The neuroscience of uprooting beliefs from former life seasons, so you can reach your next level of a healthy life. Dr. Laurel Oliver addresses psychoneuroimmunology for the connection of inner beliefs shaping physiology.
Full Transcript
Dianeu2019s Self-Sabotage and Hidden Belief 0:00
I met with a woman named Diane for Confidentiality. She was one of the most motivated people I've ever worked with. she tracked everything, she showed up prepared, and she knew what she was focused on, okay? She focus on change. So the motivation factor was there for her, but every time progress drew near to her story, something would pull back. She'd get a little bit better and then she'd self sabotage it. she's skip her practices, she would stop her protocol and she find a reason to stop. And so I asked her one day, it changed everything.
I said, Diane, what would it look like if you were completely well? And she got very quiet. And then she said something I'll never forget. Honestly, I don't know who I am if I'm sick. She said, being sick is the only time I've ever let myself slow down to take care of myself. That belief was running the show and no supplement, no protocol, No lab result was ever going to touch that belief. My friends, welcome to your practice and prayer on the hidden belief that's blocking your healing.
Faith, Fear, and the Science of Belief 1:32
This is Rewire Revival Podcast, your Christ-centered space where scripture meets neuroscience and where faith meets functional medicine and the nervous system. So I'm your host, Dr. Oliver. And as we begin, I want to remind you of this truth I found in 2 Timothy 1.7. It says, for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a power of love and a sound mind as you weed out fear and unworthy beliefs from your life. you'll begin to locate one footprint in front of the other because healing begins when we reject lies, okay?
And here's what I wanna convey said fully in compassion because I have seen this in people all around and I've had to do this work myself. Your body doesn't just respond to what you eat or what take or your lab say. It responds to you believe as well. not in a vague motivational poster kind of way, in hard, measurable, biological way. Your beliefs, especially the ones that you're not consciously aware of, they generate emotional states. So these emotional state triggers stress responses. and they signal your hypothalamus in your brain.
They drive up cortisol and adrenaline, and then determine where your immune system is. Is it in repair mode? Is in defense mode. And this is the field of psychoneuroimmunology, the study of thoughts, emotions and beliefs directly communicating to your, immune systems and your endocrine systems. So there's lots of research over the decades that is deep, It is unambiguous and is your inner world shapes your physiology every single day.
How Beliefs Affect the Nervous and Immune Systems 3:34
So when I say limiting belief is blocking your healing, I'm not talking about mindset. I am talking a physiological break that is on and whether you know it or not. Let's make this concrete. When you carry a belief like I'll never get better or I don't deserve to be well. Or if I heal, I'll lose the one excuse I have to rest as Diane suffered from. So your nervous system hears these stories, hears this beliefs and builds a threat signal, okay? So if we don' know the difference between a bear in the woods and a story that you've been telling yourself for 20 years, your body's gonna respond to the emotional charge the same way.
And chronically, when that break is on for a long time, you will have chronic elevated cortisol that's keeping you in an ongoing threat state, suppressing your T-cell activation, and those are your immune cells responsible for fighting infections. and clearing damaged tissue. So it increases intestinal permeability, which is what people call leaky gut, and it disrupts your HPA access, Which governs, your hormonal rhythm. And it literally changes gene expressions throughout a process called epigenetics.
Meaning your beliefs held on long enough can in turn turn on or off receptors on those gene cells. Okay, things that have been passed on from your mother and your father in your genes, prone to activation, your own life circumstances turns on and off depending on what you've been through and how you handled it. So here's the part that really matters. Your brain learns these beliefs the same way it learns anything else, through repetition, repetition. The more you've thought about a thought, the more automatic it becomes.
So the More it runs in the background, repeating, without you even noticing sometimes after a while, it can develop a story which plays out in your physical health. And that's why you want to heal. Consciously, you know that it's good, genuinely, desperately. but you have a part of your biology working in the opposite direction. Keeping you stuck, keeping you small, keep you limited, limiting your function.
Common Limiting Beliefs That Block Healing 6:29
Because if we don't address beliefs, it's the operating between the conscious and the subconscious intentions. This is why I love doing this work. this trauma-informed functional medicine philosophical approach, because uncovering a limiting belief isn't therapy for therapy's sake. It's not, let's learn a language so I can talk about it. it's a body-up approach. Its clinical work that directly impacts your physiological healing capacity. And in my practice at Rewire Revival Health Labs, every patient goes through a prepare phase.
It's a belief excavation. We look for patterns. The ones that show up like self-sabotage, the ones who show fear of getting well, deep unworthiness about rest or pleasure or success or expansion in your life of any kind. So some of the most common ones I see are I have to earn my health. I can't, I need to focus on responsibilities and that's priority. Health is limited. You just are usually seen in high achievers who've been just pushing through in exhaustion. They compartmentalize them about a lot of things.
Another one is being sick protects me. often found in people who are only allowed to slow down or say no and receive care when they were sick or isolated in bed, unwell. Here's another one. I'm far too gone. Okay. So I too far gone in the patients who have tried most things and had the least results. These are the people who have started to believe the problem is them. Now, none of these beliefs are weaknesses. They are adaptations. they made sense at some point in your history, but they are now biologically measurably getting in the way of your healing.
And the extraordinary thing about neuroplasticity is what the brain learned, the bring can unlearn. New beliefs, practice with consistency, emotional resonance, new neural pathways, literally, structurally in tissue of the your brain. Not positive thinking. Neuroscience. And I wanna be clear about why this comes first in my practice. Before drainage, before detox, Before we address any nuanced root cause, okay? Because if you go into a healing protocol, caring with you, trauma, grief, any kind of belief system that keeps you from getting better,
Rewiring the Mind for Sustainable Healing 9:39
you don't deserve to. Your nervous system will find a way through it to confirm that belief. It will create conditions to prove it right. it's not a character flaw, it doesn't mean you're broken. That's how your brain has been trained to always find safety in every circumstance. So we have to change the expectation first. We have create the inner conditions for capacity, for safety, or healing before we address the outer ones. The outer one's are fatigue, stress, thyroid, sleep problems, all of those, right?
You know them very well. And so this is one of the most important and most skipped pieces of functional medicine. I have built my program to do this phase one work before anything else, to find the belief release and let go of trauma, of wounds, heart wounds. So that neuroplasticity can practice well in your life. One that supports not change right now, but change that can be sustainable for you over time. Because here's what I know after years of study and years living this experience. Your body wants to heal.
It's innately designed to heel. We just have to get out of the way. Have to filter the things that are no longer serving us for this new season that we're about to step into. and remove and sift those things from us. So if you're ready to do this from the inside out in the right sequence, join my three day workshop to start building the blocks of a healthy foundation. I'd love to watch you discover what's possible when we remove those hindrances, not just the physical ones. Thank you for joining me today.
By integrating REWIRE Revival as a daily practice, you are investing in the single most powerful asset you have for a healthy life. A regulated nervous system, a safe body, anchored in Christ, bringing you safety, comfort, function, optimal health, grounded in God's Word. And I believe when those work together, God brings unbelievable lasting change. I'm your host, Dr. Oliver, founder of Rewire Revival, where applied neurology and functional medicine meets Christ-centered counseling, woven together for a whole holistic body awakening.
To get more help and hope, visit rewirerevival.com.
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