Welcome And Why This Matters

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome back to Healthy Mind Healthy Life. I'm your host, Yusuf, and this is the show where we have the honest, practical conversations about the things that genuinely shape how we feel and how we heal. Today's guest is Shelley Galvin, a master transformation coach, an apnotherapist who specializes in helping women living with autoimmune conditions break free from the flare-up cycle, calm their bodies, restore their energy, and feel safe and confident in themselves. Today, we're going to talk about something that does not get talked about nearly enough. The relationship between chronic stress, the nervous system, and autoimmune flares. And what it actually looks like to interpret that cycle. With that, I welcome my guest Shelly to the show. I'm so glad that you are here.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Hello, it's good to be here.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Perfect.

Shelley's Story And Women’s Pressure

SPEAKER_02 1:06

So before we get into the depth of this, I want to start somewhere personal. You were specifically with women navigating autoimmune conditions and the way you describe your work, calming the body, restoring safety, rebuilding confidence. You know, it sounds like it comes from a place of real understanding. What brought you to a particular area of work? Was there a moment or an experience that pointed you here?

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Yes. My sister actually was diagnosed with several autoimmune conditions many, many years ago. And then I got diagnosed with lupus, although it was a misdiagnosis. So that was a blessing for me, but I didn't know. I had that cloud over my head for four years, wondering if this is lupus, is that lupus? And, you know, we did some more testing and found out I didn't have lupus. I actually had my null syndrome, which stops the circulation in your fingers and your toes, and they get icy cold. And but anyways, a lot of it was my sister, and I really wish she would have had different avenues when she first got diagnosed rather than just medication. And with women, 80% of people diagnosed with autoimmune is women. And I feel, you know, as a woman, we put so much on ourselves. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves. And we need to know that it's okay to stop for a second to take five minutes for yourself. Autoimmune diseases can really make havoc on your bodies.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

You know, Shelly, that sounds like, you know, what you're describing is a body that has learned to be on guard. And that learning does not just switch off when the circumstances change. Right? Did I get it right?

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yes, yes, you did. Yeah. And sometimes you anticipate the flare. Like you think you have an event coming up and you start thinking about, like, oh, if I have a flare, what's going to happen? If I have a flare at, you know, and so you put that extra stress on your body. So it's it's giving you, and like I said, with women, we don't give ourselves a lot of permission to do things because it's just how we're programmed. You know, we we take care of the house, the kids, you know, we we take it all, we take on the world. And sometimes we just need that permission of even two minutes, take two minutes and just go breathe. Go find a quiet place and breathe. And it's okay. It's okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Yeah.

The Fear Loop Behind Flare Ups

SPEAKER_02 3:46

Let us go deeper into the pattern itself. Because I think for many of the women loving this, there is a very specific and frustrating cycle. They have a flare, they feel frightened or overwhelmed, that stress response makes things worse, and then the fear of the next flare comes. And you know, it is it is a loop that feels almost impossible to step out of. So, what is underneath that loop at a deeper level? What keeps it running?

SPEAKER_00 4:17

What keeps it running?

SPEAKER_02 4:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Sure, fear. It's you get it in your mind, and you know, your mind, you know this, your mind is so powerful, and you start thinking about it and concentrating on it and knowing you're gonna get that flare. And sometimes you have to break that cycle that is in your mind and just say, Stop. I'm not gonna do this. My body is safe. I know my body is trying to protect me, even as as bad as it hurts, it's still trying to protect me. And I'm okay, I can do this. And you know, and and I also do, you know, hypnotherapy sessions through my program that helps with that, helps you feel safer in your body. You can do that, you know. I have different ones for when you go to sleep, or you know, a little five-minute one if you're starting to get some anxiety about situation.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

So, and you use the word safety a lot in how you describe your work, helping women safe in their bodies again. That language I feel is very intentional. What does it mean for a woman's body to feel unsafe to her? And how does that internal sense of unsafety show up in her daily experience?

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Well, that's just gonna be your stress because it's it's hard to wrap your brain around the mere fact that you have an autoimmune condition and your body's attacking itself. But you have to teach your body that you're okay and you're protecting yourself, that even though it's it's it sounds so funny, even though it's attacking itself, it's trying to protect you. And so your body's trying to fight against you. So there's a little bit of a battle. But once you learn how to get through that, and it's okay, you know, like I said, we have to have permission to be like, this is okay. This is okay for us to to fill down, to have a bad day, to, you know, do these things and take take five minutes for ourselves because we don't. We don't take time for ourselves to just let things go, you know, or to breathe. And and you will know that just because of the work you do, you know, and it sounds funny, but five minutes could is a lifetime just to take for yourself.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Yeah. What you are describing is not just a physical struggle, you know, it is a fractured relationship with the body itself, and that is such a layered kind of pain because the body is both the place you live and a thing that feels like it keeps letting you down. And that this connection is real and it deserves to be named.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, like I said before, you know, my sister is a huge inspiration to me. And what she's had to go through in her life and the pain, I just, you know, I give her kudos. She she's a big inspiration. And I have another friend that she has a lot of health concerns, and I just see them as fighting. And like I said, I wish they had different avenues when they first got diagnosed, you know, 30 years ago. Every every doctor wants to just give you medication. But now, you know, we're learning like you don't have to have medication. You can have, you know, change your diet, you know, change what you drink, eat, you know, meditation, hypnosis, just, you know, giving yourself and also giving yourself, like I said, permission. We don't give ourselves permission to do things, to have a bad day.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

I want to bring this into the everyday because I think a lot of women listening might recognize species of this, but have never quite connected the DOS. So, what does this stress flare cycle look like in ordinary life?

SPEAKER_00 8:24

And depending on which autoimmune condition you have, it can affect all of your internal organs. And you know, it's hard, it's hard to be happy and nice when you're in pain. It's hard to take care of your kids, your animals, your house, your job when you're in pain. You know, and it it's a hard thing for a lot of women to get through, and I'm gonna help them with that.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

You know, the story a woman tells about herself and her body can become its own kind of signal to the nervous system. I'm sorry, what I was thinking that the story a woman tells about herself and her body can become its own kind of signal to the nervous system. And changing that story is not about positive thinking, it is about genuinely shifting the felt sense of what is possible and what is safe.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Exactly. Exactly. I totally agree with you. And it's, you know, I feel too like when you when you go into a doctor, like when I got diagnosed with lupus, you know, I what what does that mean? And she says, Well, some days you're gonna have bad days, it's just gonna knock you around your butt. Like, what? That's that's what you're gonna say, you know, and and I feel sometimes, you know, if we get certain things in our head, we're gonna sit there and keep thinking, when is this gonna happen? When is this gonna happen? And it's like, okay, if I get knocked on my butt, like what am I gonna do about it? And so it's changing that, you know, I don't know if you want to say negative thinking into positive thinking, but changing how you look at it. Like, okay, my body is attacking itself. It's okay, because I'm okay. And I can move on and I can choose to go and get in bed, or I can choose to go outside into the sunshine.

Hypnotherapy For Nervous System Safety

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Shelley, you work with hypnotherapy alongside transformative coaching, which I think might surprise some people. They may not immediately connect hypnotherapy with autoimmune healing. So, can you help us understand what hypnotherapy actually does in this context?

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Lecture on conscious mind, take a little bit of control, which is good because your conscious mind is the one that sits there and just keeps badgering you, you know, like you're in pain, you're in pain, you're in pain. But when you go in there and talk to your unconscious mind and go through, you know, with hypnotherapy, nothing's gonna happen unless you want it to happen. So, you know, it's it's relaxing. I just I truly, I just love it. You can, like I said, you can have a session for when you want to go to sleep, and you know, we just tell your unconscious mind you're you're healthy, you're healing, it's okay, you know, different positive affirmations, you know. Like I said, you know, with women, we we put ourselves down a lot, you know, we're we're very crucial on ourselves. And so, you know, I have just a positive affirmations meditation that I, you know, I do and and help people with like, you know, I'm at peace, or you know, I I read affirmations every morning, so it it's helpful.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Okay. And more broadly, when you work with a woman through this process, when the nervous system does not start to settle and the cycle begins to shift, what changes first? I'm not talking about the physical markers necessarily, but the inner experience.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

I would say their outlook.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

You know, learning to, like I had said earlier, learning to take time for yourself. You know, even if it's two minutes, there's there's different breathing exercises you can do, and and I do them, and I have to set a timer because if I don't set a timer, then I sit there and I'm like, what time is it now? What time is it now? But I do a breathing exercise for two minutes and I just close my eyes and I breathe. And, you know, it's a great way to wake up. But it's also you need to to to start the habit with it. It's got to, you've got to have a routine and be like, I'm gonna take this time for myself. And once you do that, it feels amazing, you know, and it has nothing to do with like you're not neglecting your husband or your kids or your partner or your animals or any of that. You're just a few minutes for yourself, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

Yeah. You know, the shift from bracing to being, from waiting for something to go wrong to actually inhabiting your own life. That sounds like it carries enormous, enormous weight for someone who has been in the survival for years.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Yep.

Boundaries Drama And Nonlinear Healing

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Yeah, because drama, you know, um workforce anywhere. Whenever there's drama, that causes stress and that can cause a flare-up. So you learn, you know, if you're, I don't know, in the lunchroom and the girls are talking drama, you gotta have your boundaries. You gotta just be like, you know what? I'm I'm not gonna get involved in this. And and it's okay to walk away. It's okay to be like this, doesn't it have to be like this?

SPEAKER_02 14:08

But Shelly, recovery and healing from something like this is is really linear. There will be flares that come back, there will be hard days and hard seasons. What do you want women to understand about those moments, about what it means when things get difficult again, even after real progress has been made?

SPEAKER_00 14:30

It's okay. It really is. It's okay. And then you just gotta start over again. You know, you can't beat yourself up. We all have bad days. Like, like I said, I I see it, you know, with my sister and my friends, and and it it makes me want to cry because I don't feel there's enough support out there for women, you know, and like I said, that medical doctors just want to give you one medication on top of another medication on top of another one. They don't want to look for the root cause and try and and divert it. And, you know, well, when do you get a flare-up? Is it caused by you know drama? Is it caused by this? Is it caused by that? You know, do you have that one toxic friend that constantly has so much stress and drama that you look at the phone when they call and you're like, I can't answer that. You know, it's boundaries.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

And for the woman listening right now who has been managing this alone for a long time, who may not, who maybe not has not told anyone how exhausted she really is. What do you want to say to them?

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Oh man, that's scary, and I'm here for you. I I I couldn't imagine going through that alone. I I don't know my heart, my heart hurts for that that one to do that.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

You know, the permission to stop managing it all alone, that itself might be the most healing thing that someone hears today.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Didn't know they're not alone. Yeah. Yeah, being lonely is not a good feeling.

Support Resources And Final Encouragement

SPEAKER_02 16:21

Shelly, for people who want to connect with you or just want to learn more about your work, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 16:28

On my website, shellygalvin.com. I also had a discount code Healthy Mind25 if they want to, you know, purchase anything on the site. And my email is to inspire within Gmail. So lots of ways to get in contact with me.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Perfect. And to everyone listening, all these links are in the show notes, so just go and check those out. Thank you so much. Is there any last message you want to do that way?

SPEAKER_00 16:57

I truly appreciate you taking the time and talking to me, and I've really enjoyed this, and I hope I can help some women.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

Yes. Ellie, thank you so much for the clarity, for the compassion, and for bringing this conversation into a space where it belongs.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Yeah. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

And to everyone listening. If you are living with something that feels bigger than what the stand deck conversations about health have been able to hold, know that there are people like Shelly doing the deeper work. And know that you deserve that. If this episode felt important to someone in your life, please pass it along. We will be back with more honest conversations like this one. Until then, be gentle with yourselves, especially with your bodies. They are doing their best.