I've been noticing something in the women I work with, and honestly, in myself too. There's so much fear sitting in and around our bodies. Fear that spirals into anxiety, confusion, late-night Google rabbit holes.

In this episode I'm talking about where that fear actually comes from, what to do when it shows up, and how to transform it into something far more useful: self-understanding.

Through self-understanding, you have access to the everlasting antidote to body-fear, healthy anxiety & hypochondriac thoughts: self-trust.

I walk you through how to work with the fear rather than suppress it, including a simple process inspired by DBT (dialectical behaviour therapy) for looking at your symptoms through a neutral lens rather than a fearful one.

We also talk about self-trust as the destination, and why holding your own boundaries is one of the most direct paths to getting there. If you've ever felt like your body is a stranger to you, or like every new symptom sends you into a panic, this one's for you.

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REACH OUT!

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:23 — Welcome + what we're covering today
02:00 — Cycle check-in: day 27 luteal, flying interstate, buying pads for the first time in 7 years
05:41 — Cycle Tracking Guide + how tracking builds self-understanding
07:01 — The pattern: health anxiety and fear in the women I work with
08:14 — How fear makes symptoms worse (stress is stress, real or imagined)
09:44 — Examples: what health fear actually sounds like
12:06 — Where did this fear come from? Exploring the roots
14:07 — The common denominator
15:56 — Body literacy as the foundation
26:08 — When fear comes from a history of being dismissed
28:11 — Fear as an alert signal
29:18 — The fearful lens vs neutral lens
31:00 — DBT-inspired exercise: stating only the facts
34:09 — Taking your symptoms less personally
35:07 — What the fear often actually wants you to know
36:23 — Giving fear a seat at the table rather than suppressing it
38:21 — What does your fear want to know?
40:09 — The antidote: self-understanding (and why no one's coming to save you)
42:53 — Ways to build self-understanding
44:00 — Body scan practice I use in sessions
46:20 — Moving from fear to self-understanding to self-trust
48:05 — Self-trust and boundary-holding are inseparable
50:01 — Self-trust as the antidote to health fear and wellness noise
54:28 — Where my work meets you
56:49 — June 9 Harmonised Hormones waitlist + Body Story Call

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WATCH OR LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST:

💖 On website: http://karindawholistix.com.au/podcasts/oh-my-menses/

💖 Youtube: youtube.com/@karindawholistix

💖 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0SksHGmREZ7waOeGrIXgvw

💖 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oh-my-menses/id1673595367

💖 And be sure to check out my other podcast, The Nuanced Naturopaths with my bestie & colleague Julie Forrester: https://www.karindawholistix.com.au/podcasts/nuanced-naturopaths

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:23] Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Oh My Menses. I'm your host, Karinda. I am a women's health and hormone naturopath and menstrual cycle educator, and here we talk about all things women's health, hormones, bodies, bust myths, talk about menstruation, talk about the menstrual cycle, and get into all of it.

[00:00:46] Today, I feel called to talk about the fear that we hold in and about our bodies, especially as women, but as humans in [00:01:00] general. This is a pattern that I've noticed and something that I feel like we really just need to bring to the center of the conversation a bit. So I'm gonna talk about how I recognize fear about your body or about your health, in myself, but also in the women that I work with.

[00:01:21] We're gonna talk about what to do when that fear shows up, and we're gonna talk about the antidote to that fear, how we can move through it, and how we can ensure that fear isn't guiding our decisions when it comes to our health, when it comes to our healing

[00:01:39] I have lots to say on this, so we're just gonna see where it goes, but that is the general guideline. And before we dive in, as always, I'm gonna start off with a cycle check-in because that's what I do as a little ritual to check in with my own energy. But it's also what I invite you to do if you have a menstrual cycle, and just taking a brief moment to check in [00:02:00] with where you're at in your cycle and what you're feeling in your body, in your mind, emotionally, energetically, spiritually, as a way of acknowledging out loud that we are cyclical beings.

[00:02:15] And if you experience a menstrual cycle, you experience a changing inner landscape day to day, week to week, month to month. And I just feel like there's a lot of benefit that comes when we acknowledge that. So personally, if the date is the 26th, this cycle I am just a day ahead of the, the calendar date.

[00:02:40] So I'm on cycle day 27. Uh, it doesn't always line up like that, but that's how it is this month. Cycle day 27, luteal. Like definitely feeling, um, definitely feeling like I might be pushing my edges a bit recording a podcast. Gonna be interesting to see how, how it turns out, how my, how my speech goes, how my eloquence [00:03:00] goes, how my , my overall cadence and brain functioning goes.

[00:03:07] And I've definitely been feeling emotional. Definitely, definitely been feeling luteal.

[00:03:13] Keen to bleed. Also a bit apprehensive to bleed because for the first time in six years, I am going on a plane. I don't travel much in a, um, interstate capacity. Um, I love a good road trip, um, but I'm going to the Sunshine Coast, yay, with Julie Forrester, my lovely colleague. And we are going to talk at the Herbal Medicine Summit all about the circadian rhythm and why it's so important and how it literally affects every aspect of your health.

[00:03:46] Uh, a topic that's very, that is close to our hearts for both of us. Um, but I am gonna be due for my bleed smack bang on the day that either we're [00:04:00] leaving or potentially the day, uh, that we have our talk. So I'm Yeah, I feel the luteal tension. I'm ready to break it, but my goodness gracious, I'm gonna need to be, uh, ensuring that I'm well-resourced.

[00:04:15] Uh, I bought pads for the first time because I just thought it would be easier to deal with pads rather than deal with w- using and bringing and, uh, rinsing and drying period undies or cloth pads, uh, on a plane, uh, for an interstate trip. Any of my frequent traveler girls who use cloth pads or period undies, if you have any tips, would love to hear them.

[00:04:40] But for the meantime, I've just thought, you know what? Let's do a throwback. Let's buy some menstrual pads, which is, which is weird that that feels foreign, uh, foreign for me to say. And yeah, if you're curious about my menstrual regimen for whatever reason, don't worry, I talk [00:05:00] about it. I did a whole episode on my journey from pads to free bleeding and e- everything I've tried in between.

[00:05:06] So yeah, if you're curious to know what I use and why I use it, and some options that you might be interested in learning about, uh, check out that episode. I'll link it in the description. The other thing that I'm gonna link for you in the description is my free Cycle Tracking Guide PDF. If you are new to cycle tracking, if the concept is unfamiliar to you, or if you're looking to listen a bit more deeply to your body beyond just marking your period in your calendar, if you want to start to understand the shifts that are happening throughout your entire menstrual cycle, this guide is the place to start.

[00:05:41] This is why I made it, to help more of us understand, okay, what is an entire menstrual cycle? What are the different phases? And what do I need to track physically and emotionally in order to understand what phase I'm in? And what are some practical ways to track my cycle if I don't want to use one single app or [00:06:00] if I don't want to use a calendar?

[00:06:01] There's so many different ways to track your cycle these days. I walk you through all the things I've done. The top three signs to track for comprehensive, empowered body literacy, where you actually understand what your body's doing rather than feeling like a stranger to it. And start to hol- start to hold some awareness of your different cycle phases and how each phase feels for you, and then start to hold some compassion for the motions that you move through and the ups and downs that you go through as you traverse a menstrual cycle.

[00:06:35] You're a cyclical being, and that's okay. Download the free cycle tracking guide to get started today.

[00:06:41] So I wrote an email on this. If you're not on my newsletter list and you'd like my weekly emails where I just talk about all different topics affecting women's health, and my own, my own stories, my own naturopathic musings, Downloading the free cycle tracking guide

[00:06:56] will instantly make you part of the Karinda's Korner fam, [00:07:00] where you get my weekly emails.

[00:07:01] So yeah, I've... It's just something that I've noticed a lot more frequently in some women that I've worked with and then by seeing it in other people as, as, as I believe it goes. Things that we see in other people, um, can often be helpful reflections about, mm, things that might be in our shadow, things about ourselves that we're not, um, aware of, that we're, we're not fully conscious of.

[00:07:28] I-I've been witnessing a lot of women holding so much, so much fear around their bodies. And I, I can spot it pretty quickly now because it's become really common and it, it comes as this kind of health anxiety.

[00:07:46] Maybe you relate to the term hypochondriac. Maybe you relate to the experience of feeling a bit like, uh, like shocked by any new symptom or sensation in your body, and then spending lots of time [00:08:00] going down Google rabbit holes or maybe going down like a conversational rabbit hole with ChatGPT or Claude and just figuring out all the possible things that, that, that this could mean about your body.

[00:08:14] But it's coming from a place of fear rather than curiosity, for example, and I'll talk more about that. And so the result of kind of spiraling into this anxiety, like what's going on in my body, is an unnecessary amount of anxiety, stress, confusion, frustration. All things... All of these are fear-based, right?

[00:08:34] And usually, ironically and really unfortunately, they will worsen the symptom or sensation in question that, that the person is feeling fearful about or anxious about in the first place. Um, 'cause that's just how stress goes and the thing that I want to remind you about stress is that your body reacts to stress, whether it's real or imagined.

[00:08:55] So whether this is just something that you are keeping, you know, [00:09:00] maybe on the surface you appear cool, calm, and collected, and you are just worrying about this on the inside and you're just having thoughts about this symptom or whatever it is. I'll, I'll go through some examples shortly. If you're just thinking about it and you're imagining all the horrible things that might be happening in your body, or you're thinking about your health experience from a place of fear, that registers as stress and there will be a physical reaction.

[00:09:25] Physiological stress processes will start to take place in your body, right? So look, some of my patients, they are self-professed hypochondriacs, and they will be the first to tell me that , and I, I take that into account. And others, the health anxiety, it, it comes through more subtly, without an overt acknowledgement.

[00:09:44] But the questions that they ask me are, are deeply rooted in fear, and, and this is how I sort of clock onto it, and these are some examples. It's, it's usually jumping from... It's usually a small change or an [00:10:00] uncomfortable, a fair enough uncomfortable symptom, and then it's jumping, jumping to, like, a complex conclusion or jumping to something they've heard about recently.

[00:10:10] Like, there's recency bias, and then thinking that something's wrong with them and that it's gonna take all this intense treatment and... So there's lots of assumptions. There's lots of catastrophic thinking. So it's things like, "My stomach hurts," or like, "I'm always bloated. Does it-- T-This must mean I have SIBO.

[00:10:28] You know, I've, I've heard about SIBO." Sometimes they get diagnosed with endometriosis and they go, "I've heard that it's common to have SIBO with endometriosis, so this means I must have SIBO. Am I gonna have to take antibiotics or does this mean I need to do a parasite cleanse?" For other people it will be, "I feel so mentally unstable, like, before my period.

[00:10:47] Like, I m- I n-need to take an SSRI. Like, I think this means I have depression." And they're placing a lot of weight on the label and getting, getting themselves worked up about the potential treatments that [00:11:00] they'll need to engage with. "I've got this weird rash on my neck. Does this mean I have eczema?"

[00:11:07] Maybe they have a menstrual cycle that is usually, twenty-nine or thirty days. And they say, "My period usually comes on day twenty-nine or thirty, and it's day thirty-one today, and I haven't got my period, and I don't know what's going on, like something must be wrong." Like, you know, and there's, there's a panic and there's a worry around it.

[00:11:26] And I, and I, I say, I say this with so much love. I, I send so much love to you if you have ever asked yourself these questions. If you are hearing yourself in literally having asked me these questions before directly, I'm sending you love. I'm sending me love for the versions of myself that have ever held this level of like panic about my health.

[00:11:48] This is not coming from a place of shame. This is... I'm just observing something and naming it because I want to help you work through it. And if this is where you're at right now in [00:12:00] your health, I really, really hear you. And I, I've been thinking about you a lot, and I've been thinking about this a lot.

[00:12:06] Today I am pondering, where did this fear come from? Who taught us to have this fear around our bodies? Is it something that we were taught, or is it something that we were just born with? Is it something that we saw demonstrated to us growing up? Did it come... Was it passed on to us from our mothers, our aunties, our grandmothers?

[00:12:32] Is it from having witnessed so many awful portrayals of women's health in modern media, and just seeing women kind of be confused and seeing women's health experiences as scary scary and concerning? Is it, is it a result of marketing? Is it a result of modern marketing where, you know, [00:13:00] so much of the, like, the modern healthcare, the modern wellness machine, the, the aim is always trying to convince us that there's something wrong, right?

[00:13:10] Something to fix, something to im- that we have to improve about our bodies. That alone feels like that's enough to keep you in a state of fear, right? Like something's wrong and you've alwa- you've always gotta be working on something. Maybe it could also be from the lack of meaningful insight and actually helpful answers that we are not receiving in appointments with our GPs, gynecologists, or obstetricians.

[00:13:35] And maybe there's a deeply, a deeply rooted fear that goes deeper than just, you know, being a hypochondriac or having some health anxiety. Maybe there's a deeper fear, um, that is wanting to come to the surface. And dare I say it's a little bit of all of the above, right? And when I thought about this more, I thought regardless of which one of these is the, is where the [00:14:00] fear is coming from or what has helped grow the fear, there's a common denominator.

[00:14:07] And the common denominator is that women in these scenarios, in these questions that they ask, in these things that they Google about their health, are feeling unempowered in their bodies. Because ultimately, the less you know about your body, the harder it is to trust it. And if you've ever experienced feeling unsafe in your body, how the hell are you meant to trust it?

[00:14:35] Especially if no one taught you how to start cultivating safety in your body, if you've had a lived experience of feeling unsafe in it. So of course, every sensation, mood swing, altered bowel movement, rash, pain, weird smell, swelling, or breakout is gonna feel like a confusing as fuck mystery. Every new symptom sensation like [00:15:00] that is an opportunity to spiral into, "Oh my God, what's wrong with me?

[00:15:05] Oh my God, what's my body doing now? Why is this happening? This is so scary. My body is out of control." And those thoughts will crush your soul and keep you disconnected from your power if you let those thoughts run the show. So because I care deeply about this, because I see it way too often, and because I've experienced it myself before, I, I, I wanna explore, I wanna explore this more.

[00:15:35] So there's this concept of feeling unempowered in our bodies, not understanding our bodies, and therefore not trusting our bodies when they communicate to us in the form of symptoms and sensations, right? So instead of being able to just, like, listen, listen to it as a signal, it, it just totally triggers our fear response and our stress response.

[00:15:56] And this is why a huge foundation of my work [00:16:00] is body literacy, learning the language of your body, learning to start decoding and unpacking these signals that your body is always sending you, learning how your body responds to certain stimuli or circumstances, right? Because ultimately, body literacy is self-understanding.

[00:16:22] And that's really maybe one of the only things that will be the most sustainable tool to have in your health looking-after-yourself toolbox when it comes to long-term health. Being able to feel something, notice something in your body, and make sense of why it's there. Feeling a new symptom express itself in your body, noticing it, and checking in with your own body as to what's causing it.

[00:16:50] Knowing how to, like, track your own patterns and spot new trends and spot new changes and go, "Oh, yeah, I understand why that happened." Knowing how your body [00:17:00] responds to your environment, food, what you drink, how you move, what work you do, how much work you do, the stress you feel, how you deal with stress, what triggers stress in the first place for you, the people, the places, and the things that make up your life, that you surround yourself with

[00:17:18] And this is also one of the reasons why I love menstrual cycle awareness so much because it's like the ultimate validator of your bodily experiences as a female with a menstrual cycle. Knowing your hormonal landscape changes and knowing and accepting that it is built into your DNA, and that as such, you will experience life in different ways, phase to phase, cycle to cycle, season to season, and it's okay for your experience to vary like that.

[00:17:53] It's built into your DNA. All of these components of self-understanding, all these tools we have to help [00:18:00] understand ourselves better are direct pathways to cultivating self-trust. And it might not happen, it might not happen overnight, but with each puzzle piece that you learn about your body and your experiences, it starts to make more sense gradually.

[00:18:17] You start to notice patterns, the changes, the sensitivity of your body, and instead of spiraling and freaking out when she does something out of the ordinary, you feel more understanding and more trusting of what she's doing and why she's doing And yes, there are, for any symptom, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of things I could recommend for all the ranges of different things you could be feeling in your body or ways that your body's expressing itself.

[00:18:46] There's so many things I could prescribe, right? And these things would help ease symptoms. They would help bring your body back into a beautiful, balanced baseline. But learning to understand and trust your body? [00:19:00] Like that, in my opinion, that might be the real medicine. That might be the real medicine.

[00:19:07] So when we feel a lack of understanding around our bodies, we don't trust our bodies. When we don't trust our bodies, we have fear when our bodies speak to us and when our bodies start to do things that are new for us, that feel out of the ordinary. We acknowledge that our thoughts, that the questions we're asking, that our emotional reaction is, is coming from a place of fear, right?

[00:19:32] And now I wanna talk about the really slowing down the process of the antidote to that fear. Unpacking that fear so that you can see it for what it is, let it have a seat at the table, but not let it rule your life, not let it rule your relationship with your body, not let it rule your relationship with your health, right?

[00:19:57] What do we do when we have this [00:20:00] fear? When we're asking all those questions, "Oh my God, what's wrong with me? Oh my God, my period's two days late. Oh my God," you know, freaking out, spiraling, panic, worry. What do we do? We don't shun it away. That might be your instinct to want to push it down or suppress it and shun it away.

[00:20:15] You know, get it to shut up, get it to be quiet. It's uncomfortable. We don't go, "Oh, I have this problem with fear in my body and I need to get rid of this fear." We don't use that approach of, "Oh, this thing I don't like? Suppress." Right? That's what the medical system already does with our bodies, right? We don't need more of that.

[00:20:33] We don't need more of that suppression. What you suppress stagnates. What you suppress doesn't get an opportunity to be fully alchemized and integrated. What you suppress has an opportunity to grow in other ways and start to affect other areas in your life. If you had this fear and you just suppressed it, it might not only come out [00:21:00] as anxiety around your health and your body, it might start coming out as anxiety in other areas that you've never experienced before.

[00:21:06] Suppress it for long enough, it might start coming out in panic attacks or, relational conflicts, or work stress, or a new level of fatigue that you've never experienced before, or feeling, uh, uh, feeling constantly existential and feeling like constantly something's wrong and every day is just about getting through and every day you wake up feeling overwhelmed and panicked When we try to get rid of fear or any negative emotion or anything in our life that we don't like, when we come at it with this energy of get rid of it, it's a recipe for disaster, and it's a recipe for being stuck in a cycle that's absolutely not good for your mental health and your soul.

[00:21:49] It's not good for your spirit. So the first thing we do is let the fear be there. We acknowledge it. We don't run away from it. [00:22:00] We don't push the anxious thoughts down. We don't try to ignore the fearful, the fearful thoughts or questions that come up within us. We just simply notice.

[00:22:11] So what could that, what could a, a fearful thought sound like? Oh my God, why do I have this pain in my stomach? What's wrong? What's wrong? Oh my God, did I get poisoned? Do I have food poisoning? Oh, do I have a parasite?" Hear the thought. "Okay, that sounds like fear," or, "That sounds like that might be coming from a scared place within me," for example, and we let it be there.

[00:22:40] Another example, "Oh my God, my period pain is so bad, and I'm never gonna be able to have a normal life, and I'm never gonna be able to function normally because of my period pain, and I have this for life, and nothing I'm doing is helping it, and it's just awful, and it takes over my life, and I'm never gonna [00:23:00] be able to have a pain-free period."

[00:23:02] " Okay, that, that thought sounds like it's coming from a scared place within me". We let it be there. And then we can take this, we can take this step a little deeper, and we can go, "Okay, actually, what part of me is feeling this fear?" Because, and this is just how I see the world, this is how I see psychology; we all have parts, right?

[00:23:32] As far as our psyche goes, as far as our inner workings go, I believe we all have parts. And if you're interested in that concept, I highly recommend the work of Richard Schwartz. He wrote the books, um, No Bad Parts and It Takes Two? No. He-- Anyway, he wrote, like, a book about parts work and in...

[00:23:57] This modality is called Internal Family Systems, [00:24:00] that's No Bad Parts, and then he wrote a version of the book that's, like, for relationship dynamics. So I highly recommend that. Look up Internal Family Systems. Look up No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz. So a good question to ask is, okay, when you're having these thoughts, what part of me is feeling this fear?

[00:24:21] Maybe it's a younger version of you. Maybe it's a version of you from your childhood

[00:24:29] Maybe it's a part of you that had medical decisions made for her, and maybe there was some weird stuff going on in her body, um, that gave her a lot of discomfort that she felt totally out of the loop about, and she felt totally confused by and afraid of. And she didn't know how to make a decision for her health, for her body.

[00:24:53] She, she didn't know that decision was in her power. Maybe you were young enough that this was where you had a [00:25:00] family member, a parent or guardian, like making some decisions for you. Maybe this happened in adulthood, but your doctor just like didn't explain anything clearly, and you were just left feeling more confused about what your body was doing.

[00:25:13] Especially if you had some blood tests done, and you were told that everything was normal, or you had an ultrasound or, you know, whatever it was, and being told that everything's normal, it's this like whole new level of frustration and confusion about your body. Maybe it's coming from a teenage part of you, um, that's maybe stuck in a loop of believing that every new thing has to be something really, really significant and scary, and that new and unfamiliar equals be afraid, right?

[00:25:41] Maybe when you were getting your period for the first time, maybe when you were getting hormonal symptoms for the first time, acne breakouts or mood swings or heavy bleeding. Maybe parts of your teenage self had a thought like that. Like, "Oh, this is so new and scary, and oh my God, what's happening to my body?"[00:26:00]

[00:26:00] And you feel like something is taking over your body, and you feel totally out of control. So of course, there would be fear, right?

[00:26:08] And maybe it's coming from a part of you that experienced some really intense, scary times with your health. And maybe you were, uh, uh, being supported by a medical system that was advising things or prompting you to make decisions that did not feel like they were in your best interest. Maybe you feel like you were made to or pushed to make decisions that didn't feel right in your heart, but you just didn't understand what was going on enough to make a decision that would have felt better for you.

[00:26:39] So this fear can be coming from so many places, right? So many different parts of you. So that's the first thing I invite you to do. Welcome the fear, let it be there, and if you wanna take it deeper, ask, "Okay, what part of me is feeling this fear?" And in terms of when you ask what part of you is feeling that fear, you know, you might have a flash of a memory, you might just have an age come to mind.

[00:26:59] You [00:27:00] might have a part of your body that kind of comes online and you feel a sensation in a part of your body. Let, let whatever the most instinctive thing is, let that be the guide, okay? You don't have to overthink this process. Don't, don't overthink it. Let, let your intuition lead. So if you're just working with the fear, whether you take it to the deeper parts level or not, ask, "What does this fear want me to know?" And you might just get the answer as a thought. You might feel like you can journal about it and you might feel called to do some writing about what the answer is, what that fear wants you to know.

[00:27:37] You might just need to talk it out loud. I love setting a voice recording on the journal app on iPhone and just blabbing, blabbing my thoughts until I get to the realization like, "Ah, oh, there it is. Yep." Sometimes it takes five minutes. Sometimes it takes 27 minutes. Sometimes it takes an hour So ask, what does this fear want me to know?[00:28:00]

[00:28:00] And especially when it comes to our health and our bodies, the fear might want you to know that something's going on in your body. The fear might just be wanting to alert you to something

[00:28:11] Fear just happens to be the, I think, most efficient way to get our attention, right? But just because we get alerted to something from fear, it doesn't mean we have to look at it through a fearful lens. Yes, we may be used to looking at things through a fearful lens, but we're not locked into that lens.

[00:28:30] We can look at it with a neutral lens

[00:28:34] But it's just that fear will usually be... Fear and emotions related to fear will usually be the loudest. They'll usually be the best at getting our attention. So it's okay if in this process, and after practicing over time, if you're still getting these initial fear cues that then you're then having to, like, calm down from, like, that's okay.

[00:28:56] Your body is just using the best method it [00:29:00] has to alert you to something. Fear is, fear is a powerful motivator, right? It's such a powerful driver, and it's great. And as such, fear is just great at getting our attention. But it's the difference between, you know, looking at it through a fearful lens or looking at it through a neutral lens.

[00:29:18] It's the difference between, "Oh my God, I've had two loose stools for two days in a row. Oh my God, this is diarrhea. Um, oh my God, I think I have a parasite. Oh my God, do I need to go to the hospital? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? Oh my God, is my gut gonna be stuffed up forever?"

[00:29:34] Versus, "Okay, all right, I've had some loose bowel movements for the last couple of days. All right, let's look at this on paper. What's gone into my body in the last week? Um, what have my stress levels been like? Is it possible that my gut is reacting to something that I've had? Is, is there a food that I've had that could be triggering an immune response?

[00:29:55] Is it my body helping me clear something out, um, [00:30:00] that it didn't want to absorb into my system? Um, did I mix a couple of foods together that weren't a great combination? Um, did I have any alcohol recently? Have I used any substances or medications that could impact my bowel movements?" Like, there are so many things that you can ask with, with that curious neutral lens rather than having it go through the fear lens, right?

[00:30:23] So ask yourself that, "What does this fear want me to know?" Accept that the answer might sound alarming, right? 'Cause it's coming from a place of fear, and translate it to a neutral version if you can.

[00:30:37] If you were looking at what the fear was telling you and it sounded scary and it felt scary, if you had to convert it to just the facts of the matter and take the emotion out of it, how could you look at it? Just as far as the facts on paper go, that's, that's a tip. Just a little prompt to help you start, um, looking at things with neutrality.

[00:30:58] And that's actually something that [00:31:00] was ins- I was inspired by, as far as DBT goes, which is a psychological psychotherapeutic modality, dialectical behavior therapy. Dialectics is pretty much the concept of being able to hold two seemingly opposing ideas at once. The, the, the, the base polarization is that on one side you feel unwell and you wanna support yourself- And there's things you can do to be better, and there's so much work to be done, and there's so much that you can do, and there's so much that you can change.

[00:31:35] And the seemingly opposing truth is that you are perfect as you are right now, and everything that you're experiencing, you just need to accept. So it's being able to accept your reality for how it is and be able to still hold this energy for like, "Okay, I accept my reality and there's some things I wanna do differently."

[00:31:57] That's the basics of DBT. But [00:32:00] in DBT, there was this self-directed program that I was doing, and there's this exercise in the program, the exercise is that you, you play a video on mute. So it could be like a clip from a movie or a TV show. The goal is to provide commentary for that muted clip on exactly what you are seeing.

[00:32:18] Nothing that you are inferring from what you're seeing, just exactly what you, you are seeing. Nothing that you're assuming, nothing that you're interpreting. You are just stating the facts of literally what your eyes are receiving. So like, just for example, there might be like a woman getting out of a cab in a busy New York street, and she might have a certain look on her face, and the emotion, the emotion side of our brain goes, "Oh shit, she's in a bad mood.

[00:32:46] Oh, she looks like she's just come from a stressful morning. Oh my God, I can't imagine what it was like in her house. Did she had a fight with her husband? Oh my God, does she hate her job? she's got like something stressful coming up, something bad has happened." But then [00:33:00] if we, if we're looking at that c- clip on mute and we're being truly neutral about it, it's like, okay, it's, it's slower, right?

[00:33:07] And it's just the facts. Okay, a yellow taxi has pulled up on a street in New York. There's lots of traffic around. A woman in a red dress has stepped out, um, off the cab. Her facial expression is kind of like frowning. She's frowning. She's got her mouth open, like she's breathing heavily. She looks really focused.

[00:33:29] She's walking fast. See how that takes the judgment out of it? We are just stating the facts of like her behaviors and what we see. We're taking the layers of inference and interpretations out of it. So I invite you to do that with yourself. And I mean, this is a great tool for life. I mean, if you're experiencing any conflict or any, any emotional upheaval where there is just a part of you that is feeling really reactive about something, or you're interpreting so many layers of a situation and trying to read [00:34:00] into things that you can literally only assume, try to zoom out and just journal the facts of exactly what happened.

[00:34:08] Yeah?

[00:34:09] And look, it sounds almost counterintuitive, especially when it comes to your body and your health, where I certainly believe your emotions are so valuable. Your interpretations of what happens in your body, it's so valuable, right? But the invitation, as counterintuitive as it might sound, is like sometimes you just need to take your symptoms less personally.

[00:34:29] And sometimes detaching and putting them on paper can help you see them more clearly and highlight the next best action step to take to support those symptoms rather than being caught up in it, right? Rather than letting it overtake you So try that. Try, try taking your symptoms less personally through a lens of neutrality.

[00:34:50] And even if, if it's as simple as you just like listing exactly what you're feeling in your body I'm experiencing this. Before I felt this, and after [00:35:00] I felt this, and I ate this food and I felt this, and I'm just simply stating the facts, right?

[00:35:07] And then you might wanna ask the fear, we're still welcoming it in. We might wanna ask, "Okay, what does this fear want me to do?" Or, "What does this part of me that's feeling fear want me to do? What would help? What would help this part of me feel more at ease?" And when it comes to fear around our bodies, what you might find, and what I certainly found for myself, is that the fear often just wants to know that someone's looking out for you.

[00:35:38] The fear just wants to know that, like, you care about your body, and it wants to know that you've got things on your radar, that you're paying attention. And it wants you, it, it wants you to, like, be able to have the best chance at experiencing optimal health so that you can prevent illness. It's, it's trying to help.

[00:35:54] It's trying to help. And it just wants to know that someone's listening, [00:36:00] someone's getting the messages, reading the signals, and that they're not gonna be ignored or dismissed or invalidated. And especially if you have a history of feeling ignored, dismissed, validated when it comes to your health. It's okay if you feel like you have a stronger fear response and that maybe you have more health anxiety, or maybe you do identify as a hypochondriac.

[00:36:23] Because of course, if you have felt dismissed, of course the fear is gonna be like, "Well, uh, we've been ignored before, but we were having a very real experience, and so now we need to turn the dial up on how scary this thing is to make sure that it doesn't get dismissed." That is totally, totally understandable.

[00:36:41] That psychologically makes perfect sense. And, and I just really want you to feel validated in that.

[00:36:47] So we give, we give the fear a seat at our table, and we let that be okay. We let the fear be okay. We don't turn the fear into just another bloody problem to have on our [00:37:00] plates. We don't turn it into, like, another problem that needs to be solved or dealt with. Another thing that needs to be fixed. No.

[00:37:08] That's not how we approach fear

[00:37:10] Now granted, if you wanna keep the fear for the rest of your life , if you want it to have a hold on you and have this grip on you for as long as possible, potentially for the rest of your life, then by all means, keep saying that it's a problem. Keep saying that, that it's this thing, oh my God, it's this thing that needs to be fixed.

[00:37:25] Keep trying to run from it. Keep trying to suppress it. Keep trying to shut it down But I just, I genuinely think and I genuinely believe that you will get so much more out of inviting a curiosity

[00:37:42] So from the information that you get from that question, getting curious about the fear, see if you can take one action step. Whether it's just writing out what you're feeling in your body, what you're experiencing in your body and your health, just writing it out on paper as the facts, taking the charge out of it, taking the [00:38:00] emotional charge out of Or it could just be based on what the, uh, what would help the fear feel more at ease, right? Taking one action step. And it could just be saying... It could be as simple as just saying to yourself, you feel the fear, you've noticed it, and you're just saying, "Yeah, I'm listening. I'm listening. Yep, I hear you.

[00:38:21] You're not being ignored." You know, whenever you feel that symptom that is, that's worrying to you, right? It also can't be understated how many symptoms will be exacerbated by stress alone. Stress on a biological level, when it comes to our human bodies, stress counts regardless of whether it is real or imagined.

[00:38:44] So if you're imagining bad things, if you're thinking bad thoughts and you're not interrupting that pattern, your body will experience a stress response. And on some level, whether it's super direct or a little bit more indirect, it will be affecting your experience of health. It will be affecting [00:39:00] symptoms It will be, you know, stress is enough to cause, uh, an acne breakout, an eczema flare-up, a more painful period, uh, delayed ovulation and so a longer cycle.

[00:39:12] It can't be understated, right?

[00:39:14] And probably my favorite part is that we get to transform this, this fear, we get to transform it into an opportunity for self-understanding. Because the root of that fear, as I mentioned at the start, it might be that you don't trust yourself, and you might not trust yourself because you haven't always understood yourself, or maybe you haven't understood how your body works or why it does what it does, or what certain things cause certain symptoms, right?

[00:39:42] Flare-ups, period pain, extreme PMS, heavy bleeding. We're not, we're not typically taught what causes that stuff

[00:39:50] We're not taught, yeah, your-- so your body will respond in a certain way if it's exposed to certain triggers or if it's in a state of imbalance, which can be caused by this, this, and this. We're not taught that. [00:40:00] And in fact, we're not even taught enough about our bodies that when these symptoms do arise, our first response is usually fear rather than curiosity.

[00:40:09] So we don't... Most of us, most of us aren't even starting off from just a nice neutral baseline of like, "Oh, this thing's happening in my body." It's, it's to fear straight away. And then what are we taught? Outsourcing our power is the first thing we're generally encouraged to do. "Oh, the scary thing's happening in my body.

[00:40:27] Go see a doctor. Oh, do whatever the doctor says." Oh, and it comes from this really constricted, tight, scary place So this is where we bring self-understanding in as an antidote to this fear. This is where the power is really in your hands. And this might be harsh to hear, this might feel like a lot to hear.

[00:40:50] This is a truth I had to accept for myself. No one's coming to save you, right? No one is coming to save you. No one is [00:41:00] coming to decode your body for you. No one is coming to read and translate your symptoms for you. Well, I... Well, I take that back a bit 'cause I can definitely help you with that, but it's, it's self-led.

[00:41:13] It has to be self-led because the system that we've been outsourcing our power to, right, is the same system that, mm, kind of encourages us to be a bit fearful about our bodies. Because if we're fearful about our bodies, we're out of our power, and when we're out of our power, we're more easily influenced.

[00:41:33] Because being informed and being empowered, it doesn't always bode well and mesh well with what the system would prefer, right? And, you know, whatever, you know, come down on me if you want. I believe the system would prefer that you not understand your body or what's going on in your body.

[00:41:49] You tell the doctor your symptoms, and then you get prescribed medication, and that oppresses, that oppresses those symptoms, and that's it. And that's just how it goes. That, that's the [00:42:00] basic, very black and white, unnuanced version of, um, modern healthcare, by the way, through the lens, through the lens that I'm seeing it through in this moment So we need to acknowledge it that it's up to us if we want better answers, if we wanna feel that clarity about our health, if we wanna feel that solid understanding about what's going on in our bodies.

[00:42:21] That is up to us to learn about our bodies. If we wanna have less fear around our health, less confusion, we need to take it upon ourselves to go, "Okay, do you know what? I occupy this body, right? This body is my home. This is my flesh vessel, and I am the custodian of it, and I'm going to put devotion and energy and time to understand her, to really listen to her, to listen what she's been trying to tell me, and to understand her as best as I can."

[00:42:53] And whether that's, you know... This could be so many things, whether it's reading books, watching high-quality YouTube [00:43:00] videos, or consulting directly with a professional, um, that seems to have knowledge in the areas that you're concerned with, that you're specifically wanting to learn about. Maybe it's going to workshops, joining a community group.

[00:43:11] Maybe it's doing webinars and masterclasses. And maybe you could s- you could argue that the most self-led version of this is literally just spending dedicated, intentional time with your body every day and just taking that time to listen to her and be present with her. And it's hard.

[00:43:34] Rest assured it's hard, but it is not impossible. And you will be so surprised at how much wisdom you get from your body when you come into intentional stillness and focused attention with your body. The outcome, the, the outcome of this process can be absolutely incredible. And sometimes in my consults, if I can tell that my client is [00:44:00] anxious or just really in their head overthinking things, I'll invite them to just close their eyes and drop down into their bodies.

[00:44:08] If that feels too overwhelming, I'll get them to keep their eyes open and just start noticing things that they can see, hear, smell, touch in their environment. Get them to come back to their senses, right? 'Cause that's like kind of the first, the first boundary of our body, our senses. And then I'll invite them to just, okay, close their eyes.

[00:44:32] Bring it, bring your attention a bit more inward Maybe place a hand over your belly or womb, right over the lower belly below the belly button, and just ask Take some time here, take some breaths here, and just ask, what is the next best step?

[00:44:52] And the answers are usually clear and profound, as simple as they are. [00:45:00] It's not this exaggerated, you know, very mental thinking process, right? It's, it's really simple and the messages are really clear. Please have some water. Please put the screen down. Please take a walk outside. Please take five minutes to just breathe.

[00:45:25] Please have a hot shower. Please have a piece of fruit. It doesn't have to be rocket science, it really doesn't. And you don't have to outsource your power as much as you already have or, or as much as we're kind of convinced we have to outsource to experts, right? And I say that as a women's health naturopath.

[00:45:45] I say that as someone who people come to for my expertise, for my guidance. I'm saying that from that perspective that there is so much you can do on your own accord without any external expert [00:46:00] to help cultivate that self-understanding.

[00:46:03] And when you do start to get the messages from your body, and you start to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and you start to recognize the patterns, and by the way, cycle tracking is a fantastic way to start that. Again, if you don't have it already, check out the free cycle tracking guide. It's there to help you.

[00:46:20] So when you start to hear the messages that your body's asking of you, that is our opportunity to cultivate self-trust. So we're moving from fear to self-understanding, slowly towards self-trust

[00:46:33] Self-trust though, it is a cultivation. It's not always in an instant. The change may not be dramatic as you would like. It's cultivated from listening to and taking action on the preci- the precious signals and messages that we get from our body. If you feel the urge to go inward, act on that.

[00:46:56] Don't get that message like, "Oh, yeah, I think I need some time to [00:47:00] myself."

[00:47:00] Don't then like, you know, message a bunch of your friends because you had all these unread messages that you felt guilty about not having replied to for, you know, a day and a half, right? Don't then start conversations that you don't really have the energy for, but you just feel guilty.

[00:47:14] Don't, you know, if you're feeling, you know, maybe it's in your emails and you're like, "Oh, no, I just, I'm gonna get back to everyone, otherwise, you know, people think that I'm a bad person," da, da, da. To cultivate self-trust is to receive the signal and follow through on that signal or what that signal is asking of you.

[00:47:34] So it means you get that message, you put your phone down. It means you get that message from your body, get yourself a glass of water and sit outside for five minutes. You don't go, "Oh yeah, that would be a good idea," and then keep scrolling.

[00:47:47] If you get the intuitive nudge, act on it, especially if it's gonna be something that takes less than five minutes, do it in the moment. Self-trust, I believe, is actually inseparable from [00:48:00] boundary holding. And you know, anywhere you go on the internet now, you will see a lot of conjecture about boundaries, right?

[00:48:05] When it comes to self-healing, when it comes to self-help, self-development, spiritual journeys, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. And I think we can get caught up on boundary setting and declaring our boundaries, right? This is my boundary. I'm very protective of my energy, okay? Don't talk to me because I need alone time, right?

[00:48:27] And again, maybe some more harsh news that you weren't expecting me to spill on you today. But guess what, babe? You can't control what's coming towards you You can't control what is hurtling towards you from external sources. You can't control how many messages you receive. You can't control what people will ask of you.

[00:48:48] You can't control the things that people will expect of you. What you do control is how you respond to those expectations. What you can control is how [00:49:00] you respond to the incoming feed of life that's coming towards you. It's how you respond that holds the power, and the response is holding the boundary.

[00:49:12] Holding the boundary is your response. If you tell people that you're on your bleed, and on the first day you, you really like to make a cocoon for yourself, and you really don't like to talk much, and you won't be as communicative as usual, you won't reply to texts. And then you get a text on day one of your period, and then you talk to people, and you make plans, and you're having all these conversations, and you're holding space for all these people.

[00:49:32] And then by the end of the day, you feel resentful because you feel like you've shared your energy that you didn't even-- that you either didn't have or that you didn't wanna share with others. That's not their fault for sending you the message. That's not their fault for reaching out to you. That comes back on you and your responsibility to hold that boundary.

[00:49:54] And the more boundaries that you can hold, the more intentions that you set that you can follow through on, the more [00:50:00] you can cultivate self-trust

[00:50:01] And self-trust is the antidote to that fear, to that health anxiety. When you have a sense like of self-trust, when you have a strong foundation of self-trust within you and you are dedicated and devoted towards that cultivation of self-trust, you are so much more inherently protected and resilient when it comes to messaging and marketing and just what you receive in general, right?

[00:50:28] And for anyone telling you, "This is what you should do and this is what you should not do," when people tell you, "This is the thing that's wrong with you, this is what you need to fix."

[00:50:35] You become so much more certain. Because it's like you go, "No, I actually, no, I actually trust myself. I trust my body, and if I need something, I trust that I'll be able to make the right decision on that." You're not, you're not swayed by other people's opinions and suggestions. There's so much less confusion.

[00:50:55] And this is why, this is why you could argue this, this whole topic, and maybe [00:51:00] why I'm so passionate about menstrual cycle awareness and cycle and symptom tracking, because if we're not listening to our bodies, what do we expect? If we're not receiving the signals that our bodies are sending us, and we're just expecting everything to be fine and dandy or expecting to just, like, outsource it to someone with a degree who, who's a professional, who must know more than us, right, who has some training, what do we expect?

[00:51:26] That's gonna keep us in fear. That's gonna keep us in a lack of self-understanding, and it keeps us further away from self-trust. So to cultivate self-trust, we need these layers of self-understanding. And I really believe with all the ways that I recommend that you can develop your self-understanding, just spending your s- time with yourself in stillness and taking the time to track what your body is doing.

[00:51:52] And, like, this is for everyone, but especially if you have a menstrual cycle, even if it's regular. Even if it's regular, like, "I don't need to track my cycle, like [00:52:00] I get my period when I expect it," it's still such a powerful tool to go, just take a moment every day and just note your experience. What did your body feel that day?

[00:52:10] What did you feel physically, emotionally, energetically? Just that tracking sends such a strong signal to your body of like, "Hey, I'm listening. I'm here. I'm here. I'm listening. I'm the custodian of this body, and I'm listening, and I'm gonna respond based on what you tell me." And that, I mean, gosh, that is a tool that you cannot outsource.

[00:52:36] You cannot get someone to track your body for you.

[00:52:38] It comes down to you. And you know what? You are so capable of this. I absolutely believe that this is well within your capacity. And it doesn't have to look the same for everyone. You don't have to get into this really rigid format of tracking that doesn't feel good for you. It doesn't have to be at the same level.

[00:52:57] Make it work for you. [00:53:00] But do it. But make it work. Make it within your capacity, but do it. Some level of listening to your body is in your capacity. So please download the free cycle tracking guide if you don't know where to start, right? And see what you notice. And that on its own, you know, doing that for three cycles in a row, the patterns and things you'll notice about yourself, oh my God.

[00:53:22] Oh my God. That on its own already is gonna be such a rich well of information for you, such a rich data set for self-understanding.

[00:53:33] And then, and then if you get to the level where you're like, "Okay, I'm reading my patterns, I'm tracking these symptoms that my body's giving me. I'm tracking the changes that I experience, and I do want some more help with understanding them. I don't know what they're telling me. I, I don't know how to translate them, and I don't know how to change aspects of my life to respond to them appropriately.

[00:53:52] You know, my gut's telling me this, but I still don't know what to eat or how to eat in a way that will actually help what my gut is specifically telling [00:54:00] me. My cycles are irregular. I'm, I'm tracking it. I'm aware of it. I'm listening to it, but I don't know what I can practically do to help regulate my cycles.

[00:54:11] Okay. I have period pain. I've sat with my period pain. I've tracked it. I have a deeper awareness of it. But now I wanna know, I, I wanna know how what I eat, how I feel, my stress levels, my inflammatory load, I wanna understand how that impacts my period pain and how I can influence those things."

[00:54:28] So if you're at that level, that is what I'm here for. That is exactly where my work lives. That is, that is exactly where I wanna meet you, exactly where I wanna meet you. You're in that zone between you've got the awareness and now you're ready for some practical support. You're ready to take action and you would like some guidance on that action from a place of natural medicine, looking at your body and your health through a very holistic lens, and also from a place that acknowledges [00:55:00] my expertise and what I know about health science and what I know about naturopathy and the human body and female physiology, and where that meets your intuition and respects and acknowledges your intuition.

[00:55:14] That's what I bridge together when I work with women.

[00:55:17] So if this sounds like the kind of medicine that you are ready for, that you would like to receive, if this is the kind of way you would like your body to be experienced and assessed and investigated, if you are experiencing imbalances in your health, whether it is period pain, endometriosis, PCOS or now PMOS, irregular cycles, hormone imbalance, PMS, I would love to help.

[00:55:45] And all you need to do is just start off with a free body call. You don't even have to book in for a paid appointment, a paid appointment to start a journey. Start off with a free body call. Book in for that. It's online, and it's just a chat between the two of us. You tell me what's [00:56:00] going on for you, and I'll help you map out a story,

[00:56:03] through my naturopathic training, what I believe your body is sharing with us. And then I'll share with you how I would approach your health and your health goals as a naturopath in your case, the links that I see between, between different symptoms and certain symptoms that could be linked together and what I would investigate and what those investigations would rule in or out and how that applies to your health, but also how it applies to your life.

[00:56:31] Because these, these symptoms, this experience of health, it's, it's not separate from your life. I think that's a myth that we've been told and convinced of for way too long now that, you know, all our health problems are separate from the rest of our lives, and this is what I really try to bridge together in my sessions.

[00:56:49] So my, um, the next intake for Harmonized Hormones opens on June 9th. Join the Harmonized Hormones waitlist, and you will be the [00:57:00] first to receive the invitation to book in a body story call when the slots open. And the, the least intense scenario is that we have a chat and that I share some things that hopefully leave you with more clarity than when you first came into the call.

[00:57:19] And the most that happens is that we have that chat. I offer some insights that leave you with more clarity than when you first came to the call, and you decide that you wanna take the journey further, and you wanna book an appointment, and you wanna start the Harmonized Hormones journey for three or six months.

[00:57:35] That's all that happens.

[00:57:36] So if this is where you're at in your life, in your health, I would love to support you. All the links to anything that I've mentioned are below. You can read more about the Harmonized Hormones journey and the link to join the wait list. It's just a simple email address opt-in form. That's below. I would love to chat with you.

[00:57:55] And as I've said, however many times I've said in this podcast, the free cycle [00:58:00] tracking guide is, it's just been updated as of May 2026. It's a wealth of knowledge. And it's knowledge that you can apply for the rest of your life.

[00:58:10] And it's knowledge that you can share with your friends. And if you already have the cycle tracking guide, please, please, please share the link with your friends and loved ones who you think it could support. 'Cause seriously, this is, if you do nothing else but track your cycle, it's a game changer. On its own, it's a game changer.

[00:58:27] Anyway, I've said enough. Luteal Karinda can apparently be very talkative as well. So let's shut her down. Thanks for tuning in. I will catch you in the next episode of Oh My Menses!