If you have been chasing test after test and the doctors keep telling you everything looks fine -> this is the episode where you find out why. Today Grace walks you through the 7 signs of a dysregulated nervous system that almost nobody connects back to chronic symptoms.

You are not making it up. Your pain is real. Your bloating is real. Your fatigue, your dizziness, your reactions to food and smells and weather -> all real. They are also exactly what nervous system dysregulation symptoms look like when your brain has been stuck in danger mode for a long time.

In this episode Grace breaks down what neuroplastic symptoms actually are, why "normal labs" are usually a green light not a dead end, and the checklist she walks every new client through in their first few weeks of working together. She also talks about why the labels you have been carrying around (IBS, MCAS, chronic fatigue, hypermobility flares, IC, OAB, migraines, fibro) are not life sentences, and what shifts when you stop identifying with the diagnosis and start training your brain.

If you have been doing the supplements and the elimination diets and the protocols and the PT and you still feel stuck -> the missing piece is your brain and your nervous system. Real talk: not everything is neuroplastic. But if even a few of these 7 signs land hard, you are in the right place. And there is a path forward.

Grace is hosting a FREE live masterclass on May 13th to take this one step further. 

SIGN UP HERE

How to work with Grace:

• Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort Waitlist
• Mind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system now
• Free Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your Symptoms
• Work with us in private mind-body coaching 
• Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to's

Connect with Grace

• Connect on Instagram
• Check out my website

If you've ever caught yourself thinking "that's just me -> I'm an anxious person," or "I've always been a perfectionist, it's just how I am" -> this one's for you.

In this episode, I'm walking you through the 6 personality traits that show up over and over again in people with chronic symptoms. Anxiousness. Pressure. Perfectionism. People pleasing. Catastrophizing. Black and white thinking. These aren't who you are. They're learned patterns. Which means they can be unlearned.

I'm digging into how each one keeps your nervous system stuck in threat mode, where it actually came from (hint -> it's almost never random), and the small shifts that start to loosen the grip. I'm also sharing the moment my therapist called me out on my own perfectionism in grad school -> and the light bulb that finally went off for me.

If you've been doing the work, listening to podcasts, reading the books, and you still feel like something keeps pulling you back into the loop -> it's probably one of these. Maybe more than one. The good news is, naming it is half the work. Once you can see the pattern, you can step outside of it.

You don't have to fix your personality. You just have to give your nervous system a different message than the one it's been getting for years.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sign up for my FREE Live Masterclass happening May 15th :
How to know if your symptoms are nervous system driven and what to do next

Pain Reprocessing Therapy 

How to work with Grace:

• Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort Waitlist
• Mind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system now
• Free Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your Symptoms
• Work with us in private mind-body coaching 
• Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to's

Connect with Grace

• Connect on Instagram
• Check out my website

If you've been doing all the right things and still putting pressure on yourself to heal faster, this conversation might land deeply.

Grace sits down with Lindsay Vine, an ME/CFS and long COVID recovery coach who spent seven and a half years navigating her own healing journey, including a period of being fully bedbound. Lindsay now works one-on-one with clients and teaches mind-body and neuroplasticity courses within the healthcare system in British Columbia, Canada. She also co-created the CFS Programs Guide, a searchable resource covering 34+ recovery programs to help people find the right fit without the overwhelm.

Together, they explore how the pressure to "get better" can become the very thing keeping the nervous system stuck. They discuss the role of goodism — the deep need to be seen as good — and how it drives people to turn recovery into another achievement to get right. Lindsay shares her own turning point of shifting from valuing achievements to valuing who she is, and they talk through what it looks like when brain retraining feels fake, why positive psychology alone isn't always enough, and how doing less can sometimes be the real healing move. They also break down the three pathways that keep people stuck — worry, pressure, and self-criticism — and what to pivot to instead: gratitude, focusing on wins, and self-compassion.

This episode is for anyone who's ever thought, "I should have figured this out by now."

Find Lindsay: 

Website

Post Viral Podcast

CFS Programs Guide

Listen to Episode 14: Healing ME/CFS Using Brain Training and Nervous System Regulation 

How to work with Grace:

• Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort Waitlist
• Mind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system now
• Free Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your Symptoms
• Work with us in private mind-body coaching 
• Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to's

Connect with Grace

• Connect on Instagram
• Check out my website

In this solo episode, Grace breaks down what it actually means to create safety in the nervous system — moving beyond the vague advice of "just feel safe" and into six specific, practical approaches that listeners can start using right away. She explores why a dysregulated nervous system keeps responding to non-dangerous things as threats, and why safety isn't something you can think your way into — it has to be felt in the body. 

Grace walks through the power of accepting where you are instead of fighting it, how suppressed emotions keep the system stuck in chronic activation, the role of spiritual connection in co-regulation, and why authentic self-expression may be the deepest safety signal of all. 

Drawing from her own healing journey and clinical experience, she gets honest about what it took to stop performing okayness and start actually feeling it. This episode builds on her popular earlier conversation with Vanessa Blackstone in Episode 24, going deeper with concrete examples and practices. An episode to save and return to — each practice builds over time, and different ones will land for different people.

Referenced episode: Ep 24. How to Create Your Own Authentic Message of Safety with Vanessa Blackstone: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2346801/episodes/15170620

How to work with Grace:

• Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort Waitlist
• Mind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system now
• Free Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your Symptoms
• Work with us in private mind-body coaching 
• Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to's

Connect with Grace

• Connect on Instagram
• Check out my website

Kayla Jacobsen is a licensed clinical social worker and mental health therapist based in Minnesota, where she works at a small group practice supporting individuals navigating anxiety, chronic pain, trauma, and traits associated with being a Highly Sensitive Person. Her approach is relational and holistic, shaped deeply by her own healing journey with chronic migraines and a sensitive nervous system. Through the Mind-Body Healing Program, Kayla experienced meaningful shifts in how she relates to her emotions, beliefs, and symptoms — work that continues to inform how she shows up with clients today.

In this episode, Kayla shares what it was like to have migraines starting at age 10, cycle through Western and Eastern medicine without lasting answers, and eventually realize that information-gathering had become its own form of avoidance. She and Grace explore how perfectionism, shame, and suppressed anger were quietly driving her symptoms — and what actually changed when she stopped trying to fix her migraines and started relating to them differently. Kayla also talks about what this work has opened up in her therapy practice, including how she now invites conversations about physical symptoms into sessions and incorporates more experiential, nervous system-informed approaches with her clients.

Find Kayla: 

Psychology Today

Willow Creek Counseling

How to work with Grace:

• Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort Waitlist
• Mind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system now
• Free Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your Symptoms
• Work with us in private mind-body coaching 
• Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to's

Connect with Grace

• Connect on Instagram
• Check out my website

Ellen B. Alden is a Mind/Body Coach who fully recovered from Long COVID after the medical system could not help her. When chronic symptoms took over her life, Ellen discovered that healing was possible through nervous system regulation and brain retraining. Using mindfulness, meditation, and Pain Reprocessing Therapy, she overcame chronic illness, anxiety, and lifelong hypervigilance. She is certified in PRT, MBSR, MBCT, and functional breathing, and now helps others heal through her community, My Recovery Crew.

In this episode, Grace and Ellen discuss what it was like to be shuffled through the medical system with diagnoses of Long COVID, MCAS, and POTS — and how Ellen moved from hopelessness and victimhood to full recovery. Ellen shares the nighttime turning point that shifted her mindset, how she used visualization and micro moments to retrain her brain, and why she started reintroducing feared foods using breathwork and safety cues. They explore what recovery actually looks like day to day, why post-exertional malaise disappeared when Ellen changed how she related to movement, and how letting go of perfectionism and outcome-driven thinking was essential to healing.

Connect with Ellen: www.stress-less-studio.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellen_mindful_healing/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ellenalden-mind-body-healing Email: [email protected]

How to work with Grace:

• Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort Waitlist
• Mind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system now
• Free Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your Symptoms
• Work with us in private mind-body coaching 
• Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to's

Connect with Grace

• Connect on Instagram
• Check out my website

In this solo episode, Grace Secker opens up about the one thing she was missing during her own healing journey — and why it kept her stuck in flare cycles for years, even after she understood the work. It wasn't more information, more books, or more podcasts. It was consistent support, accountability, and community.

Grace shares her personal story of recovering from chronic pain in her 20s through what is now called pain reprocessing therapy, only to develop a wave of new symptoms years later — chronic fatigue, gut issues, histamine reactions, migraines — and having to find her way back to mind-body work all over again, this time completely alone.

She explains why understanding alone doesn't change the nervous system — because knowledge lives in the prefrontal cortex while the patterns driving symptoms operate from much older, less rational parts of the brain. Real change comes from practice, repetition, and showing up consistently, especially on the hard days. Grace also explores the science of co-regulation — how our nervous systems are wired to calm and heal in relationship with other safe humans — and why so much healing content is consumed in isolation, which limits how far it can take you.

Grace introduces what she's been building behind the scenes: small, intimate group containers (six people max) designed for people already in the MindBody Healing Method course who want structure, accountability, and a community of people who truly get it. The first group launches in April.

How to work with Grace:

• Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort Waitlist
• Mind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system now
• Free Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your Symptoms
• Work with us in private mind-body coaching 
• Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to's

Connect with Grace

• Connect on Instagram
• Check out my website

If you've been diagnosed with IBS, chronic constipation, cyclic vomiting, or another functional GI issue and your doctor can't find anything structurally wrong — that's actually good news. 

In this episode, Grace sits down with Dr. Jennifer Franklin, one of the first gastropsychologists in the US, to break down the gut-brain connection in a way that's simple, clear, and genuinely hopeful. 

They explore how the autonomic nervous system controls both stress and digestion, why lifelong patterns like people-pleasing and emotional suppression quietly fuel gut symptoms, and how your brain works around the clock to keep certain emotions out of consciousness — and what that means for your body. 

Dr. Franklin shares her powerful "passenger seat" analogy for working with your body instead of against it, and explains why reducing stress is the one intervention with no downside. 

If you've been told "nothing is wrong" but you're still struggling, this conversation reframes that diagnosis as a starting point for real healing — because it's a software problem, not a hardware problem.

🔗 Find Dr. Jennifer Franklin:
🌐 Website
📸 Instagram
📘 Facebook
▶️ YouTube

How to work with Grace:

• Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort Waitlist
• Mind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system now
• Free Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your Symptoms
• Work with us in private mind-body coaching 
• Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to's

Connect with Grace

• Connect on Instagram
• Check out my website

If you've been doing the nervous system work but still feel stuck, this episode is for you. 

Grace Secker dives into the seven habits she consistently sees in people who actually heal — and why how you show up to the process matters just as much as what you practice. 

This isn't a checklist or protocol. It's about the mindset, identity, and ways of being that shift everything. 

Grace explores why waiting to feel "ready" keeps you stuck, how over-identifying with being sick reinforces survival mode, the quiet belief that you don't deserve to heal, and what it looks like to build real safety in your daily life. 

She also gets honest about why consuming information without practicing keeps the brain locked in old patterns — and how to stay in the process even when healing isn't linear. 

Whether you're just beginning to explore mind-body healing or you've been on this path for a while, this episode offers a grounded, compassionate reframe on what recovery actually asks of you.

How to work with Grace:

• Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort Waitlist
• Mind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system now
• Free Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your Symptoms
• Work with us in private mind-body coaching 
• Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to's

Connect with Grace

• Connect on Instagram
• Check out my website

In this episode, Grace sits down with Dr. Rebecca Kennedy, a family medicine physician with over 20 years of clinical experience and founder of Resilience Health Care in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Kennedy spent 15 years at Kaiser Permanente where she led the Long COVID specialty group, treating some of the most severe cases in the entire Northwest region. After witnessing how profoundly the neuroplastic model transformed her patients' lives — and after developing her own severe neuroplastic symptoms — she left Kaiser in 2023 to focus exclusively on this work.

Together, they explore why so many people with long COVID, MCAS, POTS, and ME/CFS aren't getting better with conventional treatments, what the research actually shows about spike proteins and inflammation markers, and why the brain's threat response may be the unifying explanation that finally makes everything make sense. Dr. Kennedy shares why the placebo and nocebo effects are far more powerful than most people realize, why long COVID may be better understood as a post-pandemic syndrome, and what it takes to move beyond surface-level nervous system tools into the deeper emotional work that creates lasting change.

Covered in this episode: 

✨ Dr. Kennedy's journey from Kaiser Permanente to founding Resilience Health Care — and her own experience with severe neuroplastic pain and fatigue 

✨ Why spike proteins, cytokine changes, and abnormal blood tests may not be driving your symptoms the way you've been told 

✨ The real science behind the placebo and nocebo effect — and what vaccine trial data reveals about the brain's role in side effects

 ✨ Why most people with long COVID are middle-aged women who were previously healthy — and what that tells us 

✨ How MCAS, POTS, and ME/CFS diagnoses can unintentionally keep people stuck in fear and body-focused treatment 

✨ The critical difference between nervous system regulation tools and the deeper emotional processing that actually turns off the signal 

✨ Why stopping body-based treatments entirely can sometimes be the missing piece 

✨ How to accept a neuroplastic diagnosis when everything you've been told points to something structural

Connect with Dr. Rebecca Kennedy:

Website

Instagram

Facebook

How to work with Grace:

• Practitioner Training-Mind Body Integtration Method Founding Cohort Waitlist
• Mind-Body Healing Method Course - Regulate your nervous system now
• Free Masterclass: How to Know If Your Nervous System Is Behind Your Symptoms
• Work with us in private mind-body coaching 
• Subscribe to my Substack for the deeper how-to's

Connect with Grace

• Connect on Instagram
• Check out my website