The 6 Core Beliefs that are Keeping You Sick with Filipa Bellette, PhD

The 6 Core Beliefs that are Keeping You Sick with Filipa Bellette, PhD

00:00

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the EnergyMD Podcast where we help you resolve your Long COVID and chronic fatigue syndrome naturally so that you can get back to living your best life. I'm Evan Hirsch and today I'm with Filipa Bellette and we're going to learn all about her and how she's going to teach us some really cool things today. So Filipa Bellette is co-founder of award-winning Chris & Filly Functional Medicine and author of Ending Body Burnout.

00:30

An accredited clinical nutritionist, functional medicine practitioner, coach, trauma therapist, and PhD scholar, she's been featured on the Today Show, in Forbes, and Body+Soul. Together with her husband, Chris, she has helped more than 3,500 clients address burnout, drawing on over 30 years of combined experience. Her passion for helping busy people restore energy, improve mood and gut health, and reconnect with life grew from her own experience of burnout while juggling business, family and declining health.

00:59

Filipa, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here. So you've had a bit of a journey. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got to this place? It's your story of your body burnout and now how you help people. Yeah. So it's interesting when people ask me this question, because my brain wants to go right back to childhood, but I'll probably go back to it there later.

01:30

But when my body really started speaking to me was in high school as a teenager. So I had hormone issues, but the big thing that started showing up as quite alarming was I developed vasovagal syndrome. So basically that was any time that my body felt under stress, I fainted, fitted and peed myself, which was really embarrassing as a teenager. And that continued for about 10 years.

01:56

But back in high school, my mum was a nurse, so she took me around to all the specialists and in the end they're like, you don't have epilepsy, you don't have a brain tumor, it's just you struggle to respond to stress in a healthy, resourceful way. No one used the word nervous system back then. Had it happened now, probably I would have got to the help that I needed a lot faster. But anyway, was basically just wiggle your fingers and toes when you feel stressed and just learn to live with it. And I did.

02:29

It continued happening. And then fast forward, maybe even 10 years, I had my first baby and before that I had had a miscarriage and I really felt like when I fell pregnant the first time before the miscarriage, it was almost like I went from running at boot camp and like, you know, we were doing like a two-kilometer test run every week and I used to be at the top of the pack.

02:55

And then one day, like my body just felt like lead. It was almost like, this is so weird. Like yesterday I could run, but today I can't. And from then on, I just started noticing my health declining, especially around like that physical capacity and energy. And then I had my baby at around 27 years old and it was a really traumatic birth, a three-day labor. I had a lot of bladder and like bowel problems afterwards, including my bladder couldn't even pee, like it would fill up and I had no sensation to urinate.

03:26

So for three or four months I was using an internal catheter and kept getting infections, UTIs and antibiotics and ended up in hospital a few times. And so basically my gut health was very destroyed by the antibiotics, but also there was a lot of emotional and psychological trauma that was happening around then as well.

03:51

And my baby wasn't sleeping probably because she was getting all the antibiotics through my own breast milk and feeling like I wasn't co-regulating with her very well. And then after that first birth, I just felt month on month more health issues started popping up. So I was watching other women having babies and they're like bouncing back each month.

04:13

But for me, I was getting worse and worse. So started having really big immune crashes, a lot of body pain, anxiety and depression, later on developing histamine intolerance, chemical sensitivity, all the weird health issues that, you know, if you go to the GP, the doctor, and they run the test and they're like, your bloods are fine, you must just be stressed, which is essentially what my GP told me, my doctor. And she's like, this is so normal, you've just had a baby, or young mums are stressed. A year later, I felt like I was an 80-year-old and I wasn't getting any help from the medical system.

04:50

So I started looking into nutrition, getting rid of toxins in my environment. And that definitely helped until I had my second baby and all the symptoms came back. And I'm like, I obviously haven't got to the root cause yet. And that's when I found functional medicine. So started doing my own lab testing, therapeutic protocols. Again, that helped. I probably had a period of two or three years where I was pretty good symptom wise, but I still was living very restrictively.

05:20

It's like I had to have a perfect sleep routine. I had to make sure that I wasn't eating any histamine foods or gluten or dairy or sugar. I was very careful around what I did and like my stress levels and all of that exploded in COVID. So there was a lot of stress as there was for a lot of people, but a lot of financial stress in particular.

05:46

And in hindsight, I can see that I was constantly stressed about money, even back when I was in high school. So COVID really amplified that deeper wound and all the health issues came back and this time nothing physical budged any symptoms at all. Like in my head, I'm like, I have all the tools, just run the labs again, take the supplements, tidy up my diet even more.

06:09

Nothing changed until I started addressing what I call the metaphysical root causes. So those were deeper unconscious core beliefs that I had about myself and my body and the burnout patterns, like the overdoing perfectionist patterns I was running. And yeah, there was a lot of unprocessed trauma and repressed emotions that I'd never had the ability to, or I'd never known that I needed to address them, because I had a safe and loving upbringing.

06:42

So I always like slipped through the cracks, I guess, from a traditional psychological point of view. You know, GPs were like, oh, well, you're not bad enough to go see a psychologist. Just learn to live with it. Stop saying yes to things.

06:59

Don't stress. But that's not great advice when internally. Like I remember even when I was on holidays or, you know, took my kids to the beach, my nervous system was constantly on as if there was a tiger about to chase me and pounce on me all the time. So that's kind of the story. Then, yeah. And then as I address the metaphysical root causes, I really, yeah, like those deeper root causes were rewired, healed. And the best thing about that is I don't have to live a restricted life now in order to be symptom free.

07:34

Whereas previously when I was just focusing on physical protocols, it was kind of like I still had to wrap myself up in cotton wool. Right. Yeah. It's so important to remember, you know, so many people are focused on, you know, what does that lab test show? You know, and I have found that lab tests are inherently erroneous and imperfect. And consequently, if you lean too heavily on your labs, you're going to fall over.

08:04

And if you're not focused on your nervous system, your emotional state, your beliefs, that's very hard to get better. So tell us a little bit about, what are some of the beliefs that make people sick or that you find for people who are coming to see you? Do you go through a process of identifying their core beliefs and flipping them into more empowering beliefs or what does that look like?

08:29

I guess start off with what are some of these common core beliefs that people have that are keeping them sick? Yeah, cool. So there's actually, I think they can fall into six core beliefs. So one would be around significance. It's like I'm either significant or insignificant. And then that can often show up as like I'm unworthy, undeserving.

08:54

And so if someone has a deep belief about that, then they're often the people that like they know what to do, but they're not really doing it or implementing it or they're self-sabotaging because at the end of the day, if the unconscious mind believes that they are insignificant, then why the heck bother? Another big one is around capacity. So that one was a deep root belief for me. So it's either you're strong or you're weak.

09:25

And this is where my childhood story comes into it, that as a kid I, yeah, there was a time where I thought that I could do anything. And then one day I was going to perform on a stage. It was just a little one-minute talk. And in my head, I'm like, I'm going to memorize this. I'm not going to read it out. I'm going to memorize it. And my parents are going to be so proud of me. It's going to be awesome.

09:51

The moment I got to the microphone and saw all these faces out in the audience just like adrenaline would have shot off as it would have for most kids that age. It's like, oh, everyone's looking at me. And then I completely forgot the words, went beetroot red, crying at the pulpit and then sat on the stage as all the other little kids came up and did their talks perfectly.

10:14

So in that moment, I started like just questioning. It's like, why can they do it and I can't, must be something wrong with me. And I just had these accumulating very similar events where I wasn't showing up like other kids did from a capacity point of view. So weak and incapable became my old core belief and it's very common in people with chronic health issues because it can also show up as like powerlessness. It's also going to bleed over to the body at some point, especially for people who are starting to have chronic health symptoms, because then we're sense-making creatures.

10:47

So the unconscious mind is constantly trying to find evidence for what you believe about yourself. So it's like, oh, the bloating's back or the headaches are back, or you've just crashed again. Just another piece of evidence that our body is weak, incapable, can't hack life. So that's a really big one. Sometimes it can be around morality, like I'm either good or bad, inherently I'm bad at my core.

11:13

And that often comes up when people have had an upbringing where they might've been like really strict rules, either like from a religion point of view or just having like a really authoritarian parent or caregiver. And then it's like these beliefs end up being a little monster or a big monster underneath the bed that you're constantly trying to hide from self and from others and it's exhausting.

11:44

It becomes this internal tiger that's constantly chasing you. And it can show up in like two main ways. Either people retract and become smaller or they develop prove-and-defend qualities, which is what I did. So with the weak and incapable, I started developing patterns of overdoing perfectionism, overachieving. It's like, if I can get the grades, if I can do a PhD and I'm the youngest student at this university doing a PhD, then it must mean that I'm strong and capable.

12:13

And for me and for many other clients that we work with, that ends up in body burnout. At some point, the body cannot continue running at 110 or 150 percent. It's going to crash at some point. Agreed. So you said there's six core beliefs, significance, capacity, morality. Yes. The other one is intelligence. So I'm either smart or dumb.

12:40

And then appearance. So I'm either attractive or ugly. Normality, I'm either normal or weird. And then status, I'm either a winner or a loser. And each person is going to have like a nuanced belief. So for the status one, for example, we've had a client that it was like around that, but his belief was, I'm a leech. It was just like, oh, that's interesting.

13:08

But it was all around, oh, like I'm a loser. So I just have to like leech on to other people. Yeah. And so you said normality. Yep. What was the this or that? Yeah. So I'm either normal or weird. Gotcha. And yeah, that one can be really common too with people with chronic health issues as well, especially if your health issues started earlier in life, where it's like, I'm just the, I'm the weird kid.

13:40

I'm the one that always has like skin rashes all over my skin or eczema or like, why am I always the sick one that's going to hospital or I have to stay home a lot and you know, then they can start getting teased.

13:58

Also if someone's neurodivergent, that one can come up a lot as well. And the intelligent one, especially for undiagnosed ADHD kids who might have been like distracted, struggled to pay attention in school, constantly being told off for like, you're lazy. Then, yeah, these core beliefs will start cementing in the unconscious mind. That's really great. I love the way you're explaining this. And the significance one was? Either significant or insignificant.

14:31

Uh-huh, gotcha. Yeah. Or like valuable, unvaluable, worthwhile, worthless. Uh-huh, gotcha. And so when somebody comes to work with you and they don't know what their core beliefs are, do you take them through a questionnaire to help them determine them or how do you determine them? Yeah. So inside our program, we have a process where we start off with patterns, first of all, because every behavior, including the way your body is behaving, has a belief underneath.

15:04

It's kind of like, with curiosity, with compassion, with a bit of neutrality, maybe even a bit of fun, because otherwise the unconscious mind will shut down. It's like, this is not safe to look at. We start with looking at patterns.

15:20

So it's almost like, put all your dirty laundry out on the table. What are all the weird patterns that you're running or patterns that are unresourced, essentially taking them away from where they want to go and who they want to be in the health that they want. So really common ones that show up with body burnout would be overdoing perfectionism. People pleasing can be a big one.

15:42

Rescuing others, pouring from an empty cup. But then also if someone has been running in that more fight-or-flight nervous system state for a long time, at some point they switch down into shut down. And so for some people, their pattern might actually be procrastination or like analysis paralysis. It's like, I have all this information, but I just don't know what to do with it. And I can't press go on the button. They can definitely, like, if there's signs or feelings of self-doubt or lack of self-esteem, there's definitely going to be a belief underneath those.

16:19

So we start off with the patterns, and then every behavior will have a belief underneath. So I would then encourage a client to zoom out of themselves.

16:35

Create a bit of distance and neutrality. Imagine you're looking at someone else that has very similar patterns to you and a very similar life and health. What must they believe about themselves in order to continue running these patterns that are clearly taking them away from healing or causing more distress to themselves and to their body? And another way you can start looking at that is to ask, why is that a problem?

17:05

So if someone's running procrastination patterns, it's like, well, why is that a problem? Because I don't do the things that help me to heal. And why is that a problem? Because then I don't heal. And then why is that a problem? Oh, well, then I'm stuck and I'm in pain and I feel crappy and it's affecting my relationships and I can't work anymore. And then why is that a problem?

17:33

Because I have no money and everyone's leaving me. And then why is that a problem? And then when you kind of start looping, you can switch it to, and what does that mean about you? And an identity-based unconscious core belief will always start with I am. So it's not just a subconscious story. It's an I am statement that then becomes the operating system in which your unconscious mind, your brain, your nervous system is constantly making sense of yourself and your existence in this world.

18:04

Brilliant. Sounds like a wonderful program.

18:12

And so then it's really tailored for the individual because, I mean, it sounds like there's patterns, but everybody's got kind of like not necessarily a different pattern, but a unique pattern. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's same, not. It's going to be nuanced for everyone. And then I guess the next step after that too is when was the first time you accused yourself of something unkind.

18:36

And often it happens like, you're just a kid. So it's not like you're walking around saying, I am weak and incapable or I am so powerless. But when you can find those earlier memories and actually start deconstructing, re-imagining, rewriting the story of that memory, the whole foundation of the belief structure starts crumbling along the timeline. So then you had to rewrite the story of that speech that you had a hard time with.

19:07

Yeah, that was definitely part of it. So how do you do that? So, you know, multifaceted, holistic way. And again, everyone is so different in how they learn. I talk about submodalities. So some people are very visual. Some people are very kinesthetic or feeling. Some people are very auditory. So I guess we have like a range of tools to help someone rewire that root belief.

19:34

For me, yeah, there was a lot of journaling, a lot of coaching sessions, a lot of subconscious change practices where I could actually drop out of my head and into the body because these beliefs will have a somatic expression in the body. And for me, I remember I was doing a timeline therapy, for example. I don't know if you have heard of timeline. It's a neuro-linguistic programming practice. And you're going and you're working at an unconscious level.

20:06

So you're just trusting your unconscious mind to go to the earliest time that needs to be reimagined, reprocessed around this belief. And although I'd done all the memory work, I knew that like that's where I went. But the moment that I landed in that memory, my body had like a really visceral response to it, different to when I was just consciously thinking about the memory.

20:33

Because it was a memory that I told as a funny joke. It's like, when I was little, I stood on the stage and I got so embarrassed and I cried, ha ha ha. But when I dropped into the body and actually into the childhood experience of that and the stuck emotion around it, shifting that really helped to take out the charge around the belief. And then it's a daily practice as well. So I think about beliefs as well as symptoms as neural pathways.

21:06

So anything that we are thinking or feeling or experiencing in repetition becomes a neural pathway. And the research shows that you can change a neural pathway. Usually it takes between three weeks and three months. Now this is if you're not living like life.

21:25

So they actually say it usually takes six months if you're also dealing with work and children and you know sometimes there's an event that pops out that causes a lot of stress and your attention goes there. But, yeah, for about three months I would wake up every day and essentially like tell myself the new beliefs that I was choosing to believe about myself, not from a place of just parroting the belief.

21:52

You know how you see the memes and it's like, just look in the mirror and tell yourself that you're good enough and everything's going to change. When I was doing the work, and also I encourage this with our people, is that you want to have a visceral experience so that you know that you're cutting past the conscious mind and into the unconscious.

22:14

And so sitting and feeling into these new beliefs until you either start crying, you get goosebumps, or you're so lit up by the awesomeness of yourself that you know that things are changing at a subconscious level. And I think the most powerful thing that people can do is real-time, in the moment. So there's amazing, lovely practices that can help rewire deep beliefs.

22:43

But if you're not then practicing it in the moment when you get triggered, when a pattern shows up again or a thought or a belief that is there and you're not rewiring it in the moment, it's kind of like all the lovely work you're doing in the safety of your own bedroom will be doing something, but it's going to take a lot longer. So it was just a conscious, intentional... Yeah, it was like my mission basically for three months.

23:13

It's like I'm changing this belief, and any opportunity that I have where I'm feeling triggered, rattled, dropping down into old neural pathways, I will, yeah, rewire that in the moment. Brilliant. Yeah, you know, it's a practice, right? Like you said, you know, you have to do it every day. I mean, do you have to do it every day?

23:41

Look, it's best, I think. Again, I'm thinking about clients and if a client said that to me, it's like, do I have to do it every day to get the result? It's like, you don't have to. You don't have to do anything. If you were able to, the result is going to happen a lot faster. You know, three times a week, it's still going to happen. It will probably just be slower. Maybe once a month is not enough to create that consistency.

24:11

And I probably even say once a week is not enough to create that consistency either. So how does somebody have that visceral...

24:26

Changing state is really important. So a couple of things I did, because I found when I was with my coach, my coach was amazing. But also he's kind of like, cool, you found the belief, go and talk to yourself differently and visualize, and I was just like, how? So he actually didn't give a lot of like how to do this and that's his style of coaching He's very much like you're gonna figure it out.

24:52

Like if you want this you'll figure it out So the benefit of that was that I did figure it out and I tried a bunch of things and now I have created structure for clients because I feel like they need a little bit of structure and it's a step-by-step process. So some things, like music, is really powerful for me. So when I added in some music into my daily affirmations or reprogramming of beliefs, and I found just really inspiring movie soundtracks.

25:23

Some of them were from Gladiator, but I'm like, oh, this is powerful. And then anchoring into visualization as well. Not everyone visualizes, but for me, I could really anchor into. As an example, something I rewired was my belief about my body.

25:40

So it's like I believe that my body is strong and capable, which was really hard in the moment when I was doing it, because it was still sending me all of these pain signals. Like I was still very symptomatic. But I guess that's more in the moment, the things that I was doing to try and help create the sense of safety and the feeling of strength in the moment.

26:04

So touching my heart, like these are really simple things and this is where like the repetition is going to compound over time. Touching my heart, for example, one of my chronic symptoms in the past was heartburn, which is part of a histamine intolerance presentation. And it was 20, like 25 years I had that. So it wasn't just like it popped up for three months and then it disappeared. This was something that was going on for 25 years.

26:36

And there were periods of time where it wasn't there, but around the COVID time it was there every day regardless of what I ate. And so I remember, yeah, just implementing this practice of if the heartburn showed up, my old response was, oh, of course it did. Like it must be because I ate, like I've tried so many things to heal myself and my gut is still not happy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm still weak and incapable.

27:07

Maybe I actually can't heal. Maybe I just need to manage the symptoms. Maybe I should stop eating. This is like where those old neural pathway thought spirals would go to. And so to put a wedge in that, I started talking to my body and myself in a different way.

27:28

But also self-touch was really important for me because I'm very kinesthetic. So it was just like, anytime I felt that sensation, and this could apply for anyone who was listening that might have a sensation elsewhere, it's just like, give some love and TLC to that place. And so the language that I started using was, I feel you, gut. Because it's not toxic positivity. You're not pretending you don't have these things going on, but you just want to be able to hold space for them and respond to them differently.

27:57

So it's like, hey, body, hey, gut, I can feel that you're digesting food right now. You're doing a great job. I feel so strong. You're so capable. Talk to the immune system as well. Talk to my, like, deeper self. It's like, I've got this. I can heal this. So that's, yeah, that's what I mean, like that visceral. You're not just parroting a mantra or a phrase. You're actually really dropping out of the head and into the body to feel it in the part of you that needs to feel that.

28:27

And for me, over time, like I was doing that consistently. And then I remember one day I got really frustrated with it. I was just like, I'm doing all the things, but why is it not shifting? And then when I asked my unconscious mind, it's like, what am I missing? It actually sent me this image of a supplement I'd been taking, that I've been taking for years and it was a hormone supplement that helped me to have a lovely cycle, but also really clear skin.

29:06

So before I used it, I was getting cystic acne. And so I was a practitioner at the time and my advice to clients always is after a certain amount of time on the protocol, we come off the stuff. You're not going to be on it forever. Even if you feel like you still need it, let's come off it.

29:27

Let's get an understanding of your baseline. See if you still need it. We'll switch to something else. But I wasn't taking my own medicine because I was scared. I was scared to stop this supplement because the underlying fear was then my skin is going to flare up and everyone's going to look at me, especially my clients and say, oh, she doesn't look after herself. She's a crap practitioner. She's so incapable. She can't even look after herself. And so I was like, oh, what? So there's blind spots that We can hold on to that are actually just confusing the unconscious in the body.

30:00

So although I was doing all this lovely stuff to like, you know, talk to my body in a different way and to feel a sense of safety and awe and love, there was some behavioral patterns I was still doing that was basically saying the opposite. And so that day I'm like, I'm going to stop the supplement, see what happens to my skin, deal with it if it shows up.

30:25

And that night I ate pasta that had tomatoes, gluten pasta and dairy. Because by then I was just eating anything. I'm just like everything is flaring up my gut. So even though I said I should stop eating, a lot of yo-yo behavioral patterns going on. And so anyway, I ate this food and again, I implemented the self-talk and, you know, just dialing down the amygdala and the response to the symptom.

30:53

And that night I felt just this radiating, glowing light from the top of my throat down to the bottom of my gut. And from then on, the heartburn switched, like it was gone. And every time I ate for three days after that, that same sensation, it wasn't as strong as the first time, but that same sensation just radiated from the top of my gut to the bottom of my gut. It was incredible. Sounds like it.

31:25

So that's the state when you ask like, how do we get into this state? Well, you know, that's the state that is healing versus if we just stay in our conscious cognitive part of our brain. Wonderful. Working. I'm sorry. I'm just working with those deeper messages as well. It's just like, oh, you got a little blind spot here or like over there. I'm a bit confused, but, you know, so you've got to do something about that. Yeah, it seems like there's always more work to do, you know, and that it is a marathon.

31:54

It's not a sprint. And that there's so much that we can learn by going through a process like yours. And I love how practical that was in terms of like talking to your body and really having that awareness, that mindfulness to develop that relationship with the different parts of your body.

32:16

I remember learning about the work of John Sarno and his chronic pain work where he found that people who had chronic pain could get 87% of them well by having them journal, usually about rage. But oftentimes he was coaching people to talk to their bodies and say, I know that that's not pain. Like I see that you're pain there, but quit doing that. You know, like that's not, you know, like, so there's these different techniques of how you can like talk to your body.

32:49

I prefer yours because it's a lot more loving, you know, but I just, it's such a beautiful illustration. Thank you for that. Yeah. Thank you. And so, you know, let's talk a little bit about little T trauma. So a lot of people think that they don't have trauma, but you know, much like you, I grew up with a loving family, but I tell people that, you know, my parents were imperfect humans trying to get their needs met, and my siblings were imperfect humans, and my peers were imperfect humans, and I was rejected by peer groups.

33:20

And when you were talking about some of these core beliefs, you know, I was a nerd or I was a geek or some of those things. You know, I was weird, you know, yeah. And I tried to embrace it at different times in my life, like I'd rather be weird than normal, you know, sort of things, you know.

33:38

But the reality is that we develop these beliefs that end up causing inflammation and symptoms in our body. So I would definitely encourage people to, to realize, hopefully they have this, hopefully after listening to this, you can understand that, you know, we all have trauma of a certain sort. It doesn't have to be really significant abuse, but it changes the way that we look at the world and consequently it can cause symptoms. Would you say that's accurate?

34:07

Absolutely. And I might give another example to you, because weird was a later belief that I created in high school, which is also when all those vasovagal episodes started showing up. And the fear was that, so I went to church and I was just petrified that, in Australia, not many people believe in God compared to, I think, like, the USA. So I was just always like, oh, like I'm the weird one.

34:35

Like everyone else, my parents don't let me go to parties, blah, blah, blah. But I never told any of my high school friends that I went to church because I was so scared. I was so scared that I would get teased and bullied and kicked out of the cool group. So I was constantly masking and like trying to be cool. But yeah, there were periods of time where I would have this like intense panic in my body like a really big fight-or-flight response when I thought someone knew.

35:08

And you know, that's the same as someone with big T, the way that, you know, they might actually have real danger and their body's having this big fight-or-flight response that is, you know, just a constant that's popping up anytime they get triggered. Essentially, that's what my body started doing, even though it was little T.

35:31

And so, yeah, I mean, obviously, if you've had big T, that needs to be addressed as well. And that can be a major contributor to chronic illness. But for those who have had little T that are kind of like, oh, I don't need to do any of that like mind work. I don't need to do any of the metaphysical. It's all just physical. It's like there's going to be stuff. You can't actually tease apart the different parts of you because then we start going down a reductionist model again.

35:58

So it's like, you're not just a slab of organs, adrenals, your brain, your gut, healthy detox pathways, these neural pathways, nervous system, unconscious mind, the things that we can't even see or hold on to or test for. They're also part of you as well. And so intricately connected. Absolutely. Yeah. So what haven't we talked about that you want to make sure that we talk about today?

36:32

Like we've talked about some good stuff. Look, you know, in our method and our process, we don't forget about the physical body as well. So, like, again, you can't separate the mind or the body. So if we're kind of like, ah, like functional medicine or naturopathy or like diets, just like, meh. All I need to do is change my beliefs. Well, it's really hard to heal if you're, I don't know, eating McDonald's every day.

37:00

There's probably not many people listening to this that are doing that. But it can also be really hard to do this deeper inner work if your brain is inflamed. If you're so foggy and so exhausted that when you, I don't know, even read a question or try and do some journaling, you're struggling to do that.

37:26

If you're not sleeping very well, if your adrenals are really burnt out and cooked and your stress hormones are just going haywire and you're not responding to that, supporting especially the neuroendocrine system at the start of the journey to help you go into the metaphysical is, yeah, I just see it happens. It works faster. It's more effective.

37:52

You've got some support therapeutically on the physical side that can help assist with the deeper metaphysical work. And look, I believe anything that I have seen has become possible from a healing point of view, even if it's one person, like, well, if one person can heal that, other people can. And if someone has a really nasty parasitic infection and the levels say on their stool test or something, are incredibly high, we can help speed that along.

38:27

You don't just have to think away the parasite or feel away the parasite. We can actually do something about it to fast-pace the journey. But again, on the other side, I mean, we had a lot of clients who have worked through a string of practitioners and they're like, they've done all the tests, they've done all the protocols and nothing has changed for them. So that's very clear that there's something deeper going on that's actually blocking you from healing.

38:54

And around that, there was something that you said before, it's a marathon, not a sprint. So if you come into your healing with the same patterns that led to body burnout in the first place, it ain't gonna work. You can't solve the problem with the same thinking, right?

39:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's probably why, like, my healing journey really spanned 10 years before I got to, it's like, okay, I've addressed my lifestyle and now I've addressed the physical body. And then later on, it's like, okay, now I finally addressed the metaphysical side of things. And I'm a human being in a crazy world. So, you know, I'm constantly evolving and communicating with my body and taking action based on the messages from the body.

39:43

But I'd say it probably took me eight years, nine years of that journey of healing was from a place of perfectionism and overdoing. So it's like, oh, I've got Candida on my stool test and I'm like, okay, I've got to do an anti-Candida diet. How long for? 10 days and then start bringing foods back in. It's like, I'll do it for six months. I was almost like, I will go above and beyond to make sure that I heal, but that was stressful on my system and exhausting. And it was just, again, it was just another feedback loop to the deeper part of me that believed I was weak and incapable.

40:17

It's like, yeah, you have to try really hard to get the result. Yeah, I absolutely agree that this can expedite healing for folks. You know, that's one of the reasons why we started incorporating the work that we do, the nervous system, the limbic system retraining about a year ago is because I saw so many people getting better faster.

40:40

And I was like, what are you doing? And they were all doing some kind of limbic system, amygdala, nervous system retraining. And I was like, okay, we have to incorporate. I don't understand it. I need to learn about it. We have to start incorporating it more and advocating for it. So, you know, your program sounds wonderful. Can you tell us a little bit more about how your program is structured? Yeah, so it's a six-month program and we work with people I mean, there's two options, a one-on-one container or there's more of a group coaching with the option to add on some one-on-one when needed.

41:15

And over the journey, first part of the journey is what we call answers. So it's like, let's run some labs, let's look at some key body systems and we'll start supporting your body therapeutically to help speed along the journey. But while we're waiting to get lab test results, they're starting to work through a process called SPARK.

41:38

And this is the deeper metaphysical work where it's like, what are my patterns? What's the belief underneath? Where did it come from? And then we start rewiring from there. So then it's like, and what do I want instead? So if the brain is constantly focusing on what we don't have, the symptoms that we've got, the pain in our life, then it's just going to perpetuate that. So really connecting into your desired state and starting to step into the healed version of yourself, even though you might not yet feel it physically or mentally, emotionally.

42:13

And then, yeah, a lot of subconscious rewiring, nervous system regulation. And then the last part of that process is purposeful living. So it's like, you know, again, we can heal and we can regulate and we can rewire. But if your life is out of alignment, if you're not being who you want to be, if there's toxic relationships or toxic workplaces or something in your life that is now out of the aligned version, the healed version of yourself, then that needs to change as well.

42:42

Otherwise symptoms at some point are going to start returning. And then it's going to be individual depending on what people need from the physical point of view. But you know, there'll be lifestyle therapies, lifestyle medicine, maybe different healing diet, short-term diets. I don't love the word diet, you know, eating guideline, to fast-track reduction of inflammation.

43:14

And yeah, that's the process. Sounds great. And so, yeah, this has really been wonderful. So we'll drop the links below. And for those of you who have been curious about this, interested in exploring what you can do besides the physical stuff, besides going to see your functional medicine provider.

43:36

You've done a ton of tests. You're not getting the results you want. I highly recommend that you check out Filipa and Chris's program. And if this was helpful for folks, please like and subscribe and we'll see you all again soon. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. So if you have chronic fatigue, whether it's from Long COVID or chronic fatigue syndrome, go ahead and click the link below to watch my latest masterclass, where I go deep into our four-step process that has helped thousands of others resolve their symptoms naturally.

44:11

After you watch that video, if you're interested in seeing if we're a good fit to work together, you can then get on a free call with me. All right. Thanks so much. I'll see you over there.

44:23

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44:36

Sharing all the experts I know and love and the powerful tips I have is one of my absolute favorite things to do. Thanks for being part of my community. Just a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. It is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. Thanks for listening and have an amazing day.