210: 20% Who Don't Get Better | A Therapist's Perspective (Ellen Ronka)

Let's say you need to be setting some boundaries, but you don't. It's not because you don't know how to set boundaries is not because you don't know that you should be setting them. It's because you can't tolerate the emotion that comes up when you do that shame. For anyone who tries to do this self empathy thing when they're in shame, I just want to warn you ahead of time. It is going to feel noxious because basically you don't have neural networks for loving yourself. You have really well developed neural networks for attending to the needs of other people. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I pretend that I record these introductions before the interview, but I don't. I do it after. And I'm telling you this now because I have to be honest with you about something. I already know because I've already done the interview that this is one of the most impactful conversations. I've ever shared here. My head was basically exploding the entire time because my guest today pointed out a massive missing piece that explains why some people do everything right with brain retraining and still don't get better. So this is a brand new topic for this channel and it has the potential to completely change how you understand chronic symptom syndromes and what getting unstuck actually requires for some people. Today I am joined by Ellen wrongka joining us from port smith new Hampshire. Ellen is a licensed psychotherapist who spent 25 years living with a constantly shifting list of chronic symptoms. And she finally discovered modern pain science, her own symptoms resolved and then she went on to train in this work, including certification in pain reprocessing therapy and started running groups to help others recover. But here's where this gets really interesting. Ellen became obsessed with the people who didn't improve even when they were using the same tools, doing the same practices and genuinely showing up. And over time, she noticed a hidden pattern, something deeply human that most recovery spaces, including this one until today, don't name and therefore don't address. And in this interview, she's going to walk us through that missing link and why it blocks progress in complex cases and how shifting this one lens can change everything about how you approach your symptoms. So if you felt like you were the exception, like brain retraining helps other people and nervous system regulation, but you're still stuck stay with us. This conversation is for you. I promise you every word is pure gold. And this is one to listen to or watch to the end, because this is a discussion that you don't want to miss. So please join me in welcoming the spectacular. Ellen wrongka. Ellen, so incredible to have you here. Thanks for being with us. I'm so glad to be here. I, you know, after listening to you so much, I think it's great to finally actually meet you, Raylen. It's great to finally actually meet you after reading about your, I know you've had your own personal journey with this, which we're not going to focus on, make the core focus of this interview. But because you've done so much work with people since and just so many insights, I've been ridiculously excited for this conversation. I'm thrilled that you know that this is what you wanted to talk about. I'm thrilled, really. Yeah, let's just jump right in. So in your view and your experience, what is actually causing chronic symptoms? I love this question because I think I have a different answer than a lot of people do. So we know, we know this that symptoms are your brain's assessment of being in danger. We know that from the pain science. But what I think is mostly not getting talked about is that what does danger mean for humans? Danger is, it's about disconnection. It's about not belonging. It's about threat to relationship. So the observation I started making when I was doing this work is that the vast majority of people, now I do work with complex cases, but I think for those who have protracted symptoms, you know, ongoing, really struggle to heal or symptoms that are really intensely intense. The common denominator that I see is that they didn't have ideal early attachments, which is to say your relationship with your primary caregivers, usually your parents, not always. And in a very specific way. So I want to be clear about this. It doesn't necessarily mean that your family, your parents were abusive or that you had a significant loss necessarily. It's about a tunement. So most people don't realize, but even before you're verbal, you are learning by the way that your primary caregivers are interacting with you, they're mirroring you or not, they are attending to your needs or not. So they're excited to see you that kind of thing. That is literally wiring into your brain a sense of I'm valuable. I'm worthy people see me. It's okay to be seen. People will take care of my needs. It's literally wiring in those beliefs or not. So I would I've noticed is that for folks with a lot of mind body symptoms, it doesn't feel safe to be them. It's not safe to be me. They walk around with an idea that they can't really fully show up. And so I, a lot of my ideas are at least got spawned by the work of Brane Brown, who has a very specific definition of shame and shame is a sticky word and a culture. There's a lot of shame about shame. But she has a really powerful definition. I can give you a long one if you want, but the short hand definition is the fear of disconnection. Wow. Right. My head's exploding right now. I've got so many things going around here. I'm just like jumping out of my seat. Like it's taking all myself control to just be quiet, which clearly I lost right now. So I'm going to dial it in. I think it's mind blowing too. Honestly, because I will tell you I didn't learn this in reference to mind body symptoms from anywhere. I put it together as a therapist watching my own experience healing and and then watching what's happening with my clients honestly. So it is mind blowing to me. So just to back up just a little bit, we know that symptoms are caused by fear. But what we don't realize is that most of the time that fear is a relational fear, which is why a lot of the time, this idea of safety messaging. I'm really safe, right, that we get them pain, reprocessing therapy. Cool. Really awesome. We need to hear that in reference to our bodies. Our bodies actually aren't in danger. We don't have a disease. We don't have something broken or diseased, but that safety messaging doesn't address shame because shame is a fear of disconnection. Yeah. If I can just, you know, before your blood head totally blows off, I will just there's more. There's more. I can't take more. Okay. So God or not. Our motto is a physician author, probably a lot of folks have heard about him. One of his key themes that he talks about is in childhood or always actually there's this tension that we humans feel between what he calls authenticity and attachment. We're not really helpless as humans like this is not true for all animals, but as humans, we are right. We can't move. We can't we can't eat. We can't do anything without our attachments who were taking care of taking care of us, right. We're built into our attachment system in our brain is prioritizing attachment. But what that means is if you happen to be unlucky to be attached to someone who can't really attune to your emotional needs, you're going to have to deprioritize your authenticity. It sounds like very relevant when you're, you know, one or two, but as you age, even toddler land, but later teen adult ears, if you've learned to for the sake of attachment, deprioritize your authenticity. But that means as you can't really stay connected to yourself, you can't stay connected to other people without disconnecting from yourself. And and Renee Brown's definition is fear of disconnection. That's her definition of shame. So my take is that really shame is driving these mind body symptoms. I feel like I'm in therapy right now. I can't believe how much I still learn about my own journey still, you know, seven years now since being past it, all of these interviews and so many injuries and like, oh my goodness, I had never looked at this component of it. And I, so two things really big things popped up in my head when you were talking and one was thinking about, you know, I grew up loving parents. This isn't about blaming parents, but my mom got chronic fatigue syndrome when I was five. So for as long as I can remember, and you know, she was a big personality like she was kind of a lot before CFS came along. So, you know, there are factors that contribute to the storms that follow, but anyways, it's just it seems to really suck up everything in our home understandably right my dad, my mom, it was just like my mom was drowning and for the next 25 years, we just focused on that. So I did feel everything you were explaining and I hadn't thought about, of course, I thought about how hurt illness could set me up for having similar symptoms, but not that aspect of it. And then also, I was at a medical conference recently. put on by the association for the treatment of neuroplastic symptoms. I'm healthful. Yes. You were there? OK. So was it you? I took in a speaker. I mean, I have to look at who it was. It wasn't you. But we're talking about how the brain responds to isolation, to the different types of isolation and rejection and the different ways that we feel disconnected in the same way that it responds to a physical threat to anything else. Like the same alarms go off in the body. And I'm thinking, oh, you and this woman need to get together, because you are speaking the same language. That was the first time I ever heard that. And that was just what just recently. Yeah. And I hadn't still connected all the dots there. Well, you know, they're going to keep connecting. Because honestly, it goes so deep that I feel like I keep realizing I'm a deeper, in deeper level. I would go so far. And there's no way I can prove this. But I actually think that if there was a way that we could induce shame in people, I think we've actually done this. But the neural networks for shame are the neural networks for pain. And I'll tell you why. Is shame is so noxious. It is a terrible emotion. It's a terrible experience. We don't want to-- it triggers fight or flight. Yeah. Fight or freeze or fun or collapse response in the nervous system. So it actually, if you have well developed neural circuits for shame, you will have well developed neural circuits for an upregulated nervous system. And therefore, mind-body symptoms. I don't think there's a way around it. Actually, there is one. Addiction. Addiction takes care of the problem in a different way. But causes its own problems. OK. I'm going to need you to explain that. And addiction takes away the problem of shame causing pain. Addiction takes away the problem of shame. Because it just numbs us. It gets us away. Oh, yeah. Because the reason why shame creates mind-body symptoms multiple reasons, one is that shame is the thing that makes you verbose emotions in the first place. So we do all this talk about, oh, you're going to do expressive writing, right? And you're going to get in touch with how you really feel. The problem is people really struggle to do that. And I think it's because of shame. The only reason why you would repress emotions in the first place is because you feel shame about them. Yeah. But most people don't know how to recognize shame. And so many people I talk to, not everyone, but a lot of people. And this was my experience as well, is that I used to say that alcohol was my superpower when I had CFS, because alcohol completely shot off my symptoms. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. I would venture. And again, I'm not a researcher. I'm a clinician, right? So I just observe. And I interact with a lot of people. And I've been working with this framework for how to resolve my mind by symptoms, and it works. So what happens when you're using any kind of substance or for that matter, an addictive behavior, shopping, gaming, you name it, over reading, overexercise, really any behavior that you're doing really compulsively, it's a way of distracting yourself from, I think, shame. And I don't say I think it's more than I think, but I know one really talks about shame, 'cause there is so much stigma about it, and it's really quite hidden. Most people are aware of, like they might say I struggle with self-esteem, a lot of people don't. And in fact, as you know, a lot of people with mind-bodies symptoms are actually kind of high performers, right? They're successful. A lot. Yeah. I actually think that the thing that drives them is shame. So the success and all that pushing, push, push, push, I know, 'cause I was there, totally part of my story, in fact, it could really relate to your story in that regard. It's really what I would call a shame avoidance behavior. We're managing foreshames. So, I mean, we may not even realize it. It really, 'cause we talk about all, 'cause I see a disproportionate number of people sitting across from me in these interviews that are marathon runners, ultra marathon runners, high performing professionals, professional athletes. And we talk about it a lot. Well, it's the voice in your head while you're doing these things. What is it saying? Like, you're not good enough unless you have all these accolades. You're not safe in the world, unless you do all these things. You're not enough. And what is that boil down to? I don't think I've heard anyone of us say the word, audience, say it, all of us all together now. Shame. It's so true, though. Well, and it gets even richer. Like, really, to me, it feels like it's been hidden in plain sight for me. I mean, I was fighting through it, trying not to, I didn't have a word for it. Literally, I mean, shout out to Brunei Brown. Thank you very much for putting it on the med for me. I really was the process of, when one of my parents was dying, someone had recommended her book to me. And I was like, oh, this is what's happening in my family. Like, all hell was breaking loose in the relationships. And I realized, oh, we're just passing around shame. That's what's happening here. So, oh, shoot, I lost track of my thought. I was, oh, I had one thing that you just said about, you know, ultra marathon runners and all that. It was right there. I was listening to a story in the radio, an interview with a woman who was literally the world champ in surfing. I have no idea how they decide, but, you know, or how they rank them. But she was the women's world champ in surfing. And the interviewist asked something about her self-confidence. She was like, no, I doubt myself all the time. I don't trust myself. I get in my head. And I thought, there it is. There it is. It's shame. We just, we don't have a cultural language for it. And, you know, Brunei Brown put in the map. But we still don't really like talking about it. You know, and I'm thinking about the disproportionate number of women who get these conditions. And men and all across the gender spectrum get these conditions. I definitely see that. We are generally seeing it's a lot more women. And there's a lot that ties into this for women that make sense. You know, I was thinking about even that book, a lean-in where they're talking about women in the workplace and interviewing high level people, like, people in women in senior management. Now, shocking. I'm going to throw out a number. I can't remember exactly. It was something like 90% of them felt like imposters. Like they had imposters. And like, if people only knew, like, I am not qualified to be in this role. You know, I'm so glad you said that because you're saying is we are talking about shame. We're just not naming it. Yeah. The imposter syndrome. That's that's a K. A. Shame. I don't feel like I'm worthy, adequate, whatever to fill this role good enough, fill in the blank, right? This is where you can have women who are super skinny and still think they're too fat, right? It's a self-perception. I project my own beliefs about myself on other people. And it's they may or may not be judging us, right? Yeah. We're judging us until we aren't, because I'm all about training out of shame. But here's what I was starting to say is people understand sort of low self-esteem, right? We're self-doubt or getting in my head. Again, that's all code in my opinion now for shame. It's just that-- Well, let me tell you, Bryne Brown's full definition, because I think it really matters here. She says, it's a universal. That's cool. We all have it. So no shame about shame. Universal, deeply painful, yes, indeed. Feeling our experience. That's important. Feeling or experience. Now, wait for it. Of believing, we're flawed. And therefore, unworthy of love and belonging. So here's the piece that really clicked for me when I clicked. It's an emotion, but it shows up as thoughts. Believing on flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. And the thing is the flawed part-- of course, we all know we are all-- but the way people try to self-for-it is they try to talk themselves out of that belief. And what really did it for me is she defines it fundamentally as an emotion, fear of disconnect. And that changes everything about how you try to resolve it, because most people are trying to affirmation their way, mantra their way, self-talk their way out of shame. And I can just tell you, trust me, I tried. It did not work for years and years, decades maybe. Doesn't work. Can't heal shame cognitively, because it's actually an emotion. That's my condition. So oh my goodness. This feels like one of those before and after moments. Yeah, I'm going to remember there was life before I heard this and then everything after. I'm really going to shift everything that I'm doing slightly. So I'm trying to figure out what this means for people, because we know we see people that do lots of different recovery programs, focusing on brain retraining and nervous system regulation, and many get tremendous results, fully get past it. But there's always a segment that don't. So how does this fit into that? And how do we shift it so that it's more effective for people? Love that question, because once I got healed up, that's been my fascination is what holds up the people who don't get better, you know why? And for those who don't understand this principle, how, like if they really don't have their eye on shame, how is it that they get better? I think actually one thing is people do get better, but then they end up with other symptoms. Really, unless you really solve the core, you probably will be dancing with neuroplastic symptoms your whole life. So I think absolutely pain-reprocessing therapy is really essential, but I don't really think it gets at this core, right? So one thing I would say is that I think that resistance is a huge thing. We talk about that a lot in the mind-body healing world, right? Jon Sarno talked about resistance being part of the disease, right? We just got to count on it existing. I happen that, you know, as I run my lens, my paradigm through and kind of watch how resistance happens, really, I think every time I bumped into resistance in myself or someone else, it's because shame's underneath. In other words, we don't, let's say you know you need to be setting some boundaries, right, with so and so, but you don't. It's not because you don't know how to set boundaries, it's not because you don't know that you should be setting them. It's because you can't tolerate the emotion that comes up when you do. That's shame, but we call it resistance, you know, like it's resistance. And as a clinician, you know, and a coach, I want to say, but okay, how do we work with that resistance? And for me, it's always about finding the shame underneath and then teach people how to deal with shame. And then you have resistance. There's no reason for it. Okay, I can see your. Yeah, the light bulbs are going off and then things are also like melting down going, I don't compute. Okay, tell me. I'm just probably talking too fast because I get very excited about this. Oh, no, I am, yes. So I'm thinking of. Because the boundaries one is something that comes up a lot and we talk about a lot and this is, you know, one of the many things that people do is they move through this. I mean, we talk about self-compassion massive. So you can see the direct link to their to shame, let's, I would say, sort of the 180 from from shame. And I'm thinking of setting the boundaries. So is it just that we are naming emotions improperly? Because I think about when I set a boundary and when it feels uncomfortable and I still have this, like, why does it feel uncomfortable for me? And for me, it feels like it's upsetting to see someone else upset. I don't want to be the cause of someone else's distress. A good person wouldn't do that. Yeah. So I guess that's where the shame connection is. Like, I think I'm a bad person. Yeah, we're great. So let's go back just for a second back to childhood. If you, if, if your authenticity and attachments are in opposition, meaning if, if the way you were parented, in order to stay in attachment, you had to downgrade your own interest, your own emotional experience. You had to tell yourself a different story than you were actually perceiving. Yeah, you're going to do that. In other words, this pattern that I was saying that I see consistently in folks who really struggle to get better, it's, they've learned to tune all of their empathy. So much so that I call it over empathy. I would call it compulsive behavior now. And, you know, again, all this comes from the laboratory of me. So, you know, there's no judgment anybody about this habit. But basically, we tune our eyes outward because that's how we maintained attachment. But what that did is it broke our own sense of authenticity with ourselves. In other words, yeah, mom and dad isn't, mom or dad aren't wrong. They're not being mean and there must be something wrong with me. I mean, that's oversimplified. But I think if your listeners sort of try that on for size and sort of fit it, sort of to their specific situation, they'll probably resonate with it. Yeah. You know, maybe well, you were too sensitive or too emotional or you're, yeah, you know, I was just listening to someone the other day, you know, she'd be telling her mom about her day at school and her mom, now that you wouldn't call us abusive. But her mom would say, she would interrupt her on and would you get that dish please? Like, like what she was saying had absolutely no merit or interest to her mother. So shaming. Yeah. Yeah, I could see it all the different layers. And if I, if I set boundaries, I upset that person, I don't want to be that person. However, when I don't set boundaries, that is not me living in alignment. And I feel this internal rage building up and not being authentic. Where you have it. It's just like a tug of war of exactly, exactly when you, so here's what I, when I'm making hard decisions, do I want to set that boundary with that person I, very often I'll list out reasons to do the thing or reasons not to do it. And what I've learned about how to heal from shame because again, the affirmation thing doesn't work is shame is a terrorist. That's what I'd say in my practice. It's a terrorist in it. You give it power by negotiating with it. So in other words, if I set that boundary, I'm going to feel bad. It can't shame because that person's unhappy with me again, fear of disconnection. Then I just won't set the boundary, right? You've just negotiated with a terrorist who's going to have you even more by the neck later. So what I've learned to do is you just don't negotiate with it. You do the thing anyway, you don't abide shame. The trouble is, and this is the, this is the key piece that I also don't hear people talking about is how, what do you do with the shame? What do you do with that tug of war inside? And I think the answer is, I have to learn how to tolerate it. You can't learn how to tolerate something you don't even know is there. Yeah. What's we name it as an emotion? Oh, okay. It's sadness, anger, disappointment, grief, whatever. Shame. Oh, okay. And here's what was really, this is this was the big aha for me because I had learned Brunny Brown's way of thinking about shame. And then when I got trained in PRT, at some point, something clicked that I thought, oh, the way to train out of shame is to use basically PRT on shame. So in other words, in pain or processing therapy, we learn enough pain science that we know, oh, that pain in my knee is not actually a structural problem. It's an, you know, it's an outdated neural network that's sending an outdated signal. Okay. So we learn to disbelieve the signal. And then we learn how to be with the sensation while we remind ourselves of her safe, right? So shame, we say, oh, that's the emotion of shame. And it's telling me that there's a problem with me. It's so similar. They're, it's where they're the same neural networks. Shame is telling me there's a problem with me, my core, who I am, right? I'm too much. I'm not enough, whatever. I don't have to believe the message of it. It's like, I don't have to believe that my knee is actually injured. And then I be with myself. And the equivalent of a safety message about, you know, a sorning, when you're training out of shame is empathy. So empathy is the antidote to shame. And the reason is, the original injury, what set up shame is disconnection, right? Fair of disconnection. If I'm my real self, I won't be accepted, loved, you name it, nurtured. If you can do self empathy. Oh, I see how hard it is to set this boundary. This person might reject you being mad at you. That's terrifying. Well, no wonder why you're scared. Oh, it's so hard to be in this situation. That's empathy. And that's empathy. Wow. Emotion of shame, right? It's not, you're fine. They'll still love you. That's what I call reassurance. You'll be okay. Cheerleading. I call that lying to yourself. Yeah. That's not how I feel. Like, yeah. And here's the thing. When you do what I call lying to yourself, you actually are making the problem worse. You know, oh, you're skinny enough. You're making enough money. People don't really think you're stupid. Any of that, all that reassurance, cheerleading stuff. I call faux empathy or like to yourself. It actually believe it or not. And this, it re-injures you. In other words, it actually reinforces the shame network. And the reason is shame is about disconnection. I'm disconnecting from myself. I feel crummy about myself right now. I feel like she's going to reject me if I said a boundary with her. So to tell myself anything other than that, she's disconnecting from me. So I'm almost nervous to take this to a whole other level because I'm not sure how much more my brain can process. This is just so eye-opening. And for what it's worth, I keep obsessively checking to make sure we're still recording because my biggest fear right now is that somehow we're not capturing this. But we are. I'm like, this is gold. Like this. I'm just going to walk around with a megaphone playing this on the street to people. But I'm thinking about, so how does shame? Is there something similar that's happening? When I was living with chronic fatigue syndrome, I do air quotes because I know there's many labels that essentially it's just the symptoms that we get, how it's labeled. But I didn't want to tell people. And I felt ashamed of the condition. So I did not, I hid it as much as I possibly could because I thought people would judge me for it. So where does that, I'm really trying hard not to turn this into my own personal therapy session, but I'm asking because I know a lot of people, I feel this way. It's a silver platter question, honestly, because you're exactly right. You know, in pain repressives therapy, they talk a lot about the pain fear cycle, right? Like you feel some pain, and it instigates some fear, right? Like because the pain is scary, right? But fear, we know, actually causes more pain because it activates your sympathetic nervous system, which then and causes like this nasty little loop where pain fear, pain fear, pain, it just reinforces, right? So what you're saying, I love this. I actually, I mean, I don't love it for you that that's what happened, mind you. And I lived with that, honestly. That whole shame about like I'm underperforming, we had such great expectations for what I could do with my life and here I am ahead, like totally understand that. And the whole, the sick one, you know, that identity of like, oh, she, well, it's terrible. There is a lot of shame around it. But I, and also, sorry, I've just, now I'm adding quickly there because I know it's a big one. Also the invisible illness aspect of it where people don't believe you. And they think you're just being lazy. And I still hear it from people all the time when I talk about what I do for my YouTube channel, someone just at brunch last weekend was like, do you think sometimes these people just kind of get in the habit of, I don't know. I've heard you say the whole thing about we must just call it the crazy lazy syndrome. Yes, because that's what people hear. So that was a part of my shame too. Like people are gonna judge me and make I'm making it up. And just for the record, to the extent, I always say, you know, like one thing that's really helpful for starting to recognize shame, because again, that's the first step is knowing the key words that go with it. Very often people say, I feel bad. You're probably in shame, not actually, you know, it's a two-gen error. But also if you're thinking about people judging you, I guarantee you, shame, at least knocking at your door, you're gonna dance and you're gonna get flirting with it on the edge of it, or you might be in a full blown vat of it. It is a spectral continuum. But I think it was the latter. I mean, look, you know, I listened to enough of your channel to know what a bright woman you are and how capable you are. And the idea, when you know what you're capable of and you're just stuck in bed, right? It is such an assault to your identity. And let me be clear. Again, shame is about our identity, how we see ourselves, whereas a lot of people mix it up with guilt, I'm doing something wrong. I should be making money, you know, for my family, whatever. That might be guilt, but the shame is I'm a terrible person because I'm not supporting my family, right? Or, you know, I'm lazy or I'm worried people are gonna think I'm lazy. So it's a bad identity. But as soon as you're thinking about other people judging you, I guarantee there's shame here. And again, no shame in having shame because you can't heal what you can't feel or recognize, right? So back to your point though, I think shame is what sets you up for the mind-bodies symptoms. But by the time you're stuck in bed or you're, you know, carrying around a fancy pillow or you're spending all of your family's finances on treatments, et cetera, now you've got more shame. Because of that. And I think, I, you know, I mentioned the pain-fear cycle, I've coined the shame overwhelm cycle. Because I think what happens is, first of all, again, shame triggers our fight flight or freeze mechanism, which basically deprioritizes our frontal cortex, the part of our brain that can do executive function, plan, make good decisions, whatever. And we're an Olympic brain, right? You know, people call it the reptile brain, whatever. But what happens is you can't concentrate, you can't think, well, you know, if you have chronic fatigue, long COVID, you're stuck in bed, you're exhausted. So that causes shame in itself. But then when you have the shame, maybe you don't even have the word for it, but then you're overwhelmed, not just by the emotion, but by the things you're not doing, but also how you feel about yourself because you're not doing them. It kicks off more shame. But then the more shame that gets kicked up, the less able you're able to function, right? And so basically what you just described about being in bed and having so much shame, yes, that's not, I don't think probably the shame that originally kicked it off, but it keeps it in place, which is why it feels, because at a certain point, even if you do the work on your self-identity and your relationship to yourself, if you're stuck in that shame cycle of, like I'm not getting anything done, that was huge for me. And it just felt like such a failure when I didn't get enough done. You know, that's kicking up shame, and that's keeping you, and if you don't recognize the emotion of shame, you don't even realize that's why I'm feeling unsafe. It's probably not. I feel unsafe in my body per se. Yeah, you might be worried if I walk out to the mailbox, I might not have the energy to come back. Sure, but that's not the stuff that really creates the symptoms in the first place. That's just the layer on top once you get there. You see what I mean? Yeah, it's very much like the pain-fear cycle. It's not what caused the symptoms initially, but it keeps them going, and makes it even more challenging to get to the source of what's going on, 'cause you're just overloaded with symptoms, the same way the shame spiral comes in. It wasn't the original call, like, exactly. Of course, you didn't have shame about symptoms before, 'cause you didn't have them, but now it's just, and you're already wired for this. So if you already have a shame propensity, then of course you're gonna respond to this in that way, or there's a higher likelihood. Oh, different. You know what? I wouldn't even say higher likelihood. It's gonna happen. I think, you know, I came by this mind-body model much later than a lot of the people, I mean, I suffered for two and a half decades, and I was doing, because I'm a psychotherapist, I was, you know, good gall. Having chronic illness, and of the likes that you had in the sense that, you know, chronic pain is tidy, and I might have discovered Sarno sooner, but I didn't, 'cause that didn't make any sense given the kinds of symptoms I was having. And so I was doing all this psychotherapy work, wrestling down my perfectionism, and self-judgment and all this stuff, but I didn't have any good answers for it, but I think at least I was sort of working on that. So by the time I found this model, when I understood how to train the brain out of a sensation, or in this case, in emotion, then I, oh, now it's just a matter of, yeah. Now I just gotta do it. And it all clicked, but for me, it was backwards than most people. - Yeah, no, that is really incredible. And I'm still, so I'm wondering, and we talked about how, you know, my label was CFS for someone else that might be chronic pain, or my grains, or long COVID, and so forth. So does it matter what your specific label is? Do the symptoms themselves matter? Like, you know, cognitive symptoms, such as brain fog versus posting sirtional malaise or chronic pain? - I don't think so. - Yeah. - In my program, like I tell people, I care about your symptoms, 'cause I know you're really suffering with them, and it matters to you. And I know you wanna diagnose us to have, you know, some validation of your suffering, but literally it doesn't matter. Because I really, I have yet to meet a case where I can't draw a line back to learned neural networks for shame. And that sounds really dramatic, because I know that a lot of your listeners are probably like, I don't relate to that at all. But if they don't, I'm pretty sure they'll relate to their shame of wooden behaviors, which of course they wouldn't call them that. Their perfectionism, their drivenness, their people pleasing maybe, or their over empathy. A lot of folks, maybe they don't have that stuff, but they're just constantly connecting with the other long before. And they don't even notice themselves. Everything, you know, they surrender their own needs to the need of the other person. Usually it's them they some all that. - So I'm pretty sure, I know you're already overloaded with a lot of people and you're helping so many, but I'm, there's gonna be a lot more coming your way after this conversation. So what, like what you have available for people that this is really resonating. You're like, I need to know more about this. I need to work with this. So what is the work that you do? What do you have for people to support them as they work through this? - Thanks for asking. So my program is called Chronic Ticured. And because I understand the core dilemma is being this learned pattern of shame. And because shame happens in the context of relationship, I built the structure of my program to make the structure actually a healing medium in itself, which is to say small groups, really intentionally curated small groups by me. Because you don't usually even notice your shame until you're in relationship. And I think relationship is a per, safe relationship. So I should clarify that. Safe relationships where vulnerability is encouraged but very safe is the place to heal. So I think of it as an intensive mentorship with me, but in the context of a small group, where you have a lot of access to me to sort of wrestle down what you're, I do teach of course, the pain science and the nervous system regulation, but so many people come to me, they already know that stuff and they're not getting better. And I think it's again, just 'cause there's this blind spot about shame. So I really built my program to shift people's lens to be able to see exactly how this disconnection from self really when it is is in order to maintain attachment, right? We deprioritize ourselves, but in order to heal, we have to literally connect to ourselves. And that's really what empathy is, right? So I teach people how to have a new relationship with themselves. But if I advertise my program that way, no one would join, because they don't know that they did from those-- - You're right. Yeah, exactly. People were like, "That's not me." 'Cause those of us that never picked up Sarno's "Hilling Back Pain Book," were like, "That's not me." - Exactly. - Exactly, exactly. - Wait, it is me. (laughing) - True. - Yeah. - Yeah, and I just wanna say, for anyone who's listening, who tries to do this self-emphasy thing when they're in shame, I just wanna warn you ahead of time, it is going to feel noxious. It will feel fake, awkward, forced. Yep, that's true. And that proves that I'm right because basically you don't have neural networks for loving yourself. You have really well-developed neural networks for attending to the needs of other people. And so if turning it on yourself is really hard and feels awkward and uncomfortable, we're on the right track. It's just literally like attending to the sensation in your back that you've been trying to avoid all day long. And what, you want me to pay attention to it? - Yeah, but in a new way, you know. It's fun, I love it. Really, once people see this, they're lens changes and they start treating themselves differently, even though, again, it's not gonna feel natural to begin with. And you certainly, you know, yeah, it's not gonna feel true that you're worthy of loving belonging to beginning, but if you start acting as if, that's a phrase I pull from the 12-step movement, it act as if, you know. I am worthy of loving belonging just as much as anyone else. When you do that, and you learn how to sit with your shame, your symptoms just fall away. They just, it's so fun to watch. - I'm taking your program. The check is already in the mail for this therapy session. I cannot believe how many aha moments that I've had. And I started, I'm gonna link it here. I've been trying to make friends lately, that disconnection there. So I've been going on friend dates and the woman confided me on our second date. She said, I saw your channel. She said, I've had Chronic Vitek Syndrome for 17 years. And so I, yeah, like, she said, but I'm very overwhelming. There's hundreds of videos. So I said, if you'd find it helpful, I'm always like, you don't want to push things on people. I could send you some videos that I think are some really great ones. So I'm officially, if I made a playlist, I'm officially putting this one on it. So I'm gonna link it here. So it's the start here place. So if you're here and you're overwhelmed by videos, there's a ton of great ones. So I can't include them all. It was very hard decision making, but just, yeah. - You have amazing content, really. What a gift you've given the world of my body symptoms suffers. It's such a gift, really, truly. It's in such a, I mean, I don't, you're a busy woman given how much content there is in there. - I've been too busy and there's a lot of unpacking to do there, but I'm in a better place now. So it's been a journey. This channel keeps me in such a great head space. It's how I get free therapy. It's not selfless. I think it's about all of you. Yeah, I'm just trying to fix myself like everybody else out there. No, it's, there's no greater thing in the world than getting to do this work and see people move past these things and move through these things and take themselves back. - The courage required to heal from these things, it's stunning. So when you talk to people, even once you haven't healed yet, just them continuing to show up. Like I listen to your story about your video on your homepage about your story and I was like, my goodness, you just didn't give up. It's really, this is one of the things that I love about working with this group of people is that they're such strong life force. But it's so interesting is there's so much talk about this intensity thing? You know, like the intensity is what gets some trouble. I've definitely heard it in your story, like everything to the end degree. But I like to honor the fact that you were really trying to live. - Yeah, and I should throw in that my understanding of my journey changes every month. So how I explained it a year ago or five years ago, I'm like, oh, I didn't understand that yet. And I still don't. But I'm piercing it together. - Yeah, I feel the same. I really am hatching a book. It's in my head. It's partly in scraps. Someday I'll write it and I worry about that very thing 'cause I think that's the, I mean, it shows you're consistently growing person, though, right? The fact that something you wrote a few years ago is absolutely irrelevant. - Yeah. - It's not recommended. Do not buy my book. - Right. - So maybe there's a little bit of shame of what's in her book. - Oh yeah. (laughing) Oh my goodness, so incredible. Open invitation to come back whenever you want. I think this will have blown many minds wide open and just be so, I know you've been doing this work for a long time, but we've got hundreds of millions of people in the world facing these conditions. So there's, you know, I'm just learning about this and I do this full time. So, absolutely amazing. - I'd gladly have another conversation 'cause there's so much that we could talk about, honestly. Really right. The biggest thing is how do you train out of shame, you know? - Yeah. - Because if they're really persistent neural networks, how do you, that's the most important thing and I think the rest takes care of itself, honestly. - Yeah, well, people watching, let us know in the comments if you would like more on this topic. I'll use that as my, making my case to get Ellen and her busy schedule back here. And if you're still watching to the end, well done. I just want to, like really the fact that you're still here and you're still trying not only just in life and in recovery and watching videos, but you're like, I'm gonna watch these long videos and I'm gonna get to the end or maybe skip to the end. That's fine too. Whatever you do works for you. I heard an interesting theory recently that we see so many overachievers and these recovery interviews 'cause everyone tapped out years ago, everyone else tapped out. It's just the overachievers that don't give up. So I don't know. I don't know what it is, but for the people that just keep going, it's, I know it takes a lot, takes a lot. - I know, it really. - Pulling yourself up. - Yeah. - So the fact that you're still trying. - Yeah, well done everyone. Thank you for watching, looking forward to your comments. I hope to see you in one of these next videos and my playlist for a friend. I'll be there waiting to greet you when you say play, when you hit play with another incredible guest. Thanks Ellen. - Thank you. - Amazing. - Go away if you ask. Bye bye.