She Cared for a Dying Mother-in-Law. Here’s What It Did to Her Nervous System

Jamie was caught in an impossible situation, traveling back and forth across state lines to care for her husband’s dying mother, navigating family conflict driven by money, and carrying two powerful emotions in her body at once: fear and rage. She had no idea her nervous system was holding both.

In this episode of Healing Beyond the Symptoms, Leah and Dr. Scott share Jamie’s story, a woman who became a caregiver during one of life’s most stressful transitions, what showed up in her spine as a result, and how Network Spinal Care helped her body stay adaptable, clear-headed, and grounded through the entire journey.

By the time her mother-in-law passed, at over 100 years old, the tension pattern that had defined Jamie’s spine for years was gone. Not managed. Gone. She’s now experiencing joy, taking actions aligned with her values, and holding none of the anger that once lived in her upper back.

This episode reveals how much unprocessed caregiver stress can impact your long-term health, including your heart, and what’s actually possible when your nervous system has support.

🧠 About Network Spinal Care (NSC): NSC is a gentle, research-backed chiropractic approach that helps the nervous system release stored tension and move from chronic stress (fight-or-flight) into a healing, adaptable state. Rather than traditional adjustments, NSC uses light contacts along the spine to help the body reorganize its own patterns from the inside out.

📍Body In Balance · Leah Hahn & Dr. Scott Hahn

755 Heritage Rd Suite 110, Golden, CO 80401

(303) 215-0390 · bodyinbalancechiropractic.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to Healing Beyond the Symptoms. Today we're starting our part three of a part four series of interviewing Dr. Scott about different client stories, about how people reorganize their nervous system to help them become more adaptable, really keep them in a healing state versus just staying in the stuck stress state. Welcome to Healing Beyond the Symptoms, the podcast that helps people discover the root causes of their health struggles and take back control with science, strategy, and self-awareness. I'm Dr. Leah Hahn, a chiropractor and functional wellness doctor who believes that true healing starts beneath the surface. So let's dive in. So today's story about Jamie, we're really going to highlight how she has been living through some really stressful situations, but how she's learning to thrive and adapt despite all of it. So tell us about Jamie.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

So Jamie's been a client of ours for probably like a couple years, maybe three years-ish. And I'm sure, you know, everyone out there, they have family members who have gotten ill who have gotten sick, or maybe they're aging. And then for what we're going to work on specifically or talk about with Jamie is kind of the scenario that she more recently went through, what her process was. And what happened was it was her husband's mom and they lived out of state. And there was constantly this travel back and forth, trying to take care of her, trying to organize things, trying to organize, you know, living situations. And then it finally kind of got to the point where it was just too difficult to manage things out of state. So then they moved her in state, and then they moved her down to kind of, you know, a little further away. So still like an hour away from where they lived, and kind of the stress that went on with that. And then as things progressed, then they moved her closer. In Jamie's case, with all the stress that she went through, what first thing that always kept showing up was is she always had this like upper right back pain, upper right back pain. And it always came after they went and visited her, her mother-in-law, or maybe her mother-in-law was around for a while. And really what that came down to was there's two factors that were going on. There was fear and there was anger, because there was anger of how she was being treated by the other family members, or how there was, you know, how the tension and the friction between them. And then there was the fear of like, are we doing the right thing? And are we making the right decision? And are we holding the best interest, you know, for you know, the mother-in-law's interest in that sense.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Just well, and like so many of the clients that we work with, they're stuck in that stress cycle of they have their own children, they're caring for aging parents, they're having to make these decisions for both groups of people, and it's a lot of stress. It's a tremendous amount of stress that they're carrying.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

And so when when you hold that level of stress, so sometimes it's one where even though I stated this before, where we can we can't control the situation around us, but we can control how we respond to it, that is where the network can really make a big difference for individuals because network helps us from the nervous system perspective, typically, or I should say, it'll help us get us out of that fight or flight response. So rather than making decisions based out of fear, we're making them typically more from a growth perspective. What ultimately serves us for our greatest purpose, our greatest good, what we're trying to accomplish, what we're trying to have happen versus the fear of all the 10,000s what-ifs, like what about this? What about this? What about this? And it helps us let go of that fear and make the right decision for what we're trying to accomplish. So, you know, for some people, it might be their job, some people might be their kids, some people might be, you know, aging parents. And in this case it was. So it's one where inevitably we know what will happen. Unfortunately, you know, people pass. That's just part of life's journey, is that process. So, how do we move through that? And how do we help someone's body process and adapt as someone is starting to approach the end of life and the stresses that go along with that, along with taking care of them, and then the stresses of like, you know, what's next and all the different family members that are involved.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

So she was carrying a lot of fear, you said, about the decisions that they were making, whether they were doing the right things, moving her mother-in-law toward close to her, as well as anger based on the other family members' reactions. So she was carrying all of that on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

And it was, it was representing when when she came in, you could feel that tension in her upper back, you could feel that vibrational tone in her upper back and just the twisting pattern that that was creating. So when working with her, it was it was yes, we did frequently work on a very similar pattern, but that's because her life stress trauma, which was present. So it was important for her to be able to kind of still have access to that kind of that tone, that tension, that emotion, so she could still feel and be aware and keep herself safe. Because I kind of relate it to walking down a dark alley. And if if you know that the dark alley is, you know, our our gut might be screaming at us, like, do not walk down that dark alley, but our brain's like, oh, well, there's nothing to fear. You know, I don't need it's and our intuition is really what we need to trust. So it's it's not that we're trying to shut off someone's intuition. We're really trying to help them gain better access to that to make the more appropriate decisions. So in this case, it's rather than saying, hey, let me like not walk, walk down this dark alley, which might be like, hey, let me like walk into this room with these family members who are maybe arguing or complaining or fighting, let me take a different path, or how can I find a different way to resolve this? And keeping a nervous system in an adaptable state will help them recognize options that they didn't even see, maybe in the first place. So maybe it's like they're contemplating option A and B, but really option C is something they never thought of. But because they're living things in a fearful place or they're living things or they're looking at the experience through a certain lens, if they can get out of that process, then they can start to see that there's other options available to them.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

So when you started working with Jamie then on this, like during this time period, what kind of patterning did you see and how did that change?

SPEAKER_00 6:20

So the main thing that I would say is we saw it's called like C5. And another, like, so there's a C5 component.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

So when you would be analyzing her spine and looking at the tension patterns, you were consistently seeing this kind of lower cervical tension pattern.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

So specifically to her, what you'll see is you'll see a short leg. In this individual's case, it was a left short leg. And one of the things that we will have them do, you can have them turn their head to the left or right, and you'll see that leg kind of pissed in long or pissed in short or even. What we're looking for as a positive like indicator for us is that if that leg evens with them turning the head and depending on the speed that it that it evens, then that will indicate to us that it's you know in the lower cervical area. And in her case, that was one of the indicators that helped us become aware of that it was C5. Now you can feel that frequency and tone in that area. So that's more of just like you can utilize that as a confirmation. And so that was one of the ways that we're able to kind of look at that. And not only that, but if someone has pain in an area, you can look to see like what is causing this distortion. Because if, you know, in her in her case, it was more specific. But in some cases, what you might see with individuals is maybe there's something going on, you know, within their life of who they are. We talked about the phase three from the previous episodes. But if that pelvis distorts, if the body's trying to compensate and trying to write itself, if the hip is twisting one way, you'll see the shoulder calmly like opposite twist into the other direction is a compensation pattern. So that is one of the ways that we're able to analyze the system and really be able to figure out to see is it truly lower cervical or is it pelvis or are they both involved? And that through the analysis system, we can figure that out. And in her case, you know, it was more specific just to that lower cervical, even though that's where the pain was at, but it's not always that case.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

So the emotional part of a C5 pattern is there's kind of like unexpressed rage that really needs to find a safe outlet. And so one of the stages when we start to work on someone's body is creating safety within that part of the nervous system so they can actually feel the emotion in a healthy way. And then it can kind of exit the body in whatever way is healthy for that person. So with Jamie, she had this going on, and you were able to really work on it and create more safety and more adaptability in that area. What did you see?

SPEAKER_00 8:43

So frequently, what you would see with her is she would she would get off the table or when she would sit up from after being worked on, is she was just talking about all the anger, all like all the rage that she was she was able to identify. She was able to identify it, but she also felt it on the table. Like she felt that emotion going through her. And then once that released, then there was tears. There was almost always tears because then there was like sadness, and because that's where the fear started to kind of express of like, what if? And it's you know, the worry of you know, what's gonna happen to her mother-in-law? What's you know, is she gonna be okay? Is she are are they making the right decision? And and so there was always you know that fear. So it was helping her body process that. So I think, you know, I think in anyone's goal, that's a pr that's a pretty impressive feat in that sense. So, but what happened is we started to kind of like progress towards the other side. And as Jamie was able to recognize that, once the mother-in-law finally passed, the I think the thing that's most important in this scenario was that that pattern was no longer present within her system. So the instant the mother-in-law passed and things kind of got rectified with the family members, even though you know they might not necessarily be on speaking terms right now and they went their own ways, but Jamie knew she did the best that she could. She knew that the mother-in-law was taken care of. And I think that was what what the biggest thing was. And she's not holding on to the anger anymore surrounding the other family members and recognizing that's their issue, that's their problem, that's their choice. And it it's not her, like it's not her space to hold that for them. Like that was their choice. That's the way they had responded. So she's not anchoring into that. So that's no longer part of her physiology. So she released the fear, she released the anger, she released all of those. And now she's, you know, basically all of that's gone, and now she's in a much she's in a stress-free place. She's a seeing the joy again in life, she's experiencing happiness, she's taking actions and doing things that are congruent with her that brings her joy and happiness.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

If she had not had network care through an experience like that, what would you see?

SPEAKER_00 10:54

So commonly what you'll see in someone where there's kind of this unexpressed rage is you do end up seeing a lot of heart stuff starting to show up because the upper thoracic and how the nerves that go to the heart and they innervate the heart, which basically means the nerve leaves the spine and goes, or I should say, leaves the spinal cord and goes into the heart from that area. That's what innervation means. And so that nerve goes into that heart region. And so if they're building tension in those areas, it's common that you'll see those internal organs being affected, not only just from but just from the emotional perspective, but just the structural perspective as well, from someone's body's physiology of how those areas work. There was one study where they looked at, you know, the majority of heart attacks happen on Monday morning. You know, why is that? There's the anger, there's the frustration, there's the unhappiness, there's all those things. That's that tension that people are storing in their upper back. So if we could help people let that go, then that's gonna decrease, you know, you know, decrease that risk factor in that sense of how that body's functioning, how it's adapting. And then on the on the opposite side, too, is when's the least likely time that someone's gonna have a heart attack? Friday afternoon, when when work is getting out. So it's when we look at those factors, we see how much stress impacts our underlying physiology and how that impacts us. So what that what that really did for Jamie in this scenario is it didn't allow that kind of immediate stress response that she was going to, like going through, for that to be able to impact then the future of her life, to be able to impact then, you know, that pattern is no longer present with her. So it's no longer having that negative impact on her structure and her physiology, which then can, you know, prevent, you know, there's no way to ever know like what diseases you prevented. But when we look at these long-term longitudinal studies and stuff like that, that you start to see these patterns start to emerge of like the long-term health benefits of what network can do and releasing stress and all of those.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

It shows how powerful that mind-body connection is.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

So in Jamie's story, we've talked about this situational experience that she was going through in terms of creating more healing, being able to clear stress from her body, being able to clear stress from her emotions. And what I've loved about working with Jamie is that she's cleared some really long-term stressors, things that she's dealt with since she was a teenager, and really just focused on her healing process on a weekly basis. She's very aware and she loves network care because it helps her stay present, it helps her stay more adaptable and resilient and again in that healing state. So this is part three of a four-part series where we'll be interviewing Dr. Scott, talking about different clients' stories and how their nervous systems have shifted and changed and rewired, reorganized, and how that's affected their lives. So I hope you join us in the next episode. Thanks again for joining me today on Healing Beyond the Symptoms. If you've been curious about network spino or if you've tried everything else and still feel stuck, I want you to know this. Your body is not broken. It's patterned, and those patterns can change. If you're ready to experience how gentle care can lead to profound transformation, I'd love to invite you to book a wellness consultation at Body in BalanceCiropractic.com. Together we'll look at what your body needs to finally release, reset, and thrive. Until next time, breathe deep, trust your body, and remember that gentle can be powerful.