesn't work. We're going over here and we're not factoring in other components to that, which is our environment. I'm going to continue to keep saying that over and over and over, but the schedule, our pace, our lives, how much screen time we find ourselves on.

All of these actually impact our bodies. What? No way. Yes. I know, at least I pray that most of you who know me that are listening right now know that I was being super facetious there. Of course, all of those things have a role to play in our body. And I've seen people literally stack these health tools that I'm talking about, myself included.

And their environment stayed really loud. Their workplace never changed. Their relationships never changed. Their relationship with God never changed. And their body stayed loud no matter what they were doing. They were doing all the right things. My friend Sally, she had beautiful results with the keto diet. I'm doing the keto diet and nothing is working for me. We got to listen to the uniqueness of our body.

Sally, working for her, all great, dandy, amazing, praise God for that, but you are different. Your environment plays a role in this and that is what we are going to break down today. So what are the three, three, three, three, three, making this easy, environment inputs that people underestimate? Now, the first one is having a pace with zero recovery.

Now, if any of you have ever worked out with a trainer, and even online trainers and people who have fitness spaces, they do talk about how important recovery is. Now there are those boots or those leg things that you can wear. I don't even know the official name of them that you can put your feet and legs into, and thighs, and get good recovery that way. You can get recovery through doing electrolytes pre/post workouts, those kinds of things to help with recovery, right?

We do hear this term of recovery, but a lot of times many of us don't actually apply it, right? We continue our same pace. We're a nine to five at our job. We pick up the kids, we do this, we do that. This is our routine. And then the next day and the alarm goes off and then the next day and the next day and the next day. And there's real no recovery to this pace.

So if we never, and I'm gonna use a car analogy again, I hate referring to the body as a vehicle because it is a beautiful masterpiece, it's not a machine, but I know people can understand this, especially people who are over 40. I know my 30 something old women listening right now will understand this, but the younger generation probably has no idea what a stick shift car is, manual transmission where you actually had to shift gears and do all that. Not a fun thing, right? It is fun to drive on open roads and it's cool and I love it and I had so much fun, but when you're stuck in traffic and you're just first, second, first, second pushing in the clutch, right? That just feels so daunting.

Well, what we don't realize is when we're in this pace, pace, go, go, go, go, go, and we're never applying the brakes, we're never downshifting. We're in our environment, we're not downshifting and our body never fully restores itself because we're just constantly go run, run, move, move, move. The other environmental piece is night stimulation. I am so guilty of this. I'm going to put myself out there. I'm so guilty on this.

This is that night stimulation where we're just end up in this endless scroll on our phones, right? Watching YouTube videos or watching Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, TikTok, whatever it is, we've got a lot of this blue light coming in into our environment. It's keeping our brain active. It's not setting our brain into a place of I'm ready to rest and I'm ready to rest really well.

And then the third one is relationships and spaces that keep you bracing. I briefly went over this when I talked about work environments or in relationships with a significant other that may not be healthy or things like that that really do need to get worked out. I'm not telling this is not at all proponent, you need to get divorced or you need to break up or you need, no, they can be worked out. We need to work on shifting and getting things worked out and not brushing things under the carpet. 

Now, I did a lot of this in my prior relationship with my ex-husband, really just not speaking up, not using my voice and my body felt it. I felt it in my gut. My stomach hurt constantly. No matter what I ate, healthy, non-healthy, the like, it was not going away. It was a very toxic relationship. I did not speak up for myself. I allowed things to get brushed under the rug. My body was taking a physical hit for that.

This does affect, again, going back to the pillars, I've talked about these in other episodes, physical, spiritual, emotional, mental. There's not just physical manifestations of symptoms. There's spiritual manifestations of symptoms, emotional manifestations, and mental. So we have to really understand that these kind of things that keep our body in a state of bracing, really trying to grab a hold and not go off or, my gosh, can actually have an impact.

So one of the things I want to talk about is if your body is preparing for the next then we will never heal. If we're constantly walking into our homes after work and we're feeling, oh my gosh, am I going to be walking on eggshells? Is there going to be drama? Is there going to be something? Or walking into work to go see your, oh my gosh, this coworker, this boss. Or walking into these environments. These are going to play a role in how your body responds. And it's important to talk about this kind of stuff because we can't get well if we are constantly living in an environment that is toxic and unhealthy.

And yes, we could be eating all the healthy foods and doing all the healthy routines in the world and the environment is going to play a role. So what are some of the things I really want to talk about more so than talking about what they are is how we can help settle the body, how we can bring the nervous system back into balance, how we can support ourselves.

And a lot of this, I'm going to talk just the very first one off my notes, because I think it's really important to talk about is really spending time in prayer and having that connection to God. It's important to really get yourself grounded and ask for the help and cast your cares like He tells us to do in the Word. And it's important to do these kinds of things and help us work through it because if I had the knowledge and the relationship with the Lord that I had when I was married to my ex husband, things may have looked drastically different. And I praise God for what He's brought me through and where He has me now. But I also have to realize there are things that I could have actually taken control over in a positive sense.

We're not trying to control all of our environments. We're leaning on the Lord and His goodness in these times. And so we need to get grounded into prayer. We need to spend time in the Word. We need to spend time with the Lord and really work on that spiritual muscle, that spiritual discipline. It's super, super important. And now also working through quieting the input and helping our bodies settle and getting that nervous system to really come back into balance is to add a daily safety cue.

Again, I don't mean to be sounding like a repetitive machine or just saying the same thing over and over, but it's so important is coming back and saying, thank you, body. Thank you so much for all the amazing work you do for me every single day. I am so grateful for you. I am so grateful for what you're doing. Or even saying, we're okay. We're okay.

Now I want to talk about language here. I'm going on a little rabbit trail, but come with me, come with me. It's important how we say things. It's also important what we say when we're talking to our bodies. Now I was working with a patient the other day and one of the things I was sharing with her because there was a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear and a lot of just turmoil of things going on in her external world, but also in her body.

And I was saying, just put your hand on your chest and really just say, you're okay. Talk to your body. And so she started to verbalize things out loud while we were on the call. And I thought it was so beautiful because it opened up a space for a teaching lesson for me to actually mirror back to her, what she was doing.

She started as we were on the call, she said, my body is safe. My body is safe. My body is safe. And I said, wait, let's take a step back. I don't want you to say my body is safe. Those words, while true, is actually causing a little disconnect. So when you're placing your hands on your body and you're saying you are safe, you are safe. We're going to make it through this. The Lord is with us.

We're going to make it through, we're going to be okay, I want to listen to you, I want to honor you. You're making that more a two-way conversation versus trying to just say a quote affirmation that you're trying to make yourself believe my body is safe, my body is safe, my body is safe. I don't care if you say that in the most calmest tone, my body is safe, my body is safe. There is a whole different feel and you will practice this or pause me and do this with yourself.

Try both ways. My body is safe versus you are safe. There was an incredibly different imprint in your actual system, in your physiology when you say you are it's you talking to your body. It's your body talking to you. You're helping that spiral, that fear spiral quiet down so you can actually begin to be in that moment.

And so adding those safety cues, you are safe. You are well. You are good. We're going to get through this. We're going to make it through the day. We're going to have the right words to speak to our spouses. We're going to have the right words to speak to our boss. And it may be messy, but I love you. And I know you love me. Those kinds of conversations, right? When you're developing and working on building this beautiful relationship with your body.

Now the second piece is obviously about those nighttime blue light disturbances that I spoke about earlier that really does affect our environment is reducing the nightly strain. So yes, it's easier said than done sometimes, especially, I know myself, if I get into an anxious period or I just need a mental numb out, I'm looking for numbing mechanisms.

I have a tendency, my flesh will run towards those things like the YouTube shorts, the Instagram reels, the other things. I need to answer this email. No, I don't. I just need to set it aside and just thank the Lord for the day. Thank you for His mercies and His goodness every single day, right? Just setting that down. And that might even be like, if you're finding yourself scrolling for 20 minutes in the evening, cutting it back by five minutes and then five minutes again and then five minutes again.

So it's not this all or nothing, this cold turkey, this all of a sudden you go from this to that. It's not those type of behaviors. It's really creating rhythms and patterns and beautiful experiences in your body for you to be able to learn to build this relationship and trust it. And then the last piece in quieting the input and helping your body settle is to build a buffer into your day. Now this is not building 20 different buffers. This is about building one buffer.

Now an example of this would be to have, if we're talking about recovery, right? I mentioned that earlier in the episode about having a proper recovery plan, not just go, go, go and having the car running in full throttle without brake pedals or downshifting is to really add in some recovery. So for you, if you're working out a lot, might need to like take two days off and then reconvene if it was a hard workout. Asking your body those questions, asking what recovery looks like to your body. Maybe it might be 10 to 20 minutes in your day, having no input coming in, in those quiet moments, spending time in the work.

Might be for you, a recovery period after a long stressful day about a lot of things, is just going on a walk. The thing is, we get into these patterns or these beliefs that we have to do it for X amount of time or it's not effective. That is so not true. That is such a lie from the pit of hell that you have to do it like that. You can literally change so much physiology in your body by just going for a five minute walk. You can change so much physiology in your body by just eating five extra grams of protein versus none. Simple habits stacked upon each other can make the biggest impact versus going full blown, I gotta do it this way and I go, like all the crazy psychoness that I'm coming up against.

And then not being able to sustain it because there's no consistency. Maybe you go full, having this intensity, but then not having the consistency. So it's about building these beautiful rhythms, building this beautiful relationship with your body. And so I just pray that this episode blessed you. I do want to mention at the end of this episode that I do have a Body Signal Decoder.

You may have heard me mention it before, but this is the top eight body signals that the body will "give," so to speak, the whispers that it will say, and it starts to shout when we're not listening to those. And so these signals can cause disruptions in our day-to-day activities. And so it may be something that you might want to use this assessment and go through like, okay, this is my number one issue. And it could be sleep signals, it could be GI distress, it could be hormone imbalances, whatever it is for you, just select that on your assessment and you will be given the entire bodyOS framework to really walk your body through this actual signal.

So while it is acting as training wheels for you in this development process of building a relationship with your body, see it as that, training wheels. If there's something else your body is telling you that maybe doesn't fit within that spiritual pillar and there's another practice that you want to do, by all means, do whatever your body is telling you, okay?

And don't get stuck in this is the framework and this is exact steps I have to do. I speak to myself when I say that too, because I can be very rigid in the way that things are done. But rigidity is not relationship. Rigidity is not building those rhythms and that is what we are doing.

God bless you, have a beautiful week, and I will see you next week.

Friend, thank you so much for spending this time with me today. I know your body is grateful that you listened to this episode as well. If this conversation supported you in any way, please share it with someone who feels overwhelmed by their health, or quite possibly stuck in that wellness spiral. And leave a review on Apple Podcast as it means a lot to know this space is supporting you, and helps this message reach the people who need it most. Alrighty, let’s close those tabs, exit the apps, and let your body do what it already knows how to do. I’ll meet you back here every single week. Bye for now.