Josie's Guide to Overcoming Autoimmune Challenges

Ever wondered if there's more to managing chronic illness than just medication? Discover the transformative journey of Josie, a fervent advocate for natural treatments for autoimmune diseases, as she shares her powerful story. From childhood ailments to grappling with rheumatoid arthritis and Hashimoto's, Josie's quest for healing led her to a holistic center in Denver, where she found that emotional well-being was key to her recovery. Hear how she unraveled the emotional roots of her conditions and began a path toward genuine healing.

Why do we often expect a magical pill to cure chronic illnesses? Join us as we challenge this conventional mindset by shedding light on the grim reality that 70% of deaths in the US stem from chronic illnesses. With Josie's experiences as our guide, we delve into the limitations of both Western and alternative medicine in addressing the root causes. This episode is a call to broaden our approach to health, emphasizing the critical role of emotional and mental well-being in tackling chronic conditions head-on.

Healing from trauma and chronic illness isn't just about revisiting the past—it's about forging a healthier future. Explore practical strategies to regain emotional balance and self-empowerment as Josie shares how she transitioned from emotional overwhelm to a state of inner peace. Learn how to turn off the body's fight-or-flight response and foster self-confidence through guided education and mentorship. This episode is essential for anyone aiming to take control of their emotional health and, in turn, find physical harmony.

Email: josie@thehashimotosfix.com

Website: www.thehashimotosfix.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnKqF94WFoie2jwH1rF6pMw

Hi, Jen here! We are so glad to have you back. I want to personally thank those that have signed up with Rare Patient Voice recently. We love your support of the podcast, and this is another way that you can by signing up with Rare Patient Voice through our referral link. Remember, we're here to support you every step of the way. 

Chapters

• 0:10 Healing Autoimmune Disease With Emotional Wellness
• 9:45 The Truth About Chronic Illness
• 26:09 Healing From Trauma and Illness
• 31:28 Finding Self-Empowerment in Healing

Transcript

Jen: 0:10

sisters, it's your host, gracefully, jen, and I have a wonderful guest for you today. Hi, josie, how are you?

Josie: 0:18

today. Hi jen, thanks so much for having me on. I'm so happy to meet the spoonie sisters audience today. Yeah, great to be here, thanks.

Jen: 0:26

Oh, my gosh, I am just so thrilled to have you I'm I swear you have like a radio show voice. I mean, do you have a show somewhere we're not aware of?

Josie: 0:37

I wish no. I just love meeting people on podcasts and I like to talk. Maybe that's it.

Jen: 0:44

Maybe that is it. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm listening to you and it's like you need your own show or a voiceover or something.

Josie: 0:51

Oh, I appreciate that.

Jen: 0:53

All right, so could you start by sharing a bit about yourself and what led you to specialize in Hashimoto's disease and natural treatments?

Josie: 1:02

Yes, absolutely Well, like all you Spoonie sisters out there, my history is a sick person, I like to say my autoimmune and chronic illness. The warning sign started when I was super little. I was the allergic kid, had all the sinus infections, strep, throat, ear infections. I got to stay home a lot more than other kids in school, got my appendix out, had anxiety. You know, very hard on myself, perfectionist. We're all kind of of that same fabric, I find, and that way of kind of how I was living my life, even as a child, not emotionally handling my challenges.

Josie: 1:40

Well, holding everything in that actually led to me developing autoimmune and chronic illness after my life kept happening. A big one for me emotionally was my dad passed away in high school. After that, about six months later, my first autoimmune was rheumatoid arthritis. So I got that when I was about 16. And then had depression, anxiety, an eating disorder, struggle with substance abuse and when I went into college I got Hashimoto's and then that kind of opened up the Pandora's box to other autoimmune like MS lupus, cvid, eczema. So by the end of my 20s I had eight autoimmune diseases.

Josie: 2:27

I had ADD, depression, anxiety, an eating disorder, chronic pain and I was a licensed therapist, I was really trying to help myself emotionally and I went down the alternative route because, like many of us, I said no medication. I did not want to be that person on medication for the rest of my life. I mean, I started my arthritis medication when I was like 16. I said I can't do this medication when I was like 16. I said I can't do this. So I tried all the food diets I took, the allergy testing. I had the you know pantry full of supplements. I had been a supplement kid. Even my mom gave them to me when I was a little kid, so I was used to that lifestyle. It just resonated with me. I read the you know the, the books on whole foods and the AIP diets and I went head first.

Josie: 3:14

Um, and I ended up having to take some medication over those years and I was just like sure that these things didn't have to be lifelong. I was like I thought I was going to somehow kind of supplement my way out of chronic illness and autoimmune and like many my you know my journey goes up and down. I would go into maybe even a semi remission and then I'd have a flare up and and then develop more illnesses and so really by the time I was in my late twenties, um, I at that time was working with children children at the Betty Ford center. Um, it's an alcohol and drug treatment center and my immune system was so out of whack and shot that they said you can't be around kids anymore or else you might not be able to like I might get so sick I could, I could pass. So I quit my job and I realized, okay, like if I'm not working, like I have to figure myself out, and thankfully I was.

Josie: 4:03

Actually I'd seen a woman who did Reiki here in Denver and she looked, took one look at me and said you need to go to the center here in Denver. They help people like you who are like medical mysteries. And I pretty much just felt like a medical mystery at that point. You know, I and I know for most of us out there it's like a whack-a-mole you know situation we get we deal with one thing and then another thing pops up and another thing and we feel super complicated and I felt, yeah, I was like, yeah, yeah, we like, we all like so complicated, so unique to and that's a problem, I'll talk about that in a moment, but I can't.

Josie: 4:38

I said Okay. So I called this place is called a new life center, and I brought my big old stack of diagnosis and I thought I was kind of like, kind of a badass, to be quite honest. I was like no one can figure me out. Like I'm just such a mess, you know, try me. I'd seen all the doctors you know in the area that were supposed to be the best ones and and no one could fix me. So I sat across from my mentor who's now? He's now my mentor and he looked at my stack of paperwork and he just point blank said it changed my life. He said why are you doing this to yourself? He said why are you doing this to yourself?

Josie: 5:14

I was like who is this man? I wanted to throw a pencil at him, but then I also wanted to give him a hug at the same time Because I was like, wow, no one's ever asked me that before. And then I was secretly like how does he know? And what he went on to say? Because he used to have autoimmune. He autoimmune. He says listen, he's like we're all the same kind of people. He's like we didn't realize it but we're not good at emotionally handling life. That's all of our problem and it's our inability to emotionally handle our life that's caused our physical body to go into a state of dysregulation. He's like that's where all of your illnesses are coming from. He's like join my clinical study. He's like you'll learn how to emotionally handle life and all of your chronic illnesses and autoimmune will go away without medication or supplements or diet. And I thought it was intriguing. Being someone who was a psychologist, I was like okay, the emotional, physical connection, like no one's talking about this. This makes this resonates with me. I didn't quite believe him that he could fix me, but I joined his clinical study and, despite myself, within about three months I was able to and I had been like basically isolating at my house at that point because of my illnesses and I was.

Josie: 6:30

I started. I live here in Colorado. I started skiing again, for the like, really for the first time. I started eating regular foods again. I would only eating about five foods when I came here. My arthritis was going away, my pain was going away, my hair was growing back, my anxiety was going away, I was sleeping again, I was feeling happy and within a number more months, everything went away and it all happened without doing any of the complicated protocols and supplements and all the things I thought were going to be the answer. None of it was. It was just me and learning how to emotionally do life again.

Josie: 7:06

And as a therapist and someone who was on my own kind of like health journey, I was just totally floored and shocked and said I can't be a therapist anymore because I'm not really helping people Like I'm helping people. I was helping people manage and this actually healed. So I chose to work here and train and I've been here for I've been healthy for almost nine years now and everything's gone Like. I don't take supplements or food diets. I have no autoimmune, no chronic illnesses. I'm totally healthy. I don't see specialists Don't need to, and I teach people this pathway that was developed by my mentor about 20 years ago, and we just work on the emotional state.

Josie: 7:54

We work on what's going on beneath, underneath the skin, in our, in our how we're feeling about ourselves and how and learning how to do life, and it's not supplements or diets or foods, so it's a totally different category. We're kind of we're trailblazers in our own path. But I sure love what I do because I know from my own experience for all the women out there, the emotional pain that we're all in, not just from our illnesses but also from our past, you know and the grief and the loss that we hold in our hearts and the anxiety and depression that we try to hide so that we can be moms and daughters and wives and still have jobs. Some of us, you know if we can, and I know that place and that never gets addressed with the foods and the supplements and the medication, and that's actually what's causing us to continue to have these conditions. And we can learn a new way, and it's through education. So now I'm a teacher and I teach a program that resolves autoimmune permanently in chronic illness. And that's me in a nutshell.

Jen: 9:05

Wow, I mean so many things. I could dive in dissect and ask a thousand things, but what I kind of want to go back to I'm not sure your age, but I'm guessing you're, like many of us, 80s, 90s kid.

Josie: 9:19

Yeah, well, yeah, I'm a late 80s, born in 87. Yeah, I'm 36. So, yeah, I consider myself I'm more of a 90, like my memory is more 90s, which I do think was the greatest decade I still do.

Jen: 9:32

Absolutely. I was born in the 80s. So I kind of you know my childhood childhood is in the 80s but junior high, high school in the 90s, absolutely.

Josie: 9:40

Yeah, and.

Jen: 9:41

I look back on this timeframe of our lives and maybe you agree with me on this. We kind of had the mindset you go to the doctor, they prescribe you a pill.

Josie: 9:49

I'm glad you said this.

Jen: 9:50

You get better, love it oh my gosh, I'm so glad you said this. You get better, love it. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you said this, jen. So when I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, I kind of thought, oh, I'm going to go, they're going to give me this magical pill and I'm going to feel great, I'm going to feel like me again, and that's the answer. And I think what so many of us are finally diving in and figuring out is that's not the answer. It's just not a magical pill that makes all of our lives go, you know, go well, and everything feel better. There's so much more at play.

Josie: 10:22

Yeah, oh my gosh, I'm so glad you said that Cause I had that cause. I'm always trying to break down. You know how can I understand chronic illness better, how can I teach it better to people? And I'm so glad you said that because I had that same epiphany recently. I said here's the problem.

Josie: 10:36

Like, just like you said, we all, as children, went to the doctor with bacterial infections, you know, or viruses, you know, things like strep throat, you know science. Infections were prescribed of antibiotic, typically like a Z-Pak or something. Took said antibiotic and, just like that, within a few days the condition was completely gone. And so we grew up thinking that that's what doctors did. If I had a health issue, they literally had a solution that would eliminate or eradicate it from me. Or I would take a vaccine, you know, for rubella or mumps and you know I would never get it or chickenpox.

Josie: 11:19

So when all of us were diagnosed with chronic illness, I, in my being naive, literally thought this was going to be the same thing as my strep throat. I had no idea and did not slow down to ask myself what does it really mean to have a chronic illness? What is that doctor telling me when they say chronic illness and I didn't dig in. And later, when I healed, I did dig in and I was like I can't believe I never looked this up, that know that a chronic illness. I learned that 70% of deaths in the US are due to chronic illness. 70% Six out of 10 people in the US have a chronic illness. Four out of 10 have two or more, which most of us, I'm sure are listening, fit into that category. And the nature of a chronic illness is that it has doctors have no cure for it, that it is lifelong and that it can greatly reduce impact or even end our life.

Jen: 13:30

And how often are we doing it to ourselves?

Josie: 13:33

Yeah, they don't tell us that and they actually have no idea about the me piece. And I was shocked and a little I'm just going to say a little upset or maybe a little angry. I've had to work on that at times that I felt like my Western and alternative doctors acted like that. They had a solution. They're like well, take this supplement or take this medication. They didn't tell me that they actually had no idea where the disease was coming from and they had no cure for it. You know, it might have changed what I decided to do in some of my health decisions, but they're not honest about that. Typically they act like they're the authority on these conditions because they have no idea that they're actually coming from an individual's emotional state. They have no idea. And even if they do have some inkling that it comes from our emotional state, they have no idea what to do about that or how to resolve it. So they just stay in the lane that they know that or how to resolve it. So they just stay in the lane that they know.

Josie: 14:41

And to me I never broke it down like that because I was kind of almost so indoctrinated in this idea that doctors have the solution to cure my condition with chronic illness and autoimmune. They don't and they never have. They're no closer to finding a cure for all the chronic illnesses than they were and just because and I was thinking more about this they made huge breakthroughs Western medicine did in the late 1700s with smallpox, or the polio vaccine in the 40s, or even the chickenpox vaccine in the 90s, they have made no progress for issues like depression, arthritis, lupus, ms, nothing. They're no closer to the solution than they ever have been with all the millions of dollars of research. I mean Alzheimer's, geez. So it's a huge, huge problem and 70% of us are dying from these diseases and they don't know what's causing them. To me it's huge, it's scary, it's very scary. It's causing them Like to me, like it's huge, it's scary, it's very scary, it's like incredibly problematic.

Josie: 15:51

And the best that they can offer us either Western alternative or alternative is managing our symptoms. That's the best that we can do. That's the only thing they know how to do, and whether that's natural ways like supplements or diets or cleanses, or whether that's the prescription route, I'm still not getting to the true source of why is my body dysregulated? Why is my emotional, my brain chemistry dysregulated? Why? Why am I the kid that always got sick? What's really going on here? They, you know they have these theories. It's not our genetics and Epstein-Barr and all. If it was those things, 70% of the population wouldn't be dying from chronic illness. So to me it's like wow, it really is. It's so big. And the fact that they just say, basically, here's a pill or here's a supplement, and they have no idea where it's coming from, so they can't replicate like even if a person could get into remission with alternative medication medicine for instance that they don't know how to replicate that with another person successfully.

Jen: 17:02

Because everyone's so different.

Josie: 17:04

Yeah because they they tell us that's's another thing that really gets me going. They make us believe We've actually been brainwashed into thinking I truly believe us that we're all unique and special in our conditions and that they all have special kind of causes and that we need a special regimen that's unique to us, that needs to be fine-tuned. I bought into that, like most of us. It made sense to me. I was like, well, yeah, I have a fingerprint and I'm different and you know, this diet worked for me, but it didn't work for my other friend who had autoimmune, and so we're all and it changes over time, but they're leaving out a key factor. Yeah, if it's different for everybody, what they're really telling us, you guys, is that they don't know what's causing it, because it should be the same solution for everybody. If we're having to do this unique blend of maybe Western and alternative and foods and diets, then what they're saying is we don't know why you have this condition and we don't have a solid step-by-step plan to resolve it. And the reason I know that is because when I worked on my emotional state and learned how to do life, I healed. But then, working here and working with countless other people, all different kinds of people with all different kinds of autoimmune and illness. I take them through the same step-by-step program to resolve their emotional state and get their fight or flight to turn off.

Josie: 18:29

Everybody heals. It's one thing to heal everybody's body dysfunction, which is actually we're all the same because of the duh thing we're all humans, regardless of our age or certain genders or things of that nature. It won't be graphic, but you slice this open and we function the same way. We have the same body that goes into this malfunction for the exact same reason and it heals in the same way. We actually aren't unique. We actually are, in a positive way, the same. It's the same way. We actually aren't unique, we actually are in a positive way, the same. It's the same reason we developed our conditions. It's the same way out. But it's just looking at. The thing that not everybody wants to acknowledge or look at is I have to look at myself and how do I learn a new roadmap for how to emotionally handle my life so my physical body doesn't get overloaded and overwhelmed anymore and that you know it can feel easier? I know from my experience to just pop a supplement.

Jen: 19:38

Oh yeah, hands down. You know, pop a supplement, dump something into your water and I'm going to feel great. I'm going to feel great by the end of the day. Dump something into your water and I'm going to feel great.

Josie: 19:48

I'm going to feel great by the end of the day. Yeah, I feel great. You know, do some blood work and miss my more meditation and just kind of go on that cycle. But it never resolves the dysfunction. The body's still in a state of dysfunction for, like arthritis for instance, our immune system still overactive, you know, it's still attacking, it doesn't matter what diet I do. And so why is my body attacking itself? Well, we've been our whole life emotionally attacking ourselves and feeling in an emotional overwhelm. Our fight or flight thinks we're all, we're people like us, we're always under an emotional threat, and that our fight or flight thinks that we really are under a threat and has gotten locked on. That's why our body's in a dysregulation.

Jen: 20:34

It's coming from our emotional state. It's not coming from any other source. So I feel like this is maybe off subject, but I guess this is something that just popped in my head. So I have anxiety. I've had it since I was 12 years old, but I feel like, the more that I'm looking around and listening to people, many people have anxiety. They don't even realize it.

Josie: 20:51

Great question, because it's almost like.

Jen: 20:53

it manifests differently because we each have a different background, how we were raised, how we deal with stress, so anxiety doesn't look the same in each and every person.

Josie: 21:05

Yeah, no, that's a Jen really good point. And I just had this kind of light bulb recently because I work with all different kinds of people with chronic illness and autoimmune and you know we all have some similar symptoms. But it just dawned on me the other day I don't know why it took this long. I think it might be because my mentor asked me this. He's like think about this for a second. And I did.

Josie: 21:28

Every single person that I've ever worked with with chronic illness or autoimmune the one symptom that we all have, everyone, no matter what age, what sex, anxiety and depression all of us have it, every single person has it.

Josie: 21:45

So I can know, if I ever meet a person with a chronic illness, for instance, I know automatically that even if they're scared to admit it, I know this person is also somebody who is struggling with anxiety and depression and what's really going on there is, regardless of kind of our backgrounds or upbringings, we can know that we're all the same fabric of person and that we're just weren't born well-wired to emotionally handle the emotional stressors and challenges of life.

Josie: 22:20

We're just we're much more sensitive people. We're kind of like sponges and so you know we just have kind of suppressed and it's built and it's built and over time that causes a dysregulation in the physical body. We get stuck in fight or flight and in that dysregulation brain chemistry also gets dysregulated. Everybody I meet has a brain chemistry dysregulation which causes the experience of depression and anxiety. Everybody with chronic illness or autoimmune from my experience all have depression and anxiety. It's actually a symptom of our emotional state, and our emotional state is never something we were taught that we can heal and or be in control of, so thus we never heal.

Jen: 23:07

And we can't understand what we're not taught. And maybe the best we can, yeah, and maybe our own parents they didn't know. And that's, I think, how it keeps fueling. You know my parents can't teach me what they don't know and what they don't understand. And you know, maybe I know more and I understand more now so I can help my children better. But at what point do we finally ask for the help and the guidance?

Josie: 23:33

Yeah, yeah, and you know people think, oh, autoimmune or chronic illness. You often see it. I call it running in families, you know, going from one generation to another and people are really interested in like, well, there has to be a genetic component. You know it has, that's why I have it and I actually think differently. I actually think it's what you said, jen. It's it's not as much a genetic component to autoimmune or chronic illness, but it's that. It's that learned modeling not good or bad, that of an inability to an unhealthy way of emotionally handling life, that we learn from our parents, that they learn from their parents, that they learn from their parents. That gets passed down through generations and we all become very emotionally overwhelmed as challenges and grief in life happens. That's what causes the dysregulation of autoimmune and chronic illness. I don't believe it. You know the genetic component is, is is a lot more even than that. We that that always comes first, even if we have genetic markers.

Jen: 24:35

Yeah, and I think it's kind of like a learned hobby. So you know, if my parents come home from work and they've had a rough day, and how they deal with their stress and their emotions is to go on a mountain bike ride or hit the treadmill. That's what. That's what is being modeled, just like what you were saying, and so maybe that's the kind of lifestyle I want too, and then I'm going to start teaching it to my children and so on and so on, and we're not doing the work. And so what would you say to someone when you meet them and you're like, oh my gosh, let's get you doing the work.

Josie: 25:05

Yeah Well, I first like to tell people like you're not a lost cause. You know, I think I and you're not complicated like you think you are, cause I know for me that feeling of hopelessness after all the years of being sick, um, and feeling like a lost cause, um, feeling like I was unique, and the problem of feeling like I was special and unique is that like I couldn't get better Cause I thought no one could. The problem of feeling like I was special and unique is that like I couldn't get better because I thought no one could fix me. I like to tell people to be like, listen, like there's hope, we're all the same in a positive way. It's just what's going on beneath the skin that you can't see, which is our emotional state, and the cool thing is all it is is just education. It's like what I do is I teach. Basically, it's like teaching a book of how to do life. You know, like we've all been doing the best that we could, but we've picked up some really unsupportive ways of coping and managing the challenges, the emotional challenges of life that have taken a physical toll on our body, you know. So it's really just education and like kind of a new set of glasses for people and we don't have the cool thing too.

Josie: 26:10

I know I was really nervous. I was like, oh my gosh, I have all this trauma, like I don't want to go in the. You know, I did so many years of therapy. I was like I don't want to talk about the addiction in my family I don't want to talk about, you know, the death my dad dying. Again I don't want to talk.

Josie: 26:29

And so the nice thing is is like we we healing starts from the present forward, that we don't actually have to go. The past isn't going to be our solution to healing. We have to learn new, constructive ways of. You know we did the best we could. It's about now and moving forward, and that's just learning a new perspective that our, our parents and no one out there has figured out to teach, and that is what makes this unique. The work I teach was created by my mentor, david Cope, and he developed this all on his own. It wasn't inspired by anybody else's teachings or work. So it's just we kind of have to empty out the cup of everything that we've learned to learn a new way, and anyone's body is ready to pick up on that. The body wants to get out of fight or flight, it wants to heal, it just doesn't know. We haven't known the right avenue because we've been focusing on the symptoms, not the real root of where it's all coming from, which is is. Is is our emotional state.

Jen: 27:30

So if I were to contact you today and I say, okay, josie, I need your help, I am so dysregulated I don't know how to deal with the crap in my life. Where, where do we even begin?

Josie: 27:43

Yeah, Well I would say don't worry, you know like I know it feels heavy, I know we can feel like we can't. You know I'm too far gone down this path. But the first step is what I do with my students is we do a really in-depth symptom assessment. So we just roll up the sleeves and I ask all the questions and we'll get a really good idea of the truth, of how frequent and how chronic your condition is and all of your symptoms. Because one thing I found too with all of us, especially women, we're massive under reporters. We love to under report. You know we're like how you doing I'm feeling fine, you know, and even my doctors, I would not tell them the truth about how I was really feeling. I didn't want to know the truth of how how bad my symptoms really were and how they're impacting my life. It's a, it's a, it's a coping mechanism. So we can't heal from the things we can't see. We can't heal from that which we can't see. So we kind of pull it up, we look at it, I put it on paper, we file it away, and that actually is the first step of healing, when we bring the unconscious conscious and they say okay, this is what you are going to be getting better from and then moving forward. We never talk about that person's symptoms or illnesses, because that's just a symptom of not knowing how to do life. And you know, then we go into they go into my online program and week by week, they're educationally learning constructively how to take back their power and control in their life, how to emotionally handle life in a healthy way, how to understand life through kind of a stress lens so they can say, oh, like, here's what was really going on and here's how I can handle it differently. You know we address the trigger word called victim and that we've all unknowingly become victims to feeling, you know, out of control of our experience and life and also been victims to our conditions. And we got to flip that script and take our power back and learn how to prioritize ourselves again, especially as women, and put ourselves first emotionally. And you know and it's not like bubble baths and chocolate and things like that, it's like how do I really? It's like learning how to care for myself for the first time and step by step, we're learning how to emotionally handle life. It's no longer feeling like a threat, it's no longer feeling scary, fight or flight, picks up on that, heals and self-repairs, and it's just, it's the same pathway for everybody.

Josie: 30:11

So, regardless of how long a person has had autoimmune or chronic illness or how many they've had or kind of the interwovenness, it seems like, of everything and the complicated nature, the body will naturally heal and self-repair. All of it when it enters, re-enters the parasympathetic nervous system where the body naturally regains homeostasis and all the dysfunction naturally repairs and goes back to normal. And for those of us with autoimmune, for instance, that immune system stops attacking the tissues and organs and foods and just does what it's supposed to do. It starts protecting us again and it all happens by us not being under an emotional overwhelm and an emotional threat anymore internally. And it's just a step-by-step process.

Josie: 31:00

So I tell people like, let's do the symptoms assessment Off, you go, you got this, and then at the end I reassess them and they can see, oh, I am either don't have these symptoms anymore or, wow, my body is very much healing and self preparing. Um, and you know, at the end of my program people are able to get off medications with the help of their doctors. They don't have to take supplements anymore, they can reintroduce foods again, um, and just go be normal, healthy um people, uh, without these illnesses.

Jen: 31:29

Okay, so what is some of the work, what are some of the steps that you have people get into? Is it working on stress management? Is it working on sleep optimization?

Josie: 31:39

Can you give us a few examples things I do like to bring up is that all the things that we've tried, they all are in the category of symptom management. So it's like dealing with the condition after it's already happened. Like for me. Like I did a lot of yoga and meditation but it's because I was already anxiety ridden and stressed out. Or I tried to, you know, take melatonin and tryptophan for my sleep, but it's because I was already dysregulated in my sleep, right, so it's managing, you know. Or I was like I had gained some weight with my Hashimoto's. I was trying to do diets and things, but that's. I wasn't able to lose the weight because my metabolism was out of whack because of the dysregulation. So none of it's actually getting to the true core source, which is our emotional state, and that really boils down to kind of conceptually big picture.

Josie: 32:41

What we teach, what my program teaches, is how to be back in the driver's seat of our life again, because people with chronic illness and autoimmune, we've lived our whole life with a psychological term called an external locus of control. Now, locus means place or location. This is a well-established psychological concept. It was developed in 1954. I studied it in school, in grad school, and external locus we all live from this place. It means my control comes from outside of me. What happens in my life and my emotional response isn't in my control. We've all lived feeling like we're in the passenger seat of our life and that the hard things have happened and they keep happening and emotions keep kind of getting piled on and stress keeps getting piled on and we see no way out of it and we think that life is doing it to us. So we've we've unknowingly disempowered ourself and we've given our past and everybody in our lives to power and control in our life and we didn't like we've never. We might've thought maybe, but we've never really gotten real with that. That's what's going on, and so what I teach is like a lot of windows in for people to get this shift. But a body, a person, has to psychologically make the shift from an external locus of control to an internal locus of control. As you can see, none of this has to do with supplements. It doesn't have to do with, like, managing anything. It's truly learning something that we never knew, which is that we have a different choice in the way we live and the way we emotionally handle life. We never really knew we had a choice. Things happened to us. We got stuck in really unhealthy behavioral patterns. We beat ourselves up. We didn't see a way out of that.

Josie: 34:31

An internal locus of control is realizing I am in control of myself and I'm in control of my emotional response to life. So suddenly I'm taking the focus from my external world and I'm shining the flashlights in a positive way, solely on me and for the first time in my life I'm making myself the focus and I realized that it's me and my emotional response that determines how I feel in my life and how I feel determines my physical health. So once I realized that I'm like oh, what I do, kind of like what I do matters, how I respond to life, what I do matters, and I learn how to understand and respond to life in constructive, healthy ways that we've never been taught and that's really a lot of what I teach and we move back in the driver's seat of our life. Suddenly life doesn't feel out of control. We're not perfectionists anymore. Perfectionist happens from an external locus. Being at peace and calm comes from an external locus. Being at peace and calm comes from an internal locus. I build a self-confidence and esteem back into myself because I build my confidence in how to do life because I know that, no matter what happens, I have control. How I respond matters and I learn how to respond in healthy ways. And this is what actually gets a person's fight or flight response physiologically to turn off. When a person moves to an internal locus which is what I teach then psychologically they're no longer under that emotional overwhelm and they don't feel out of control anymore in their life and emotionally the fight or flight picks up on. That realizes that person is no longer under an emotional threat, turns off. Then the physical body begins to heal and self-repair. So it really happens from perspective shift and that has to happen through really specific education.

Josie: 36:27

Like I know, I was like I'm going to figure this out on my own. You know I try to like patchwork my own healing program for so many years and I did not realize that I needed a teacher. I needed someone who's done this. And when I slowed down and thought about it until I came here to a new life center and I met David Cope, my mentor, who had permanently healed his autoimmune, everybody I worked with either had never had an autoimmune or chronic illness or they were in remission, which means they still had their autoimmune. It just was the symptoms weren't as severe. So if someone still has it, that means they don't actually know how to heal it.

Josie: 37:14

So the thing I like about what made sense to me, I was like, oh, I needed to learn step-by-step from someone who had actually permanently healed it. That's not supplements and diets and medication. The body went back to normal functioning and that's what I teach people. So that takes the pressure off of the individual. We're not supposed to know how to naturally do this. We can't figure it out on our own. If we would have, we wouldn't be in the health situation we were. So that's why the program we teach is a very step-by-step structured program that builds off itself. That does it for the person.

Josie: 37:45

That makes sense, like if a person follows the program they will have that shift from an external to an internal. I could never had that perspective shift had I not had a teacher and a very structured step-by-step process that led me down that pathway. Otherwise I would have been still sick today.

Jen: 38:06

What an incredible story, thank you. I mean, I'm looking at the time. I feel like we could go on for like at least another hour easily and I have a thousand questions that I haven't even asked you. But I kind of feel like, in a way, you went through a lot of them all on your own, which is incredible.

Josie: 38:24

Oh nice, Thank you.

Jen: 38:25

What? What would be the three takeaways you'd want a person to take from listening to this episode?

Josie: 38:31

Yeah, I think that's a great question, jen. The first takeaway I want anyone that's listening to this, whether they have a chronic illness or autoimmune, or you love someone with a chronic illness or autoimmune is that the truth is is that our body is not supposed to have these conditions and they are not lifelong Like in a good way. Don't believe what your doctors have told you. It is not a lifelong condition and these can't. Your body has the natural capacity to heal and self-repair itself. That your body is amazing.

Josie: 39:08

It was designed to be able to regulate itself. It's designed to be in homeostasis. It's the only big log in the road. We didn't realize it. It's just our emotional experience, our internal emotional state. And then my second takeaway is it's not scary to work on to learn a new way of emotionally handling life. There's no big monster in the closet, you're not a bad person out there, and that when you learn a new way of handling your life, you actually get to be the good and genuine and kind person that you've always been. That's just been clouded by your disease.

Jen: 39:57

And I would think you would feel a giant weight lifted off your chest.

Josie: 40:03

Yeah, it's so freeing because I started really thinking am I a crazy person? I remember as a kid, before I got really sick, I was lighthearted. I like kittens, I like to chase butterflies and roll in the grass and run in the rain, and all of that just went to a dead halt as I got older and life turned very black and white and gray and then I got very hopeless and I lost the light inside of me. And when we get to heal by just having the courage it's not scary to shine the flashlight just lightly inside, all of a sudden the disease starts to resolve itself and what comes forth is the wonderful people that are underneath, that have been hiding. And so I think my third takeaway, probably the most important one, is that healing isn't scary. Healing isn't scary.

Josie: 40:58

Something that no one talks about but I know this 100% from my experience and those I've worked with is that over the years of being chronically sick people because we are not naturally good at handling life our illness becomes our comfort link. It really becomes a buffer from a life that we feel very ill-prepared to handle, and I knew I could always have my illness and my flare-ups and my symptoms to kind of pull out whenever life felt like too much or felt hard or felt scary and being someone and we all struggle with confidence and feeling like we're not seen. When I had my diseases, suddenly people paid attention to me. It wasn't positive, but I had something to kind of live for and I didn't realize what a. I didn't realize what a lifestyle that had become for me, an identity that had become, and I was at first scared. The thought of healthy was scary to me because being sick was how I knew myself, it was what felt familiar and it was that kind of glass between myself and the world that felt scary. So I like to tell people it's okay, we all struggle from that in various degrees and healthy is actually the true nature of who you are.

Josie: 42:28

Unhealthy is not our true nature. So when we give ourselves the gift of being healthy and we do that simply by opening up the door in our hearts and kind of just peeking inside and learning how to do life in a supportive way, we get to return to the goodness and the nature of who we are and nothing feels more natural and feels better and more life-giving than that. So trust that even though your illness is, is a familiar, it's okay to say bye to it with love. You know, I thank my illnesses for what they taught me about myself and life, and also I'm so grateful to get to go back to the true nature of who I am and that pathway is open to all of us. Yeah, that healthy isn't our true nature. Excuse me, unhealthy isn't. Healthy is our true nature. Unhealthy is not our true nature. And those are my three things I want to share.

Jen: 43:29

Oh my gosh. Well, I feel like I'm going to have to bring you back.

Josie: 43:32

I would love to come back, yeah.

Jen: 43:34

I feel like we just nailed a tiny little window of information, but thank you for joining Of course I'll make sure that we have all your links in the show notes so people can find and follow you and get in touch.

Josie: 43:47

Thank you, I appreciate that.

Jen: 43:49

All right, my spoonie sisters, until next time, don't forget your spoon.