Chronic Pain, CFS & Long COVID: How to Rebuild Trust in Your Nervous System | Miguel Bautista

Leigh Brandon (00:01.304)
Miguel, welcome to Beyond the Pain. Great to have you on the show.

Miguel (00:04.624)
Really excited to be here. Thank you for having me on. Hello, everybody watching right now. My name is Miguel Bautista.

The founder of CFS Recovery. We help people dealing with CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome, long COVID, fibromyalgia, and a lot of these mysterious debilitating symptoms that the doctors just can’t explain go from surviving to thriving. So really excited to be on here. I know this show is one of those few shows that that takes chronic pain very seriously. Seriously enough to look at all the different aspects like physical, emotional, nutritional, environmental drivers all together. And that’s kind of the world I

Live in so really excited to be here. And for everybody watching this, just do me a favor, go leave a five-star review on this podcast wherever you’re watching from, or give it a thumbs up. I know it’s not easy putting out all these episodes, you know. So I’m a content creator myself, and I know a lot of work goes into this. So hope you guys are getting value. And if you are, definitely leave a review. I left mine earlier over today on Apple Podcasts.

Leigh Brandon (01:06.062)
Awesome, great stuff, thank you very much. So before we really dive in into your work, can you take us back to when you became seriously ill at the age 19 and kind of share what happened, what symptoms you were experiencing, and how did that experience eventually lead you to the approach that you teach now?

Miguel (01:29.318)
Yeah, so it’s been quite a long journey to give people a snapshot, because a lot of people see me today and they’re like, Yellow you look perfectly healthy, you look fine. You know, were you ever actually dealing with these symptoms? today we get to work with thousands of clients across the world dealing with all these symptoms, people from as young as nine years old to eighty-six years old, people who are really severe or people semi-functional, but I was somebody who actually went through this myself. So when I started feeling some strange symptoms,

I was about nineteen years old and there was a lot of stuff leading up to it. It actually wasn’t just one thing. So I think like a lot of people, if they look back at what led to a massive symptom flare-up or their health kind of deteriorating, it wasn’t just one thing. I had a lot of stressors going on. a lot of it was

Not sleeping enough, overworking myself, skipping meals, is putting too much stress on my body, a lot of coffees, a lot of energy drinks. I was also an athlete in high school. but I think one of the biggest things that kind of came into all of this

goes across the board for all the activities I was doing was I had a very type A personality and highly analytical. I had this perfectionist tendency. So I put a lot of pressure on myself.

And knowing what I know now, I just did not give my nervous system or my body a chance to rest and recuperate and recharge. So even trying to take a day off, I felt guilty about it. I’d always tell myself, hey, you’re not doing enough, which led to me over pushing myself to the point where my body started actually pushing back and forcing me to to slow down. And so it started with some simple fatigue, started with some headaches, some heart palpitations, I had insomnia.

Miguel (03:18.896)
For most of my life leading up to this. However, where it really got in the way of life was when it started interfering with work. When I had to start calling in sick, I was a personal trainer at the time, and it was ironic because I’m helping my clients get healthier while I’m getting sicker and sicker, trying to push through. And so

I started saying no to hangouts with friends. I had to skip out on family get-togethers because the symptoms started to get a lot worse, like shortness of breath, lots of headaches, so tension headaches, even migraines. and then when it got really bad after a few years of going on and off work, seeing all the doctors and specialists, it was an extremely frustrating kind of gauntlet of testing to do. Because a as you guys might know watching this

You go to the doctors and they kind of look at you sometimes like you’re crazy. They do some tests. A lot of it comes back perfectly normal. In fact, I don’t know if you guys ever heard this before. Maybe you have, but the doctor looks at the tests. As I’m in pain in some in a huge symptom flare-up, s you know, skipping work because I’m so sick, they look at me and say, Miguel, congratulations, your tests are perfectly fine. Actually, I wish I had your test results.

While I’m sitting there and my body is on fire, which is one of my other chronic pain symptoms. It it went from all those other symptoms to extreme burning pain all over my body. And so fast forward about four years into this whole journey, that’s when I really hit rock bottom and my body just started giving out.

And at my worst, I was actually bedridden, completely bedridden for eight months. I had to get spoon fed. I couldn’t go to the washroom. I couldn’t take a shower for sometimes a month at a time. Like my eighty year old grandma had to brush my teeth and feed me. And one of the worst days actually I remember it was it was chronic pain related because it felt like my body was being electrocuted, even just trying to lift a finger off the bed. And so it was a crazy journey of

Miguel (05:26.288)
Getting sick that whole four four to four and a half years, that felt honestly like a decade. It felt like a whole lifetime. It’s like you’re living in another dimension because nobody really understands what’s going on. And you also feel like you’re going absolutely crazy. So yeah, it was quite the quite the fall from being a top personal trainer in a company of like three hundred trainers to not even not even being able to to lift a spoon to my mouth sometimes.

Leigh Brandon (05:53.871)
Yeah, it’s interesting. He just reminded me of something going back to about 1999. I was working as a personal trainer in a health club and it was a health club who obviously back in 99, personal training was relatively new in the UK and

this particular club just couldn’t get personal training off the ground. And they basically said, you’re the last person we’re gonna try and if you can’t make it work, we’re just gonna give up. four weeks later, I’m training 40 clients a week, 40 sessions a week in four weeks. And that went on, I think I worked at that club for about nine months. And I remember there was one point where,

Miguel (06:32.678)
Lot.

Leigh Brandon (06:44.334)
I was there at 7 in the morning. had an hour and a half journey there, an hour and a half journey back home. And I would see my first client at 7 in the morning, and I’d finish my last client at 10 o’clock at night. That was three days a week I did that, and I did shorter days, two days a week. But I remember I was with this lady, she was warming up on a rowing machine, and I’m sat the rowing machine next to her.

And the next thing I remember was looking up at the lights on the ceiling thinking, where am I? What’s going on? And I think it was just complete exhaustion. You know, I’d literally just passed out, right? And it wasn’t even like it was late at night. It was early in the morning. And it was at that point, I just said, no, this has to stop. luckily, luckily,

Miguel (07:26.354)
Mm-hmm.

Miguel (07:33.275)
I think

Leigh Brandon (07:36.495)
I rang my boss that day and explained what had happened and I said, look, this is too much for me. I need to work closer to home. And it just turned out, he said, I was going to ring you today. We’re opening a club near where you live and we want you to manage that. And it worked out really well because then I could set all my own hours. I didn’t have to see loads of clients because I was just employing trainers. But I do remember the kind of, it almost becomes a treadmill when you’re in that world.

Miguel (07:49.338)
Mm.

Miguel (08:04.7)
Yeah.

Leigh Brandon (08:04.8)
Certainly back then, I don’t know so much what it’s like, but certainly working for an organisation, you weren’t getting much money per hour, so you had to put in the hours to actually be able to pay your mortgage and put food on the table. But that was an important lesson that I learnt, and I learnt that very, quickly. So you explained really well what you went through, but what did you do to get yourself healthy again?

Miguel (08:17.702)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Miguel (08:23.398)
Mm-hmm.

Miguel (08:34.53)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I f I feel very fortunate to have come across a doctor in the hospital. So of those eight months I was bedridden, it got so bad to the point where my dad was blending food because I couldn’t even chew anymore and my body just wouldn’t digest food. I’d throw it up or I I just I had no energy to chew. And so

Leading up to this point, I had gone to the hospital many times. I’d seen maybe forty specialists and doctors and alternative health practitioners at this point. And they at least the hospitals they always turned me away. They maybe kept me for a night and said, Well, there’s nothing wrong with you. You gotta go figure this out. You know, just get some rest. That’s what they always told me. And finally, when I was drinking blended food,

One of the things that led to that was my grandpa was taking care of me for six months with my grandma, my grandma and grandpa, but he was brushing my teeth for me, wiping me down, and then he passed away from a stroke. And so that was just a whole nother stressor on top of the whole stressful situation. And my body just like really started to shut down. And so after about three days of not being able to move,

Even just lifting a finger off the bed, it’s like I was being electrocuted. I couldn’t eat.

We call the hospital or call the ambulance. They finally take me in and they they finally take me a little bit more seriously. Well, a lot more seriously. So I end up in the ICU for a month straight. They’re doing every test they could. Thankfully it was covered by health insurance in Canada. But every test they could, all these IVs hooked up to me. They were actually trying to flush my body of all the supplements that this other naturopath had me on. I was taking forty pills a day at this point. And so they’re giving me Tylenol.

Miguel (10:25.198)
Every day. They’re injecting me with blood thinners actually because I couldn’t move. They didn’t want me to get a blood clot. Blood thinners in the stomach every day, along with a whole bunch of other stuff. I don’t even know. But finally, after a month in there, you know, I thought that was rock bottom. And I didn’t think I was ever gonna walk again. And I kind of accepted that.

You know, if it ends right here, at least I lived a good life. I I I came to terms with I’m twenty one twenty two years old. I guess I could be happy with the life I lived. I came to terms with it actually. But they finally said We can’t do anything else for you, however

Maybe we can set you up with one of our psychiatrists. That’s the last Hail Mary here, because it’s not anything physical in your organs. Your organs are actually functioning okay. Like there’s some stuff going on, but nothing that should be causing your 50 plus symptoms you’re dealing with. And so I said, sure, honestly, I’m at rock bottom. Just let’s try anything at this point. Tell me to eat cardboard. I don’t care. Let’s just let’s do it. And then the next thing they said was

Well, he he works under the psychiatry wing. He only works with inpatients. So I mean, for you we can make an exception. You can go home and you can come back and forth every day to see him. And I re I said, I I can’t like I can’t move. How am I gonna get back and forth? Said, Well the other option, we have extra beds in the psych ward.

So if you stay there, you’d be able to work with him every day and you’re right right beside him. You could leave anytime. You’d be a volunteer. And I was like, I guess I don’t have a choice. So anyways, I spent the next month there working every day with him, but that’s when my whole journey finally turned around. Because he finally explained he looked at me in a hospital bed and he said, Miguel, I’ve looked at your charts, your tests. I know exactly what’s happening here.

Miguel (12:24.058)
You have a hypersensitive nervous system. And that’s reversible. That’s fixable. Like we can actually work on that. I’ve I’ve seen your tests. I’ve seen your scans. This doesn’t look like it’s an issue with your organs neck down or head down. anything below the head.

This looks like it’s a glitch in your nervous system. This seems like a software issue more than it is a hardware issue. And I’m like, what do you mean by that? And that’s when you explain this whole concept of me reaching my stress threshold, maxing it out, and my body trying to protect me by putting everything on lockdown. The whole concept of the fact this is a soft could be a software issue, not a hardware issue, the fact that

If I was once normal and got sick, then I could go from very sick to being normal. And I learned the beauty of neuroplasticity. And so within a week of meeting him, I went from completely hospitalized, bedbound, to being able to sit up in a wheelchair, finally go to the washer by myself, finally be able to eat sitting up. and then within two weeks

I was able to go from a wheelchair to a walker. I was able to actually stand on my own two feet, hold myself up a little bit. And then a week after that I was able to stand up on my own and then after a month of meeting him, working every day tirelessly on recalibrating, you know, a lot of the thoughts, a lot of my brain patterns that was going on. I walked out of the hospital on my own two feet and that was like my second leaf lease on life.

That’s when my two point life really began. And that was about it’s twenty twenty-six now. So that was eight years ago, just over eight years ago. And since then I’ve been able to travel, work, exercise. I’m in the best shape of my life, and I don’t have any symptoms anymore. In fact, my life now is better than what it was before, but it was it was quite the long journey to get here. But he was the turning point in the story and the information he gave me.

Leigh Brandon (14:25.23)
I’d love to know how you felt when he said, I know what’s wrong with you.

Miguel (14:35.394)
man, I remember that moment like it was yesterday or like it was a few minutes ago. I could place myself right there. It was this sigh of relief. This weight just lifted off me that finally somebody had some idea of what was going on. I was at such a low point. Because when you’re dealing with this and you’re getting worse and worse, you think you hit rock bottom and then you lose your job. And then you’re buried in debt.

And then you start to lose your identity. It just gets worse and worse. And I think I was like 20 floors deeper than rock bottom. It was like my 20th rock bottom. And so I was willing to latch onto anything. So when he said that, it’s like I felt this spark of hope finally. It’s like that candle inside, it was like flickery. It was about to go out. I was about ready to give up. But when he said that, it it

it made it possible to actually come back from this. And it’s like someone throwing me a a life raft or a a a floaty device as I’m up like five seconds away from drowning. So all the other doctors had no idea. Like zero idea. In fact they looked at me like I was crazy.

almost like what are you doing here? Why are you wasting our time and resources? Whereas this guy finally had an idea of what was going on. So the biggest sigh of relief I’ve ever had in my life when he said those words.

Leigh Brandon (15:56.367)
And I guess for you as well, was validation as well. Whereas previously all you’d had is pretty much gaslighting. There’s nothing wrong with you. And you’re like, what? And then soon as someone says, I know exactly what’s wrong with you. First of all, you feel validated, which calms your nervous system. You’ve got hope, which will calm your nervous system.

Miguel (16:01.678)
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Miguel (16:06.776)
Exactly. It was the Yeah.

Leigh Brandon (16:21.772)
The fear is going to lessen, it’s going to calm your nervous system. So just that one thing saying, I know what’s wrong with you, I’m sure would have had quite a big effect on your whole system.

Miguel (16:31.524)
Mm-hmm.

yeah, and there’s another thing he said in addition to that, he said, I know exactly what you’re dealing with. I’ve seen this before, and I’ve seen other people get better from this. And that was also another big part of it, because I was like, so I’m not just this one in a billion case. He’s actually seen this and they’ve gotten better. So it was that glimmer of hope, just something to latch on to. And for me, it wasn’t even like, yes, finally I’m gonna get better. Just the the thought of it being possible to get better. I’m like, it’s possible.

It’s actually possible to get better? Well, I’ll take those chances any day versus just giving up. It was just something to grab onto as I was falling off the cliff. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I was just I was falling off a cliff and it’s like I finally caught this branch or somebody reached out their hand and just barely slipped and barely slipped by and then was able to latch onto it. That’s what it felt like.

Leigh Brandon (17:27.854)
Yeah, amazing, awesome. So you mentioned that you work with people with chronic fatigue, long COVID, fibromyalgia. Now obviously all of those, in each of those pain is a major part of the picture. How do you believe nervous system dysregulation contributes to persistent pain and other?

very real physical symptoms, particularly when, as in your case, conventional medical tests may not reveal any obvious explanation.

Miguel (18:02.928)
Yeah. So yeah, pain and all the other symptoms, essentially the way I see it is the body going into full on lockdown mode to protect us from ourselves. Essentially we’ve triggered some kind of some kind of alarm system in our body. And actually everything I’m saying on this podcast, this is if you guys have had your tests and scans done and you’ve been cleared of any other health issues that could be causing it. but

If you’re listening to this right now, you you’ve probably done those things and you’re looking for other answers deeper when that what the doctors are giving you. So there there’s a lot of mistakes people make actually when they but in their approach to it. And I made all of these mistakes at first. So I think those are really important to cover as well before even jumping into the science. you know

One of the things a lot of people do is is chasing different diagnosis, which you kind of have to do in the beginning. Like you have to go from specialist to specialist, you know, and hoping somebody’s finally gonna find something. So maybe it’s a rheumatologist for arthritis, neurologist, endocrinologist, maybe it’s adrenal fatigue or something like that, infectious disease. So

They get the blood work, the MRIs, the sleep studies, the tests keep coming back normal. So now they don’t just feel sick, they feel like they’re going crazy actually. Like they’re making it up. It’s a really dark place to be. So the next layer after that is people tend to try to throw supplements and treatments at it. So hundreds, sometimes thousands, I I’ve seen tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, spent on things that promise to fix their mitochondria or detox their liver or heal their gut or or

get rid of parasites and maybe they get a little boost for a week, but then they’re right back to where they’re they started or sometimes even worse because now they’ve added also to their mentality, well nothing works for me. That’s added to their belief system. And so finally the third thing is they try to just push through it.

Miguel (20:04.85)
They think like, I’m just gonna power through, I’m gonna be mentally tough. This is mind over matter. And they try to brute force their way through it. You know, just try to ignore the symptoms and keep on going and and force themselves to be positive, right? Or power through like they used to do in life, thinking they’re gonna break out to it, but their body actually kind of pushes back and and punishes you for that. So

one good day of going all in and doing a bunch of stuff it could lead to several bad days, right? And then they crash. So now they’re actually terrified to try anything because they don’t know what’s gonna set them off. They start to lose trust with the body. Now with all of those approaches, those all approach that

Those all try to treat the symptoms. Those approaches try to treat the symptoms. Not really addressing the source or the root cause. At least what worked for me and what we see working with all these thousands of people, as long as they’ve had their tests and scans done and nothing is showing up, the root cause is usually a nervous system that’s stuck in survival mode and what we call a chronic threat response. So it’s not like the body’s broken. The hardware isn’t actually broken, it’s doing what it’s designed.

Designed to do when it perceives danger. The problem is it it doesn’t know how to turn it off. So until we address that, that alarm system, until we teach our nervous system that it’s safe to come out of survival mode, out of this hibernation mode, or this almost like invisible bubble that it creates. And anytime we go outside that, it causes symptoms. Until we deal with that.

Nothing else really sticks. Like the supplements don’t stick, treatments don’t stick. But once once people understand that, they’re able to kind of change their perspective on things. and every individual symptom, it doesn’t throw them off, especially pain, because pain can lead to so much frustration. But when you understand where the pain’s coming from, and the fact that it can be, you can control sometimes the level of pain you feel and how long it lasts. There’s a certain exercise we show people, then you find

Miguel (22:08.768)
Feel like you’re taking your power back versus feeling like this helpless. I felt so helpless, like I just had to wait out this wave of pain that was coming over me, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. It went from that to I I have some input on how much of the sensation I feel. I can actually control the knob on the pain. So we we chalk it up to a nervous system, a hypersensitive nervous system issue that’s trying to protect us from going back out into the world and exposing ourselves to more.

Mm-hmm.

Leigh Brandon (22:40.366)
Yeah, I often use analogies when I’m trying to describe that to people and it might be you know a smoke alarm or car alarm You know, so, you know when you’re asleep at night at home If you are if your house is on fire You want the smoke alarm to go off because it’s it’s there to alert you so you can get out of the house right keep you safe But You know if the fire department turn up

Miguel (22:47.666)
Exactly.

Leigh Brandon (23:09.986)
and they put the fire out, but the alarm’s still going. You’re not gonna wanna go back home, right? Because the alarm is still going off. And that’s kind of similar to what you just described is that the body’s trying to keep you safe, but it’s just overly sensitive. And it might be for some person, you might just brush their arm and that feels painful, whereas you think, well, what?

Miguel (23:29.5)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Brandon (23:36.131)
How can that be painful? It’s just because your nervous system is just overly sensitive. It’s just trying to protect you. in my book, which is called Beyond the Pain, the same as the podcast, that’s a really important part of what I’m trying to get across to people is that pain is a blessing. Without pain, if you were in your kitchen and your stove was on and you put your hand on it,

if you didn’t experience pain, within about five minutes you look down, your hand will be gone. So you put your hand on a hot stove, you take your hand away, because your brain is making you aware of danger. But that’s what we call nociception. So we have pain receptors, or sometimes they’re called danger receptors by some people.

You you might tread on something sharp. You get that nociceptive input to the brain. The brain says to your leg, lift the leg, otherwise you’re going to hurt your foot. But what you’re talking about is what’s called nociplastic pain. It’s where the brain itself is receiving inputs from the environment via the nervous system and deciding that these inputs mean danger. And therefore I’m going to create symptoms to try and keep you safe.

Miguel (24:53.49)
Mm-hmm.

Miguel (24:57.841)
Yeah.

Miguel (25:03.726)
Exactly. Like limiters on what your body can do and handle in in hopes that you avoid doing those things in the future. And something that really helped as well specifically with pain, he drew out this picture

And it he said, you know, he said, Miguel, you know, I’ve never really drawn out pictures and drawn a board and and spent this much time with the patient before. But I mean, you were actually trying to remember everything I was telling you. I was a good student, I would say. I would write down all the notes when I could write after everything he said, but there’s this one particular diagram, or not not diagram, this visual. He drew a stick person on the left and stick person on the right, so two of them. On the left side, he he wrote acute pain, and he just drew an arrow from the

Body going up to the head, and you said, see Miguel, this is acute pain. You stub your toe, you touch a hot stove, you know, you scratch your arm on something. That’s your body sending that pain signal to your brain. That’s feedback. All pain is is just data, right? But we tend to make it very personal. We feel like our body is punishing us and attacking us, which can make the pain worse. But, anyways, acute pain is

Your body sending a signal to your brain. Whereas chronic pain, what you’re dealing with, with all your headaches, all the burning in your body, he drew an arrow from the head to the body. So it’s your brain sending signals to your body for like anticipated pain or you know over-exaggerated pain. So just like you said with a smoke alarm, like let’s say you do go back in the house, right?

And then you start making toast and then that little bit of smoke from the toast that sets off the alarm. So that’s another thing he he told me too, is that he told me s some things about Doctor Moskowitz’s work.

Miguel (26:55.664)
He he’s a doctor who talked a lot about pain, but he told me there there’s essentially like sixteen pain centers in the brain. And these pain centers, typically, a small portion of them are allocated to processing pain. It’s like five percent or something. But when you’re in a highly stressed state for a long time, those 16 pain centers, they can reallocate those pain receptors to instead of five percent, it’s like twenty-five percent.

And that explained why my grandma would walk into the room when I was bedridden, she turned the lights on.

And instantly I’d get a migraine. It’s like someone shined a massive flashlight in my eyeballs. Or my dad, some days I was so severe that my dad would come and just touch my leg to try to comfort me. And I swear it felt like somebody hit me with a baseball bat. It’s like it was like the worst pain I’ve ever felt. this one time in particular, when I couldn’t move for those three days, right before we called the ambulance and they took me in for two months, I couldn’t move. Lifting a finger felt like I was being

Electrocuted and he came up, touched my leg, and then that’s when I felt the baseball bat pain. It’s like the worst pain I’ve felt. I’ve gotten injured, I’d separated my collarbone. I’ve had many injuries growing up. I was a wrestler and a football player. Nothing came close to him putting a finger on my shin, and the craziest part.

Is six months later when I was healthy again, we were talking about it. I said, Remember that night where you touched my leg and it it was extreme pain? He said, You know what? I actually didn’t even touch you. You thought I’d touched you. I I was about to.

Miguel (28:40.23)
But then you you like screamed in pain. I didn’t touch you. And I was like, what? So that’s how powerful the brain is. It’s more so the perceptions it has on things and what it’s hypersensitive to. So it thought he touched me, it created that pain in anticipation. So it it’s fascinating what the brain can do. And I love what you said about just kind of reading it as data. It it’s there to help you. It’s the best thing to ever happen to us because it keeps us alive and really it’s doing what it’s trained to do when it’s giving us.

Yeah.

Leigh Brandon (29:11.502)
There’s a story of a construction worker and apparently, do you want to tell the story?

Miguel (29:16.978)
Is it the nail shoe? Yeah. Sure, yeah, yeah. I think it goes something along the lines of this construction worker is working on a site wearing these boots and then he he accidentally stepped on this piece of wood, but there’s actually there happened to be a nail on it. Stepped on the piece of wood and he could have sworn he was in excruciating pain, you know, lots of pain. They called the ambulance, they brought him in.

to the place or where to cut the shoe off and look at his foot to to work on it. And then turns out that the nail actually went right in between his toes. It didn’t puncture him at all.

Even though he was feeling excruciating pain. So a perfect example of how our perception of things can actually cause physical symptoms in our body. It doesn’t mean it’s all in our head, doesn’t mean we’re making it up. It’s just the way the brain works. If we actually looked at a microscope or looked at your synapses and neuropathways, you’d see those pain areas actually light up, which is why I think when people start to understand that as well, they realize, it’s not all in my head. There’s actually some kind of physical thing happening.

up there and it makes it real versus it being all in your head. Technically your brain is in your head, so it is in your head. But I like to say it’s I like to tell people, no, it’s in your brain. It’s actually physically in your brain.

Leigh Brandon (30:33.614)
you

Leigh Brandon (30:37.102)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So many people with chronic pain and fatigue spend years going from practitioner to practitioner, treatment to treatment, trying to find the one thing that’s wrong with them. Obviously you’ve been there yourself. What do you see people doing that can unintentionally keep them trapped in a cycle of symptoms, fear and relapse?

Miguel (31:03.312)
Yeah, no, I love this question. and everything I’m about to share, you know, these are things I went through as well. So there’s there’s a lot of mistakes people can make. I’ve found there’s like really the top two or three different things, right? number one, at least for me and for what I’ve seen in a lot of people, is trying to Google symptoms to become their own doctor.

Right, which makes total sense because that’s the next logical step when the doctors can’t help. Like nobody else taught them that there was another way. And there are great resources online. Right? The problem is there’s so many resources and so many unvetted resources, it becomes really overwhelming. So when you’re trying to solve these tension headaches or heart palpitations, you go down a lot of rabbit holes about potentially mold toxicity and Lyme disease and massellact.

Activation, Epstein bar, all of these different things, which it could be those things, but that’s where you get tested and rule them out. The thing is, with the limited energy you do have, there’s just so much information for any of it to make sense. You end up more confused and exhausted than when you started. So you’re spending 10 to 15 hours a week researching instead of focusing on recovering, and every new theory it convinces you that maybe this is the answer. So you chase it, spend money on it.

and when that doesn’t work you go back to googling. And it’s just really exhausting. And that kind of leads to the second thing. When you’re Googling a lot of these solutions, you’ll also see a lot of dark stories, like a lot of just people venting because

When people are in that state of pain, there’s a lot of frustration and there’s not a lot of people that they can just vent to in real life. So a lot of times they take it to the forums or certain Facebook groups I’ve seen that are supposedly help groups and support groups, but all you see is people saying how much they hate their life or how much this has interfered with life. And it’s interesting.

Miguel (33:10.704)
There’s so many people who recover from this who actually never really share their story online. So you’re almost getting the worst of the worst. You’re seeing all the cases that haven’t gotten better yet or that have the worst experiences. so that can lead to a lot of negativity. we have a lot of people

come to us, especially with CFS and fibromyalgia, and they say, Well, I read you can’t recover from this. I read you just have to maintain. So I just accepted that. I’m gonna have this for the rest of my life. It’s like, well, I mean, you you probably s research a lot of this, right? They’re like, yeah, I’ve seen all the Reddit forums and everything. And so Googling and going down deep rabbit holes, that can definitely get in the way of recovery, which leads to actually the deeper point. I think this is the most important

one that can keep people stuck. It’s the downward spiraling. It’s

Not responding in the best way possible to symptoms. Because typically what happens is like you’ll have a sensation your body in your body, whether that’s pain, whether it’s palpitations or shortness of breath or you know, tremors, weird visual symptoms, brain fog. You’ll have a sensation, you’ll notice it, and then immediately your brain will try to find an answer to it. When there’s no answers, when you don’t know what’s going on, your brain will think worst-case scenarios. So it’ll think, brain fog.

I’m getting dementia. I’m getting Alzheimer’s. if you’re shaking and trembling, it’s like, maybe I have Parkinson’s or heart palpitations. I’m having a heart attack. I should call, get the phone ready to call, or the pain stuff, right? It can be super frustrating. And the thing with all of this is more fear or more frustration only adds more stress to the nervous system, which actually makes the symptoms worse. So you have this three-step cycle, it’s like you have a sense.

Miguel (35:04.692)
Sensation, then you have the response to the symptoms, which is potentially downward spiraling, which only increases the stress. Increased stress leads to more symptoms, downward spiral, more stress, and it just is this downward spiral. and so that’s one of the first things we try to teach people. It’s just logically what’s happening here. Where is this problem coming from? Because when they add more logic into the picture.

It actually reduces the amount reduces how emotional they can feel about it. ‘Cause we tell them knee jerk reaction, of course it’s to panic. ‘Cause nobody told you what’s going on, right? But

In the beginning, like emotions are very high, very reactive, and logic is way down here. Cause I have no idea what’s going on. As we added more logic, the emotions tend to come down until I mean I was still dealing dealing with a lot of symptoms, but everything made perfect logical sense to me. So now it was no longer fear about the symptoms and worry and panic. It was just physical discomfort.

But I’ll take physical discomfort by itself. I’ll take that any day versus physical discomfort and the panic. Because the panic is what makes it feel five times worse. so yeah, Googling and downward spiraling is are probably the top two hinderers of of recovery that I’ve seen.

Leigh Brandon (36:29.55)
Yeah, it’s interesting. You just reminded me I Used to be on Facebook. I’m not on Facebook anymore. I got thrown off of Facebook They don’t like people telling the truth, but that’s the whole another episode But I you know, I’ve got I’ve gone in join groups before and You know, I’ve really seen exactly what you just explained. It’s just people wallowing in their own almost self-pity and then you know

Miguel (36:41.65)
They definitely don’t, yeah.

Leigh Brandon (36:58.656)
everyone’s just talking about symptom relief, symptom relief. And I’ve tried, you I used to go on there my own time just to try and give back and drop little bits of information. And then people would respond to things like, this guy’s a grifter, he’s just trying to sell something. And I’m like, and I literally, I didn’t leave my website, my detail, I was just literally dropping information. And…

Miguel (37:15.526)
Yeah.

Leigh Brandon (37:26.838)
In the end I just said, I’m wasting my time here. People were just looking for a quick fix and I’m not a quick fix guy and I’m sure you’re not as well. But it just highlighted that misery loves company, But I guess a lot of people are reaching out because they don’t feel heard and they want to feel heard and other people are in the same situation or understand their situation. But the problem is, as you alluded to,

Miguel (37:29.873)
Yeah.

Miguel (37:36.23)
Mm-hmm.

Miguel (37:42.182)
Yeah, absolutely.

Leigh Brandon (37:55.279)
there’s still no solution there because the people aren’t educated to know why they’re in that situation. Unless there’s people on there that have been through it themselves, but then I guess most of them wouldn’t be on those groups anymore.

Miguel (38:02.682)
Mm-hmm.

Miguel (38:09.894)
Yeah, exactly. And what you said is exactly right. And you know, I used to I used to dislike these individuals, but then I realized, you know, it’s not even their fault. Like and I was probably at some point one of those people because if somebody came in and said, Hey, this could be neuroplastic this could be neuroplastic

There are probably some exercises you could do with your brain or certain things without harsh medication that could probably fix this. I would have been like, You’re out of your mind. I definitely need medication for this. So I totally understand where they’re coming from and I I don’t

Take it personally anymore because even us, we I have over 2,000 YouTube videos on the channel, like hundreds of hours of videos, and people will still call me a grifter. you’re trying to sell something. I’m like, I literally say in the videos, you don’t have to buy something. I literally say to watch the free videos. So I think a lot of it is just pent-up frustration at their own situations. And like you said, like they want to feel heard and understood. Like Maslow’s one of Maslow’s top hierarchy of needs as a human is a sense of

belonging or sense of community. So sometimes having any kind of community, even if it’s, you know, more of a darker one, is better than having no community. Because that at least you feel like you have something in common with the other people. Now

There are more positive communities though, where people are recovering. And I would encourage people to try to get around that, you know, or get in those environments like listening to this podcast, right? Or for example, our YouTube channel in the comments section. Most people there believe in recovery and they are solution focused versus problem-focused. and for some time I was very problem-focused. I couldn’t get out of that fog. But once some little thing makes sense in all of this, that’s

Miguel (40:02.928)
you that’s your starting point because you just need something that makes sense to show you that recovery might be possible and it starts with a little seed like that and then it grows but finding communities online there are definitely more positive places you want to go where people are where you want to be like if you wanted to be healthy again go where people have become healthy where people are a few steps ahead of you

So they can teach you something. So that that’s actually a really big tip I could give people is your environment. A lot of these people they can’t participate in physical environments or physical activities, social activities. So they turn to the internet, right? Because they can’t get out of bed, some of them. But you just want to be very mindful of which environments you’re in. Because it just because you don’t see them in front of you physically.

I’d say online communities have an even deeper effect than physical communities because you’re spending even more time on there throughout the day. So just be very mindful of where your energy’s going.

Leigh Brandon (41:06.924)
Yeah, it’s interesting, again, talking about community and feeling heard and things like that because I think it was about 18 months ago, I held a focus group for people suffering in chronic pain. And, you know, I was looking to put an online course together and I wanted to fully understand where people were and what they needed, et cetera.

I held this evening and I put on some food and some drink and stuff and these people came together, didn’t know each other and by the end they were swapping numbers and I got from it what I wanted to get from it, it was great.

But then they said, can we set up a WhatsApp group? I said, yeah, fine, do what you want. You can put me in it as well if you want. So they did. And then they kept badgering me saying, can we do it again? Can we do it again? And I was like, no, no, no, this is a one-off, right? But I think just attending that made them feel better because it was the first time that any of them felt heard. obviously, was just a natural community.

Miguel (42:10.694)
Yeah.

Leigh Brandon (42:14.784)
already and I would love to have continued something for them but I just wasn’t able to. So that shouldn’t be underestimated. think that’s potentially a really powerful thing.

Miguel (42:26.853)
yeah, yeah, just feeling like you’re not alone that

That already can reduce the stress by a lot. we’ve seen people, for example, join one of our recovery systems, come into the community, and within the first few days they’re already feeling less symptoms because you just they don’t feel as alone. They feel like they they finally have people to talk to or spend time with like digitally. of course not all the symptoms go away, but there’s at least a sigh of relief that okay, at least I’m not all on my own. It’s like, you know, if you were lost in the middle of the ocean.

all by yourself swimming, maybe you had a life raft. It’s pretty darn scary. You don’t know, you don’t have a compass, you don’t have a map, you don’t know if the next island is 10 miles away or a thousand miles away. But then you run into this group of maybe 50 or a hundred other life rafts tied up together. That’s a totally different experience than you being out there by yourself. Like it’s still hard. You still don’t know where you’re you know what’s gonna happen yet.

but yeah, maybe these people they have they figured out a GPS or a compass and just tying up with them, it totally changes the recovery experience and just makes it a lot easier when you’re around other humans.

Leigh Brandon (43:43.855)
Yeah, absolutely. I know one of the biggest challenges with persistent pain and fatigue is that people often, they’ll feel a little bit better, but then they’ll do too much. Then they’ll get a flare up, and then they retreat back to just going back to prolonged rest. Why can both pushing too hard and excessive rest become problematic?

and how do you help somebody find the right level of activity between those two extremes?

Miguel (44:15.11)
Yeah, I I love this question ’cause this is probably the number one question we get asked and actually what we spend most time on in trying to teach people the skill of finding their optimal zone. You know, so it it’s very true. There there is such thing as obviously overdoing it, which I think what a lot of people do, but

There’s the other side, which I think a lot of people don’t realize this is underdoing it, playing it too safe. because that’s when deconditioning starts to come in and you’re essentially training your brain that the world is very dangerous. So there is an optimal zone. I don’t call it a sweet spot because there’s no exact spot. It it’s it it changes day to day depending on how you’re feeling. But essentially

The way we like to break it down for people, it it’s kinda like exercising. You know, if somebody has never been to the gym before and their goal is to get to a hundred push-ups, they don’t do a hundred in the first day, right? They’ll maybe do ten off the knees and then the next day they’re actually sore.

And what do they do? They take a few days off, their muscles actually grow back stronger because when they get sore, that means the workout was effective. So they take some time, they step back, let their body recharge and rebuild, and then they go back. And maybe next time they do 12 or 13 or 15 or something like that. So very similar in recovery, almost anything you do, I’m not gonna say all, but almost anything.

That is above what you’re currently doing right now, it can trigger symptoms. And the best part is that’s actually okay. Most people say that most people see that as a sign they screwed up or did something wrong if they feel some symptoms. So they associate increasing activity equals symptoms equals bad. So increasing activity equals bad. Then they become very scared of the activities. so we teach them, hey.

Miguel (46:10.342)
This is actually what we want. Now don’t overdo it, right? Don’t go crazy with it. That’s like doing 50 push-ups on your first day in the gym. So we want to give the body something to adapt to. We need to give it a signal that, hey, we’re trying to get to this level up here. This is where we want to get you to.

And in order to get there, like you just slowly do a little bit more. but we always tell people, don’t all also don’t empty the tank. Don’t go all out. Leave more juice in the tank. You know, and you want it in that manageable range of of symptoms. Right? ‘Cause the physical symptoms is one thing, and then the other thing is well, how are you responding? Like are you able to keep it under control or do you automatically panic? In the beginning

People may panic early on. So that’s why we’re very gentle. I go gentle in the beginning. And as you get more confident in your ability to respond well to the symptoms, you can like push it harder and harder. But you don’t wanna you don’t wanna go too hard. And so we call those adjustment periods. people typically, from what I’ve seen online and what I heard about it back in the day, they call them crashes when you flare up.

But I looked at it differently. I said, well, no. We wouldn’t call getting sore from a workout something bad. Like that’s actually part of the process. So we call those adjustment periods. Your body is just adjusting to the new level of stimulation that you’ve placed on it. And then I I pushed it further. I was like, well, what happens though? You increase activity, you get some symptoms, then you you dial it back a little bit. You don’t slam on the brakes, but you know, you shift down a few gears, you slow down a little bit.

Let your body adjust and then ideally like your body is at a new level after that. It kind of levels up. And that equals a progress cycle, we call it. So a progress cycle, it consists of in increasing activity, having an adjustment period, and then pulling back to let your body recuperate.

Miguel (48:10.032)
And it’s pulling back physically, but also mentally and emotionally. You want to keep your emotions as neutral as possible under control. And then recovery just consists of sometimes hundreds of progress cycles, hundreds of cycles where you increase activity, you get some symptoms, and then you dial it back. So that’s on the increasing side of things. On the resting side of things, let’s say you were to

you know, someone was really severe and they went for a walk outside. Like to their mailbox for five minutes. And then they have a slight flare up. Nothing crazy. But they feel the palpitations, they feel some kind of tension headed coming on. And immediately they retreat to the bed.

For the rest of the day. In fact, for two days, they go in the bed, go under the covers, and they say, I can’t do anything else. Well, that’s essentially like if your nervous system was a vehicle, that’s you driving on the highway and then slamming on the brakes.

The nervous system doesn’t really like that. It’s quite jarring. And what we we’re doing also is we’re teaching the nervous system that, hey, anything out there, that walk, that was dangerous. We need to get as far away from that as possible. So it creates these associations of danger with these certain activities. So instead of slamming on the brakes and overresting, sure you can take a short nap after. or ideally

You wouldn’t completely stop, but you’d you do stuff, you know, after that. You might sit up, talk to the family, you might go on your phone, lying down in bed, but you wouldn’t just go, you know, kind of hide under the covers, because that is signaling to your body that, hey, this is extremely dangerous. I think naps are okay. as long as the intention behind the nap is, hey, let’s just recharge a little bit, not hey, we need to get as far away from that activity as possible. That was bad. So the intention behind activity is very important.

Miguel (50:08.18)
But there is that optimal zone. You want to keep it in this manageable manageable place. Once it starts getting unmanageable, that’s probably your sign that hey we should we should kind of slow it down here a little bit. Don’t need to slam on the brakes, but maybe just slow it down so the wheels don’t fly off this thing that we’re driving right now.

Leigh Brandon (50:27.022)
Yeah, one model that I use, I’m not sure, are you familiar with Paul Cech’s work? So he uses the four doctor model, which is doctor happiness, doctor quiet, doctor diet, doctor movement. And when it comes to movement,

Doctor movement is all about tuning into your body on a daily basis and saying what movement does my body need today and what movement can my body handle today. So, know, whether you’re in pain or not, that should still apply. You know, I’ve played a lot of tennis this year, like more tennis than I’ve ever played. And it got to a point about a month ago, my doctor movement was saying, you need to slow down.

Miguel (50:58.994)
Yeah.

Leigh Brandon (51:16.514)
You know, getting tennis elbow, my knees were starting to creak a little bit. And so I just listened and now I’m only playing once a week instead of three times a week. Hour and a half instead of six hours. You know, so I haven’t stopped. I’ve still got bit of tennis elbow, but I feel like I’m not making it worse. And it’s just about tuning in to your body’s needs. And of course, sometimes those other doctors play a role in that as well because…

Miguel (51:26.939)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Brandon (51:40.813)
If you’re eating inflammatory foods, you’re more likely to feel pain when you move. If you’re not getting enough sleep and rest, you’re more likely to feel pain when you move. If you’re feeling depressed and feeling down or you’re under more mental stress, you’re more likely to feel pain. So taking into consideration those four doctors on a daily basis can help you to evaluate how much and what type of movement you can potentially handle on a particular day.

Miguel (51:44.496)
Yeah.

Miguel (51:56.912)
Mm-hmm.

Miguel (52:07.992)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. And there’s a there’s a reason a lot of people overdo it. And I’ve done this, man, hundreds of times early on in my recovery. It’s the feeling of feeling of wanting to play catch up. You know, so you have these people there flaring up for a few days or a few weeks, sometimes a few months at a time, and the moment they start feeling a little bit better, it’s almost like

you’re getting out of jail. Like you’ve been you’ve been in this invisible cell where you’ve been playing it super safe. You’d have you had to say no to so many things in life. You’d had to really

Turn the notch down on life. So maybe it was really boring. And you feel like this caged bull that as soon as that door swings open, you just want to reintegrate back into life and almost make up for the lost time. I know I felt like that. So as soon as I had this window of energy or this window of hey, little to no pain, it’s like finally. Wow, the sun is shining, like no pain. Great, I can resume life. So you hit that resume button, and they it’s kind of like you go to the casino.

You know, you’re given a whole bunch of chips, and then you just start going all in, like, let’s play, let’s keep playing. And I actually have a video where I I had this concept people will tend to like push and push and push until they go bust, right? So they’ll do a little bit of activity, like, that I feel okay. Let’s do a little bit more, let’s do a little bit more, do a little more. So it’s almost like I remember literally feeling like this this is kind of a gamble. My friends want to go to the beach today, but just last week I was flirting up, should I go to the

Beach and play beach volleyball when last week I could barely walk around the house. You know what? I’ve been doing okay so far. I’ve been I’m on a winning streak. Let’s go do it. And this might have been like the tenth expansion of activity this week, and then boom, I go bust. Next thing you know, I’m back in bed. So it’s the feeling of wanting to play catch-up. There’s a lot of FOMO, fear of missing out because

Miguel (54:10.662)
I mean, especially nowadays with with social media, you’re seeing people’s Instagram stories, you’re seeing Facebook, your friends traveling, and kids doing this stuff, camping trips, especially in the summer, or any time around holidays. You’re seeing people live out their lives and you’re like, Man, I wish I could just participate in that with little to no symptoms. So the moment you get this window, you’re like, I might be normal, I might be out of the woods, boom, all in. And then you’re even more frustrated after because now you’re in a

flare up like twice as long. So just something to look out for for you guys listening. be mindful of when you s you get really excited. excitement is good, but I think you want to contain it.

Again, that’s an emotional reaction you’re having. So just you wanna be quite strategic with the way you expand activity, at least in the beginning. You don’t wanna feel like you’re technically walking on eggshells throughout your life, but you do wanna be mindful with your capacity. And as you get better and better and that builds up, you can be more loose with it. You know, you can do more spontaneous things. But in the beginning, just be mindful of that carrot that your nervous system is dangling in front of you. I mean

you could see it as a test. Your nervous system is saying, hey, I wonder what they’re going to do with this energy. Are they going to spend it all like they used to in the past? Let’s see if they take the bait. And if you take the bait, you’ve essentially given your nervous system another reason to put you into lockdown mode again. So don’t give it that reason.

Leigh Brandon (55:41.923)
Yeah, while you was explaining that, was thinking of an analogy of, say, it could be any sport, but let’s say a soccer player, right? So obviously we watch the Premier League over here and a player gets injured and, you know, every day he goes into training and he’s in the treatment room with the physio and all his teammates are out on the pitch and they’re playing and he’s just like, no, this is, right? And then…

Let’s say, okay, he’s out of pain, but he hasn’t gone through that late stage rehab where he’s regained his strength, regained his power and his agility, and he goes back out there and plays football, soccer. What’s gonna happen? He’s gonna get re-injured, right? So it’s that temptation to get back on the pitch. And that’s what used to happen a lot years ago. Things are a bit better.

not probably as good as they should be at the elite level but they’re getting better at holding players back now rather than rushing them back onto the pitch. The medical team seems to have a little bit more power over their coach than they used to. And I guess the other thing when you were explaining that was that’s where working with a professional can be quite useful as well.

Miguel (57:02.929)
Yeah.

Leigh Brandon (57:03.362)
someone to bounce ideas of, look, my friends have said they’re gonna go to the beach tomorrow, we’re gonna play beach volleyball, what do you think? And then obviously you can give them feedback, well, based on what you’ve been doing up until now, and then you might say, yeah, you’ll probably be fine, or, nah, probably not on good, it’s probably a bit too much of a jump, especially what you’ve already done this week, maybe, let’s build up to that.

Miguel (57:15.589)
Exactly.

Miguel (57:27.098)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Brandon (57:28.236)
because it must be difficult. mean, obviously you and I have worked with people and their physical bodies for a long period of time and we get a good idea of what people can handle and what they necessarily can’t handle. So that can be really useful so that people don’t go through that boom and bust process that so many people do.

Miguel (57:41.094)
Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Miguel (57:51.917)
Exactly. Yeah, they can’t see their blind spots, you know, and there there’s a lot of people, you know, I believe that more people actually just recover through free content online, but there’s some people who really want that person overseeing their plan, overseeing their activities, just to make sure. Because it’s just like going to the gym, right? You don’t have to hire a personal trainer. You could totally learn everything online by yourself. You could YouTube it, you could read magazines. It’s actually all there. More information than

You would ever need. The question is like which bits and pieces of information do you apply to your specific situation? So maybe you have a shoulder injury, maybe you can’t do a certain exercise, maybe you have a certain diet, a certain food intolerance. So you’re gonna have a cherry pick that information and like put it in a melting pot for something that’s tailored to you. It’s kind of like in recovery. So you know, you can absolutely just recover through free content.

It may take a little bit longer and you are taking more of the responsibility on building that plan. Whereas if you do have somebody else, like myself or Lee, then you have that extra pair of eyes. So you can focus all your energy on just executing the plan versus building the plan and executing the plan when you’re just still experimenting and you don’t really know what to build yet. So there’s there’s different ways about it, but it does make a huge difference when you have that outside input, that third person

perspective on your situation.

Leigh Brandon (59:22.04)
Yeah, absolutely. So after months or it could be years of unpredictable symptoms, people can understandably become frightened of exercise, movement, increased heart rate, or even the symptoms themselves. I know we’ve touched on this a little bit already, but what role does fear play in maintaining chronic pain and other symptoms? And how can somebody begin teaching their nervous system that their body is safe again?

Miguel (59:52.199)
Yeah, that’s a great question. Fear, I believe that plays the the biggest role. that’s the biggest factor, the the highest lever that we can put our attention on in terms of you know, someone recovering from this stuff. As long as they’ve had the tests and scans done and there’s nothing else causing this. Because fear essentially it keeps that loop alive. It keeps that nervous system in in a high alert state, keeps the alarm system on.

You know, every hit, every dose of fear, that’s kind of us like let’s say the alarm system, the way it works, is it’s not just on and off. It’s like on, and then it slowly dies down, the volume goes down. Well, every dose of fear, it’s like we’re just pressing it, we’re restarting it back to the highest volume possible. And so if we don’t break that cycle, we see a lot of people just tend to get worse and worse over time, or that alarm system gets louder and louder.

every time until it becomes an automatic loop where you’re kind of just a a bystander here you don’t even have any say in the process. It’s just immediate sensation in your body, reaction, more fear, which increases your stress, which leads to more symptoms. And so

I found once we bring in logic into the equation that that really helps it, once they just start to understand even a little bit of what’s going on, we want to reduce the emotions as much as we can, and become as logical as possible. And so people don’t even realize that’s happening, but there’s these different phobias about

activities or sensations. Like I used to be afraid to roll over in bed because my heart would skip and it would go to like 140 every time. So I thought rolling over equals potential heart attack. So I just didn’t move. What that does, when I’m not moving, I mean there’s deconditioning in the legs. like I get my cardio is just gone. So when I did sit up

Miguel (01:01:55.887)
I was panting and breathing heavy. and it just makes everything feel dangerous. And it has a compounding effect too. So like if you’re afraid of one activity, any other activities associated with it, you’re probably also gonna fear. So for example, I had times when I was in the kitchen and had like a panic attack.

because something happened in the kitchen. I started becoming afraid of going to the kitchen when this is when I could walk. So and then anything around the kitchen, even walking in the room next to it, I’d be afraid of that. Next thing you know, I’m afraid of walking in general. Okay, you know, just walking because that’s associated with going to the kitchen.

And then on the way to the kitchen there’s like stairs. So I started to associate the whole world as something dangerous. and it assigns labels to these different things. Until next thing you know, everything is dangerous. When you do that, your world just becomes smaller and smaller.

So there’s definitely a compounding effect with fear that unless you manually override it and interrupt it, it will typically not just get better on its own. There’s almost like too much momentum moving in that direction of danger, danger, danger. You really need to like do some manual work to flip that. But once you do flip it, it’s not like you need to work on that forever. You just need to change the direction of where your brain is wanting to go. Like now, I don’t think about symptoms at all, haven’t thought about

it for years. But in the beginning, ooh, maybe couple hundred times to a thousand times a day, I was catching that fear and redirecting it and being like, no, you know what? It’s not a heart attack.

Miguel (01:03:36.784)
This is a hypersensitive nervous system. And that just brought the fear level down. You don’t need to completely get rid of it. Because we’re not robots. We’re humans. We feel emotions. But you just want to like limit the amount of fear you feel. If you can neutralize it at least a little bit, you have some control over that. you’re gonna just feel better a lot sooner.

Leigh Brandon (01:03:58.191)
So it’s the main way that you help people with fear, mainly education.

Miguel (01:04:03.58)
Yeah. Most of it is education and at first it’s it’s theory, like for the first few weeks, but then it becomes practical. We’re like

Hey guys, here’s what an adjustment period is, here’s what a progress cycle is. All those times you had a flare-up and you thought you reset the recovery clock to zero, because a lot of people think that. They think they’re right back at square one. It’s like if you’ve been disciplined and recovering for six months and then you have a flare-up, you didn’t just go backwards six months. You just had a flare-up, right? And so we tell them.

It’s an adjustment period. This is what a progress cycle is. This is what’s gonna happen when you’re in an adjustment period. Your brain is gonna play tricks on you. And these scary thoughts you’re having, essentially treat them as symptoms. Because you’ll only have these crazy, irrational thoughts when you’re in a big flare up like this. This is what’s gonna happen, guys. And then so we look at their situations and we we slightly expand their activity in areas that you know are important to them. Like we don’t have people do stuff just for the sake of doing things.

Try to tie it to like what’s actually important to them. And so when they do have a very tiny flare-up, they can see that, they’re right. They’re right. I am having a lot of these thoughts. I am wanting to downward spiral. But we also teach them that, hey, when you feel these symptoms, when you feel the at least the the the fear around the symptoms, this is your opportunity. Like this is good. This is a window of opportunity.

For you to recalibrate your nervous system, recalibrate the software. Like this is where we actually update the software in your brain. It’s not when you’re feeling great, not when you’re doing really well. When you’re doing really well, you sometimes you might forget you have this stuff. It’s when you’re in the trenches, when you have that.

Miguel (01:05:51.363)
Option when you notice the panic and the fear and you’re aware of it, you have that option to redirect it. That having that option, that’s where the real training happens. So that’s where the magic happens. So it goes from them running away as far as they can, like mentally, from the symptoms, as if the symptom was a tiger. Symptom is like the predator, they’re the prey, running trying to get away from it, avoid it at all costs. A lot of times it actually flips when they’re a little bit more functional. They’re like,

Where are those symptoms? Actually give me more symptoms, because that’s my opportunity. So they totally change their association with it. Now they’re like the predator. Symptoms are the prey. And it’s very hard for your nervous system to be in this survival state, this this danger state, when when you have that like predator mentality. Now we’re not saying go out there, go chase him down, bring on the craziest symptoms ever, but it’s just a switch from being extremely avoidant of it

to being open to it. Being like, well, I’m more neutral about the symptoms. Not the end of the world. And it’s just data. We like we try to teach them and get them to look at it as data and just feedback from the body. And it that feedback is telling them, hey, here’s what your capacity is, here’s what your level is at, and here’s what you should probably work on. Because there’s symptoms, another thing for talking about fear, we see something called symptom rotation. So

The moment you start responding really well to one symptom, let’s say it’s chest pain, well

Your nervous system goes, Well, if we give him more chest pain, that’s not to keep him not gonna keep him in this alarm state. Well, we want to protect this person. We need to get him into an alarm state. So forget the chest pain. Let’s give him head pain, like right in the back corner of his head. Let’s try that. Let’s see if he thinks it’s a brain tumor. So it’ll start giving you different pain as a test. So it just likes to rotate symptoms. but that’s also a sign that hey, that means you you’re you’ve been doing pretty well with that.

Miguel (01:07:56.222)
original symptom. Here we go.

Leigh Brandon (01:07:57.423)
That’s what Dr John Sino used to call the symptom imperative. And he’d say, if your symptoms are moving, you’ve got it on the run. You’re doing the right thing. Keep it going.

Miguel (01:08:02.374)
Yeah. Exactly.

Miguel (01:08:09.488)
Yeah. It’s pretty much what it feels like. And then it’s like one of those arcade games, you know, the whack-a-mole thing just pops up and you’re using the mallet to smash it, then it pops up somewhere else. in that case, I don’t think there’s a way to actually beat that game because they just keep popping up. But with a nervous system, yeah, eventually you you do all the whack-a-mole stuff on the symptoms. Sometimes it’ll move from your your head to now your left arm is burning because it’s trying to make you think you’re having a heart attack.

weird pain going down your back. But you’ve already had it checked. You’ve had the tests and scans done. So you know the tricks it’s trying to play on you. So it it almost becomes this game.

Obviously not in the beginning, but you go through enough progress cycles where you go into a flirt and then you come out of it and actually feel better. You’re essentially having these validation cycles of these concepts, these are not just theories, they’re these concepts actually work and I feel it working. Because it can make perfect sense in the beginning, and you could see hundreds and hundreds of testimonials, but until it actually works a little bit for you, you’re always gonna have some doubt. That’s why it’s we always say, let’s start really small, let’s start with some small.

small wins here just for proof of concept here and then we’ll go swinging for the fences. so we typically like to start really small with people.

Leigh Brandon (01:09:28.6)
Yeah, yeah. So someone that could be living with chronic pain could be fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome. They can reach a point where they no longer trust their body because it seems to react unpredictably to everyday activities. How do you help people rebuild that trust without simply telling them to ignore what their body is telling them?

Miguel (01:09:52.623)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And this kind of ties into my last point of starting very small, just having these these little validation cycles of, hey, here’s what we’re telling you, here’s what we’re showing you, right? This is what’s worked for us. This is what’s worked for other people as well.

And based on your situation, based on we have something that we created, a nervous system health assessment, just to see their symptoms, see what stage of severity they’re at, see their their tendencies for activity, like expanding activity and resting. Based on where you’re at, you know, let’s do this small amount of activity. Right? And here’s what’s going on, here’s what’s gonna happen when you do this tiny activity. You’re gonna feel this, you’re gonna start thinking these things, watch.

And you’re gonna get better after. So we start with something really small and yeah, once they do have that win, it’s a little bit of trust gained back with the body. Now, when people come to us, like even the worst cases, if they’re completely bedridden in a dark room and we’re like talking to their family to get to them anyways, because we can’t get to them, the reason they even reached out for help is there’s at least one percent trust in their body.

That recovery is even one even one percent possible, or else they wouldn’t even try. So all we’re trying to do is get it to like two percent, three percent, four percent, because it also compounds. Once they go through a few of these validation cycles, it could go from like one percent trust in their body to like

2%, 4%, 8%, 16, 32. It does have a compounding effect, but in the beginning it can be very difficult actually. So that’s why we also like to use a lot of analogies. So we do a deep dive, like what is this person like doing? What’s important to them? What’s their job? what’s their personality type? And then we’ll use certain analogies or examples to really drive these points home in ways that they understand. Because there’s a lot of stuff out there. It can feel very cookie-cutter.

Miguel (01:11:55.389)
But again, that’s where having a a hands-on coach or someone working closely with you can actually tailor that information into ways that you understand. And we might even cut out other stuff that might be confusing to this person. we’ll only do what is helpful for the situation, but it starts with really small wins. I think one exercise actually, I interviewed Dr. Howard Schubiner a couple months ago on the channel.

It’s one exercise, I love it, and I use it with with people now. So we have them, regardless of what stage they’re at or what symptoms they’re feeling, we say, okay, let’s do an exercise to show you how much your brain is involved in this whole process. So imagine a time where you know you did an activity that caused a lot of symptoms.

Maybe it’s running, maybe it’s walking down the street. Just imagine that. Place yourself in that moment. Think about yourself doing that activity. And so we do that for about, you know, maybe a minute. And after a minute we say, okay, now check in with your body. How do you feel?

Feel any tightness, it’s your heart rate higher. And every single person, they always say, Yeah, no, I my palms are sweaty, my heart rate’s up, my breathing is more shallow. I I feel kind of dizzy, and we’re like, okay, okay, so interesting, right? We didn’t do anything physical, we just thought some things, and you felt different, every single one of you. And then we say, Well, if your brain can do that, it can also move in the opposite direction.

So check this out, guys. Then we say, go to the most calming, beautiful moment in your life where you felt so calm and relaxed and peaceful. Maybe it was sitting at a lake when you were seven years old. Maybe it was watching the stars with your family at 15 years old, whatever. Go to that moment and imagine the warmth of that moment.

Miguel (01:13:51.537)
and how calming it was and how safe you felt with the people around you, how safe you felt in your body. We’ll do that for a minute. And then we’ll check in again.

say what do feel they’ll say wow i actually feel lighter i feel like my pain went down feel my heart rate slow down like my shoulders are not tense anymore and then to wrap it all up we go well guys check this out in the last five minutes we just we just showed you how to move your brain or have your brain cause you more symptoms and also we taught it how to turn the dial down you didn’t do anything physically all we did was think different

Things, which means there’s a link to your thoughts and these physical symptoms and sensations you feel in your body. And then they go, aha. So this is real. It’s not just all in your mind. Like it actually has a direct effect on your physical sensations. And so that’s one of the ways we we build trust with people as well. And just that alone, just for five minutes.

There’s like a a window that opens. It’s i in their brain. It’s it’s open to the possibility of like this being fixable and them having a level of control over their body that they didn’t know they had when we make that association.

Leigh Brandon (01:15:12.834)
Yeah, that sounds really good. I have one more question for you. If somebody’s watching or listening to this and they’ve been struggling with pain, fatigue or other unexplained symptoms for several years and they feel like they’ve tried everything, what are the first steps that you would encourage them to take?

Miguel (01:15:17.426)
Sure.

Miguel (01:15:34.545)
Yeah. So I would say number one, it’s actually not adding something, it’s probably taking some something away. Look at anything that you’ve been doing, like protocols that you’ve been trying, plans you’ve been trying to stick to, if it’s not working, I’d probably just cut it out. Now, unless it’s medication or something that a doctor specifically told you, keep on doing that. But anything else that you put together as part of a plan

If it’s not working, cut it out. Because sometimes just cutting the dead weight, that alone can make us feel better. so overall actually I would say simplifying things as much as possible. Cut out what’s not working. Don’t feel like you have to stick to all those things because you you read it somewhere online. that’s number one. Number two would be try to feed your brain

information that has been proven to work with as many other people as possible. You’ll know when you’re listening to something if it really resonates with you. You know, stuff like if this podcast is clicking, if these other podcasts episodes, if there’s one that really clicks with you and it actually makes a lot of sense, listen to it over and over again. Feed your brain things that that are teaching it logical stuff in recovery.

Different episodes, different topics, different themes click with different people. You you’re gonna find one that really clicks with you. And I would latch on to that as much as you can. so that’s more on the education side of things. Something makes sense, latch on to it. And number three is I would encourage you guys to find recovery stories online. There’s so many recovery interviews, so many stories.

Like there’s my channel, Raylan Eagle has hundreds of episodes of people getting better. Maybe you as well, you’ve you’ve interviewed a bunch of people. When you find familiarity or something in common with one of those stories, or you see yourself in one of those stories, listen to that over and over again. Because it it’s only a matter of time before that person who’s sharing that story is gonna be you. And maybe one day you’ll be sharing your story, inspiring other people. but overall

Miguel (01:17:44.307)
I would say to sum it all up, definitely don’t give up hope. It is absolutely possible to turn your life around. I’ve seen people bedridden for several years. They’re now skiing again. They’re traveling, they’re working, they’re contributing to society. And so never ever give up. I think there’s a reason you’re listening to this podcast right now, like an over an hour in, it’s ’cause you truly believe you have the the capability of recovering. You just need some extra guidance and help. So keep on going.

Don’t ever give up. You got this.

Leigh Brandon (01:18:16.75)
Yeah, Patience and persistence. Two really key aspects for me. Awesome. Miguel, this has been great. What’s next for you? What have you got in the pipeline?

Miguel (01:18:24.615)
Mm-hmm.

Miguel (01:18:30.062)
man, so many projects. we’re talking a lot of health clinics right now. We we have our nervous system health assessment built out and we’re developing it even further. So it’s like data driven recovery strategies. But yeah, just lots of stuff. I’d say the most exciting thing, we’re meeting up with a bunch of graduated

clients in a couple months. Last year we did it in Portugal. We met up, celebrated, we hiked a mountain, waved the flag. We call ourselves Thrivers, because you’re not a survivor, you’re a thriver. and celebrating with a bunch of people who have recovered from all around the world. That’s gonna be super exciting out in Florida in a couple of months. So we’ll we’ll be posting that everywhere.

Leigh Brandon (01:19:12.66)
That sounds great. And where can people find you online? Where do you want to send people?

Miguel (01:19:19.206)
Yeah, the the simplest place to find us online is just search up CFS Recovery on YouTube or Instagram. I’ve over 2,000 videos on my YouTube channel, almost every recovery topic you could think of, and hundreds of hours of people’s stories sharing how they recovered as well and giving you hope and inspiration. So just CFS Recovery on YouTube and just dive into the content if you find it helpful.

Leigh Brandon (01:19:46.126)
Awesome, great stuff. Miguel, thank you so much. I’ve really, really enjoyed talking with you today. You feel like a brother from another mother.

Miguel (01:19:53.746)
Yeah, I feel like we’ve been down similar paths. We’ve experienced some similar things, even the personal training stuff. But yeah, this was awesome. Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast.

Leigh Brandon (01:20:03.126)
It’s been a pleasure. So that’s it from Miguel and me for this week but be sure to tune in same time same place next week on Beyond The Pain.