The Midlife Rebel Podcast

From Trauma to Trust: Nervous System Healing in Midlife | Mitch Webb

• Host - Nadine Shaw - Midlife Rebel; Natural Wellness Advocate, Astrologer, Gene Keys Guide,Human Design Enthusiast • Season 16 • Episode 6

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Midlife “mystery symptoms” are often misunderstood. Rather than something being broken, they can be signs of a nervous system that no longer feels settled or safe. In this grounded conversation, I’m joined by health coach and nervous system specialist Mitch Webb to explore his journey through traumatic brain injuries, mold and Lyme exposure, and years of long COVID — and what it actually took to feel like himself again.

Mitch shares how years of trying to fix his body with protocols, supplements, and constant tweaking kept him stuck in a cycle of vigilance. Progress didn’t come from doing more, but from learning when to ease off — paying attention to what his body could realistically handle and responding to it, rather than pushing through or overriding it.

We unpack why symptoms like anxiety, skin flares, gut issues, fatigue, and burnout are so common in midlife, especially when the nervous system has been running on high alert for years. Mitch explains the shift that made the biggest difference for him: stopping the mental battle with his body and responding to basic needs instead — eating when hungry, drinking water, moving when movement felt natural, and resting without turning it into another task to optimise. We talk through practical nervous system tools like orienting through the senses, following physical impulses, and gently moving between comfort and challenge to rebuild tolerance over time. You’ll hear how sleep began to return once he stopped trying to control it, and why labels like “little t” and “big T” trauma often distract from the real issue — a system stuck in survival mode.

We also explore the wider pressures many people carry into midlife: perfectionism, over-functioning, comparison, and long-standing family dynamics. Mitch speaks to how symptoms can flare when old roles and expectations are reactivated, and why clear boundaries and slower reconnection — with yourself and with others — are often part of real change. His work now blends functional health with trauma-informed coaching for people who have tried everything and are exhausted by searching for the next answer.

If you’re dealing with long COVID, chronic fatigue, gut issues, anxiety, or ongoing sleep problems, this episode offers a steadier, more realistic way forward — focused on consistency, listening, and small changes that actually stick.

Subscribe for more grounded conversations on nervous system health, midlife reinvention, and embodied change. If this episode resonated, share it with a friend and leave a review to help others find the show.

You can find Mitch's profile in our Guest Directory 

https://midliferebel.beam.ly/person/mitch-webb

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Midlife Rebel Podcast. It's time to rewrite the midlife story for women who refuse to be put in a box. Because maybe midlife isn't a crisis. Maybe. As a midlife woman, it's possible you've either personally lived through things like gut issues, anxiety, autoimmune flare-up, fatigue, and burnout, or you know someone who has. And if you're a midlife rebel, you're probably the one asking, why isn't this thing getting better? And what's actually going on beneath the surface? My guest today, Mitch Webb, is a health coach and nervous system specialist who helps us connect the dots between our lived experience and the deeper patterns that influence our well-being. He's here to share how you can begin to feel like yourself again. Lighter, clearer, and more at home in your body. Welcome, Mitch. It's good to have you here.

SPEAKER_03:

Nadine, I appreciate the introduction. Thank you for having me and uh excited to jump in.

SPEAKER_00:

Me too. I love this um I love this topic. I'm really curious about it. Um, that idea of that body-mind connection. It's coming into um people's field a lot more in recent years, and you have your own lived experience of this, don't you? Should we start there and and then see where where the conversation leads us?

SPEAKER_03:

Absolutely. And and just to be clear, you're you're asking me about my health journey. Is that what the question's about?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. So um, yeah, that started when I was 20 years old. I was uh I fell out of a second story window, hit my head. Um before that, I was I was normal. Um when I hit my head, I had a traumatic brain injury, suffered a massive concussion. Um not long after that broke out in plaxoriasis over my entire body and you know went to the hospital when I got I didn't I didn't go when I fly the window. Um I went when I got home and um you know that I went home with uh some benzos and uh and an immune suppressant shot. Um and and that worked until it didn't. Uh a couple years later, moved into a house that had black mold, um, developed Lyme disease, which is a tick-borne illness, and and luckily I went to a functional medicine doctor, which is root cause. You know, I didn't go to an allopathic uh doctor, and they found the lime, the mold, they found heavy metals. I was metabolically compromised, kind of like uh like borderline diabetes, pre-diabetes. And so I began the journey of detoxing um uh the heavy metals. At first they did that incorrectly, and it all went into my brain because there was not uh uh binders to to bind up the toxins, and I had holes in my blood brain barrier um from the head injuries, and so that's called Mad Hatters disease. And so um it I didn't have I should have had like activated charcoal and clay, bitonite clay, things like that. Uh they gave me chlorella, which is a very weak binder, and so had those symptoms. Luckily, I found myself with a better doctor, uh Dr. Dan Pompa, he's a detox specialist here in the United States. Um, so I worked with him for about a year, and he trained me to be a health coach as well. Um, so I I learned I basically um used herbal antibiotics to to get rid of the uh Lyme disease and did a lot of detoxing and fasting and things like that to reverse the diabetes. And I I fell in love with health and wellness. I wanted to share this with everyone. And uh I was in a corporate world at the time, very stressful job. Um, the anxiety was was palpable, and I knew I wasn't gonna survive in that environment. And so I left and I started health coaching not too long after that. Um and then I got uh hit by a dump truck going to see one of my first clients. So I had another TBI um that left me with post-concussion syndrome for like a year. This is 2018, 2019. So I recovered through 2019, um, go back to the gym. And one of the first days I was there, I remember this gentleman who had uh was coughing up a lung. He'd been uh traveling everywhere all over the world, and I got COVID. Now, I got long haul COVID. Um, meaning, you know, in long haul COVID, in my opinion, is just a definition that you could call chronic fatigue, you could call it uh um MCES, you could call it um, yeah, in the long haul. So it's just it's in my opinion, it's mitochondrial dysfunction that comes from being in a you know a high-toned, a freeze state, a shutdown state. Like all of this trauma um was built up in my system, and I had no way of getting it out. Now, about this time, now this is actually I gotta finish this part. I got that three years in a row.

SPEAKER_00:

Long COVID.

SPEAKER_03:

Right. So I would I would get hit with it, I would recover, um, and then I get it again and then again and again. Um, and it really affected my gut, my hormones. You know, I was I went down to 140 pounds. I was eating one meal a day. I was eating meat and salt, um, and I couldn't get out of bed, and I had such bad anxiety at nighttime, and I wasn't sleeping. And so at that time, I was in a men's group and I was reading The Body Keeps the Score. I actually went and saw Bessel this past weekend at a local college here uh to, and it was kind of surreal because that was about four years ago. And one of the guys pulled me aside at the end and said, Hey, um, you're reading that book, The Body Keeps the Score. And he's like, That's you. I'm like, What do you mean? He's like, You have a lot of trauma, man. And luckily he sent me to somebody that he knew. They didn't work out, but that started my journey eventually. Found a therapist, um, started doing Irene Lyons um smart body, smart mind program. It's a at-home study that basically facilitated the learning and opened up doors that I could go ask my therapist about. And, you know, two years later, when the opportunity presented itself, I started uh training with Irene, just finished that about a month or two ago and starting to work with clients. So it's been an incredible journey. And what I didn't know then, that I know now, is all of this early developmental trauma that was really hard to miss because I came from an affluent family. Um, you know, I had a roof over my head, I had food on the table, I had college paid for, and uh financial um love is uh a way to uh to miss the actual affection and emotional connection that we need. And so I just wasn't well attuned to, I wasn't allowed to express myself, especially as a man. And I just this trauma came from throwing things at my head, um, I finally started listening when I started learning about trauma and it changed my life.

SPEAKER_00:

That yeah, wow, what a great story, and really interesting that it it it was like a a long unfolding story by the sounds of things.

SPEAKER_03:

This is this is 20 years, you know, and and for for those listening, um I just started sleeping again, you know, and it's been it's been 20 years, and so it's really nice to say that. I didn't know if that would ever happen again, and so many things that I thought were impossible have become possible because of uh meeting myself uh and and working with you know these old wounds, and I'm just trying to beat this drum and and share as as much as I can with people. Um, because I think so many, I think we're all dealing with some level of trauma, and we didn't get a uh an operator's manual when we're born. And um, I think this disgeneration, this uh our our civilization right now, I think everybody, a lot of people collectively are waking up, and if it can find my um closed-minded southerness down here in the United States, and as a male, I think you know, so many people will have the opportunity to heal.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. I'm really curious about this idea of trauma because you talked about having a traumatic brain injury or two. Um I'm kind of curious about how you fell out of a window.

SPEAKER_02:

Um just a little aside there.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, that's a fun story too. I'm happy to tell that.

SPEAKER_02:

Um because I know that people listening will wanna like be like, how the hell did they fall out of a window?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, it was uh oh, there's a there's a couple deer right outside my window.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh cool.

SPEAKER_03:

Saying hello. Um doing a little orienting while we're talking. No, I um I'm trying to avoid the question. Uh I was uh I was in Bremen, Germany. Um I was studying abroad. It was the World Cup and I was drinking heavily. I mean I was uh I was 20 years old and I fell backwards out of a second story window and hit my head. And um I remember when I hit the the ground, I I played football, uh American football growing up and all the contact sports, and definitely had plenty of concussions growing up. And when I hit the ground on this one, I knew something was different. Um and it changed my life. Um, you know, I can say at that point, something I'd never experienced is this like chattering in my head. Um you know, it was like it's like a voice in my head, and it was hypervigilance, you know, and so I was just scanning everything for a threat. And really what happened there is the functional freeze that I was in as a child, um, as an adult, basically the band-aid got ripped off. Uh, the freeze comes bursting out, and we get to experience the unsafety that had been there driving this behavior my whole life. So overwhelming to say the least. Yeah, I bet.

SPEAKER_00:

I bet. Yeah, um, so thank you for sharing that story. I think we've probably all got stories of uh, you know, in our youth of doing foolish things when we're drunk. So um, and that we've moved beyond that now and learned the lessons.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I'm I'm at a point now where I I'm not a a teetotaler, like, hey, I I won't drink, but I I don't remember the last time I did, and it's it's not something I'd seek out anymore.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Well you can't I I am a teetotaler and I gave up drinking maybe nearly four years ago, and I came to realize that there was a lot of emotional uh healing that was needed, and that that alcohol was the the band-aid.

SPEAKER_03:

Um, it it reminds me of the movie uh I think it's Talladega Nights with Will Farrell, and he's getting interviewed, and he's like, I I I don't know what to do with my hands. And that's how I felt at a party because I was used to having a drink and being social, and it it really took the edge off of the um the social anxiety that I had no idea that I had. I was the social chair of my fraternity, but I was able to be that way because of the alcohol. And that is you're definitely right. There's definitely healing that happens um when we take that away.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, it's been a journey. Okay, yeah. So the so we've talked so you've got the traumatic brain injury, um, and you've talked about like having insomnia, anxiety, um, and then you talked about your childhood experiences and going in on that journey of like how the body keeps the score. Is that connected? Do you feel like that that injury that you had was there stored trauma from that like the that accident in your body?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I I think in this world of trauma, um when someone is traumatized or has underlying dysregulated nervous system, we can certainly get into what that means. Um, but when there's unprocessed stored trauma, stored survival stress in the system, it's kind of like carrying a bunch of baggage, right? And so the example that I like to give is someone gets in a car accident who has good enough nervous system wiring, not perfect, good enough, safe enough, might be a good way of saying that. Um, they they may get banged up and be a little bit sore, and a couple days later they're they're back to normal. Someone who is dysregulated, and this is kind of the straw that breaks the camel's back, they may not be able to get out of bed the next day. They may have trouble sleeping, their digestion may be off. Eventually, they may be isolating and um removing themselves from things that they love. And and that's that's revealing. So it's kind of like it tips them over. It's the ice the iceberg gets revealed. I think of uh a functional freeze looking like a duck on top of the water, and it looks elegant and it's smooth, but underneath those little legs are going crazy. And so when we're in a functional freeze, it means that we've had prolonged stress and we've learned to shut down to avoid the intensity of the environment that we live in as a kid, and so um for me, I I never felt safe as a kid. I am learning what safety feels like now. And basically, I was in this functional freeze that got ripped open. Um, luckily, whenever I mean it wasn't a fun two decades, but this is so common of having a traumatic event, having this eruption of symptoms, it kind of feels like you know getting your skin peeled off, and then and then uh getting this massive skin breakout. You know, I've got a podcast as well, and that's something I I hear about so often is this massive skin rashes. And basically what's going on there is the liver and the the kidneys are unable to process the I really don't know what to call it. I want to say toxins. Um, I imagine it's something like that. But all of this stuff is coming out of the system, and there's just nowhere for it to go. And so the skin becomes a detox organ. And so um, everybody that I have met um that has been through the level of dysregulation that I've been through, it's not about trauma and comparing, you know, notes. It's more about the dysregulation that happens. Everybody has this explosion of symptoms. They were normal before normal before that, uh, and air quotes for those that are listening. And and then there's this big skin reaction, and and then we go on a journey. And uh, you know, mine was really ended up being the new the nutrition, the exercise. I really got into biohacking and I was really controlling everything with food, and I was Mr. Fix It. Um, I had a tool and a solution for everything. And and I um I coached from that standpoint. And I learned when I started doing this work that I was coaching people from this traumatized version of me that said, you gotta fix it and you gotta figure it out. Which I had Simona Irwin on my podcast, and she this is probably three months ago, and she stopped me in my tracks when she said, You know what keeps us in a sensitized state? And I'm like, What's that? She said, trying to fix it and trying to figure it out, and my jaw just dropped. And so that's the journey that I've been on here recently, applying what I've learned with Irene, and then really meeting and accepting and allowing um my symptoms where I'm at. And that's what's led to the breakthrough with sleep that that took 20 years.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Worth worth the wait, no doubt. Amen.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's it it uh it changed my life in so many ways. I mean, it's it's hard not to get emotional talking about it because uh I mean, I can't tell you how many times I begged and prayed for for sleep and and to get and it's not perfect, you know, it's not like I'm getting eight hours every night. I learned that if I am stressed, then I wake up. And I learned that if I don't um let my mind go, if I can just accept that eventually I'll go back to sleep, that I'll be okay. Um that's safety, trusting that what goes up must come down, that I can handle stress, I can meet it, I don't have to run away from it. And um, you know, first it was I'm gonna do this without taking medication, and now I'm gonna do it. Um, yeah, I'm gonna work on the the sleeping and being afraid. And um it's it's been one hell of a journey. And and for anybody out there that's that's that's like me who's dealt with chronic symptoms for so long, there's an answer. It doesn't have to be like that. I I just so many people wanted me to accept where I was at, and I I see the benefit in that now, and I also could not accept um how do I say it? Like, I knew that there was more for me. I knew that there was more possible, and my voracious appetite for learning and fixing got me to the party, but then I had to unlearn I'm unlearning that now.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's a fine line, isn't it, really? Because and and I guess that's that um the the balance between uh knowledge and wisdom and the integration of what you've learned as well, and the allowing, as you said, of being in flow with it and looking for those signs and experiences that might kind of be little red flags.

SPEAKER_03:

Um we've got to slow down enough to see the red flags, and uh if you can see it, you don't have to have to be it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Would you say so? I I often like from a bit of a a standpoint of like the universe giving you little taps on the shoulder, and I've spoken to a few people about this, and I've spoken to people I know about this when they have these, you know, accidents or things that make them stop when all they want to do is keep going, right? And and it's like it almost seems like one thing after another after another. They uh do I feel like they're like messages from the universe, like they you get a little tap, you get you get a little tap, you get the nudge, and then you don't take any notice of it, and so it gets bigger and bigger. And I've a few of my guests have talked about uh talked about that as well. And I really see that happening, which is kind of like interesting. But some of those so you you talked about your traumatic brain injury and some of the things that started showing up as a result of that, like when that nervous system wasn't or the body wasn't regulated, and therefore all of these things were triggered by that one big moment. But for some people, that big trigger doesn't happen, does it? There's just a uh they they get those things like gut pain or or panic attacks or insomnia without the big Mactra um sign from the universe that triggers it all. Would you say that some of those things or all of those things are associated with um traumatic events or not necessarily?

SPEAKER_03:

I I'm trying to I love everything you said, I would agree. You know, but I'm trying to understand the question like were were the events throughout my life that led to the journey, are those are those because of trauma? Is that what you're asking?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'm kind of I suppose what I'm trying to get to is if someone hasn't had one of those big wake-up moments, you know, where they've been in an accident or they've had, you know, I've had clients who've broken a you know, broken a leg randomly and um and then it's kind of unraveled other emotional stuff, you know, because they have to stop and they have to face things. But us I guess some of those health issues, like if we don't have the massive um accident or uh experience that uh literally stops us dead in our tracks, would you say that some of those health issues that people are having that um that we've mentioned are the same kind of in indicating the same thing. The the big accident, sorry, I'm rattling on a bit. The big accident is kind of like you are not listening. I'm gonna make you listen. Bang, let's go. Compared to the little judges that are there in terms of our health. You know, it's easy to go down the the route of oh, I've got a gut complaint, I'm gonna go to the doctor and get it fixed. Um, but there's I don't know. I'm gonna stop. I think you've got no you're good.

SPEAKER_03:

Thank you for thank you for clarifying that. That helps. So, number one, I don't think there's anything, there's no difference between a big T trauma and a little T. That's BS. That's something that we use to minimize it, you know. And and trauma can be some your mother looking at you wrong or something like that. You know, it's it's all about our perception. And so and and I would say to your question, are these things trauma? I say yes. Okay. I think a hundred percent the symptoms and things that aging, you know, that word, that's that's trauma. Yeah, that's that's an accumulation of years of trauma without taking it out of the bag, you know, and and what am I saying? Where what do I mean? Well, trauma is just dysregulation that comes from the inability to process or handle, to meet, to respond to something that's too much, too fast, and it's everything uh all at once, right? Um and so instead of you know fighting or fleeing, um, we learn to shut down. We learn to to drown it out. And that's a that's a beautiful survival state for someone who's a child, they can't defend themselves and they can't run away. And so they learn to go into their head um and and think their way to safety, or they learn to be perfect, they learn to to please, to be seen. And we take on all these protective mechanisms and personas, and it takes us away from ourselves. That is a trauma, right? And so you get to 30, 40 years old, and then you have the a shock trauma. That's the the hitting my getting hit by the you know, the the universe throwing pebbles at you. Well, for me, the universe was slapping me around. Um, and I was not listening, I was going in the opposite direction. For me to make such a radical change, it had to bring me to my knees, and it did 10 times. Uh you hear about the dark night of the soul. I had 20 years of that, you know, and um and dysregulation is just means the nervous system gets stuck, right? It gets stuck in fight or flight, it gets stuck in shutdown. And and the thing that also that nobody talks about as much. I'm sure you probably do on your table or your your uh podcast, but society is traumatic. That is the big trauma, you know. Uh it's it's it's asked backwards. The way that we are supposed to relate to ourselves, our bodies, and other people, you know, it starts from information from here. We get disconnected from our body when we're stuck in dysregulation and we're listening to all this. We abandon this. That's trauma. Society says if you're hurt, if you're in pain, if you're sick, put a band-aid on it, take a pill, you know, avoid that. That's bad. And so now our body is bad. Our and then we're told you gotta burn it both ends. You gotta burn the midnight oil, you gotta, you know, uh sleep when you die. You know, you do we got scrolling, we've got medication that's made from petroleum, we've got food that is poison, we've got beautifully designed systems to separate us, stress us, poison us, um, and make us hate each other so that we don't know how powerful we are. And this, and we partake on all these personas that we think is us, and we're pleasing other people and we're being perfect, and we're showing the perfect version of ourselves to other people, and we're comparing their perfect to our worst. And we don't know that this is messed up, right? Like it's just like me learning that the State American diet is crap, you know, learning that our my emotional wellness is not even existent, you know, and so it's learning to be human, and and we go into survival mode. We got generations of humans that have been in survival mode, and and we got people that are waking up now and feeling the weight of that generational pain. These are the the canaries in the coal mine, these are the uh the pattern breakers, you know, and uh that's me. And uh it sounds like it's you too, Nadine. Yeah. So, you know, and I imagine the people, if you're listening to this podcast, like you feel that. And and what I would say is it doesn't have to be like that. We can learn another way, we can rewire our brain and and work with our body, and we can feel safe and the world changes. And it's the ultimate red pill when you start doing this work. You first wake up to your stuff, then your family stuff, then your uh relationships and your work and your society and the world. And it's like it's just a lot to take in. And that's why we we we say, you know, do a little bit at a time, but but kind of putting a bow on this and going back to your question, dysregulation comes when we're stuck in fight or flight or we're shut down, and there's different health, um, different systems of the body, the immune system, nervous, or the uh the immune system, the hormones, the gut, the circulation, sleep, um all of that is affected. And so my symptoms would change so much that you couldn't put a label on them. And I'm so glad that I had a you know trauma-informed functional medicine doctor that wasn't quick to diagnose me and put a bunch of labels on me and and medicate me because that stuff never worked for me. And when I got to this work, one of the first things that happened, I started eating food again. You know, I could eat three times a day. I could my food sensitivities went away. I would burp in session because all this tension was coming out of my fascia and my gut. And uh yeah, started exercising again and just slowly coming out of freeze and and getting um getting my life back.

SPEAKER_00:

I'd love uh well, you probably it would probably be hard for you to pinpoint one particular thing, but I was kind of wondering when you were talking, you talked right at the beginning about um did you say you're a the Southern in Southern America, like and like Oh yeah, you can't do that. So there's a there's a yeah, I can. There's a stereotype, which is it is what you were suggesting, right? Of what a what that looks like. And you talked about the you know, the standard American diet, and and if you can do it, then anyone can do it, you know, breaking that mould. What did it how did that challenge your uh beliefs or your understanding of what it is to be human? Has it been kind of like uh was it a a big kind of aha epiphany moment, or is it was there any slow, thank god it's been a a slow as slow as I I like to learn.

SPEAKER_03:

Um, you know, I get really excited about things. Um but over these last so I started this journey in it's 2025, it was probably 2022, maybe 2023, something like that. And it's been a slow unwinding with big bursts. Uh the the political year was a big one for me. I never have paid attention to politics or cared, and I don't I I've went full circle and now I I could care less, but it was wild to see that unfold. Um I've got into being like a conspiracy theorist. Um and and I re I had one of my mentors really help me with that, and he's like, How do you feel about this stuff? And I'm like, most of it is a lie, and there's some truth in there. And he's like, Yeah, so that's how you tell truth, you know, you feel it. And um he he walked me through a lot of the I don't know, stuff that's going on in the universe, the multiverse, stuff that that's his opinion. That's everybody, that's your opinion, your perception, and um, you know, it it is an awakening, and it started with my family too, and myself and who I am, all these identities that I'd taken on that that felt like me and and they were not. And it's been the great unwinding back to authenticity. And um, you know, I started out saying, you know, Mitch, what's your goal here? And I'm like, I want to get rid of this anxiety, and and anxiety is a good thing, believe it or not. If somebody's dealing with it, that probably doesn't sound fun to hear, but it's a great message from our body that we don't feel safe and that there's something to pay attention to. And so I learned eventually that I want to feel safe in my body and I want to be safe being me. And the place that that started that was cool with everybody. Where it wasn't cool was my family. And so I started getting sick when I was around my family, and so I and then I shared how I was feeling, and that was met with a big uh, you know, and so it wasn't um it's it's not a language that my family speaks, and so I'm the first one to go through that. Now we have been no contact for about two years, and I've just started speaking with my mom, and and things are shifting a little bit, you know. Um, I'm learning not to try to fix and to accept them um like I'm learning to accept myself. Not quite there yet, um, but but I'm working on it. And so it, you know, and that's a big thing about trauma work is two words that come to mind are titration, you know, doing a little bit at a time, knowing when to engage in the news and other people and relationships and um that kind of thing, and when to back off and rest. Um, you know, and also pendulation. So, you know, swinging between something that's pleasant and then swinging to something that's uncomfortable and going back and forth, maybe holding both at one time and building capacity with that, you know, and asking myself, I learned this recently, and this really helped me. It was like my the thing that would scare me from going deeper into my work was this thought of this is gonna be too much, this is gonna be too much for me to handle, and that is valid. Um, but basically I had to work through that and see that oh, I can handle this. And um when I've started meeting that stuff and moving through it, so much changed. Okay, I got lost there at the end, I forgot what I was saying.

SPEAKER_00:

That's okay.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's really interesting, isn't it? I've been like I I love how when we share stories, um, there is a familiarity. So many of us have our own uh interpretation of the same journey. Or having the you know, and uh I was talking to uh my massage therapist on Monday. I was on the table and some stuff came up about my family. Um and I uh realized that that was an invitation that the healing was still in process because the things that came up, it was like, oh, that story's still there, that belief's still there, that conditioning and who I think I need to be in that relationship is still there, and so like yeah, it was an invitation to continue to explore rather than to avoid or stay in that moment. So, yeah, very interesting that you're you're having a similar experience with your family where it where um yeah, all of the old stories.

SPEAKER_03:

I love what one thing you said there, and I want to highlight it. Um, and this is something that I've learned, and it's it makes it so much easier, is that your your nervous system is the map. You you don't have to figure this stuff out. And the next thing that shows up used to scare the crap out of me that made me think I was going backwards. And what that is, is it's coming back to visit. The trigger is the opportunity, and it always is what's next. And if we can just trust that and lean into it, there's so much possibility and capacity and regulation and life on the other side of that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, let's talk about the the body and how we store um how we store all that uh trauma, the feelings, the emotions, like what's happening, and how do you begin to identify where those things are being stored, and how do we sort of work on processing that stuff that's held in our systems?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, how you begin to to recognize it, I think it's really interesting because so many people come into this work and they say, Yeah, I don't feel anything, I don't have trauma, or they come in with their hair on fire. Um and and and we don't necessarily what's going on in that situation? We have a window of of uh tolerance um uh where we feel good, and anything outside of that, that's gonna be dysregulation, being stuck. And so we may come in thinking we have a lot of capacity. Uh, me being a bio biohacker, I was uh you know, in freezing cold water and doing breath work in the sauna, doing all the hard stuff. And I thought, yeah, yeah, I want to do the big cathartic release. I want to do the big thing now. And I learned uh very slowly, actually, and very the hard way that I didn't want to do too much too soon. That's a big thing. And so in the beginning, whether we have our hair on fire or we don't feel anything, we all start with awareness. And you know, I love kind of like capacity-building exercises that has to come first. You know, I I'm not a big believer in like a strategy for healing, but if I and because everybody's gonna be different, and we got to meet that. There is no strategy here or um sequential order of doing things, and there's a couple of things that may be helpful first, right? It just depends. The entry level, the entry into the nervous system will expose itself through conversation because once you've done this work, you can just see it everywhere. It becomes kind of overwhelming and lonely to see other people in their stuff. And so we as practitioners we get good at seeing that. Um, but but we have to, as the person sitting beginning the treatment, um, we have to build capacity first. We have to build the ability to be with tough sensations, right? And we do that. I think a good way of doing that is learning to use the senses to like orient and be here now. So most of us are we're living in our head and we're trying trying to control the future or prevent something from the past happening again. So we're not here, we're not in our body. And so, and what that means is that's just my attention is somewhere else. I'm not feeling my butt in my chair, I'm not noticing my breath, I'm not looking at the room around me. I'm thinking, you know, and so we start to interrupt that. We may start with thoughts too, but eventually we we start to be present, if you will. And we may notice, like, oh man, I got this pain in my chest, or I'm I'm holding tension in my body. And so we just that stuff is out of our awareness to protect us. And the more we start meeting our body, the more safety we bring on, the more it's gonna give us. And it goes, hey, what about this? Or maybe in the beginning, too, it's a lot of education about the biology of stress and how our physiology works. And I know that for me, I watched two videos of Irene's in a row in a row. I wasn't supposed to do that. I was on a plane flight. It took probably an hour, but I didn't sleep for two days uh because it was just it was so overwhelming. But I didn't even know what was overwhelming because I couldn't slow down enough to feel that. Um, and the cool thing about building capacity too maybe we don't even have to talk about that thing from the past. Maybe the the system gets stronger, uh, is able to handle more, and some of the stuff starts working itself out on its own, and that's what we want. Um, so so capacity, and another one is following impulse. I really like that one. So learning to trust your intuition. This work is intuitive. Um and we start by responding to our bodily sensations. You know, if I'm hungry, I eat. If I'm thirsty, I drink water. If I if I want to move, I I move, you know, um, I sleep, I rest. That's complicated. Some people have never rested before. They've never, they've they've gotten, they've they've not responded to their body. I mean, I remember my wife when we were first dating, she would get busy at work and and not go to the bathroom all day or not drink water, you know, and she's she's a superstar. Um, but superstars need fuel too. And so it's little things like that. And and the more we meet our body with with curiosity, with presence, and we start being more learn to be in our body and slow things down, the nervous system again is the map, and it'll continue to give us more, and we get to to work with that. We get to eventually see triggers as the good guy.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. You talked about um uh the uh awakening process that a lot of us are going through right now. How do you see that connection? So you've said that we're a lot in our heads and we need to get into our bodies more. How does that benefit the awakening process? Um, or how does it connect with it? Or doesn't it?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, I mean, coming out of survival mode is like being held underwater, but you don't even know you're underwater. And if you think about being underwater, life is up here. You know, and it feels like we're it feels like we're in it, but we're not, you know, and when we come out, it's it's the most beautiful thing. The the everything is so beautiful, like just just like looking outside. It's it's amazing. And I I never knew what it would be like to feel at home in my body, to not be driven by all these survival responses that I I thought I needed to be loved. And it's uh it's not fun, it's not easy, it's absolutely worth it. Um, and it sucks the whole way through. And that's why you need a really good guide um to keep reminding you that this is worth it and it's amazing, and it's not always bad all the time. Um, it's really me just talking to somebody else that's been through it and we're kind of laughing about it. But there are whims along the way that let you know this is the right move and that we should continue to do this. And I think the more we can be, I think the awakening process right now, like what's going on with the raising the consciousness and everything, you know, it feels like authenticity. It feels like the ability to be in my truth, in my body, to say what I need, to be who I am, to love being that and to be celebrated and to to to to do that with other people and to see that we're not as separate as we thought, that we're all connected and that we've just been conditioned to be against each other and point fingers and judge everyone, and that system works so damn well. Um, and and you can't see it until you wake up, and then it's just this yucky, residue-y thing that's infiltrated into all forms of society, and it's gross. And you it's the matrix, you know, that's the best way of looking at it. And I've been out of the matrix for a long time. Um, I got out of the corporate world uh in 2017 and um have kind of been doing my own thing and now, but I was not awake to any of this stuff until probably two years ago. And again, it's been a slow awakening, but it man, everything just I don't believe in what's the word I'm looking for, like coincidences, but damn, they are everywhere right now, and it's just it's amazing. You can turn on the news and you can you know have your brain sucked out of your skull um and numbed out, or you can, you know, luckily there's there's amazing things happening right now with consciousness, with people, with uh all over the place, and it's undeniable, and you can see it everywhere, but it's not readily available to the public. I don't know if that makes sense. Um but if you know what to look, I just think it finds you, you know. It's like my journey, everything that I needed, I felt like I had to just go after it. And now I know that I just sit back and it comes to me. You know, and I so many people around me. Like I went to a local networking event the other day, and I had some people, a lot of people, talking to me about Ozempic. And I had the other half of people talking to me about magic mushrooms and aliens and consciousness.

SPEAKER_02:

That sounded like that's like my life as well.

SPEAKER_03:

I know, and I'm like, I'm going, man, I've been sneaking this stuff into conversations for like five and ten years, and it's real, and I was the weird one, and it's really awesome to have a bunch of other weird people around me now.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, it's it's uh curious old world. We're um close to the end of our conversation, so I'd love to just hear like you've been really generous with everything you've shared so far, just a little bit about your purpose. You've been through this enormous journey over 20 years, and you're using it to help others now. Can you tell us a little about that?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I mean, it changes all the time. Um, from the very beginning, when I started having health issues and being in the corporate world, I knew that wasn't for me, that I wasn't gonna get better if I stayed in that environment. And, you know, it was a this waking up process has been 20 years for me, really. Now that I think about it, you know, it started with the food system. It went into exercise, it went into, you know, detoxing, remove all these different things that I learned, it's what I needed at the time. The information was not readily available. I had to mess up and get it wrong more than I got it right. But I knew that, you know, like I remember being in the hospital in in the Lyme disease center, and nobody was getting better. It felt like it was just me. And that's because I put my head down and I did everything I could, and I felt an obligation to share that with people. And so it started with food coaching and exercise coaching, and then you know, really got into like kind of like 2018, 2017 was like flow states and um um subconscious mind. Like I was studying with Joe Dispenza doing his retreats, and and that was like mindset, is kind of what I called that. And that led into the nervous system, and the nervous system has been the thing for me now. And I think everything goes back to dysregulation. We kind of talked about that. Will that change and be different? I'm open to that. I don't see that happening. It this feels like, oh, these are my people because I work with a lot of guys that are special forces, you know, from the military, professional athletes, um, you know, and women as well, from the business world, like moms that are running three jobs and raising kids and doing it as a single parent, you know, and and burnout and gut issues. Like if they've had, it's kind of like the the universe has been throwing the pebbles and they're not listening, and all the symptoms. Those those are me, the people that are in a sensitized state. I think it's a very you could also call that global high from like a somatic experiencing uh lens, um, you know, the long haul COVID, chronic fatigue. Those are my people, the people that have tried everything and nothing seems to work. And they got to start slow and learn to build capacity and learn to listen to their body. And eventually we get to a place where we can start, you know, meeting the early wounds and unpacking some of the emotions and the and the bigger traumas as well. And so as I I just share whatever I've learned, you know, there comes a time I've learned so much, and it's it's time to start practicing and uh sharing with other people. It is amazing the results that I get with my clients that have had symptoms for so long. I think I recognize things before they even do, and that's something I can't quite point out all the time. Um, but it's it's an incredibly fulfilling job, and it's healing me while I help them heal themselves. Because everybody that I work with right now, I know this will change the more that I heal, but everybody is just like me. You know, they're a version of me for the last couple of years. And um, I do use my health coaching where some things are nutritional and some things are movement, and I weave all of this stuff in. I mean, it's it's really complete human wellness from top to bottom, from physical to emotional to spiritual. And um I'm constantly learning and applying, and who knows where I'll be in a couple years, but right now it feels really good to be helping people and giving them the help that I needed that I didn't get along the way.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, great, very cool. Thank you so much for joining me. It's been really cool conversation. I've really enjoyed it. Um, we're gonna we've got your details in the guest directory, so that will be there. People can find your, I would guess, your podcast, your website, your socials, so that if they want to find out more about what you do, they can connect with you directly. Thank you so much for joining me. I've loved it.

SPEAKER_03:

Thanks for having me, Nadine. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey there, Rebel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Midlife Rebel Podcast. If you'd like to support the show, you can buy me a coffee by going to Buy MeACoffee forward slash Midlife Rebel Podcast. Thanks for listening.