131: How I Healed my Mold, Food, Light & Sound Sensitivity, CFS, Migraines, Pain & More with Dr Connie Boczarski

00:00:09 Chazmith: Connie, thank you so much for being here with me today. 

00:00:12 Connie: Chazmith, thank you for having me on. It's really lovely to be here with you. 

Pleasure to finally meet you.

00:00:17 Chazmith: Yay. Agreed. Well, I know that this is going to be welcomed by the community of listeners because I've actually had several people reach out to me and request to have you interviewed. So that's really awesome. 

00:00:31 Connie: How cool. I love that. 

00:00:34 Chazmith: So you are going to be today sharing about your personal testimonial and your healing recovery journey that you've been on. So I think what we're going to do to get started is just dive into that, if that's okay with you. 

00:00:49 Connie: Sure, absolutely. 

00:00:50 Chazmith: Awesome. So the first question I want to ask you is, what tools and modalities were most supportive for you on your healing and recovery journey? 

00:01:00 Connie: That's wow. It's a big question to start with. We didn't waste any time. 

00:01:06 Chazmith: We're going to dive in deeper. But this can be brief if you need it to be, and then we're going to talk about some other things too. 

00:01:12 Connie: Yeah, for sure. The big foundational thing for me was absolutely doing DNRS and brain retraining. I had become so sensitized to mold that I wasn't able to even be indoors. And that was just foundational for getting me back indoors, getting me functional again. And then I think that the other things that really helped alongside, that were other things to help calm my nervous system because my central nervous system at that point was just so tightly wound that I realized I didn't even know what it felt like to be calm anymore. And so doing some other bottom up regulating resources alongside the brain retraining was really helpful. 

00:01:57 Chazmith: And then I'm sure we're going to dive into those a little bit more. But I do have a side question. You did brain retraining, how long did you do that initially? 

00:02:07 Connie: So we did that for a year and a half. 

00:02:08 Chazmith: Okay.

00:02:09 Connie: And I think that's one of the things that's helpful to talk about too, is that I know most of us think that it's going to be six months and I'm back to normal. And when I started brain retraining, I literally thought, oh, it takes six months. Well, then I'll be done in five, which I just laugh at now, but because I had been so type A and that was just always my personality of you set a goal and you do it and you do it under time. But I think it's so important to normalize that for most of us, a longer recovery journey is normal. That's not the outlier. Absolutely some people do recover in six months from what I've seen, though. That's the exception, not the rule. 

00:02:53 Chazmith: I agree. And I love that you point that out because I never want anyone out there to think that they're doing something wrong or not good enough because they're not getting the results as fast as what they think is the normal. 

00:03:05 Connie: Yeah. And I think it's something that's just so triggering for so many people, because we all compare ourselves to other people, and it's so easy to go on social media or other forums and see these magical recovery stories. And you go, oh my gosh, why isn't that happening for me? And it's so important to know that, yes, that happens, but that is the outlier, not the longer recovery journey, at least, from what I've seen, anyway. 

00:03:32 Chazmith: Yeah. It's also interesting that you brought up that you were the type A person because something I've really noticed is, well, let's be honest, there's a lot of type A's that end up on this path, right, on this path to healing. And I think that I know in my own experience, I think that's why I felt the same way when I entered into the brain retraining program. I was like, okay, tell me exactly what to do. I'm going to do it so well. I'm going to perfect this healing. And I've talked on this podcast so many times about how we can't really try to heal in the same way that we may have contributed to us getting sick.

00:04:08 Connie: 100%.

00:04:08 Chazmith: AKA, perfectionism. 

00:04:10 Connie: Yes. 

00:04:12 Chazmith: Now, something I'm curious about, too, is you explained that after about one and a half years of DNRS, you actually started to use some other tools and modalities to help calm your central nervous system as you realized that you didn't know what it felt like to be calm anymore. Now, even through the daily practices in your brain retraining program, you weren't able to get your body into a true state of calm. 

00:04:41 Connie: So I actually started doing the other bottom up resources when I was doing DNRS, I would say probably at some point after that six month mark. 

00:04:51 Chazmith: Okay. 

00:04:52 Connie: That's when I started. Basically what I did, it was not at all well thought out. It was very willy-nilly. I had read one of [Dr. Deutsches’] books, and he talked about some things to work on the central nervous system. And I just went, oh, that sounds really smart. Let me play with some of this stuff. I don't know that I ever felt that same deep calm within my nervous system until I started doing some of those bottom up regulating resources. I'm sure I could have gotten there, and I'll just share. So an example was I went and did a Feldenkrais session and had no idea what to expect. And I'm lying on the table and the practitioner is doing what seems like nothing. Literally all I was thinking is, I can't believe I'm spending this much money and he's doing nothing to me right now. And what happened afterwards, came home. I think I slept for a couple of hours, which at that point was just a precious gift because I was not sleeping. And then went for a short walk and there was this loud, unexpected noise that happened. I think it was a car backfiring or something, and there was no startle response. There was nothing. And that's when I realized, oh, wow, okay, this is really powerful. It allowed me to tap into a deeper sense of peace and calm within my body, not just an intellectual. I'm saying I'm calm. And I'm saying I'm grounded. I don't know if that makes sense. 

00:06:20 Chazmith: It does. And when you did visualizations, did you try to visualize bringing calm into your state?

00:06:28 Connie: I did. And this is one of the things that, looking back, I could have done in a much more nuanced way. So when I first started, I did what so many of us do, and I needed to. Everything was this big, exciting visualization where I was traveling internationally or some big, exciting life event. And I very much needed to do that in the beginning because I was so, so down in a freeze response where I just needed something to lift my system up a bit. Down the road, I started to realize, I actually need to bring in some calm. As I started to come out of freeze, I did what is normal. I went into fight or flight, which there's not a whole lot of conversation about that at times. And so I think it can be confusing when it happens because you're lifting your system up, and then all of a sudden, you get into this place of anxiety. And you think, well, where the heck did this come from? And what I know now and didn't realize then is, that's actually you, climbing the polyvagal ladder and coming out of freeze and into fight or flight, which is normal as you go up into regulation. Does that make sense? 

00:07:37 Chazmith: It does. And I can very much relate to this, except for you're, like, explaining the whys. You're explaining what I didn't understand at the time, which is really helpful, because if we didn't understand at the time, there's probably other people who don't understand it at the time.

00:07:52 Connie: For sure. 

00:07:53 Chazmith: Something I've heard happen, and I've personally experienced this too, at the time, when I didn't really quite understand what was happening. I think that a lot of us become very, almost afraid of that fight or flight state. And as you said, it's an essential part of the journey because it's helping you to get into ventral. But so many people, they become afraid of it that we do things to basically go back into shutdown, essentially, because it's what you've become, I guess, accustomed to. It's all you knew or you're so afraid of fight or flight that you try to do something to get out of the fight or flight, but you go back down rather than up into ventral. Does that make sense?

00:08:34 Connie: 100%. Yeah.

00:08:35 Chazmith: Yeah. So we're getting stuck in this cycle versus actually climbing up the ladder.

00:08:42 Connie: Right. And that was very much my experience too when I started brain retraining. And again, I didn't understand any of this at this point. All I knew was, I was really sick, really tired, had zero life force or energy. And as I kept retraining, for me, it felt like all of a sudden, I woke up and I was just in crazy anxiety, where I had never experienced that. And well I had, but many years ago. And so it felt really weird and really odd and to be honest, I was scared. I thought, oh my gosh, what the heck is happening? And again, because it felt so weird, so overwhelming and so intense, then absolutely I was all about, oh my gosh, how do I stop this? How do I control it? How do I decrease it? And didn't realize all I was doing was putting myself back into that shutdown or [freeze] state because it was so overwhelming to feel that. And I see people do that all the time because they don't understand that actually it's a positive change. It's pretty unusual for our systems to go from shut down and freeze right up into balance and regulation. You don't jump that rung on the ladder. You step on the next rung on the ladder, which is sympathetic activation, fight, flight, and anxiety, usually, yeah. So I still agree with what you said. 

00:10:10 Chazmith: So through your personal experience, what did you learn was necessary in order to get out of that cycle and start moving upward? 

00:10:25 Connie: A big part of it for me, there's a couple of things. One, and again, I didn't understand the science of it. The explanation I had heard was, it's peeling away the layers of the onion. And so I just held on to that and just viewing it as progress. And I think one of the things that did serve me with that as well is just my history as a chiropractor. One of the things that we had learned repeatedly in school is that change is good. So change is good even if it doesn't seem obviously good. And they would give us an example of say, you have someone come in with low back pain on the left hand side and you adjust them and it moves to the right side. Obviously, we want to get rid of it altogether, but the fact that the system is starting to change and not stay so stuck and so static is really good. And so I tried to bring that in with brain retraining as well and say, okay, this doesn't feel good, but it's changed. Can we embrace this as a positive change? So that was a big piece of it, of not being afraid of it and not seeing it as this negative thing. And then a big part of it was also not trying to stop it and recognizing that this was another symptom that I couldn't stop and it was learning how to respond to it with peace and calm and as much grace as I could muster.

00:11:49 Chazmith: Was there at any point a time when you felt like you actually needed to do something to help move that intense energy? 

00:11:59 Connie: Yeah. Well, and I think that's also where playing with some of those bottom up things helped because it helped me navigate some of the intensity of it. And I think it was helpful for me to move. The challenge was that I had to be mindful of how much exercise and movement I did because I was still bouncing back and forth so much between freeze and fight or flight. And so if I did too much to expel that energy, I would really knock myself back into freeze. And so it was challenging at that time to find the right amount of movement, what's the right amount of discharge. 

00:12:34 Chazmith: And that was just a game of trial and error for a while for you.

00:12:38 Connie: 100%. Yeah. My natural inclination, as I shared being Type A, is to always do more, go harder, push. And so a lot of the trial and error was realizing that less is actually  more. And my natural inclination to just push harder wasn't serving me like you shared at the beginning, that trying to heal using the same things that got us to being sick is not going to  work well.

00:13:06 Chazmith: Yeah. And it sounds to me as though there was a way in this journey that you also learned how to shift your natural rhythm, maybe not be so Type A, realizing that it really wasn't actually supporting you. Have you noticed a big shift in that now after ebbing and flowing back and forth for a while through the recovery journey? 

00:13:33 Connie: Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I really had to work on just like you shared. I think being Type A is so tied into perfectionism, and so I really had to work on that. And also, I think one of the things that really helped me tremendously with that was just reading more about perfectionism and understanding that perfectionism usually isn't just this thing that randomly shows up, it oftentimes is a coping behavior for shame. And so just understanding some of the deeper roots of that and working with that really helped. Instead of just saying, stop being perfectionistic, I started to look at what was actually driving that perfectionism. 

00:14:13 Chazmith: That makes sense. 

00:14:14 Connie: Yeah. 

00:14:16 Chazmith: So you already explained or touched briefly on one thing that you were healing from, which was a very intense mold sensitivity just because I know people really appreciate knowing what somebody recovers from. Because if it's something they've been through, it helps them to have a little bit more faith in the process. 

00:14:39 Connie: Sure. 

00:14:40 Chazmith: What else were some of the primary things that you recovered from?

00:14:44 Connie: So chronic fatigue, light and sound sensitivities, food sensitivities, chemical sensitivities, chronic migraines. I had pain everywhere in my body at some point. I think those are the big diagnoses. And then of course, underneath those, there's so many other diagnoses, like adrenal fatigue and all those other things that tend to go hand in hand with some of those bigger ones. Yeah, I think those are the main big ones. And well, some of the other things. I was never diagnosed with mast cell, but it's just because I was lying to doctors at that point. I had every single symptom of it. 

00:15:24 Chazmith: Got you. Do you look back now knowing everything you know and everything you've been through in this whole journey? And maybe you don't, and that's okay. But can you look back and see how the life you were living before could have been a factor in you getting sick? Or does it still not make sense to you? 

00:15:44 Connie: Oh, it makes total sense to me. Oh my gosh, it makes total sense to me. Where to begin with that one? Wow. So I think a big part of it was I really was ready to stop being a chiropractor, but I didn't know what was next and was scared to close my office and find a new career, when I had spent so much time and money and energy getting that degree and that license. But I really was ready for a change. I also was in a relationship that really went on way too long and needed to end. And just again, my perfectionism and type A and all of that stuff, all of that drove me getting sick. And I really feel like the only thing that would have led me to do what I needed to do, which was close my chiropractic office, was something really massive like this. I don't know that I ever would have had the courage to do it on my own because I didn't know what was next. And I got so sick that I just didn't have the choice anymore. So I absolutely see why all of this happened. And I also feel like I'm doing what I was meant to do. I feel like I was an okay chiropractor, but I love what I do now, and I feel like I have so many more gifts and skills in the arena of coaching than I had with chiropractic. 

00:17:17 Chazmith: That's awesome. Did it feel like everything just came on at once? Or was there this slow build where it was one thing and then another thing, and like one sensitivity, and then now this sensitivity, now this sensitivity?

00:17:32 Connie: Well, how far back do I go when I look back, just like so many other people that have dealt with chronic illness? The beginnings of it started when I was a young kid, when I was, gosh, I don't know, four or five, maybe six. I was the one that was always getting sick, and it always took much longer for things to heal. When I was probably around 11, started getting really chronic, severe migraines that I would be in bed for four and five days at a time. And then when I was in high school, even though I was very active in playing lots of sports, I always had injuries, was constantly, constantly trying to nurse something that was injured. So when I look back, I can already see the beginnings of chronic illness starting as far as the sensitivities. I can see how it built because prior to my tipping point, I had fallen back into that same pattern of getting sick a lot and taking a really long time to recover from whatever I had picked up. So that was the beginning of all of that. But then once I had that tipping point, that's when things just got really weird, really fast. 

00:18:49 Chazmith: Did you notice that if you had fear around these, like, when you first started noticing a sensitivity to one thing? Was there a presence of fear for a while before you found DNRS and started to understand what was actually happening? 

00:19:06 Connie: Oh, my gosh, yes. 

00:19:08 Chazmith: Yeah. I think that sometimes things, in my experience, it's almost like they get worse because we are so terrified and we start to make our world smaller and we become more and more afraid of all these potential, harmful things outside of us. 

00:19:22 Connie: Yeah, well, in my journey, especially with mold, and I'm sure anyone who has dealt with a CIRS diagnosis or any kind of mold sensitivity illness diagnosis is, you are told pretty much immediately, when you're diagnosed, that the only way you'll heal is if you practice 100% complete extreme avoidance, which I don't even know how that's possible. 

00:19:49 Chazmith: It's not. It’s literally in the air outside all the time. 

00:19:57 Connie: So I can't think of a better recipe for creating absolute terror in someone.

00:20:03 Chazmith: Right. 

00:20:03 Connie: And that's really what happened with me, is that when I was diagnosed, I would have done anything. I mean, literally, if that doctor had told me, stand on your head in the corner for 10 hours, okay, whatever it's going to take to get well, I would have done. And he said, you have to avoid all mold. And my sensitivity went through the roof after that. That's when it got just really crazy. So, absolutely, I can see the factor, that fear, that was well intentioned, that I don't think the doctor… I truly believe the doctor was trying to help, but the messaging around it created so much fear that it just made things so much worse. 

00:20:44 Chazmith: Right. Would you say that you are fully recovered from all of those sensitivities and all those things, or do you still have things show up in an acute way sometimes, but you're able to mitigate it faster? 

00:20:59 Connie: So I consider myself recovered and healed. The thing that I think is important to bring in, though, is that I'm still a human being. I often joke that recovery doesn't come with a cape and a pair of fancy boots. I wish it did, but I'm not some superhuman. I still have a brain. 

I still have a nervous system. For me, the big thing was being able to move through the world again because of the mold sensitivities, that was just completely lost, and that's not an issue anymore. I can go into places that I would not live in, but I can stay there for a week or a weekend and be okay. So I haven't had issues with that, but certainly I've had things come up since I stopped practicing and since I finished doing the program because life happens, stress happens. I don't know if that answers the question.

00:21:52 Chazmith: Yeah. And you can eat things now that you used to be sensitive to or like, light is okay now for you. 

00:22:01 Connie: Yeah. So, absolutely. I can eat whatever I want, which, I'll be honest, I never thought that was going to happen. My gluten sensitivities were so high when I started brain retraining that I remember watching testimonials and thinking, I don't know who these weirdos are that are eating gluten again, but whatever, I just want to be able to be indoors. And yeah, I can eat gluten now, which, again, still just seems, when I'm talking about it, surreal, given how intense the sensitivity was. Yeah. And I'm not sensitive to light or sound, actually. When I go hiking, I usually just wear a visor and no sunglasses. And my friends are always looking at me going, how do you not have sunglasses on? It doesn't bother me. I don't know. 

00:22:45 Chazmith: That's awesome. Did you use exposure therapy to overcome your sensitivities? 

00:22:52 Connie: So not with the light and the sound. Those faded away as I was working on other things. I absolutely had to do exposure therapy with mold. That was the big kahuna for me. Like I shared, there was so much fear around it, and the reactions to that were so intense that, yeah, that I absolutely had to train with, for sure. 

00:23:16 Chazmith: Okay, and what about food?

00:23:18 Connie: So food was different for me, again, and this ties back into your  question around fear and the part that played. So I'm so grateful that I did lie to my doctor about… basically what happened is the mold doctor I was seeing at the time, he said, you know, I'm seeing with a lot of my patients that they also have mast cell, and I think you probably do too. Take a look at it, look it up, see what you think, and when we have our next visit, we can talk about it. So I Googled it, and like I said, literally every symptom. And then I read what you need to do and all these foods that you can't eat and this low histamine diet that you have to follow. And at the time I was living in a hotel. There was just no way. And I just decided I literally can't take another no in my life where I'm now going, to say, now I can't eat all of these foods. So because I lied about it, I think it kept me from going down the rabbit hole and really attaching so much fear to food, which was a savior. I did have sensitivities to eggs and dairy and gluten, other things as well, but those were the big ones. And it was more for me just an intuitive thing. After practicing for, I think, two or three months, I just had the sense that I can eat eggs again and just popped into my head, just this intuitive little message of, okay, now. And so I had eggs one day, it's fine. And so I had them the next day, it's fine. I did that for, I think, two or three more days just to really prove to myself that, okay, this really is okay. 

00:25:04 Chazmith: That's awesome. 

00:25:05 Connie: Yeah. 

00:25:06 Chazmith: You weren't in fear, around the food, and you just had a decision made.

00:25:12 Connie: Yeah. And I think it was also, I was able to trust that little tiny inner voice, which has gotten much bigger now, but back then, it was pretty tiny, that it's, okay, you can do this, go ahead, and just kind of trusted that, okay. And also, it's fair that my reactions to eggs weren't super extreme, so there was also the sense of, if I do react, I can manage it. It's not a huge thing. 

00:25:41 Chazmith: That's awesome. 

00:25:43 Connie: Yeah. And with gluten, it was a little bit different. That very much left till the end because again, those reactions were extreme. 

00:25:52 Chazmith: That makes sense. 

00:25:54 Connie: Yeah. 

00:25:54 Chazmith: You had to build up that faith, that trust and belief in your body's ability to heal and overcome these other sensitivities. And once you had so much evidence. Then you can try the harder stuff.

00:26:06 Connie: 100%. Yeah. And I think that's such a great point because so many of us, like you said, we're type A. And type A's, we tend to say, what's the biggest, hardest thing? Let me start there, which usually doesn't work very well, versus let's start with the easier, smaller stuff first. But the thing that was really cool with gluten is that I thought it was going to be a big deal. And I worked on it for months before I actually ate any, where I was talking it into visualizations. And I was thinking about eating it before I did my visualizations and really noticing the script I had around it because, like most of us do, I had a pretty strong belief system around gluten and really had to work on that. What I noticed happening, though, which  was so cool, is that, belief system was changing over time. And I can still remember this. I was visiting family, and they had a cherry pie on the countertop. And in the past, I would either not see those things at all because it was just off limits, or I would look at it with so much judgment, and you don't know what you're eating, and I can't believe they eat this crap. And instead, I looked at the pie and went, oh, that looks good. Maybe I'll have a slice later. And it stopped me in my tracks because I thought, where the heck did that come from? And that was, again, a cue for me. That, okay, things are changing. I'm starting to change how I see things, and I'm seeing it in a much more healthy way that isn't just filled with fear and threat. 

00:27:46 Chazmith: Right. Yeah. Did you eat a piece of the pie that day? 

00:27:50 Connie: I didn't know.

00:27:51 Chazmith: Okay.

00:27:52 Connie: I wasn't ready at that point.

00:27:54 Chazmith: But even having the capacity and that thought is a huge progress. 

00:27:58 Connie: Right, exactly. And I think that's so important to bring in, too, because we often really have to work with the thoughts first before we start to change the actions and the behaviors. But yeah, when I did then add gluten in again, I thought it was going to be this huge thing, and it was a non event. I went from having a tiny little bite of a cupcake to eating a whole cupcake the next day, to eating two cupcakes the next day. 

00:28:30 Chazmith: Go, baker, go home.

00:28:31 Connie: Exactly. 

00:28:34 Chazmith: That's awesome. I hope it was really delicious. 

00:28:36 Connie: Oh, my gosh, it was so good. I can still remember it. 

00:28:39 Chazmith: Oh, I love that. Okay, so you have already talked a little bit about this. You have already expressed like there's all these foods that you can eat now that you at one point couldn't eat. Obviously, you have the capacity to be in environments with mold and not worry or stress about it or have reactions. You said the light and sound sensitivities faded away. You can now go outside without sunglasses on. All great things. Is there anything else today that you can do that you couldn't do during the, let's say, hardest part of your journey? 

00:29:14 Connie: Yeah, pretty much everything, to be honest. At the hardest part of my journey, I was pretty non functional. At my sickest, I couldn't really take care of myself. And so even things just, like brushing my teeth or taking a shower, that used up all my energy for the day and was a huge undertaking. So just being able to do the laundry or make dinner or exercise or anything that is just normal daily living are things that I wasn't able to do. I really just kind of was back and forth mainly between the couch and bed. And at my sickest, when I was still working, I was working just a few hours, three days a week. And the only way I was able to do that is I had a doctor, who was a mold doctor, who said, well, what you can use is Ritalin to help with energy. And I thought, fantastic, okay. Because for me, the big thing was I wanted to keep my office open, which is another thing that led to me being sick, is that, just obsessive need to hold on to my career. So without the Ritalin, though, I was completely non functional. And that's probably way more than you asked for. Sorry. 

00:30:39 Chazmith: No, it's good. That's great. I think that's important information. So at what point did you, how do I want to ask this? So you were taking Ritalin, but then at what? Okay, you know what I actually want to know, when did you learn about DNRS? Because that obviously is when things really started to change for the better for you. Who introduced you to  it? How did you learn about it?

00:31:00 Connie: So that is such a crazy story. So when I closed my chiropractic office, I moved up to Georgia to live with family, and my mom's house also had mold, and so we had to have the house remediated. And we thankfully found a company that was familiar with people who were sensitive, so they were very used to people that were sensitive to molds and chemicals and you name it. And so the man that owns the company actually bought… There were DVDs at that point, so, bought the DNRS DVDs for me and wired, for healing. 

00:31:43 Chazmith: What?

00:31:44 Connie: Yeah. 

00:31:46 Chazmith: What a cool dude.

00:31:48 Connie: Well, it's funny because…  so I first met him, I don't know, it was November in Georgia. And again, I really couldn't be inside that much at that point. So I was hanging out in the backyard, in every piece of clothing I owned because I had lived in Florida for 15 years. I didn't have any warm clothing and unshowered, because, again, it's just this challenging thing to do at that time in my life. And hair piled on my head and slippers on and wrapped up in a snuggie. I looked fairly crazy at that point. And when I met him, I remember him just kind of taking me in a little bit, and not in a creepy way or anything like that, but just giving me the [ones] over. And he then later talked to my mom and said, I think this program will help her, and I think she has a lot of the things that are needed to be successful with this program, and I'd like to buy it for her. And at the time, we were just like, okay, this is amazing. I don't know why he's being so kind, what he told me many years later. So I called him up when I started coaching, and he was one of the first people I told. And I said, oh, my gosh, Bill, I have the best news. You're not going to believe what I'm doing now. I said, I'm coaching. And he was totally nonchalant, totally just blasé, and said, I know. And I said, what do you mean you know? I haven't told anyone. He said, Connie, I knew when I met you that this is what you were going to do. 

00:33:21 Chazmith: What? 

00:33:22 Connie: And so what he told me was that he had a very strong message that he needed to buy the program for me because he knew I was going to help a lot of people. And so we both just started crying when he told me that. And, yeah, I've not shared that publicly before because I usually get pretty teared up and choked up when I share it. But yeah, he later told me that that's why he bought the program for me.

00:33:47 Chazmith: That's so beautiful. Wow. I'm like this guy gets paid off of people having [said activities] to this stuff and he actually wants to help someone heal. 

00:33:58 Connie: Right. And absolutely. I mean, he basically said, hey, we've got this really great customer, and here's something that you can do so you don't need me. 

00:34:08 Chazmith: Yeah. 

00:34:09 Connie: Yeah.

00:34:10 Chazmith: Wow, that's so cool. I love people like that. 

00:34:13 Connie: Yeah. [Crosstalk] 

00:34:17 Chazmith: I love it so much. How did you manage to navigate life when you said before you moved up to Georgia, when you were really sick and really not being able to take care of yourself, how were you managing before you moved in with your mom? 

00:34:32 Connie: Yeah, it was brutal. I mean, it was brutal. 

00:34:36 Chazmith: You were doing it yourself?

00:34:38 Connie: I was. Basically, I would work for a few hours on Monday and then I would just go right back to the couch and rest as much as I could and not move unless I was just going to bed. And then same thing on Wednesday, repeat the pattern. And then on Friday, I would work a few hours. I would stop at the grocery store on the way home, and then I wouldn't leave the house again until Monday and I had to go to work again. 

00:35:09 Chazmith: Were you living on your own?

00:35:11 Connie: I was, yeah. And again, the only way I was able to work those few hours was, my system was hyped up on Ritalin.

00:35:19 Chazmith: Right. 

00:35:20 Connie: So that's probably the only way I was actually able to even care for myself. And when I say care for myself, was the house clean? Were things taken care of? Absolutely not. I was the definition of survival mode at that point. 

00:35:35 Chazmith: Right. How long did that go on for before you were finally like, okay, something's got to give, it's time for a shift, I'm selling or getting rid of my business and moving home?

00:35:44 Connie: Almost three years. 

00:35:46 Chazmith: Whoa. 

00:35:47 Connie: Yeah. 

00:35:48 Chazmith: At what point did you end the relationship? Because you said that you were in a job you knew that you didn't really want and a relationship you knew that was too long. 

00:35:55 Connie: So that was before my tipping point. 

00:35:57 Chazmith: Oh.

00:35:58 Connie: Yeah.

00:35:59 Chazmith: That makes sense.

00:36:00 Connie: Yeah, it was before my tipping point. And again, that was part of the perfect storm that was leading up to that tipping point. 

00:36:09 Chazmith: Right. That makes sense. Okay. And so what else? I want to know what, in this  journey, because you've already talked about some things that are probably that. But in this whole journey, the three years you were still “taking care of yourself” and working and then going home and all this, even through the whole, like, where you actually started healing, doing DNRS and doing other stuff, what did you find to be the biggest struggles of healing? 

00:36:42 Connie: What did I find to be the biggest struggles of healing? 

00:36:45 Chazmith: Yeah, the biggest struggles. Like some people, they're up against a lot of resistance in doing their practice or just certain things in life that happens or certain symptoms that make it really hard or just, yeah, I don't know anything at all. What did you really feel like was a struggle and then tell me how you overcame them. 

00:37:08 Connie: Yeah, well, I think there were two things. One, all of that type A perfectionism was a struggle because I look back now and the way I approached healing was so intense and so adrenalized, which obviously I know now is not a great strategy. So I think that was, a big part of it is learning to just slow down and not push my way through everything and not be in this frantic hurry to do everything and to heal. Because I definitely fell into that pattern of, oh my gosh, I've got to do all the things every day, and I've got to make sure I get all of this in or I'm not going to heal, which is so counterproductive. So that was a piece of it. And then the other thing that was really challenging was I had a lot of outside stressors going on when I was doing DNRS a lot. I had three different lawsuits going on. I had identity theft. I had parent pass away. I had an animal pass away. Forgetting some of them, on and on and on. I had a lot of outside stressors, that was also a part of it because there was always something happening. It seemed like that was a pretty big stressor. 

00:38:27 Chazmith: How did you manage that, all those stressors? 

00:38:31 Connie: Well, a little bit different with each one, but the three lawsuits, that was happening in the beginning when I started practicing, and that was definitely something that was destabilizing because, as you can imagine, there was always an email or a phone call from a lawyer or a paralegal pretty much every few days. So I really had to reframe the way I looked at that because I had this thought process of, I'm never going to heal. And what I always felt like is I was just dragging this anchor behind me, trying to drag this huge, heavy anchor while I was trying to climb this mountain. And so I really had to reframe how I saw those things and start to see them as this is going to teach my brain how to respond to stress. And this is something that you can use to heal. This is something that you can use in a positive way. And so I had to do a little bit of a Jedi Mind Trick and convince my brain that this was helping us, not harming us. 

00:39:38 Chazmith: Got you. In the end, looking back, do you feel like it, in a sense, helped build your resilience and your capacity to endure stressful times because they were in your face and you had no choice, essentially, but to rewire around them and build your capacity in that moment? 

00:39:59 Connie: For sure, yeah, I definitely think it helped to build my capacity and just my resilience. If I could do it over, would I have changed it? Probably because it was just really hard to calm down my brain and my nervous system when I was dealing with just constant, ongoing stressors that felt pretty big and pretty important to take care of. But, yeah, I do think it helped me learn a different way of how to cope with stress because that's also part of obviously what led to chronic illness for me, is just not having a toolkit whatsoever for stress and just plodding through life like my body was a machine, which it's not. Mine isn't. No ones’ is. 

00:40:43 Chazmith: Yeah, I mean, it's great if we have a perfect scenario, that we can completely focus on our healing and not have anything at all that would stress us out, but then how does that necessarily prepare us for real life?

00:40:56 Connie: Right. And in reality, just like the perfect environment with no mold, I don't think it exists. I mean, having that perfect healing environment where there's no stressors and nothing going on, it's just not reality. Life happens. And I think it's important to talk about that and that it's just figuring out, how can you work with that and how can you respond to it in a way that doesn't put you back into victim mode and doesn't put you back into feeling like a victim of circumstance and being hopeless and helpless? Because that's also a big part of what tends to bump us back into freeze. 

00:41:35 Chazmith: Right. You then, in your experience and through your experience, feel it's possible for people to heal even if they're in the face of, say, 24/7 triggers or 24/7 symptoms or triggers that they don't even know what they are. Like, oh, I'm always getting this symptom, but I don't know what's triggering me.

00:41:59 Connie: For sure. Absolutely. When I started brain retraining, I thought that I knew, okay, mold is my trigger. That's my big thing. And then what I realized probably a couple of months in, is that I was triggered all the time, and half the time I had no idea why. So, absolutely, you can still heal even if you don't know what your triggers are. You can still heal if you are triggered 24/7. You can trigger if you are being triggered by someone or something in your environment on a regular basis. Absolutely. Yeah. 

00:42:31 Chazmith: That's awesome. Today, well, for a timeline, when did you first have your perfect storm? What year was that? 

00:42:40 Connie: It was around 2012, 2013. So end of 2012. 

00:42:45 Chazmith: And at what year did you declare yourself healed and recovered? 

00:42:52 Connie: 2017. 

00:42:55 Chazmith: It's been a while. What's been the biggest physical/health challenge that you've encountered since 2017?

00:43:06 Connie: Ironically, it's something that we share. Braces. Yeah. Anyone who's had braces as an adult will understand that. When you talked about have things come up since I recovered and since I finished practicing, I was not at all prepared for what braces were going to do to my system. That has very much been, I would say, one of the biggest challenges since I finished practicing and I recovered. And actually, now that I'm talking about it, looking back and let me backup. When I first got my braces on, I went in as tends to be my personality, and just jumped in with both feet. I went in for a consult and the orthodontist, I really liked her, everything she was saying fit with what I was seeing. And so I was just planning on a consult, and she said, well, we have time now. And I thought, oh, well, sure, let's put them on. Not thinking it through, not remembering that, oh, I'm an adult now and my roots are formed. I'm  not 12 anymore and this is going to be a different experience. So put the braces on. And I was not prepared for how painful it was going to be. The other piece of that is I have so much trauma with dentists, we'd be here for three hours if I went into all of it. So probably not a super wise decision to just jump in with both feet in an arena where there's a long trauma history. So after I got my braces on, I started noticing some old patterns coming back up. And one of the old patterns is I was noticing smells more. Not that I was necessarily reacting, but I was like, wow, I never noticed that before. And things that I'm around on a regular basis, but headaches start to come back and that was a big cue that, okay, I don't think this is the normal experience for someone that has braces. So that definitely has been something I've had to work through because it definitely affected my system in a way that I was not expecting. 

00:45:22 Chazmith: What have been some of the most helpful, supportive ways that you've worked through this experience? 

00:45:29 Connie: Well, I think the first thing that was helpful for me was also tapping into some of the polyvagal information and knowledge that I have now and even just understanding that. Well, first of all, it makes total sense that the braces are challenging because I've had so much trauma related to dentists and procedures in my mouth and I'm asking my system to do something that our systems don't like to do. I'm asking it to be still and immobilized when I don't feel safe, and that was also a key piece of it. It's not that the orthodontist office doesn't feel safe. They're lovely, but to my system, a dentist and an orthodontist doesn't feel safe. And our systems don't like to be still and quiet like you have to be in a dentist chair if we don't feel safe. So I realized that I really need to work on creating that sense of safety in relation to being in the orthodontist chair. So there were a couple of things I did. I did tap back into my toolkit and do visualizations about just having a wonderful time at the orthodontist and everything being great, no problem. I also stepped into setting some very firm boundaries in their office. So they have two or three different technicians, that they seem to do most of the work on your mouth, the orthodontist looks, but they're the ones that do everything. They're all lovely, but one has decades of experience. And so I made it very clear that I only want her working on my mouth, which was uncomfortable, but I realized that I needed to do that to, again, help to create that sense of safety for my system. 

00:47:10 Connie: And I also set the boundary that I don't know if they do that at the office, you see, but what they do is you come in and they just take your wires off right away before the orthodontist even sees you. And they did this the first time. Orthodontist saw me and said, yes, everything looks great. Let's put the wires back on. And I went, you've got to be kidding me. It hurt so much to take them off, and it hurt even worse to put them back on. And we didn't even change the wire. And I just said, we are never doing that again. I want to see the orthodontist first. I want to know what the plan is, and then if we're changing wires, then we take them off. We're not doing this so that it's more convenient for you. We need to make this something that works for me, which, again, was a little uncomfortable, but I realized that boundaries and setting boundaries can be uncomfortable. And the important thing is that my system knows that I'm putting me first, not being gracious or making other people feel okay. 

00:48:08 Chazmith: Yeah. 

00:48:09 Connie: Yeah. And then a couple of other things that were helpful with that was bringing in some somatic work and really helping to ground myself when I'm in the chair and help to create that sense of grounding and being in my body and letting my system feel safe and good when I'm in the chair. And then just also understanding, ironically, that as I started to feel safer and safer at the orthodontists, what started to happen was some of those old emotions started to come up. And so there was one visit where it went well. It was totally no big deal and actually was having a good time and joking around with everyone and my teeth were feeling okay. And it was all I could do to not burst into tears in their office and went out to the car, cried for a bit, felt better, and realized, okay, my system is starting to feel safe and starting to discharge some of this past trauma and some of this stored survival stress. 

00:49:12 Chazmith: Wow. 

00:49:13 Connie: And I think that was helpful to understand because again, it can feel a little crazy making if all of a sudden you're going, why am I crying in the dentist's office when this is a good visit? 

00:49:23 Chazmith: Right. 

00:49:23 Connie: Just understanding that stuff, I think was really helpful.

00:49:26 Chazmith: You said you're talking about some trauma and emotional healing. Did you, through your journey, have to do a lot of work around trauma and emotional, like, healing? 

00:49:36 Connie: I didn't do a lot of work around trauma, specifically emotional stuff. I absolutely did emotional stuff. I didn't realize when I started brain retraining just how much I was triggered by emotional situations and interactions with other people. So I had to work a lot on emotional regulation and just working on processing emotions. And at first, I very much had to take the approach of, this is my limbic system because I didn't have the capacity to go into it and it would just instantly dysregulate me. As I got closer to recovery, I realized I need to get back to a little bit more balance with being able to have the capacity to experience a full range of emotions. And so I did have to work with being able to start to dip my pool into some of those harder, more challenging emotions while still staying regulated. So for me, that was very much a process that I had to work through a bit. And again, that I think was kind of willy-nilly. It was trial and error and just figuring out what worked and what didn't. 

00:50:52 Chazmith: That's awesome. That makes sense. 

00:50:54 Connie: Yeah.

00:50:54 Chazmith: Do you have any kind of daily self care routine or ritual that you commit to  these days just for your overall well being? 

00:51:05 Connie: Absolutely, yeah. Nothing that I do every single day for the most part, but I try and exercise most days. Exercise for me has always been something I enjoy. It's a good stress release for me, so I do try and do something to exercise every single day or most days. I also meditate, most days. That was something that I picked up when I was doing brain retraining and hated it at first, absolutely hated it. And now it's something that I really do find is grounding and enjoyable and then also, I'm always playing with other bottom up regulation things. I have turned into a little bit of a neuroplasticity geek. So I'm usually playing with something that I've just read about or a new technique that I want to try out. So it's not necessarily that I'm doing it purposely to care for myself. It's more, let me go try this and see what this is like. 

00:52:05 Chazmith: That's awesome. 

00:52:06 Connie: Yeah. 

00:52:06 Chazmith: Do you have a favorite? 

00:52:07 Connie: Well, the one that I've been playing with right now, which has been pretty cool, it's something called Frequency Specific Microcurrent. I had never heard of it. I read about it in Dr. Neil Nathan's book, Toxic. And I was like, well, this is cool. Let me go play with that. And so I've just done a couple of sessions, but pretty cool. System or technology or technique, I don't know how you refer to it for kind of helping move some of that stored trauma out of the body. 

00:52:35 Chazmith: I've never heard of it. That's awesome. 

00:52:37 Connie: Yeah, I hadn't either. Like I said, I read about it in Dr. Nathan's book and he mentioned it many times in the book. So I thought, well, let me go play with this and see if this is something that is helpful and potentially something that could help clients. Because I'm a big believer. I want to try something first. I'm not just going to recommend it if I haven't tried it myself.

00:52:59 Chazmith: Right, yeah, that makes sense. So speaking of clients, and you've already mentioned earlier in the podcast that you are coaching now. What is that like? What are you up to? What are you offering clients? Are you doing individual, group? 

00:53:15 Connie: So I do a little bit of everything. I do individual, one on one coaching, and I also do group coaching. I love both. They're very different, but I enjoy the variety of doing both. And then the other thing that I started doing is I recently started offering a class for friends and family. One of the things that I've heard so many times with clients is that my family doesn't understand what I'm doing. My family doesn't get this, and it's isolating. And that was my experience as well, that when I was doing brain retraining, that my friends and family didn't understand what I was doing. And if I tried to explain it to them, I very quickly got flustered and overwhelmed and triggered and it just went sideways really fast. So I put together a short one hour class so that friends and family can understand what the heck the whole brain retraining thing is all about and then also how they can actually help support the person that's doing it. So that's been one of the new things that I've been working on, which has been fun. 

00:54:22 Chazmith: That's awesome. And people actually are willing to join it, like the friends and family?

00:54:26 Connie: Yeah. So I've only had one class so far. So I can't say more than that. I've only had one class. What I'm in the process of doing is recording it so that people can also then purchase it and watch it whenever they want to so that it's all pre recorded so that it's not a set time that you have to show up. 

00:54:46 Chazmith: Yeah, I really think that would be such a valuable tool, especially if we got buy-in from our friends and family. That would be awesome.

00:54:54 Connie: For sure. 

00:54:55 Chazmith: Because that is definitely a thing.

00:54:57 Connie: 100%. And I know for me, I always felt like, even when I was with people, I was never present because I was so busy just wrestling with my own thoughts and wrestling with my brain and trying to redirect. And it's just so lovely if friends and family can understand that a little bit and actually help and be part of that process, so the person doesn't just feel like they're in it all alone. So yeah, I'm excited to, like I said, record that so that it can be something that is more available to everyone. And people in very different time zones, like Australia and Japan, can watch that without having to get up in the middle of night. 

00:55:37 Chazmith: Yeah, that's awesome.

00:55:38 Connie: Yeah.

00:55:39 Chazmith: Great idea. 

00:55:40 Connie: Thank you. 

00:55:41 Chazmith: How can people connect with you?

00:55:42 Connie: So my website is conniebcoaching.com. That's the best way to contact me. I'm also on Instagram @conniebcoaching. And those are the two things that I've been doing as far as getting out there. Social media is a new thing to me. Haven't done a ton of it, so my website is really the best place.

00:56:01 Chazmith: Right on. I have one last question for you. 

00:56:05 Connie: Sure. 

00:56:05 Chazmith: It's a question I ask everybody. If you were told that you could only share one message with the world for the rest of your life, what would that one message be?

00:56:12 Connie: Oh, gosh. Okay, you left the easy question for last.

00:56:16 Chazmith: Yes.

00:56:18 Connie: I think it would be, I would love for everyone to have a greater dialogue and understanding about how chronic stress and trauma affects, not just our brain and our nervous system and our health, but our whole way of being and our life. I truly think that if there was more of a conversation about how trauma and chronic stress affects us and people were given not just information but tools and that happened sooner instead of later and not once people were chronically ill, it would do so much to change the world, not just health wise. But I think it would have a massive impact on social issues and environmental issues and all the other areas. That would be my big thing, is let's all please start to have a much bigger conversation around trauma and chronic stress and how that impacts the whole world. 

00:57:18 Chazmith: Yeah, it's so true. Because when we're already sick and we're just surviving, it's like, how can we make a bigger contribution to help with the world when we're barely just getting by.

00:57:30 Connie: 100%. Yeah.

00:57:31 Chazmith: Yeah.

00:57:32 Connie: And how can you care about other people or animals or the environment or anything when you're in survival mode and just getting by. You can't. 

00:57:43 Chazmith: Yeah, it's hard. 

00:57:46 Connie: You can't. Well, it's not a fair ask, quite frankly. I don't think it's fair to ask someone to say, hey, I know you're swimming in your own sea of trauma, but I want you to care about all these other things. 

00:57:57 Chazmith: Right. 

00:57:57 Connie: It's not realistic. 

00:57:59 Chazmith: Right. Yeah. It's so true. Well, Connie, thank you for joining me on the podcast and being here to share your story and the insights you've had and yeah, just your knowledge and wisdom that you've gained along the way through your experience. And thank you for doing what you're doing. It was so much fun to get to chat with you. 

00:58:19 Connie: Yeah, thank you so much. I really enjoyed being here with you today.