What Symptoms Are Actually Trying To Do

[00:00:12]The nervous system has two opportunities to complete its processes, its natural processes.

[00:00:19]The first is through emotion and the survival responses related to that. The second is through symptoms.

[00:00:29]Everything else if we understand this in healing makes sense once this is understood. And by the way, your nervous system, your body, is always healing. It's designed to heal.

[00:00:40]It's its default state.

[00:00:42]What's preventing, what's causing disease, illness is our interruption of that.

[00:00:48]Your nervous system doesn't need healing, by the way. Your nervous system is just fine. We just need to stop becoming the impendent impediment to a natural, normal function.

[00:01:00]So, if we think about symptoms symptoms are not the opposite of regulation. Symptoms are regulation.

[00:01:10]Or more accurately they are what regulation looks like when we have interrupted the direct emotional processing that naturally should happen in the body and that route that it should take is unavailable.

[00:01:28]And if we understand this, everything changes in our relation to symptoms, because symptoms most people assume are evidence that something is wrong with our system, our nervous system, our bodies, that regulation has somehow broken down and needs to somehow be therefore engineered, created. We need to regulate [clears throat] our nervous system. But what if the opposite is true?

[00:01:52]What if symptoms are not evidence that the organism has stopped trying to regulate, but is evidence that it is still trying to regulate.

[00:02:02]What if symptoms are the nervous system's second attempt, plan B if you like, at regulation, at completing processes that we have inadvertently and now subconsciously repressing and thwarting?

[00:02:18]Because this is what symptoms actually appear to be.

[00:02:22]The first attempt is the righteous normal flow of a dynamic system to bring energy into consciousness and out, bringing information uh that from the outside to the world in, emotion in accordance with ourselves, survival responses allowed to rise, discharge, and complete over and over again. That's the normal way the body regulates itself, flowing dynamically through primary process emotions, primary instinctual responses in the present, in relation to our environment, directly, unimpeded, uninterrupted.

[00:02:59]That's the primary function, the primary regulatory route.

[00:03:07]But if that is thwarted through all the reasons we understand, because it wasn't okay to feel, to be, to defend, to [snorts] be allowing of our instincts, that energy has another way of trying to complete, and that second attempt to complete and to therefore regulate is through symptoms.

[00:03:28]So, the first attempt is like the direct delivery.

[00:03:32]The second is a kind of workaround.

[00:03:36]The first, original, flowing through its intended pathways, and the second is flow through an alternative adaptive pathway.

[00:03:49]And understanding this requires us to understand, let me remind you again what an emotion actually is.

[00:03:58]So many people in the mind-body space believe that an emotion is a thing that is trapped inside the body.

[00:04:11]Emotions are not things that are trapped inside the body. Emotions are not objects, substances, material that somehow needs [snorts] to be purged.

[00:04:20]They are not packets of literal energy that are stored as a thing marked anger, held in the muscles, the organs, the tissues, fascia.

[00:04:31]They are, however, emotion is an event. It is a process, energy in motion. It is a process, primary processing, primary regulating functions of your ecosystem, a movement through [snorts] the organism, an information delivery system, if you like. Let me remind you again, emovere is to move out, to move through in Latin.

[00:04:54]The delivery system.

[00:04:56]So long before conscious thought appears, the organism at a subcortical, unconscious level is continuously, always evaluating our reality in accordance with our true needs, our true self, and our coherence.

[00:05:10]Through neuroception, this awareness of our environment out there, and other other subcortical processes, the nervous system is constantly assessing opportunity, threat, safety, and danger, connection, disconnection, and and what is basically for us [snorts] to move towards, and what's requiring us to move away from it, or to enact a defensive response, escape, whatever.

[00:05:37]Always bringing the information the outside world into us in the present moment.

[00:05:44]It's continuously evaluating whether basically life is unfolding in alignment with the organism's authentic needs or not. It is our compass, our navigation system, if you like, instinctually working from the self, from the whole self-organizing system, not in relation to the needs of the ego, not in relation to the needs of the persona, the authentic needs, and not the version of ourselves we learned to become in order to survive. No, the authentic needs of the organism, the whole psyche, the self, itself.

[00:06:27]The deeper biological truth underneath the story of mind, body, conscious, unconscious, known, and unknown, true to you, to what your nature actually is.

[00:06:39]And these emotions are generated automatically in service of that coherence.

[00:06:46]They are part of the systems, the organism system's ongoing attempt to main to maintain alignment with itself in relation to our environment.

[00:06:57]Absolutely key. So, fear emerges when something threatens our integrity, our safety.

[00:07:05]Anger emerges when a boundary has been crossed.

[00:07:08]Grief emerges when something valuable has been lost to orient it us back to the fact that the something has been lost and to move towards reconnection with something new and to adapt to the new environment without the thing we've lost.

[00:07:23]Joy emerges naturally when movement towards something, towards life, towards a thing, a person, a circumstance is possible. It's signaling, "Now, go.

[00:07:37]That's for you."

[00:07:39]"That's for you. That's not for you."

[00:07:41]"That's safe. that's dangerous. That's in, that's out.

[00:07:46]The emotion is not the message.

[00:07:51]The emotion is the messenger.

[00:07:54]Its purpose is to carry information from the deepest levels of the organism into awareness so that adaptation, if necessary, of course, can occur and coherence can be restored.

[00:08:11]Here's the message. It's the delivery system.

[00:08:16]As I said, under Oh, I'm sorry, my tummy's grumbling. Um under ideal circumstances, where we are regulated, securely attached, in an environment that is not overtly hostile to us being ourselves instinctively, the process is completely simple. Activation arises, the messenger delivers its information, the [snorts] organism responds, the cycle completes, flow returns, bish bash bosh, done.

[00:08:40]Regulation has occurred. Homeostasis has been reinstated.

[00:08:47]That's the original pathway.

[00:08:50]The preferred pathway, the default pathway, the route nature designed in all its brilliance. The organism detects something important in relation to you, emotion is generated, information reaches awareness, oh, behavior adjusts, meaning is made, the process completes.

[00:09:08]But what happens if the messenger is not allowed to do its job? Is not allowed to deliver the message?

[00:09:20]What happens when fear threatens attachment, when anger >> [snorts] >> risks abandonment, risks belonging to the group we depend upon, when grief feels overwhelming and unbearable?

[00:09:32]Vulnerability feels exposing and dangerous and needs to be not allowed, disallowed.

[00:09:40]Well, the process automatically begins as it's designed to do, but the delivery system is interrupted.

[00:09:49]So, the activation is generated, the messenger starts its journey, it sets out to deliver the message, but it's prevented from reaching reaching its destination through the body, through its original pathways.

[00:10:01]And this is where many healing models it seems really misunderstand what's actually happening.

[00:10:06]The issue is not stored [snorts] emotion literally.

[00:10:12]And I think people e- even maybe I haven't explained this enough sometimes that it's it is stored emotion, you know, I have anger in my back or something.

[00:10:22]The issue is interrupted process because emotion is not a thing that can be stored. Oh, here's a a thing of anger or grief.

[00:10:33]Emotion is however an event that can be interrupted.

[00:10:39]A biological process that is still trying to complete the task it has been by nature defaulted and generated to perform.

[00:10:48]The messenger is always trying to finish the job. And once it's out for delivery, by the way, that delivery man will be knocking at your door a thousand times until you finally open it and receive the message.

[00:11:00]Out for delivery.

[00:11:02]Can't take it back. Can't cancel the delivery. It's left the warehouse, so to speak.

[00:11:07]The organism therefore is always still trying to restore coherence. That can only happen once you have received the message. Once the messenger has done its job, its energy can be routed back into the system.

[00:11:21]Tick.

[00:11:24]Activation does not disappear simply because the consciousness cannot receive it.

[00:11:30]That parcel that's been out for delivery doesn't vanish because you are not at home to realize it's trying to be delivered.

[00:11:40]No.

[00:11:42]Energy is energy.

[00:11:43]Living systems do not abandon unfinished processes anywhere in nature.

[00:11:48]It's obvious.

[00:11:51]Seeks completion. This is the nature of nature.

[00:11:54]So, imagine an electrical circuit.

[00:12:00]When the current or life force or emotions your energy cannot travel through the intended pathways on that circuit doesn't vanish.

[00:12:13]It reroutes.

[00:12:14]It redistributes.

[00:12:16]The load goes somewhere else. It finds another route.

[00:12:20]>> [snorts] >> And the nervous system does exactly the same thing. When the original emotional pathway becomes unavailable the organism still requires movement.

[00:12:31]It still requires regulation. Still requires completion. Otherwise, the whole thing would collapse.

[00:12:39]And so, it creates the plan B, a second pathway.

[00:12:44]Symptoms.

[00:12:46]This is the point.

[00:12:50]Symptoms are not literally carrying [snorts] the emotion. Symptoms are carrying the interruption of the process of the delivery system.

[00:13:05]Energy in motion to deliver into consciousness information that has already been actioned, is out for delivery without you even realizing in relation to your truth, your coherence, in relation to our environment in your reality.

[00:13:22]So, symptoms carry interruptions of these emotional processes. And more accurately still, symptoms are the lived experience of the interruption. These are energetic processes. And what is held in the system is this incomplete process, that delivery that was not able to deliver.

[00:13:46]That thwarted attempt at survival, to defend, to escape, to protest, to feel something that's telling you your truth that is then converted in consciousness into the meaning that might require action.

[00:14:04]Interruption Symptoms are interruptions.

[00:14:10]This interrupted process effectively somatizing, manifesting itself in experience.

[00:14:17]So, the symptom is not like the un- finished emotion in sort of the literal sense. The symptom is what unfinished emotional and survival processes look like when they have been prevented from becoming emotion. So, the affect, the sort of proto-emotion, the charge that's generated automatically.

[00:14:43]I'm going to say that again.

[00:14:45]The symptom is what unfinished emotional and survival processes look like when they have been prevented from actually becoming emotion. They have not completed. The emotion is becomes the emotion when you open the door and receive that package. Until then, you haven't opened the package.

[00:15:11]And because, you know, the raw affect, the ingredients, the raw activation, is the original emotional or survival process attempting to move through the organism through its natural pathways.

[00:15:32]And if the route is interrupted, it cannot become conscious feeling. It cannot be felt. We cannot become aware of it because it hasn't come into our awareness cognitively or physiolog- physiologically.

[00:15:49]And if we have not been allowed to let that happen, sorry, my tummy's really grumbling. I'm about to have lunch. Hmm, sorry. Hope you can't hear that on the microphone.

[00:15:57]Anyway, the the the symptom it's amazing. Once you can see the map, you can't unsee it. So, the symptom will appear at precisely the point at which the affect interrupted on its journey was prevented from becoming emotion.

[00:16:11]Out for delivery. Oh, sorry, no.

[00:16:15]That's the point at which it has to convert because energy can neither be made or destroyed, it can be transformed and it will transform into emotion and be held as a placeholder at that point of diversion.

[00:16:32]Grumbling tummy again. Sorry.

[00:16:35]So, this is the point of rerouting.

[00:16:37]At least you haven't got walnuts tummy grumbling.

[00:16:40]Um and this is where process becomes held. So, there's not held emotions as these little things marked as emotion, held processes that will become emotion. They're delivering, the delivery system.

[00:16:59]It's not because emotion is trapped as an object.

[00:17:02]It's because the movement itself has been interrupted and the organism defaulted to do this, is still attempting to do the task it is always naturally been designed to do.

[00:17:15]And now it must find a the plan B.

[00:17:19]And this is why symptoms are not merely evidence of interruption.

[00:17:25]Symptoms are the interruption being lived now through the body. We are living this interruption. Every time we have a a symptom, they are the interruption becoming experienced.

[00:17:40]The pain, symptoms, tension, fatigue, dizziness, fibro, IBS, tinnitus, head pressure, and all the others, not the original problem.

[00:17:56]These are what interrupted flow, interrupted processes look like consciously when they are forced to abandon their original route and seek completion elsewhere.

[00:18:15]And this is why we return to the same point. The symptom is never a mistake.

[00:18:22]The symptom is the nervous system's second attempt at regulation. Your symptoms are your system regulating itself in its sort of backup attempt to do that.

[00:18:35]Plan B. Sorry, I'm just going to slip that back on there.

[00:18:41]Um the workaround, the circuit board its different route, if you like.

[00:18:49]So, like a detour, diversion.

[00:18:58]You have to go around the side roads, the rerouting. And the organism's best available attempt to restore flow when the original route became unavailable, was taken out of commission for historical reasons. The first attempt was emotion, the second attempt is symptoms. Both are attempts at regulation. Both are attempts at completion. Both are attempt at restoring flow and bringing information into the system. Both are attempts at restoring natural defaulted coherence of your ecosystem.

[00:19:34]We must change the way we think about healing. The goal is therefore never to get rid of symptoms. I cannot stress that enough.

[00:19:43]The goal is not even primarily to release emotions in a in a kind of engineered way. The goal is to restore flow.

[00:19:52]The river does not want to get rid of the water.

[00:19:56]The river wants the flow to be reinstated for for movement to be able to return for the you know, for the water just to be able to flow as it naturally should in the nature of a river. And likewise, the nervous system is not fundamentally trying to dispose of you know, your fear, your grief, your anger or your survival activation that wasn't able to complete. It's trying to restore movement where movement was interrupted.

[00:20:26]Flow.

[00:20:27]Lysis from the Greek, completion, regulation.

[00:20:33]Rebalancing.

[00:20:36]The dynamic of a system, a living system that's trying to move through us the whole time.

[00:20:48]Restoration of natural movement.

[00:20:52]And importantly, the organism does not particularly care which channel completion occurs through.

[00:20:59]The energy can be transformed anywhere in your giant [snorts] circuit board, if you like. One person might be crying all the time, another might be trembling, shaking, yawning, gagging, heat.

[00:21:14]Another person's that their main route is intense vivid dreams.

[00:21:20]And combinations of all the above.

[00:21:22]Another might feel terrible terrifying somatic anxiety.

[00:21:27]Spontaneous movements.

[00:21:30]The system is not loyal to the form in which it needs to express. It is loyal to completion.

[00:21:36]>> [snorts] >> And what matters is not whether the process appears what emotion it is, whether it feels, you know, deeply somatically energetic in one way or the other, physiological, psych- psychological.

[00:21:53]That's the ego trying to name it and control it. What matters is the movement returns where interruption once existed.

[00:21:59]Energy. Energy flow. Energy in motion.

[00:22:02]Emotion. Emovare, to move out, to move through.

[00:22:07]And this is why allowing is so important.

[00:22:10]Not because allowing gets rid of symptoms, but because allowing stops interfering with the organism's attempt to regulate, to complete what was interrupted, and [clears throat] of course, allow these processes to resume.

[00:22:27]So, when we stop repressing, fighting, trying to calm, trying to engineer, trying to manage and control the body, >> [snorts] >> and begin experiencing them directly at the point at which they were interrupted, something amazing will happen.

[00:22:41]The work around begins revealing the original pathway beneath it.

[00:22:49]The tension becomes the anger, the pressure becomes the grief. Suddenly, we feel the fear.

[00:22:55]And the symptoms start handing back the task to the process it was standing in for. And the second pathway begins returning responsibly to the first pathway, so we don't need the symptoms anymore.

[00:23:10]>> [snorts] >> And this is why gate six becomes a particularly important in the 12 gates model we talk about here.

[00:23:16]>> [snorts] >> Because at the beginning of gate six, symptoms often appear much louder, not quieter, much much more intense.

[00:23:24]Spiking. And many people assume that something has gone wrong.

[00:23:29]In fact, it means the opposite. If you're sticking to your schedule, you're allowing as we detail here.

[00:23:34]This is more regulation.

[00:23:40]The organism is attempting to move increasing amounts of unfinished activation, more processing, back towards the original roots of processing. So, everything will feel more intense, more symptoms, more fear, more everything that was wanting to be lived delivered and more of the delivery system.

[00:24:00]More physiological movement, more dreams.

[00:24:05]More activation, more processing, more waves, more layers. The system is reopening pathways in your circuit board, in your nervous system, which is just a huge circuit board. If you looked at a >> [snorts] >> uh models of the nervous system, it is like an electrical circuit board.

[00:24:24]And the system is opening these parts of your circuit that have been unavailable for years.

[00:24:32]And in the middle of gate six, symptoms and emotions often coexist.

[00:24:38]So, the person can be moving back and forth between the workaround pathways, um you know, stronger symptoms, and the original pathways, much stronger emotions.

[00:24:50]One day symptoms dominate, the next day fear dominates.

[00:24:54]Very emotional one day, more symptoms, you know, activation, more symptoms again.

[00:25:01]The system is beginning to to to to regain trust in the original route. And by later stages in gate six, the shift really begins to occur because the symptoms become less central.

[00:25:13]>> [snorts] >> Emotion starts to take the floor.

[00:25:21]Fear becomes very intense in gate six, much more directly experienceable.

[00:25:29]As with the grief, the anger, you're really going to start feeling it. And your organism gradually abandons the work around, the A roads and the B roads, because the motorway, the quickest route, the original pathway, is becoming available again.

[00:25:47]People often say I'm becoming much more emotional in gate six.

[00:25:52]I describe it slightly different.

[00:25:54]They're becoming much less diverted.

[00:25:56]Less [snorts] diverted in the rerouted sense. Less dependent on the that the side roads, the substitute pathways.

[00:26:06]And the activation is finally allowing moving where it was designed through these pathways that were designed to move through all along.

[00:26:13]And this is why the transition from gate six to seven is so important.

[00:26:19]>> [snorts] >> And anyone who's finding themselves now moving from gate six to seven, please comment here because you'll be able to corroborate this. Gate seven marks the beginning of a nervous system that increasingly trusts direct experience over these work around strategies. So, we're really beginning to orient from the self. We're beginning to trust the body more. We're not let completely self-led, but the self has been organizing the process, and now we're orienting from the we can see much more clearly the map is self-directed.

[00:26:51]And what appeared primarily as symptoms is beginning to now feel primarily more uh obvious as feeling.

[00:27:04]Emotion.

[00:27:05]And what was pr- you know, previously appearing as interruption starts to be much more flow. That's why there's so much more happening. You can feel it.

[00:27:19]You're really beginning to inhabit the whole space of you again.

[00:27:23]Because the symptom was never the destination. It was effectively a detour, the backup route, the the diversion, the plan B.

[00:27:31]The second attempt.

[00:27:34]Regulation in process because the first automatic natural regulation process directly through emotion and energy in the route it was meant to take was thwarted for historical reasons we understand.

[00:27:49]So, the first attempt was direct delivery.

[00:27:53]The first attempt was flow.

[00:27:56]And the symptom only appeared because the pathway was interrupted.

[00:28:00]And so, the symptom is a bit like kind of leave you know, you were out and you left the parcel with the neighbor.

[00:28:05]That's sort of what your symptom is.

[00:28:08]So, it will be delivered somehow eventually, but this is the plan B.

[00:28:17]Couldn't be done directly.

[00:28:18]So, healing at its deepest level is the gradual return from the nervous system second attempt back to its first attempt. Healing's always happening. From work around back to the original route, to flow.

[00:28:32]From interruption to completion.

[00:28:34]From the somatized symptom [snorts] back to the original direct experience of the energy as flow.

[00:28:46]From plan B back to the original design which you were designed for to plan A.