#41 The Identity Shifts You Need to Make to Heal

Most people think healing happens when you find the right protocol, the right diet, or the right routine. But real healing happens when your identity changes.

In this episode, I’m talking about why your symptoms won’t heal until you become someone new, and the identity shifts that have to happen before the body gets the green light to change.

You’ll learn:
• The identity patterns that keep symptoms in place
• Why you have to take action regardless of discomfort
• How self-trust affects your nervous system and healing

Let’s talk about the identity shifts that have to happen if your body is going to stop adapting to survival and start healing from safety.

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Thanks for listening! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Rebellious Healer, where we ditch the fear, decode the symptoms, and heal at the root. I'm Jenny Peterson, former holistic practitioner turned mind-body rebel. For 20 years, I've helped people get to the root of chronic symptoms by changing the subconscious patterns behind them. If you're done chasing protocols, done outsourcing your power, and ready to get to the root of what's actually driving your symptoms, you're in the right place. If you're listening to this podcast, you're probably not new to the mind-body world. You already understand on some level that symptoms are connected to survival patterns, to the way your brain and body perceive safety and danger. You know there's a deeper reason your symptoms are still here. But knowing that hasn't changed your symptoms yet. And that's what this episode is about. Because the people I work with are not beginners. They understand the mind-body connection. They know their thoughts, beliefs, and past experiences affect their body. And yet they're still stuck. Because the version of them living their life right now is the same version their body learned to survive. Your body heals when the identity you live from every single day changes. You can understand the mind-body connection and still be living in survival. You can know your patterns and still repeat them. You can believe healing is possible and still act like someone who doesn't trust their body. And when the identity doesn't change, the biology doesn't change. The truth is the mind-body world teaches a lot of awareness, but it doesn't always teach identity change. People learn about trauma, the nervous system, their patterns, but they keep living like the same version of themselves who needed those patterns in the first place. They're still cautious, they're still bracing, still trying to control everything, still needing reassurance, still waiting to feel safe before they move forward. And your body keeps adapting to that. And this is where a lot of people either move forward and resolve their symptoms or they stay in the chronic symptom cycle for years. Because becoming someone new is uncomfortable. It means doing things before you feel ready. It means changing patterns your brain thinks are safe. It means letting go of the version of you that has been running your life for a very long time. And most people don't realize that this is the part that actually determines whether their symptoms change or not. So let's talk about the identity shifts that have to happen if your body is going to stop adapting to survival and start healing from safety. The first identity shift is to stop being the person who is always trying to heal. And I know that sounds strange because if you have symptoms, of course you want your body to change. Of course you want to feel better. But there is a big difference between living your life as someone who is healing and living your life as someone whose entire identity revolves around fixing themselves. When you're always trying to heal, your focus stays on what's wrong. You're checking your body to see how you feel. You're analyzing symptoms, you're adjusting your routine based on how your body is reacting. Even when you're doing mind-body work, the energy behind it can still be, I need to do this work so I can finally feel safe. And your brain feels that. And your body's responding based on that. And when your brain feels that you are constantly trying to fix something, it assumes something is still wrong. So the survival response stays on. And this is why people can be doing all the right work and still feel stuck. The journaling, working on beliefs, learning their patterns, but they're doing all of it from the identity of someone who still feels like a problem that needs to be solved. Stopping being the person who is always trying to heal doesn't mean you stop doing the work. It means your life stops revolving around your symptoms. Now I remember this very clearly in my own healing journey. There was a time when working on my health felt like a full-time job. Everything I did went back to my symptoms, what I ate, what I did, what I did for the day, what I didn't do for the day, where I could go and where I couldn't go and what I shouldn't do for that day. Everything was revolved around my symptoms. My whole life was organized around trying to heal. And one of the things that actually helped me shift out of that whole mindset was getting chickens, which sounds completely unrelated, but it ended up being one of the best things for my healing. Once I had them, I had to go outside and take care of them every day, no matter how I felt. It wasn't my son's or my husband's job, it was mine. And it didn't matter if my symptoms were there. It didn't matter if I was tired. They still needed to be fed, they needed to have clean water, they needed to be let out of the coop, all of that, right? And at first, I would go out there still focused on how I felt, still thinking about my body and walking out there, like just overly consumed with thinking about my body, still wondering if I should even be going out there because you know I could pass out and they might eat me. But once I was out there, my attention had to go somewhere else. I had to feed them. I had to, you know, check on them, make sure everything was okay, and they made me smile. And they distracted me and they gave me something else to focus on. And I remember noticing that by the time I walked back from the coop to the house, my mind was in a completely different place. My focus had shifted, even though my symptoms, you know, they didn't magically disappear, but I wasn't focused on them. I went and lived even though I had the symptoms. And that's what this shift actually looks like. Not that you stop doing the work, but that your life is no longer built around trying to fix yourself. Your day starts being about living again and not about monitoring your body. It means you make decisions without checking your body first. You follow the plan instead of changing it every time you feel uncomfortable. Or you let your day be about enjoying yourself, having hobbies, not about managing. Your subconscious learns safety from the thoughts and actions you repeat, not from what you understand, but from how you live every single day. And if your daily life still looks like the life of someone who is desperately trying to heal, consuming their day with doing a healing protocol all day long, your brain keeps running the same survival program. It thinks there is a tiger around the corner that is a threat to the brain because you're in an amplified state, a state of hypervigilance of I gotta do this, I have to do this. If I don't do this, I'm not gonna heal. And that is not healthy. At some point, healing requires you to start living like someone who is safe enough to move forward even before your body fully feels that way. The second identity shift is to stop waiting to feel safe before you change your behavior. Your brain is wired to prefer what is familiar, even if what is familiar is stressful, uncomfortable, or connected to your symptoms. Familiar feels safe to the subconscious because familiar means predictable. The brain is all about efficiency, and predictable means the brain knows what to expect. So when you start doing something different, even if that change is exactly what you know you need to do, your brain reacts like there's something wrong. And this might cause you to feel anxious, comfortable. You might feel like you're doing it wrong, you might feel the urge to go back to what you were doing before. Whatever it is, your brain is distracting you, saying, This is uncomfortable, this is unfamiliar, we need to go back. And most people take that feeling as a sign that they shouldn't continue moving forward, that they shouldn't change yet. But that's not how safety is created in the subconscious. You don't feel safe first and then change. You change and then the brain learns that it's safe. And I see this all the time with something as simple as setting boundaries. Someone knows they need to say no more often and they know they're overwhelmed, they know they keep overextending themselves. But the moment they try to do something different, their brain reacts like it's dangerous. They feel guilty for saying no, they feel like they're being selfish, they feel like they're going to disappoint someone, and they feel like something bad is possibly going to happen if they don't go back to their old behavior or please a certain person. The first time you say no, it's gonna feel wrong. The second time, it still feels uncomfortable. But after you do it over and over again, your brain starts to see that the world didn't fall apart and the response starts to calm down. And that's how the subconscious learns safety. This is why so many people stay stuck in the same patterns, even though they know what they need to do. Most people know that they need to stop scanning their body, but they keep checking it. They know that they need to set boundaries somewhere in their life, but they continue saying yes. They know they need to stop overthinking, but they keep analyzing every decision. This is because their brain still thinks the old behavior is safer. And until you're willing to tolerate the discomfort of doing something different, your body has no reason to change the program. Your subconscious learns through experience. Every time you do something new and nothing bad happens, the brain updates the file. Every time you act like someone who is safe, even when you don't feel safe, the brain starts to believe it. This is why healing requires you to lead before your body feels ready. It requires you to act like the version of you that your body can trust, even when your mind is telling you to go back to the old way. And most people never get to this point because they are waiting for that feeling of safety to come first. But that feeling of safety comes after the identity changes, after the action, not before. And until that shifts, the body keeps adapting to the same survival pattern it already knows. The third identity shift is that you have to become someone who trusts themselves. When you don't trust yourself, every decision feels uncertain. You second guess what you're doing, you wonder if you've picked the wrong approach, you question whether you should just keep going or trying something else. So the power ends up in the method instead of in you. You start believing that healing will happen if you just find the right program or the right practitioner or the right plan. Instead of realizing that what actually matters is the way you show up once you've made the decision. Your brain feels that uncertainty. And when your brain feels uncertainty, it reads that as danger, not safety. The subconscious is always looking for consistency. It relaxes when it sees the same response repeated over and over again. But when you keep changing direction and questioning yourself or waiting to feel sure before you follow through, the brain stays in survival mode because nothing feels predictable. Trust gets built from repetition. You can think about it in the same way you would think about building trust with another person. If someone tells you one time that they're going to do something and they do it, you know, that's good. But you don't fully trust them yet. But if they keep doing what they say they're going to do over and over again, especially when it's inconvenient or hard, eventually you stop questioning them. Not because they convince you with their words, but because their actions have been consistent long enough that your brain believes them. It works the same way with yourself. If you tell yourself you're going to do something, but you only follow through when you feel motivated or when symptoms are better or when you feel sure it's the right thing, you don't build trust with yourself. That is unpredictability and that keeps the survival response on. Building trust with yourself starts with small things. It might be as simple as deciding you're going to go for a walk every day and then actually doing it, even on the days you don't feel like it or the weather is bad, not because the walk itself is going to fix everything, but because every time you follow through on what you said you would do, your brain starts to learn that you're someone who is consistent. And that creates a different signal than starting something, stopping, changing your mind, and starting all over again. And this matters a lot when it comes to healing, because when you trust yourself, you stop putting all the power into a program or a protocol. For example, in my business, I have invested in very expensive coaching programs to help me grow my business. And when I make that decision, I'm not sitting there wondering if the program is going to work. I'm not constantly questioning whether I chose the right one. I trust myself enough to know that I made the best decision I could at the time. And I trust myself enough to know that I'm going to do the work that's required to get the results. And I know this because I have consistently showed up and proven to myself that I can trust me, that I followed through with the word to myself. Doesn't mean I'm perfect every single day, but in order for me to get results with anything in my life, whether it was with my health and now with my business, I have to trust me. And I have demonstrated that by showing up for me consistently, even in the times that I didn't want to show up. And because of that, the energy is completely different. I've already decided that I'm all in and that I'm going to show up the way I need to show up. And that kind of consistency is going to create momentum. And that momentum builds trust even more and more and more. And healing is going to work the same exact way. If every time you start something, you're wondering if this is the one or if this will work or if you should try something else, your brain is never going to settle. And that uncertainty keeps that survival pattern running. But when you become someone who trusts themselves enough to make a decision and stay with it, your brain starts to read that as safety. It sees consistency, it sees leadership, and it sees predictability. And when the brain sees that over and over again, the survival response starts to turn down because the environment finally feels stable. This one shift will make an impact in all areas of your life, not just with your healing, but in everything you do. When you trust yourself, you can reach all the goals that you desire because you know that it will come to fruition based on your efforts and showing up for you. No one else is going to do it. You have proven to your subconscious that you follow through, and that's the kind of safety that your body needs to feel safe to heal. So your body doesn't change because you learn something new. Your body changes when the identity your brain is responding to changes. And that means stopping being the person whose life revolves around trying to heal. It means stopping waiting to feel safe before you change your behavior. And it means becoming someone who trusts themselves enough to stay consistent, even when the old pattern wants to take over. These are the areas that most people don't stay consistent with long enough for the subconscious to actually change. Not because they don't want to heal, but because identity change requires repetition. It requires structure. It requires doing the same things over and over again, long enough for the brain to finally read safety instead of survival. And that's exactly why I created Evolve. Because what I see over and over again are people who understand the mind-body connection, but the identity their brain is responding to hasn't changed yet. Inside Evolve, the work isn't just about learning, it's about changing the patterns your brain is responding to through consistent, structured action. You learn how to stop living like the person who is always trying to heal. You learn to stop waiting to feel safe before you move forward. And you learn how to build the kind of self-trust that allows your brain to finally get the message that it's safe to let go of the old programs. That's when the body gets the green light to heal. You don't need more information, you need a different identity, repeated long enough for your subconscious to believe it. You can find details about Evolve by clicking on the Start Here link in the show notes. Remember, your body isn't broken. Your symptoms are the language your body uses to show you what needs to change. When the pattern changes, the body follows. Stay rebellious, trust your body, and I'll see you in the next episode.