Why Therapy Wasn’t Enough (What No One Told Me)

Externally things looked successful, but

internally I was always terrified I was

going to lose everything. No matter

what, panic was always the baseline.

Even though I was having weekly therapy,

I just kept getting worse. And this was

so frustrating to me. I don't feel like

I got a lot of information that it could

be healed, that the symptoms and what I

was living with could be healed. I

remember feeling like it was it was

equally validating and devastating.

Everything made sense again up here, but

I was like, "And so what do we do?" I I

saw the way that it infiltrated

everything I experienced in my life. So

even though I was having this this

experience that felt dangerous, my brain

was interpreting as dangerous, I was

feeding into that believing it was

dangerous. I was researching like it was

dangerous, I was reinforcing the danger.

These things weren't dangerous. I have

never been happier. I have never been

more fulfilled. I have never felt more

joy in my life. If you had asked me 2

years ago if that would have been

possible, if I still had some symptoms

around, I would be like absolutely not.

That's not even an option for me. The

option is be happy with no symptoms or

be miserable with symptoms. There is no

combining those two things. Hello

everybody. Welcome back to the Real Work

Podcast. I'm so excited to have you here

with me today so that we can talk about

the things that can really make a

difference in your healing journey.

Whether you're healing from chronic

stress, survival mode, chronic symptoms,

chronic pain, and if you're just trying

to have a better life, you know, like

there are things that can be really

helpful and things that can kind of slow

you down. And that's what I wanted to

talk about today. If you're like me, if

you've struggled with mental health

issues, disorders, all that stuff, kind

of fighting your brain for your whole

life, there's a really good chance

you've been in therapy. And this episode

is not to hate on therapy. It's more so

to share my experience and a lot of what

you're dealing with with nervous system

dysregulation and sensitization does

have a good amount to do with emotions

and with possibly trauma. And you know

that is all part of the whole bundle of

kind of why we get to the state that we

get to. But I did therapy on and off for

15 years starting when I was 15. And

I kept getting worse to be honest. And

that wasn't therapy's fault, but I kind

of want to talk about what the

difference was and if you are getting

that support, if you're getting that

onetoone support, what might be helpful

to look for in a therapist um and other

things that you can do to support your

therapy journey. I think it all around

it can be super helpful. So, you know,

the main issues that I struggled with

since I was very young started with

insomnia, then depression, then anxiety,

then

CPTTSD, ADHD, all those all of those

diagnoses. However, I don't relate to

many of them anymore. And as I kept

going through my life, I would do the

therapy and I still lived with this low

level of dysregulation. I tried special

restrictive diets. I tried everything. I

did all the therapies. I tried all the

supplements, the naturopaths, the brain

scans, you know, the IFS, EMDR,

all of it. And so as life kept going,

externally things looked good. Like I I

created success for myself. I created a

successful business. Um, so externally

things looked successful, but internally

I was always terrified I was going to

lose everything. So, I had done a pretty

good job at finding a way to work around

these things and continuing to do what I

thought was the work, which was get your

ass in therapy, go every week, do the

work, let's work through these things

one at a time, let's try this therapy,

that therapy. Um, but no matter what,

panic was always the baseline. Even

though I was having weekly therapy, I

just kept getting worse. And this was so

frustrating to me. It was probably

frustrating to my therapist. Maybe not.

Maybe they're used to, you know, you

can't guarantee the outcome of of the

work that people are doing. But it was

hard to keep getting worse and to not be

getting better.

And I think one of the main issues that

I had was no one ever explained to me

what was happening in my body. for me

and most of the therapies I did despite

doing some that were more bodybased

um there was a lot of intellectualizing.

So I want to talk about like what

therapy gave me but why it wasn't enough

to stop the runaway train. Unfortunately

it was really nice to have a place to

talk. I really loved all of my

therapists. They were very warm,

inviting safe spaces for me. I would get

temporary relief from unloading. I

really see that the same way I see

reassurance right now kind of because I

would go and I would have, you know, I

would cry a ton and I would talk about

all the deep darkest parts of my mind

and my trauma and my past and my

abandonment and my wounds and my

attachment trauma and I would

temporarily feel like, oh well that's

got to have to do something, right? Cuz

I let all of that out. So better out

than in, right? And it just kept getting

worse. So everything was still happening

inside me the same way. Nothing was

changing with the insomnia. Nothing was

changing with the anxiety, the panic,

any of the body symptoms. And that

again, it's it's a frustrating place to

be in because

it's one of the first things that people

will throw out is like even if you go to

a doctor and you're having medically

unexplained symptoms,

it's like they're giving you referrals

to therapists and they're giving you

referrals to psychiatrists and you're,

you know, you're you need psychological

help, which isn't wrong, but a lot of

people um will hear that and be like,

I've tried that. I've been in therapy my

whole life and that can be a hopeless

place too. So I want to speak to that as

well when someone tells you like oh this

is psychological. In fact I want to

bring up that one of the hardest parts

for me that was a really really hopeless

moment for me was once I had dug into

how my symptoms were being driven by my

nervous system and having such clear

understanding of what CPTTSD was. It was

like someone had given me like a riddle

that you have to find out like to a

troll under a bridge or something to

like get on your merry way. And the

answer to the riddle was to successfully

do the thing that you had failed at for

20 years. What do I mean by that? I had

been working on myself. It was honestly

my full-time job, my full-time identity.

I was the queen of self-help and reading

all the things and intellectualizing

everything. And then someone was like,

"Oh yeah, you can heal your chronic

pain. You can heal these chronic

symptoms. All you have to do is heal

your nervous system. You just have to

heal your anxiety.

You have to, you know, improve yourself.

You have to you have to get to the root

of of everything that's making your

nervous system disregulated." And I

thought, "What? I've been I've been

trying that's what I thought I've been

trying to do. I haven't been

successful." So to me that solution may

as well have been a non-solution because

I was so after so many years of feeling

like I had been trying to do this. I was

like oh so there really is no way out of

this because if I was able to do that I

would have done it a long time ago and I

wouldn't be in the situation I'm in

right now. So I want to speak very

directly to the frustration

of feeling like the answer out is is the

thing that you've been trying to do for

so long. You've I've done the therapy. I

know all of this from from forward to

backward. I know why I am the way that I

am. And yet

all these symptoms remain and or they're

getting so so so much worse.

It's devastating to be to be in that

place. Um, so the missing piece for me

that no one ever mentioned was nervous

system sensitization and what was going

on with my body that not only did I have

nervous system dysregulation, which is

normal for anyone who's living

chronically stressed out, chronically,

you know, in survival mode, kind of

living in that fight or flight, that's

one thing. Nervous system sensitization

is when your system gets so hyper

sensitive. Think about like an alarm

that maybe like a car alarm that goes

off if someone shuts the door a little

too hard or if someone, you know, is

bringing in groceries and they kind of

bump it. It's there's no threat. There's

no one breaking into this car. No one's

trying to steal this car. And yet the

car alarm is blaring at every every tiny

little poke, every slam. Even if it

hears loud noises, not even hitting the

car. If the car hears a loud noise, it

interprets it as a threat. That's what a

sensitized nervous system does. It's so

hyper sensitive that it begins

interpreting non-threatening stimulus.

Could be touch, could be sound, could

could be temp, could be a pain signal as

a threat, as active danger. And then we

focus on it, we fear it, we put

attention on it, and then the brain

locks it on. That was something that was

never explained to me over all of that

time. And I think partially a lot of

that has to do with the fact that it

wasn't quite as mainstream at that time.

I don't think I think this is especially

with the more and more people talking

about it is more recent in the last

probably like five to seven years and

like I said I'm 36 I've been in therapy

since I was 15. So um that was a big

missing piece for me and nobody could

explain why my body reacted so

intensely. So, while I had the diagnosis

of CPTTSD,

that was like you sustained chronic

complex multiple different traumas over

a very long period of time. You were

constantly living in a traumatized

environment. So, you're, you know, you

have higher

symptoms. You know, you have that

anxiety, you have that depression

because of the trauma. And like, I got

that, but I didn't understand. But what

is my body doing? Why is it doing this?

Not don't just tell me because of the

trauma. Like what is happening in my

body? How can I make it stop happening?

What do we do to fix this? What do we do

to heal it? And to be honest, when I got

that diagnosis of CPTTSD,

I don't feel like I got a lot of

information that it could be healed,

that the symptoms and what I was living

with could be healed. I remember feeling

like it was it was equally validating

and devastating. Everything made sense

again up here, but I was like, "And so

what do we do?" I I saw the way that it

infiltrated everything I experienced in

my life and how, you know, hearing a

thump on the ground while my eyes were

closed made my stomach drop and made me

terrified. I just realized it was

everything. It was my relationships. It

was how I interpreted the world.

Everything was unsafe because of this.

Um, and my anxiety, my insomnia, my

depression, and then my chronic pain

just it all kept spreading. It c it all

kept intensifying. It started just

getting worse and worse and worse, which

was we're going in the complete opposite

direction of of where I had been trying

to go for so long. And I really thought

therapy wasn't working because I was the

problem.

And it's just I think this is common

because you hear about people who talk

about how for use an example is EMDR.

EMDR healed me. I'm like I did EMDR

every week for a year. I experienced no

change from that.

And that can just be dangerous ground

because we start looking around being

like, what's wrong with me? And it feeds

into this story that we all

simultaneously have but don't know

everyone else has, which is I am so

uniquely broken. Because if I wasn't,

that would have helped or that would

have helped or that would have helped or

that or that or that or that or that or

that or that. Like what what meaning are

you supposed to make when you've tried

all of these things and none of them

have helped?

the bare minimum they've done is maybe

extinguished a little bit of the the

edge, took the edge off maybe, but never

feeling well, never feeling mentally

well, and then in time never feeling

physically well. So

I feel like one of the main issues that

you may find if you haven't made

progress in therapy is that we're kind

of trying to think our way through a

physiological issue because at this

point it has moved outside of the mind

and has moved into the body through

somatic symptoms through symptoms like

anxiety, insomnia, pain, illness. And um

I I was I got an A at therapy. I I

remember I was just telling Ryan, my

husband, the other day that I had a

list. It's I could probably find it if I

looked all throughout the week. Anything

I could think of to talk about in

therapy, I would write it. And I would

come in and I'd take my list out and I'd

be like this and this and this and this

and let's do EMDR on this. And I I'm I'm

saying seeing now as I say that like how

controlling that was of me. Um but I I

made a list of everything I wanted to

talk about. We analyzed all of it. We

did the IFS. I tried to do the inner

child work. I did the EMDR.

I did the CBT.

Probably more letters that I'm not

thinking of as far as therapies that I

tried. And I felt like we were always

trying to use the mind to calm the body.

And I feel like that's what I tried in

every way, shape, and form to do. And

for me, it needed to be the opposite.

And I kind of had to figure this stuff

out because my body had to calm a little

bit first before my mind I could have

access. And I understand that now

because when you are in this chronic

survival state, the main part of your

brain that you're living from is the

survival part of your brain. It is the

emotional lyic system, the amygdala, the

stress centers, the emotional centers

versus your higher brain, your

prefrontal cortex, the part of you who

your decision- making, your ability to

think into the future. We're not using

that. We're not dreaming. We're

surviving. We're staying alive even when

we're not in danger anymore. And no

matter what I tried, I intellectualized

it. I feel like I even tried to I did my

best to try that with even EMDR, which

is supposed to access that emotional

part of your brain.

I was never able to get deep enough into

the internal family systems or the inner

child work or trying to be there. I was

always just like at a level that stayed

out of my body, just safe and sound. Way

safer up here than in here. So, there

was a moment and I remember the moment.

I remember where I was. I was in my

office over there. I was on my computer

and I was listening to content from

another coach and she started talking

about fight or flight.

And she started talking about um

about the nervous system. And I was

like, now this was before I had heard

about of any of this. So this was like

prior to trying EMDR, prior to So I had

the knowledge. I had learned about it,

but no one ever really made it click. I

had to kind of hit rock bottom to get to

that point. But I remember that moment

and being like, "This makes so much

sense."

And it stayed with me. Didn't do much

with it. I just remember being like,

"This is information I have never heard

before." And I'm hoping we get to a

point soon where there's nobody that

hasn't heard about this. And I hope to

be one of the voices contributing to

spreading that awareness to people to

know what happens when you live in a

chronic state of survival where your

body, your resources, your physiology,

your thinking,

everything in your body is working to

keep you alive from a threat that is no

longer around you. For most of us, this

obviously doesn't apply if you're in an

actively dangerous, threatening

situation, but for most of us, this

stuff started in childhood and the

threat got locked on. So, that was a

very, oh, this this is me moment for me.

Like, it was a really big aha, but

again, add it to my rolodex of ahas

because I had already been learning and

studying everything I could. I didn't

know how to apply it. And it took

another four years and completely

crashing out in my body and my body

having a shutdown between the mental

turmoil and the physical turmoil for

everything

not to click but to catapult me into an

adventure, we'll call it, of figuring

out how to actually get to the bottom of

this once and for all. Having that

awareness of what's going on and knowing

how to recalibrate yourself. So, I get

asked a lot where I learned, what I

learned, what my credentials are, what

what's up with everything that I teach

and know and have applied and have used

to um be on this healing journey that

I've been on for yes, for the last 20

years, but more intensively over the

past year once the chronic pain started.

And I feel like I'm moving into phase

two of my healing and really excited to

teach phase one, which I will be

teaching in my new regulation program,

soft regulation. Make sure you're on the

wait list for that. I'm not currently

taking clients, but that is the way I

will be, you know, teaching these

concepts at a much uh deeper level. So,

I'll put that in the description. But I

learned everything I could. I learned

from every teacher. I read every book. I

listened to podcasts. And yeah, in the

beginning I did that in kind of a

compulsive way because I wanted to

escape this. But it's one thing to take

in all of this information and it's

another thing to adjust it and adapt it

and to simplify it and then apply it to

myself

and learn from everybody in this world

and to see how all of this works

together and see how that thread of

safety is what's most important. And

like it doesn't really matter how you

get there. But if the foundation isn't

set up right, we're always going to be

trying to heal from the wrong energy.

And by wrong, I mean fix it energy,

urgency energy. Every the types of

energy that signal danger to the nervous

system. And if we know the key is

safety, we don't want to be working from

a place that signals danger. So the over

stimula, the overstimulation, the

sensitization, the bracing, the urgency,

the capacity, the safety, these were

things that I have I never heard in

therapy. These were things I had to

learn from books, old books, new books,

books by people who had been through it.

For me personally, and you may be

different than this, but I feel like a

lot of people agree that I want to learn

from people who know what I'm talking

about. I want to learn from people who

know what panic induced insomnia feel

like. I want to know from people who

have had experiences that have brought

them to the depths of hell and they have

crawled their way out of that. I want to

learn from people who walk

the walk and talk the talk and

have lived experience in this because I

of course I appreciate the people who

work with people and have training on

this of course and I made the most

progress when I started listening to

people who had walked the path before

me. Even people who were a year, two,

three years down the path further than I

was. And uh so yeah, I had to put a lot

of pieces together and that was one of

the first things I did. I learned from

everybody and then I said, "Okay, what

are you all saying

and I and what are you saying that I

don't actually need? What are you

saying?" Because we don't need a

ninestep process of 42 things to do for

3 hours a day when we're already so

sensitized and our system is already

like danger, danger, danger, danger,

danger everywhere we look. We need

something simple. We need something that

sets the foundation. We need to be able

to let our environment signal safety. We

also need to look at our behavior and

what we are partaking in that is not

signaling safety. And those are going to

be kind of like the foundations of this

new program. though. Um

I was bummed to have done so much

seeking and so much attempting to heal

in my life and never coming across the

things that were going to be most

beneficial to my healing. That's a tough

pill to swallow for me because I was a

seeker. I was a researcher. I was a

learner. I was an absorber. Was it a

little bit of a coping mechanism? Sure.

Sure. Of course. Um, but what finally

made the shift for me was realizing that

my symptoms that I was experience

experiencing, no matter how horrific,

and I mean they were horrific,

um, they were not dangerous.

So even though I was having this this

experience that felt dangerous, my brain

was interpreting as dangerous, I was uh

feeding into that believing it was

dangerous. I was researching like it was

dangerous, I was reinforcing the danger.

these things weren't dangerous. Um, I

had to realize that my body was not

malfunctioning.

It was actually functioning too well. If

you think about it in terms of

sensitization, it's working too well.

It's like exactly like I explained, it's

it's a system that's too sensitive. It's

just anything is setting it off,

including and and everything that's

setting it off is not an actual reason

for the alarm to go off. It's just

sensitized. There's nothing wrong with

you. It's and I know that it feels that

way. Trust me. I I understand

feeling like this is so all over the

place. This is so random. Most people in

my life don't know what I'm

experiencing. They don't know how this

feels. I look insane. I feel insane. And

yet nothing is wrong with me. My system

was just primed to be on extra extra

hyperaroused alert state for so long

that that it has been locked locked on.

you you have a highly sensitized nervous

system, not a malfunctioning one, not a

broken one. It's like in tip-top

condition. I can confirm to you your

nervous system is is in perfect

condition, right? It's a great nervous

system. We can work with it. It's just

been tuned a little bit too high. And

that's that's the work that we want to

do is with the desensitizing it. And

other things that I had to change that I

had to learn on my own and that I had to

apply were learning how to support my

baseline instead of fighting the

sensations and the pain and and whatever

I was experiencing. And that came a lot

from my behavior changes. I needed to

not be living at full capacity all of

the time. And this is important and I

may do a whole other piece on this, but

you if you can work on lowering that

baseline, you will have more and better

capacity to respond to your symptoms in

a better way. That's very, very

important. It's the same thing with

sleep. It's like when you get enough

sleep, and I'm sorry if you're in the

middle of struggling with sleep. I

promise you'll get your sleep back, but

when you get enough sleep, you're in a

better mood and everything is just

easier to deal with. And when you don't,

everything is harder. This is the same

thing when we work on lowering that

baseline by soft regulation techniques

and soft shifts then suddenly you have

what you need to respond to although

this very difficult situation in a much

healthier and better way because you

have that capacity. So it's very very

important. I had to slow down my

stimulation. I had to slow down my

input. I had to start participating in

activities that calmed me down, even

though that can feel dangerous at first.

And I needed to let my body, this has to

be a bodyled

process, not a mind-led process, not a

control and forced process. Your body

has to work it out. And just know your

body's always trying to get back into

balance. It wants to be in balance. It

doesn't want to fight against itself.

It's it's constantly trying to find that

balance. we

do kind of a good job of getting in the

way with that. And the way that the

these shifts work, it sucks because

we're feeling something so extreme and

yet the nervous system has to unwind.

And so these aren't quick shifts,

they're slow shifts. And you can make a

lot of changes internally. You can get

to a place where you feel a lot better

and your symptoms and your sensitized

nervous system is still going to take

the time that it takes to unwind. I am

still unwinding the chronic pain

symptoms. I am still unwinding the nerve

pain. I have many more good days now

than I have of bad days. I have many uh

much less infrequent flares

and I know the changes that I've made. I

know my response is completely

different. I know that I have recovered

from the fear

and so I am allowing my body the time

that it needs to desensitize.

You have to make peace with that. You

have to be okay with that and know that

even as that happens, you can live the

best life. I have never been happier. I

have never been more fulfilled. I have

never felt more joy in my life. And and

if you had asked me two years ago if

that would have been possible, if I

still had some symptoms around, I would

be like absolutely not. That's not even

an option for me. The option is be happy

with no symptoms or be miserable with

symptoms. There is no combining those

two things. So, just to say like from

Maggie further down the road, right, a

year in your future possibly,

things can get so much better. And I

feel like that's a message of hope that

needs to be spread more because this was

the first time in my life things started

to get better after all of this time.

And that's crazy to think about because

it was such a long span of time. And I'm

so grateful for what I've been through.

Another thing I couldn't imagine saying

two years ago

because I didn't realize that my

baseline was so high that I was never

enjoying my life anyway. I couldn't

enjoy any of the success I had built. I

couldn't enjoy my connections, my

relationships until

I did the real work, which is what I

talk about on this podcast. Um, so just

to kind of wrap things up, I think talk

therapy and therapy in general really

helped me to understand my story and it

helped me to understand why I was the

way that I was. And unfortunately,

as far as healing,

the result of why I was the way that I

was, aka healing, the effect that this

now had in my body was something I had

to learn on my own. Something that I had

to study, something that I had to

implement and embody and still am

implementing and embodying. And I'm

hoping that throughout this content,

you'll be able to,

you know,

learn how your body actually works and

learn what's actually going on so you

can stop buying into this belief that

there's something wrong with you and

that you need to keep seeking fervently

for this mysterious answer that people

are keeping from you. The answer is very

simple.

You're either in nervous system chronic

dysregulation because of survival mode

or we've gone even further down the road

and you're now dealing with chronic

symptoms of nervous system

sensitization. No matter which one of

those categories you fall into, you're

going to be okay and you can recover.

Um, and you can live a life even better

than before all of this stress started.

Um, but it's simple. It's it's not

complicated. that doesn't mean it's not

a horrific at times journey and it

doesn't push you and take you to your

knees, you know, at times. Um, but it's

important to me to share my story and to

share what finally changed things

because I know the frustration of trying

something spending I mean tens of

thousands of dollars. I don't even know.

I I couldn't even I wouldn't even know

where to guess with the math. But to

keep spending money and to keep trying

and to keep being disappointed and

disappointed and disappointed

is a hard journey. And I think it's so

beautiful that so many people are

sharing their stories about relief and

healing and possibility and and I hope

to continue sharing that with you here.

So I will see you guys next