#18 5 Ways to Train Your Brain to Stop Prioritizing Symptoms

If focusing on your symptoms actually healed them, you’d be better by now — right?

In this episode of The Rebellious Healer, we’re getting real about why constantly monitoring, tracking, and analyzing your symptoms is not helping you heal — it’s keeping your brain stuck in a loop of fear and survival.

You’ll learn:

• Why symptom focus is a subconscious survival pattern — not a healing strategy
• The real reason it feels “responsible” to stay hyper-aware (and why that’s a trap)
• 5 powerful, brain-based ways to interrupt the symptom obsession and redirect your focus toward healing

This episode will challenge your old patterns, give you tools to shift your brain, and remind you that your body doesn’t need more monitoring — it needs more messages of safety.

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Thanks for listening! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back to the Rebellious Healer Podcast, where we don't just talk about healing, we take action. It's time to ditch the fear, understand the messages, and take control of your health and healing. Today we're diving into something I know so many of you struggle with, and it's one of the most common things I see keeping people stuck. Focusing on symptoms. Now, before you start thinking, but Jenny, shouldn't I be paying attention to what my body is doing? Just hold on. We're going to break this down in a way that is going to completely shift the way you see your symptoms and most importantly, how you relate to them. Here's the truth: if focusing on your symptoms actually solved them, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast right now. Let that land. Because focusing on symptoms is not healing. In today's episode, I'm going to walk you through why your brain is wired to keep focusing on symptoms and how it's not your fault, what's actually happening in your body when you do focus on your symptoms, and five simple but rebellious ways to redirect that focus and finally start shifting the pattern that's keeping you stuck. You'll walk away from this episode with tools that interrupt the cycle and start rewiring your brain for healing, safety, and trust. Let's get into it. Let's start with a truth most people miss. Focusing on symptoms is a survival response. It's not a healing one. Your brain is hardwired to keep you alive. That's its number one job. Not to keep you happy, not to keep you evolving, just to keep you safe based on what it thinks is dangerous. And if your brain has decided that symptoms equal a threat, then you better believe it's going to keep scanning your body for any sign that something's wrong. This isn't you being obsessive, it's your subconscious trying to protect you. Imagine your brain is like airport secured. Its job is to scan for anything suspicious. But here's the thing: once it's been trained to think that a water bottle is a bomb, it's going to keep pulling people aside who are just carrying their coffee. It's misreading the signal. That's what your brain does with symptoms when you've been in a prolonged fear state, been told something is chronic or have a history of medical trauma or failed healing attempts. The system is on high alert. It's hypersensitive. So even a neutral sign from your body, a little tightness, a flutter, a little pain, gets flagged as five alarm fire. And every time you respond to that signal with fear or focus, you reinforce the brain's belief. Yes, this is dangerous. Please keep scanning for it. That's how symptom focus becomes a feedback loop. You wake up, you scan. Is there pain there? Is the sensation gone? Is it better or worse than yesterday? And that scanning, even if it's small, is actually keeping the pattern in your brain alive. It's like watering seeds and wondering why the flowers aren't growing. And you are training your brain every single time you focus on symptoms to keep prioritizing them. You're feeding the neural pathway that says, this matters most, and your body follows your brain's lead. Let's go a layer deeper, because symptom focus isn't just about the body, it's also about the beliefs underneath it. There's often a subconscious belief that sounds like, if I stop monitoring my symptoms, I might miss something serious. If I'm not tracking this, I won't know if I'm getting better or worse. Or if I'm not focusing on it, I'm not taking my healing seriously. But what if the opposite is true? What if focusing on symptoms is actually keeping you from healing? Because the truth is, you cannot heal from a place of fear. And symptom focus, no matter how logical it feels, is rooted in fear. Fear of something being wrong, fear of not being in control, fear that your body isn't doing what it's supposed to do. And let's be honest, it feels responsible to do this. But responsibility in healing isn't about monitoring. It's about training your brain to feel safe. And if your brain only feels safe when the symptom is gone, then you're setting yourself up to chasing healing forever. Real safety says, I trust my body even when the symptom is still there. I know my body is doing what it needs to do. I don't need to analyze it to heal from it. So here's a reflection for you. What do you believe will happen if you stop focusing on your symptoms? What's the worst case scenario that comes up? I want you to write that down and then sit with it. Because what you write down is going to expose the belief you need to start working on shifting. So now that we've unpacked why symptom focus happens and why it keeps you stuck, let's talk about the antidote, the redirection. And no, redirection doesn't mean we're avoiding. You're not pretending your symptoms don't exist, you're actively choosing to break the pattern that's keeping them in focus. Let's say there's a dog in your yard that barks every time the mail truck goes by. That dog is your subconscious mind. It's barking because it's learned mail truck equals danger. You could scream at it to stop barking. You could obsessively watch the driveway to make sure the mail doesn't come, but none of that retrains the dog. You have to create a new association. Redirection is how you do that. You teach the brain that this signal is not dangerous by shifting your focus to something that represents safety, joy, or future alignment. Again, we're not ignoring your symptoms. That work is something that's separate. What we're doing is ignoring these constant sirens that are going off that you're giving attention to. You're gonna refuse to keep watering the weed. So let's break down how to actually do this. Here are five rebellious ways to stop focusing on your symptoms and start building the neural pathways that support healing instead of fear. Now you don't need to do them all at once. You just pick one and doing it consistently can start to shift your brain. So what this means is you're gonna use your awareness muscle. And anytime you notice that you are focusing on symptoms, thinking about symptoms, or all of a sudden you feel something and your brain starts going down the rabbit hole, that's when you're using your awareness muscle to step in and use one of these. Again, we're stopping that pathway in the brain. We're essentially what I call T-boning. We're going in and we're interrupting that pattern that normally goes around in circles and is continuing to fire. So one of the things that you can do is smile. Yes, you can even fake it if you have to. Because when you smile, even if you don't feel like it, you're sending a neurological signal to your brain that says, I am safe. It literally activates a different part of the brain than fear does. So next time you notice your brain drifting into symptom analysis, I want you to pause and smile. And I want you to hold it for 10 seconds. If you have to think of something happy in order to make it easier, then do that. Just hold it for 10 seconds or longer if you want. And let your body catch up. It's not about being fake. This is about disrupting the fear loop. It's going to feel uncomfortable. It's going to feel like you are doing this all the time in the beginning. And that's just an indication that your brain has done exactly what it's designed to do. It's been programmed on autopilot and it's continuing to do that. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong, and you don't have to do this perfectly, where if you don't catch it one time, then it's everything is gonna go wrong. You're going to do the best you can with this. And eventually that path that has been worn down is going to get less and less active. The second thing you can do is visualize your future self, your 2.0 identity. Who is the version of you that no longer focuses on symptoms? What does she look like? What does she do? What does she do in the morning? How does she move throughout the day? What does she believe about her body? Close your eyes and drop into her. Visualization isn't just a mindset hack. It's a rewiring tool. Your brain doesn't know the difference between real and imagined. So give it something worth imagining. You've done a dang good job imagining all the bad things that could possibly go wrong in the future. You can visualize all the good things. It's gonna feel uncomfortable. Your brain is gonna go, okay, this feels a little bit different. That's totally normal. You get to choose what kind of visualization you want to tell your brain you want to keep attracting. Number three, get into movement. This is where you're gonna shift the pattern physically. That stuck energy creates stuck thoughts. So when you're looping in symptom focus, go shake it off. Literally, if that's what you need to do. Dancing, stretching, walking outside, rolling your shoulders. You're shifting your nervous system from freeze or fear into action inflow. This isn't exercise for healing, it's interruption for healing, and it works really well. My choices for interrupting my old pathways back to symptom focus were dancing, visualization, and smiling were my go-to's when I was on my healing journey. And I recommend those three because they have such a great impact in rewiring the brain and moving your focus over and interrupting that old pathway. The fourth thing you can do is anchor into joy or gratitude. Now, when's the last time you thought about something that made you truly happy? Not just grateful for my house kind of gratitude, but real felt heartbursting joy. Think of a moment that lit you up, a laugh with a friend, a sunset that made you pause, a song you danced to like no one was watching. Hold that in your mind and let your body feel it. That moment is medicine because it tells your nervous system, see, we're okay here. And number five, speak safely to your body out loud. Use your voice. Speak to your body the way you would speak to a scared child. You can say things like, This is just a signal, not a threat. My body is always on my side. Or my body is healing, even if I don't feel it yet. When you speak safety out loud, you're giving your subconscious a new message to absorb. You're replacing the what's wrong with everything's okay. Now I know what some of you might be thinking right now, but what if I try these things and the symptom still comes back? What if I can't stop focusing no matter how hard I try? And I want you to hear this. Healing isn't about perfection, it's about repetition and consistency. Every single time you redirect, you're making progress. And I really want to be clear: this particular process of redirecting is not going to resolve or get rid of your symptoms. It might lessen your anxiety a little bit, but this is not geared towards symptom work. This is the work that you do before you get to the symptom work. Because if you're going to jump into symptom work without doing this, it's going to be a waste of your time. This is where we start. We start by training the brain to focus on something else, to train your brain to shift in the moment, to know that focusing on your symptom is not going to fix your symptom. So right now, this work is prepping you for doing the deeper level work. This isn't targeted subconscious pattern work for your specific symptoms. But this is where you start because that training of your brain is going to prioritize safety. It is going to create an environment that is suitable for you to work then on your symptoms. And this all takes time. You've programmed your brain on an unconscious level to do this automatically. Now you have to unwire it in a conscious way, which feels even more difficult because you're having to do it and be aware of it. So this is going to take consistency and that takes showing up again and again, not because you're trying to earn your healing, but because you're becoming someone new. Someone who responds to symptoms with curiosity, not panic. Someone who knows the body speaks in signals, not threats. Someone who trusts herself even when the road is unfamiliar. That is who you're becoming. And these five tools are your training ground. I want you to remember this. Focusing on your symptoms will never heal them. Because if it did, again, you wouldn't be here. You have focused on your symptoms for months, for years, and they're still there. Your brain is doing exactly what it's been trained to do, what you've wired it to do on an unconscious level. But you are not a victim to this pattern. You can interrupt it, you can redirect it, and you can rewire it. This is one moment at a time, one choice, and even one smile at a time. This is the place to start if you want to be working on your individual symptoms. Because without this foundation, without this skill of being able to shift your focus, being able to shift the patterns that are connected to your symptoms will not work. You have to train your brain prior to doing the work. So let's revisit again those five different ways that you can T-bone those old pathways anytime that you find yourself focusing on a symptom, going down the rabbit hole. If the thought has anything to do with the symptom, you're doing this. Number one, you can smile even if you have to fake it. Number two, visualize your future self or anything in the future that you want to be doing. That would work too. Get into movement, dancing, stretching, walking, whatever it is. Number four, anchor into joy or gratitude. And number five, speak safety to your body out loud. Now you can do one of these, you can do all five of these in a row. Just know that there isn't an exact science to one of these doing it. It doesn't matter. You just pick one. Maybe one day you just decide I'm going to do smiling all day long. Then the next day you decide that you want to do visualization. And you might find that you like one more than the other and you have your own kind of formula. It doesn't matter. We're not here to make this perfect. What we're here to do is interrupt the patterns, and you just need to find what works for you. And again, you're going to feel like in the beginning, you are doing this almost all day long, maybe even for several weeks, depending on how long you've had chronic symptoms, how many patterns are all woven together from your past experiences. So give yourself time. This process isn't about stopping the thoughts. You know, I have people will say, well, but the thoughts are still there, and I'm so mad that they're still coming. So what? So what if they're still there? Just don't give attention to them. You're going to shift to one of these five things. Don't get mad at your brain for doing what it's designed to do, to run on autopilot. That's what it's supposed to do. If you give power and energy to those patterns, then you're making a choice to have that pattern continue to be stronger in your brain and you're keep continuing to feed it. But when you have the awareness to notice that you are falling into the old pattern, you can make the conscious choice to shift it. And so the thoughts are going to naturally go away the more you do this. But don't get mad at your brain for doing its job. If this episode hit home for you, which I know it will for many of you, because this is what we see with our students. And this is what we do with our students before we even start working on their symptoms. We are working on helping them shift their focus and away from their symptoms. So then when we do the symptom work, it's effective. So if this has hit home for you, share it with someone who also maybe needs to hear it, and subscribe to the Rebellious Healer so you don't miss the next episode. Because this is just the beginning of stepping into your healing power. You've got this, and I'll see you next time.