Why Your Symptoms Come in Waves (It’s Not Random)

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:12]Fluctuations in energy, mood, bodily sensations are not random events. They are expressions of underlying biological processes through which the nervous system naturally regulates, processes and integrates our experiences.

[00:00:28]In most individuals, this rhythm remains largely invisible under conscious awareness. Energy rises and falls. The body shifts inwards and outwards.

[00:00:38]Internal states resolve without disruption, without our even recognizing it, as this used to be the case probably when we were children. But for people who have chronic mindbody conditions including chronic fatigue presentations, functional neurological disorders all obviously um in the symptom of nervous system dysregulation, persistent sematic syndromes, pain, anxiety.

[00:01:08]These same natural rhythms that are completely healthy and normal and part of the dynamic flow of a system become incredibly pronounced, overwhelming. Our energy may collapse.

[00:01:24]The body feels heavy, full, inflamed, toxic. Sensations become completely overwhelming, super intense, and really difficult to ignore. or we're so activated we feel like we're going to explode.

[00:01:40]And often there is so little, you know, that there's this huge range between things.

[00:01:49]And it's actually the same process is occurring in people with mind body conditions as in everyone else. It's just that there is more disparity.

[00:02:02]But it's h it's it it seems louder. It seems more extreme. It seems more polarized because there is more load more load in the system of unprocessed material amplified perception and incomplete resolution. And to understand why this happens, why each phase must be protected, we must look closely at what is actually occurring inside the body during these cycles.

[00:02:33]These natural autonomic, automatic, dynamic cycles in a human body.

[00:02:43]The nervous system moves through four functional phases. It's a biological process. activi activation, mobilization and outward engagement to drop inward shift and processing of what's been activated landing settling. This is a discharge and resolution as the as as this starts to to integrate and harvest. This is the full integration, consolidation and baseline update of the process. It's a complete loop and each phase involves coordinated change across the autonomic nervous system, the immune system, the gut brain axis and the brain's predictive and perceptual systems.

[00:03:28]Symptoms arise when these processes become visible, amplified, and incomplete.

[00:03:36]This is why we are so hyper aware of what's going on.

[00:03:44]During activation, the system prefers prepares for action. Big or small. It's just what we do. We move. We we we we we we exist in an environment that requires our energy, our action.

[00:03:59]And these actions may be big or small as I say but physiologically involves increased sympathetic activity go into into mobilization and mobilization of glucose energy and heightened and attention and readiness increased muscle tone or preparing you to do a thing.

[00:04:20]Whether it's getting a cup of tea or escaping danger, it's the same thing at a different level. Activation is not only about outward behavior. It's also the phase in which previously, and if you're here, this will be highly relevant to you, where previously unprocessed material begins to enter awareness.

[00:04:46]As Antonio Damasio notes, the brain continuously maps the body's internal states, and during activation, these signals can become more available to consciousness.

[00:04:58]And don't we know it. And this means emotions may begin to surface. Body sensations will seem to intensify and underlying tension or affect may emerge.

[00:05:11]For individuals with chronic conditions with a nervous system that has been disregulated through repression, through not being allowing these cycles to naturally complete, often for years and years and years. activation isn't just the activation you're doing now. It's carrying a historical load.

[00:05:32]It's not just the present demand. So people might say, "Oh my gosh, I just got up to walk to the other side of the room." But that's not all that's being activated. The system is not only responding to the current moment, but to previously unresolved states. And if activation is allowed is followed by completion this material can be processed. Great. If not it accumulates.

[00:05:59]Phase two is the drop phase and this is the inward processing in the beginning of digestion.

[00:06:06]It's where symptoms are most commonly amplified and experienced. So this is where we start to flare or spike if you like. And that that's been activated now has to be metabolized and processed being allowed to finish its arcs which of course we haven't been allowing it to do very often and takes a lot of energy. Energy is taken from all other activities and prioritized to letting this this process be enacted.

[00:06:44]So from being highly activated we will go into deep parasymp there'll be parasympathetic influence reduced available energy being offline inward redirection of blood flow and resources to do this process and activation of immune and metabolic process. This is why we will often feel much more symptomatic in the drop phase.

[00:07:09]Our ability to edit out things is reduced. Our sort of gating filter.

[00:07:16]We're a bit more offline. Our cortical function, our override is diminished because again it's more concerned the system with bottomup processing.

[00:07:24]And this is the phase in which the body can be described metaphorically and physiologically as digesting a effect. It really is. This this is an energetic process underway and you'll feel it but we want it.

[00:07:44]The gut and emotional processing the gut plays a huge central role in this phase and this is why it's so you know I use the the analogy of digestion talk about digestion a lot because it literally is digestion. You are digesting the a effect, the emotion, the energy that's been activated, processing it just as if it was a large meal you've just eaten.

[00:08:15]And through the gut brain axis, signals travel via the vagus nerve.

[00:08:19]Neurotransmitters and peptides influence mood and sensation, and immune activity interacts with neural signaling.

[00:08:28]The body is the subconscious mind.

[00:08:33]Emotional and physiological states are not separate. This is mind body not brain body mind body and they are embodied physiological processes that we're experiencing now distributed through tissues, organs and neural networks.

[00:08:54]Processes of mind, physiological, emotional psychological. These are all related.

[00:09:05]And now that which we weren't allowing to express before through the body that we actually truly felt is having to do so through the body. And during the drop, the previously held emotional and autonomic patterns that have caused our dysregulation are behind our symptoms are effectively what is being held in the system and has caused caused this huge alastic load.

[00:09:37]This huge disregulation, this huge imbalance, this huge compensation for us to be stuck in survival state. These patterns are trying now to resolve, trying to finish what we started. We've just been an activation, activation, and now we need to let us come out of activation. And the drop is the beginning of that. So they're beginning to surface into the body. And these patterns are processes are processed through the system including the gut, the immune system, and the viscera. This is why we literally you will feel often in the drop phase like your guts are full. You'll feel full. You'll have nasty tummy pains.

[00:10:15]You'll feel a lot of activity in the abdomen, in the gastrointestinal system, the entic nervous system, fullness, pressure, often nausea-like sensations, heaviness, this very full toxic sort of like you are feeling like you are trying to digest something and you are. It's not food, it's affect.

[00:10:46]And it's the same process.

[00:10:50]So this feeling is not imagined. It's not because you've got gut issues because of food or anything like that.

[00:10:57]It's an active processing of internal material through intraceptive and visceral symptoms. and everything is much more open and much more sensitized to a brain that is perceive is is perceiving things at a louder level.

[00:11:15]This is happening all the time for everyone, but they're not noticing it as acutely and they're not processing as much in such huge amounts. and their ego, their lyic system, their brain isn't feeling, it isn't wired to believe that these internal bodily sensations are dangerous.

[00:11:38]So, it's kind of just edits them out.

[00:11:44]At the same time, this has happened.

[00:11:46]This toxic feeling, you really do feel this disgusting toxic feeling.

[00:11:51]Immune signaling is contributing to the experience.

[00:11:59]As Robert Dancer explains, fatigue and malaise are organized components of the body's response to challenge. Cytoines and other signals create fatigue, low motivation, malaise and flu-l like symptoms. Please look at the other videos on sickness behavior and why we feel like we have flu when we're recovering. So this sickness behavior very well understood and in chronic mindbody conditions even subtle or transient immune immune signaling can be very very strongly amplified and perceived contributing to the sense of being really really unwell.

[00:12:40]And this is why drop feels so unpleasant.

[00:12:44]Deep parasympathetic heaviness residual sympathetic activation. So it's at the same time you've got this horrible tail end of the activation but you're feeling in parasympathetic state. So it's this sort of tail end of one. So fatigue but with agitation heaviness with unease, a sort of stillness but with still with a with a with a internal pressure. And this mixed state is incredibly uncomfortable comfortable. And these states are not just like one D. You will often have a mixed state as you go from one to the other as this crossover. And sometimes you'll be cycling through states. Don't worry about that too much.

[00:13:32]Now if we can't for whatever reason, these things don't complete all in one go.

[00:13:39]Functionally the system is holding material in awareness long enough for it to be processed. Doesn't feel very good.

[00:13:47]It's absolutely necessary. And then phase three is the landing, the settling phase, the discharge and the resolutions. The pro the processing, the integration, the installing what has just been processed into the body to be updated to be consolidated.

[00:14:12]If the drop is allowed, the system and it's supported in the schedule, the system moves into the landing and settling phase, often marked by feeling a bit more embodied, yawning, sighing, deeper breathing, feeling a bit more in line, a bit more spontaneous movement. We'll get we'll often get jerks, shakes. We'll feel things beginning to to resolve and things will start to settle.

[00:14:43]It's autonomic discharge.

[00:14:46]As Peter Lavine states, the body discharges excess activation through innate motor impulses. This is where we might start to just naturally start moving in a way that it doesn't feel unpleasant. It feels actually quite what would be the word relieving I would say. Um so during this stage muscle tone starts to decrease the breath deepens.

[00:15:10]Previously held activation is beginning to complete and the nervous system coherence starts to starts to increase and settle. And this is where the system transitions from holding into resolving.

[00:15:24]coming out of drop. We must protect this phase. If the landing and the settling is interrupted because you have a baseline that is too high in your schedule, that means you're having to brace against this phase that you can't allow this phase to exist within your schedule.

[00:15:45]That you're stacking activities that you're not honoring this. The discharge remains incomplete and the activation persists and stays in the system and will come round again again and again and again and symptoms just return in future cycles.

[00:16:04]Allowing these phases enable completion of previously unfinished responses in relation to just what you're doing now in your schedule.

[00:16:14]So you're not it's not just what you're doing now, it's all this other stuff that's piggybacking with it.

[00:16:23]And then phase four, which is the harvest, is the integration of the f, you know, the complete cycle integration and prediction update. The most subtle and yet most critical.

[00:16:37]The brain updates its predictive model.

[00:16:40]You just allowed something you haven't allowed before because you kept interrupting. kind of calm it back or interfere with it or hack it or fiddle with it and you've now carried on regardless in your schedule and let a cycle complete. The brain updates its old beliefs. The lyic system retags things as hm that's that was really dangerous but maybe it's not so dangerous.

[00:17:07]We gain a bit more capacity in the nervous system. Our window of tolerance increases. The default node network baseline improves. The nervous system consolidates the changes and repatterns accordingly. The baseline regulation shifts and in predictive processing terms. This is where prediction error is resolved. Not just in one hit but over and over again. And the brain learns that experience the experience we just had because we didn't interrupt it was safe and self resolving.

[00:17:36]As Carl Fristen explains, the brain updates its model based on lived outcomes. You have to allow it to happen in the body. It's no good just thinking it.

[00:17:48]If you have if you if you ostensibly just show again and again and again that the thing is safe because you allow it to happen. If the cycles are allowed to complete without threat because we allow it, future responses become less amplified.

[00:18:10]Sensations are perceived as less important, less significant, less we are less attenuated to having to hyperfocus on it automatically. The lyic system, the amydala, the hippocampus, everything will change accordingly to reflect this. and the system quietens down.

[00:18:30]Harvest is so often lost because when a bit of energy returns as we start to land and settle in the body, people often tend to increase activity, re-engage quickly and make up for lost time. A schedule preserves and protects all of this.

[00:18:47]Otherwise, we interrupt integration and restarts the cycle prematurely again. We don't let it to fully embed in. And without harvest, the system doesn't actually update.

[00:19:03]The internal model of consciousness doesn't update. The programs, the algorithms still stay the same and the patterns just repeat.

[00:19:12]The amplitude remains high.

[00:19:18]So why are these cycles perceived so desperately for different people?

[00:19:27]Well, mild an experience lies in the load.

[00:19:34]The more unresolved material, the more intense the processing, the deeper the drops, and the stronger the symptoms.

[00:19:42]There's more in there. There's more in there. So don't worry, it's just that your system has got more of a backlog, more to process in the way that somebody who's regulated, they do an activity, it's gone in a minute. We're not just doing the activity. We're doing the activity plus we're allowing through a whole lot of unresolved held shadow material, unprocessed a effect, unprocessed motor charges, unprocessed events held in the system to now complete layer by layer, bit by bit by bit. So how long you've been doing it, how much you've repressing been been repressing, what stage you are is going to make a difference. So don't compare yourself to other people and think that you're doing it wrong. No, no, not at all.

[00:20:33]So how much is still is there in the system. And this is why some people seem to recover very quickly and other people don't. It's to do with the stages of of repression, length, history, and all of that. And I'm going to do another video on that to explain it. So, you can still have very strong symptoms, but you can still be stage one in mind body condition. So, somebody could have CFSM me and be bedbound, but they're still only stage one. they haven't been repressing for quite so so long as perhaps another person for example it doesn't matter the system will resolve it regardless so load more unresolved material more intense processing deeper drops stronger symptoms so I obviously had a very very very very big load so my cycles were incredibly slow the drops were enormous ously long and intense and the resolution was like a blink of an eye and then round we went again which changed over time. The amplification will be different for people depending again on these factors. So reduced filtering the ability to edit out plus heightened intraception your you know the the the internal felt experiential awareness of what's going on in the system means that there'll be more signals perceived more intensely for a lot of people.

[00:22:15]So some people, it's like the princess and the pee, will be feeling every little thing at very, very high intensity that would have been invisible to other people.

[00:22:26]It's just because you've been doing it for longer.

[00:22:29]And of course, prediction, how long we've predict been predicting something, the brain expects danger, instability, and significance. So signals are amplified accordingly to the model that your brain is running from not running from running you know from as in running off its internal models.

[00:22:55]The brain uses past experiences to predict and construct your present experience. So it's always referring to the past to explain the present. And if you've been running off these old maps for a very very very long time, it's going to be more strongly associated with them.

[00:23:16]So severity is not just about what's happening now. Because in actual fact, what's happening now, although it feels dreadful, is actually mostly constructed by how high the volume is turned up on it.

[00:23:33]It's what the brain, the ego mind expects is happening.

[00:23:43]The cycles must be protected if you are to allow your system to reeregulate and the backlog to update to allow the nervous system to reorganize and balance.

[00:23:59]Each phase serves a necessary biological function. Activation brings material into awareness. Shadow material that which has been held.

[00:24:09]Drop allows it to be processed. Landing starts to resolve it. And harvest integrates and updates the system completely with what's been activated microcycle by micro cycle over and over and over and over and over and again 24/7.

[00:24:27]Interrupting the phase not supporting it within a schedule leads to incomplete processing increased load adding to your load greater future intensity.

[00:24:40]Protecting the cycle ensures smaller, more frequent processes, reduced amplification over time, and of course regulation over time.

[00:24:54]And this is the quiet return to regulation. It is not quick.

[00:25:02]A lot of people have been repressing for a very, very long time.

[00:25:09]We've been holding a lot. Depending on how heavy your load is, there's going to be more to unload, unwind, unbind from the system. And it's a real process.

[00:25:22]Takes time. It's an organic process.

[00:25:25]And slowly, this is the slow, you know, slow, steady, quiet, permanent return to regulation.

[00:25:40]As cycles are consistently completed, and this will happen thousands of times for most people, the load decreases, prediction shifts and updates, the model updates, the map is remade, consciousness is updated, the default mode baseline increases, the ego is re-educated back to the self to know that it's safe to feel these feelings. It turns down its volume. It stands down a bit. Our sensory gating, our ability to filter out things that are not important because these are increasingly seen as not important. All of these things that we've been hyperfocused on, this improves and the system no longer needs to consistently suppress, repress, override, and amplify signals so intensely.

[00:26:31]So what was once experienced as extreme symptomatology, extreme fatigue, extreme anxiety, overwhelming sensations become over time less intense, more subtle. We get dips.

[00:26:48]It comes and goes and we start to feel quiet internal shifts.

[00:26:54]The cycle will still remain but it becomes quicker, more fluid, efficient, continuous and eventually largely invisible.

[00:27:06]So in conclusion, in chronic mind body conditions, the nervous system is not broken at all. It is engaged in regulatory processes that become amplified through load. How much we've been carrying, how much has been repressed, how much has been interrupted.

[00:27:28]Perception, how the brain perceives what we're now experiencing.

[00:27:39]And it's often very very jacked up to amplify this. And of course, incomplete resolution.

[00:27:48]The sensations at each phase, you know, the exhaustion, the fatigue, the pain, the flare, the fullness, the agitation, the discharge, none of these are random. None of them are a problem.

[00:28:02]They are embodied expressions of processing and integration. And we must respect them and protect them within a schedule that allows every phase to naturally happen and for us to continue our schedule regardless. constantly now signaling back to the system, to the brain, to the ego. It's now okay to be in my body, to feel everything, to allow these processes to to cycle through without interrupting, without interfering, without having to calm and smooth and medicate and fix and change.

[00:28:41]And understanding this, as awful as it feels, reframes our symptoms from signs of dysfunction that need to be fixed to reframe our idea. Our nervous system is something that needs to be calmed and consciously regulated from the ego to signs of the nervous system actually doing the very regulation process anyway actively. That's what we're experiencing and protecting each cycle.

[00:29:11]protecting I mean I'm not saying consciously you don't have to think oh where am I doing I have to protect it protecting the cycle by having a schedule which allows each phase to unfold without our constant interruption is what enables the system to gradually over the months and years return to a stable regulated baseline