582: The power of the mind to heal | Nicole Sachs, LCSW
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What if I told you that chronic pain isn't just about your body, but your brain, your emotions, and even your past experiences? That the key to healing might not be found in another medication or procedure, but in the way you process stress, fear, and meaning. Today's guest, Nicole Sacks, is a psychotherapist and leading expert in the mind-body approach to chronic pain.

After struggling with debilitating back pain in her teens and receiving a bleak medical prognosis, Nicole discovered the groundbreaking work of Dr. John Sarno, and everything changed.

By understanding the deep connection between emotional regression, fear, and physical pain, she was able to heal completely and has now spent decades teaching others how to do the same. In today's show, we'll unpack the science behind chronic pain, why fear plays such a powerful role in keeping us stuck, and how we can rewire our nervous system to break free. Nicole will walk us through her signature technique, journal speak, and explain how emotional expression is just as essential as health, diet, exercise, and sleep.

Plus, we'll explore fascinating research that proves just how powerful this work can be. If you or someone you love is struggling with chronic pain, anxiety, or unexplained symptoms, this episode could be life-changing. Let's get to it.

So let's start with your own personal journey with chronic pain. Well, it started very young. I was 19 when my back went out completely. And when I think about my childhood, you know, I had had aches and pains, some stomach stuff, some eczema, but I never, ever thought of myself as someone in chronic anything. And when I was in college, I had what we call in my world an acute pain incident, which

I moved, I bent, I did something. And my back went out so severely that my parents actually had to come and carry me home weeks before final exams and break. And, you know, as any good parents would, they took me to every test, every, you know, MRI, x-ray, orthopedic surgery consult. They wanted to know what was wrong with me.

And when they did the tests, I actually had a pretty serious finding, according to the orthopedists, which was degenerative spondylolisthesis. It's quite a mouthful. But essentially, when I was diagnosed, having such an abnormality in my lower back, it made complete sense. Of course, this was the reason for my pain. We could see it. I was in pain. And so the prognosis was not

terrible, but there were a lot of caveats, meaning that

Because I was 19 and otherwise healthy, they said I didn't have to have the spinal fusion surgery right away. But if I wanted to live safely, let's say till I was 40 when I would definitely need it, I had to do the following things. No more exercise, no more travel, no more sports, no more lifting anything over 10 pounds, no more riding in the car for more than an hour because that could destabilize my back, very specific sleeping positions, and

And the likelihood that I would have a biological child ever was slim to none. And I remember the doctor saying, you could potentially have one, but you would need to be on about seven to eight months of bed rest. So this was like, I was 19 years old and I was like, what?

So essentially, I could not really take in that kind of information. It was just it was too heavy. So what I did understand is I could take enough steroids and muscle relaxers and painkillers to move from acute to chronic pain, which is essentially what I did. So I was able to go back to college. They gave me a handicapped sticker for my car. I could drive to class. It was like everybody knew me as the girl with the bad back. People would run to pick things up.

for me. And I really lived a life that was fueled by fear because I was so scared that if I did the wrong thing, I could destabilize myself to the point where it was like,

really, really dark. I was, however, getting my bachelor's in psychology, which I went on to get my master's in social work. I wanted to be a therapist. So I did have an open mind in that I did not want a limited life and I did not want to have the surgery. So when mind-body medicine, which is the paradigm within which I now work, was introduced to me through the work of Dr. John Sarno, have you heard of

Dr. Sarno, Jason? Yes, I have. And maybe we should do a primer on him because I don't know if our audience has. So essentially, Dr. Sarno wrote many best five different bestselling books in the 80s and 90s about back pain. That's where he really focused. And he was an attending physician at NYU Medical Center. And he had a theory about pain. He spoke of other kinds of pain like stomach issues and headaches, but he focused most on back pain. And what he said was,

There's brain science behind why the human body feels anything. And if we are to look at any human chronic pain through the lens of mind, body, medicine, and brain science, there are other solutions possible. You know, he said his work is more scientific than surgery. So I really perked up. I paid attention. And I said, well, you know, I'm open to looking at this through a different lens because, you

You know, if what you're given, and I find this in life quite a bit, is not satisfactory to you, we all have agency. We have power to seek and to see what might work for us. And through my understanding of mind-body medicine and the brain science, and we'll talk much more about it, I was able to completely resolve my chronic pain. So now I'm 52.

And I have not had a stitch of back pain for over 25 years. I had three children. I exercised till the day they were born. And although there is no way that those doctors were, you know, doing me wrong by any sort of intentionality, they were looking at a film. It looked like it was the reason for my pain. I and thousands of people at this point that I've worked with around the world have

have learned that although there can be a structural finding, because some people have them and some people don't, the science is really catching up that that does not necessarily account for our pain. Problems in the gut microbiome don't necessarily account for all the symptoms of irritable bowel. Just because your mother had migraines and your grandmother before her does not necessarily mean

account for the fact that you are in bed with 18 migraines a month. And so I've worked with so many different people and so many different diagnoses. What I have learned is we live in a mind-body system and there are real solutions that exist by opening our minds and understanding what's really going on in the human body. So would it be fair to say, and I agree with everything you just said, that there may be two people have the same

herniated discs, extruded discs, degenerative discs, identical x-rays. Yet one person experiences pain and the other person does not. Not only is that reasonable to say,

I've seen it so many times in my practice and in my work that we joke around in my world that it's boring. It's boring to me, that story. And people love it because people are like, it doesn't feel boring to me. I go, well, it does for me and you should be relieved because that happens all the time. And I'll segue to a quote I pulled from the book, which I thought was quite powerful and bold.

Quote, chronic pain and illness are an epidemic born of fear and meaning, end quote. Yes. So in your view, that's the real cause of what's causing this one person pain and another has no pain, yet they have the same x-ray showing a herniated disc. Yes. And I think the best way I can describe it is this.

If a house is on fire or a building is on fire and they have a fire alarm attached to that system, the fire alarm will go off. And the fire alarm is loud and obnoxious. And it needs to be because it needs to get your attention. So I want you to picture that the fire company arrives at this house on fire with an alarm screaming. Maybe it's a little box on the wall screaming and it's flashing. And they took their hoses and they start dousing the alarm. And

And they're dousing the alarm and they're dousing alarm. There's a fire over there. All they would have to do is turn toward the fire and it could be put out, but they're dousing the alarm because that's what they can see and hear. And that's, what's getting their attention. And that is tantamount to what I have watched people do and have helped them not do over, over 20 years in doing this.

is that your headache, your migraine, your fibromyalgia, your stomach pain, your back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain that you think was related to your injury in eighth grade or you think was a result of your allergy to a certain food. And I don't mean acute allergies. I mean things like gut irregularities or you think your migraine is because of multiple chemical sensitivities or sensitivity to light. I'm just picking stuff out of the air. When you are chasing

That symptom, you're chasing the alarm, the symptom that operates through the body. So the pain is not in your head. You are not making it up. You are not hysterical. This is so important. Most of my audience are women that have been shut down many times by the medical community. So I have to start there.

The pain is not in your head, but the solution is not in your body. And I stand as a hope merchant, essentially, to say when you chase the alarm and you run from specialist to specialist and you're trying an elimination diet and a new supplement protocol, or even in the case of some of my, many of my patients and clients who got surgeries that didn't work and the pain moved around and all that stuff, you are, it is tantamount to the

to this fire company dousing the alarm. Now, of course, in that situation, we look and we go, how silly. Just turn to the fire. So when you say chronic pain is an epidemic of fear and meaning,

What you're highlighting is we all live in a human body. Sometimes we feel things in our heart and our mind and our feelings. And sometimes we feel things in our body, pain, fatigue, anxiety, and they are literally interchangeable.

And I have learned this and I know it. And so what I want to offer to everybody who I can possibly reach is when you pause for a minute and realize that pain in itself is a protective posture. The reason that we feel pain as the human species is because back in early existence, if you cut your finger or if you broke your bone and you didn't know that you had to take care of yourself, you would die.

You need to take care of yourself in order to sustain the species. So in the same exact way, when you are emotionally overwhelmed, your stress is up to here, you

The way your boss talks to you is just, it's triggering you in such a deep place because that's exactly the way, you know, your mother or your bully or your coach or someone who was unkind to you in childhood when survival did mean actually having these people's approval. You were a powerless little thing. It's bringing you to a place unconsciously. Many of these things were not foreshadowing.

not thinking about, but they're in there, that sends the nervous system into long-term fight or flight because you got to go to that job every day. So what happens? Migraine signal starts. Back goes out. Stomach is so bad you can't go leave the bathroom. Well, I call that safe in the unsafest way because you're not really safe. You want to live your life. You want to make a career or a family or relationships, but

But your nervous system doesn't care about what you want. It cares about keeping you alive. And if your nervous system is in fight or flight because there's something in there, that fear and that meaning that you don't even know about that's kicking it up, it sends pain as protection. Because when you're in bed with your thing and you can't go out into the world where people are tripping,

triggering you, and if you are going into those really deep places of fear, which you don't even associate with, the nervous system would prefer to keep you right there. And without going too deep into the brain science, the human brain seeks familiarity and predictability. It's actually just basic science. So the brain will choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar possibility every time until we unmask what's going on. A lot to unpack there. Yeah.

It is. I'm sorry. I tend to...

I had two extruded discs in my lower back, L4, L5, S1, pressing on my sciatic nerve. Structurally, it was very clear. I forget what it was, an x-ray or an MRI. This is what I had. It made a lot of sense. Basketball injuries from college. I was flying a lot at the time, which is like compression. And I'm 6'7", I'm very big. So like a 6'7 body at a coach seat flying 100,000. I can imagine. Not good.

So I had this excruciating sciatica. My right leg felt like a lightning rod. Like I couldn't walk. Like it was maybe seconds after it was just got awful. Tried cortisone shots like, okay, I was numb for a little while, but didn't really do anything. And doctor said, you need surgery. And I generally view surgery as a last resort. And you mentioned back surgery. We all know the success rates are not exactly great, but

I saw the second opinion and that doctor said, you know, maybe, you know, you really do need surgery, but maybe try some therapy or yoga. And so I started practicing yoga and the sciatica started to move like from the toe and started to go up. And also at the same time, I started to let go of my attachment to the outcome.

And I said to myself, like, you know, I'll be okay. Like if I have to get surgery, I'll get surgery. Yoga works great. And at the same time, I started to revisit Louise Hay, who I'm sure you're very familiar with.

And we'll talk about her as well. And sure enough, I'm thumbing through in sciatica and she connects sciatica to essentially money worries. And at the time, I was really stressed financially. And then like a light bulb went off. And sure enough, the mindset shift, and I'm not going to discount diet and other things I did, but I do think in retrospect, a lot of the mindset shifts and letting go of the attachment to the outcome,

Within six months, the sciatica went away. I've been fine ever since. And so I'm buying everything you're selling, so to speak. But I think, how do you think about like Louise? Hey, I think a lot of people in our world struggle with, you know, in that, I think in her view, she's like,

She says everything is attached to, you know, a strong emotion, you know, fear, anger, trauma. So what's your take on what is, like, I think everyone, and I will also say anecdotally from personal experience, every time I have had a health issue, stress or an emotion has been attached to it. Like, I've never been like, everything's great.

I'm sleeping well. I'm not stressed. Like it's always been something. So what is your, what is your, do you, do you go that far? I do go that far, but I take a different route and you have to realize that I walk through the world with a newcomer's mind. I am constantly listening to myself and to others in my field as if I have never heard of this, because that is my goal is that I'm going to, I'm

I'm going to be able to explain this in language that is not going to put you on the defensive, that is not going to make you super resistant, is not going to make you discount it like, oh, that's for those weirdos and not for me. Like that kind of is always my goal. So here are a few things that I think I can say that will help move us in the direction of the fact that, yeah, people hear Louise Hay and they can turn away from it because they think it's too woo-woo, right? Yeah, it could be triggering for some people. Yeah.

I get it. And so there are two things that I have done in my career that are in that vein, not wanting to have people reject it. There are two things. First is I lead with the science. The first entire third of my book, and it is not science for people who need a degree to understand. I mean, it's just...

If you like listening to me talk, or even if you are just able to listen to me talk, the book feels like you're having a conversation with me. I'll just, I'll pause. I'll hold up the book. It's called Mind Your Body. It's an excellent read. Everyone should go get it, but please continue. Sorry. I very much appreciate it. It worked really hard to like,

get exactly what I wanted in it. So essentially, I spend the whole first third of the book, as you know, since you've read it, really talking about mindset and science. And if you're a science wonk and you need the studies, they're linked there. They're all outlined. If you are a person who just...

doesn't want to be at war with yourself and you have that skeptical brain, it will take you through it. It will help you understand that this is not something that you don't believe. You know, and so this is the other thing I do. I start with the science, but then I also speak geoscience.

directly to you because I have been you and I am you. And I understand from working with thousands and thousands of people around the world that we are much more similar than we are different. What I'm teaching you, you already believe. I can lecture to a room of a thousand people and I can say, raise your hand if you've ever had a stressful day or felt super overwhelmed and gotten a headache.

I would say pretty much every hand in the room will go up, okay? And then I'll say, okay, okay, great. Keep your hand up if you ran to the ER that night for a CT scan of your brain. So of course, everyone laughs and they put their hand down. And I say, you see,

What I'm teaching you, you already believe. You already believe that when someone gets broken up with, they can lose their appetite. You already believe that when you hear a comedian about to go on stage and he runs to the bathroom to throw up, you don't think he just got the stomach virus. You think he was really scared and he threw up. You believe that emotional stimuli cause physical reactions. Everybody does. And the most...

obvious one is what happens when you're really sad or moved or you watch a puppy being rescued. Water falls out of your face. You cry because an emotional stimulus like being moved or sad causes a physical reaction in the human body, wells up the tears, and they fall out of our faces. So once I get people there,

I say, so what I'm saying is, you know, we all know that there's a mind-body connection, but as soon as anything becomes chronic, all of that stuff goes out the window because chronic pain is an epidemic of fear and meaning. Oh my God, oh my God, what's wrong with me? And am I going to be able to go to that job? Am I going to be able to go to that...

That baseball game for my kid, you know, and then what's that going to mean if I miss it again? What's my relationship with my kid going to be like? How am I going to make money? This is called meaning and fear. And it fuels the human being into a place of fight or flight. And then as I said, as soon as you're in that place, your brain is desperately seeking for where it can protect you.

Because if you're walking down the street and you see a bush waving in the shadow, but you think it's a predator, you don't think it's a bush, you think it's someone who could jump out in that moment, whether it's a bush or a predator.

The human body is going to do all the same things. Your perception is your reality. So your circulation, your digestion, your respiration, your heart rate, all the things that change when we are preparing to either flee, fight, or freeze, or the fawn has been added, meaning extreme people pleasing where we completely lose ourselves. Those realities

Reactions begin whether something's actually going to attack you or not, because the human body is always on your side. It is always seeking how to keep you alive. And in that way, though, it doesn't ask your permission or your opinion before it protects you.

When you put your finger on a hot stove, you pull it right off. You don't sit with your hand on the hot stove thinking, I don't know. I mean, is it really hot? Like you're off, you know, like I once had an experience where I was young and I was in London and I looked the wrong way before the cars were coming because in London they drive on the other side of the road and I stepped into the street.

And I'll never forget this. By the time the double-decker bus whizzed past my nose, and when I say whizzed, I mean like 50 miles an hour around turn. One billion percent I would be dead. I was already back on the curb. And I remember sitting there going, Jesus.

I didn't even know I stepped back onto the curve. What's amazing about the human body, about the dance between our brain, our nervous system, and our human body, and our muscles, and our reflexes, is that it is instant. But the problem with chronic pain is that when the protection is perceived as necessary to keep us alive, and that's something that people need to understand, when you walk into work

and your boss who has been berating you and who has their own issues and is putting them on you and all the things we know that human beings do to each other does it one more time. There's a place inside of you that I help you get to, but you're not aware of.

that thinks it is the end for you because we do not have our own opinion and our perspective when it comes to the most primitive operating of the human brain. And so a couple of questions. So one, you mentioned the science here and the book is filled with great studies. You know, I have one that I thought was interesting and I want you to pick

to pick some of your favorites. Can you walk us through, I think it was the Danino study at Harvard? Yeah, so out of Harvard, Michael Danino, he did a couple studies, but he did one on long COVID. And the control group was the group that was just getting whatever medical long COVID protocols are out there, whether it be supplements, diet changes, different medications. And the experimental group was also given these techniques

of mind-body expression. They were educated on the brain science. They were educated on how to get into this repressed emotional world and do some emotional regulating work. And the study was incredibly exciting and stunning to the Danino team, which is that statistically significant results, and I don't remember the exact percentages, but people in the experimental group were relieving their symptoms at any

at a high rate in terms of statistical significance. I'm not a scientist, I just play one sometimes on TV. So I really have to say that these studies and another kind of topic of study is sort of what you just mentioned earlier. People are taken.

who have structural abnormalities. So there's a group of individuals that are scanned. Some come up with structural abnormalities, some come up with none. And there is no statistical significance between people who report pain and people who actually have structural abnormalities. So just as often scientifically, a person will have an abnormality and report no pain, then report extreme pain and have no findings.

And so these are the things where science is catching up to something that anecdotally I've known for years and years and Dr. Sarno knew for 50 years before that, which is people, when they realize what's going on with this dysregulated nervous system and do the work to bring what needs to come up to the consciousness up,

their pain goes away. And it's really, it's astonishing. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? Well, with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills.

Wait, did I say job title yet? Get started today and see how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Get started at linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. So you mentioned doing the work, and I think about this, there are two groups of people. There are people who they're okay. They're not suffering. They have no pain. And there are people who have pain or chronic pain. And my view is it's a lot easier to start working

working those muscles, if you will, so that when pain does come, because something's going to happen to something, like invariably something's going to happen, good or bad, or it's a varying degree of pain, you want to be prepared. So how do you think about emotional exercise in that sense? Like in the same way, if I want to gain lean muscle mass, I'm going to do resistance training and protein and creatine and so forth and all those things. How do I build my... What does emotional exercise entail? So that...

I am prepared because I think that's easier than I'm dealing with a lot of pain and I need something because I'm desperate. Sure. Yeah. I mean, my huge goal now that the book is out is to raise the bottom. So when I was in private practice for many years, when I tell you people crawled through the door of my office, I mean, surgeries, you know, different lifestyle changes. Some people who thought that mold toxicity was the reason for their problem had moved

Twice into new homes had bought everything new so I'm talking extreme extreme cases I had people flown in when I was in private practice by their families who that you know Because the person was like on suicide watch, you know, they couldn't do one more thing. So I mean that was the beginning and

As I've walked this path, more and more people with just, you know, mild stuff that was just kind of getting in the way of their life, now they start to come to me. But yes, my goal is that we raise the bottom so much that people look at this as prophylactic. They look at this as being healthy, you know, doing what they need to do in their wellness regime. It's going to be a tool in their toolkit.

Because emotional and nervous system regulation is just as important as healthy eating and exercise and sleep and all the things that we already embrace. It is just as important because when there is a fire, no matter how the alarm is ringing and getting our attention, it will not stop until we look at the fire.

So what I do is I teach people that we all have an emotional reservoir that lives within us. So I want you to picture like a clear science beaker and it exists, let's call it, between your belly and your chest. And in that emotional reservoir, there are three main inputs, childhood, daily life, and personality. In the childhood is like, you know, we all have our stories. We all have our stuff. We had our pain. We had our, you know, different experiences.

Capital T and little t trauma. That's what comes from the childhood. The daily life is just, we all know it, you know, your partner, your kids, your money, your self-worth, your body image, like all the things that we go through that can stress us or give us input. And then our personalities, and this is really big that people don't realize what input means.

people pleasing, perfectionism, holding yourself to a ridiculous standard, self-criticism, codependency. You know, I'm not okay unless you're okay. Super big with moms. I'm a mother of three. I understand. All of these factors are inputs into this emotional reservoir. So I want you to picture it reaches maximum capacity. So it's bubbling over at the top. All of these repressed emotions. And remember, chronic pain is not about what you feel.

It's about what you don't feel. So this stuff is going on in here, but you're not paying attention to it. You're too busy. You're too busy with your kids and your job and your life. Now it's bubbling over. And now what happens is it starts knocking on the door of consciousness. It starts threatening you that it's going to inform you of exactly how stuck and scared and enraged you are about the things in your life you can't change, you can't control. We

All are susceptible to this. By the way, this is not a person in chronic pain. This is every human being. What happens when it reaches maximum capacity is the nervous system goes into fight or flight because a predator is afoot. Something is here that is threatening your ability to live your life. And then in the midst of that space of fight or flight, a pain signal is sent. So let's just use a migraine as an example. You start to get the beginnings of a migraine. You're up to here. Well, now you take to bed.

So immediately the input of the boss, the input of your kids, you know, saying, mommy, mommy, I need something else. The input of your partner who says, you know, God, you should do this. I don't want to do it. All of that.

goes down. The reservoir gets a little bit less because you are, you have an excuse. And this is not to say that anybody is faking it or anybody wants this excuse. I've been there. I've been laid up in bed. Nobody wants this. But when it happens, we all have to admit you soften your demands on yourself. You ask for help more easily, which human beings have a rough time doing. You give yourself a break because you have no choice.

And this is where I help people understand that's no way to live. So the emotional work that I teach, my flagship tool is called journal speak. Now, this is not regular journaling. This is a specific expressive writing technique where it's like putting a ladle in the reservoir every day and dumping it off. It's 20 minutes of a journal speak practice, which we can get more into, but I describe, you know, in painstaking detail in the book.

And it is a 10 minute meditation. So it's a 30 minute commitment that even though people are like, oh, 30 minutes, my goodness, I promise you, you scroll Instagram for 30 minutes. You watch stupid TV for 30 minutes. You can do this to save your own life for 30 minutes. And I know that you will experience resistance because every human does. That's why I spend a whole chapter in the book talking about resistance because I want to protect you from yourself. But that's the way you start to regulate. Yeah.

So hearing you talk about the nervous system and fight or flight, we have an audience of people who like to measure things, myself included, as I, you know, form

wear my aura ring and my whoop and, you know, do my significant blood work every twice a year and all the scans and all those things. Is the best way to track this? I immediately thought of heart rate variability to get a sense of like my ability to regulate my nervous system. It's a great question. I'm always the first person to speak with authority on what I know and to admit what I don't.

I know about HRV. I also have an ordering. It's charging right now because that little bugger did not give me a sleep score because it died in the night.

But I love looking at HRV. I love looking at my deep sleep and my REM and all that. And I love that it tracks my exercise. This is not an advertisement for ordering, but I love it. But anyway, point being that I think that's fascinating. And what I really can't wait for as this work makes its way around the planet in a much more profound way, that that kind of study starts to happen.

Because I know there are probably more ways that are, you know, more measurable to figure this out. But I've been a therapist since, I mean, I got my master's in 2000. I've been a therapist since then and different levels of clinical work. And I will say that the biggest measurement is that your pain signals stop firing. So, you know, people go from...

15 migraines a month down to 10, down to five, down to I haven't had one in a month. They start going off their medication. They start exercising. They get back into life. So that's the measurement I've always used. I am a therapist, not a scientist, but I love the science. So as it catches up, you'll hear from me. Yeah, because I think it's interesting in that if your nervous system starting to go haywire is a sign that

you're not managing your emotional health in a way that is good for you, then HRV is probably one of the indicators. And again, I'm speaking from my Ed of One, my personal experience, times where I've been really stressed about work, about my health, someone else's health or whatever it might be, my HRV is not high, it goes low. And I definitely see a pattern.

So again, like I was joking about this, but I think we have an audience of people like me. And I think this is where the world of health is going. And we're measuring everything. We're wearing our wearables. We're doing our scans, our full body scans. We're doing, it's amazing what we can do. And I believe in testing. I do it all the time. And I also believe in everything you're saying. And I believe in a lot of Louise Hay. And you mentioned the example of like the mold everywhere with someone. And I think, how do you think about that tension?

of testing is critical, testing saves lives, but how do I balance the testing? And... It's a very important question. I appreciate you bringing it up. So one thing that I have to say, and like I said, I'm a mother of three. They're not babies anymore. They're 22, 20, and 17, but I'm still a mommy.

And I believe in Western medicine. I believe in all medicine. I believe that when you have something going on in your body, you go get it checked out in whatever way that feels good to you. Some people go, you know, the total Western route. Some people are into more holistic and alternative methods and everything in between. You go and get checked out. In terms of testing, in terms of anything where you are being responsible with your body, the only thing I will say is,

You wear it loosely. People say to me all the time, can I take an antidepressant? And I say, I have no problem with you taking an antidepressant. But if you've put a lot of meaning on that antidepressant and if you are attached to outcomes and if you are monitoring yourself and if you are saying, oh God, is it helping me? Is it helping me?

then you are probably going to have more harm than good from that antidepressant. But if you take it like a vitamin, if you take it like, wow, I feel like this is going to be good for me. If you can align, this is another thing that I've learned. It's really important. It is not necessarily in life about what you do. It is about coming into full alignment about what you do. So

If you say, I'm going to be a person that does regular testing and I'm going to feel that this is the way I feel like I'm checking all the boxes, fantastic. Come into full alignment with it. I have had people who I've worked with who do that testing.

And they do it with total fear. They do it fueled by fear. They're looking at the numbers. They're panicking. They're doctor Googling deep into, you know, six pages into Google of like, what could be this? What could be that? Those people might need to take a minute from the testing. They might need to regulate a little bit more. Some people find it so informative. Some people find it so helpful. That's great.

I just think whatever is right for you, if you can come into full alignment with it, and if it helps you make micro adjustments to your life and your world, that is fantastic. Like, for example, nutrition. I have learned, living in my physical body, that if I don't start my day right,

with a protein-heavy meal, I will not feel well. For example, like I love donuts. They're delicious. But I can't wake up in the morning, like when you go to like a talk or something and the only foods available are like donuts, danishes, and coffee, then I'm going to fast that morning because I won't feel well if I start with like a cheese danish.

So it doesn't mean I can never eat a cheese stand. It's just like I've learned my body. I've learned my body that if I have eggs first, you know, and I want to indulge on that later and that's my choice. So I really think it's about learning you, learning what feels good for you, coming into full alignment with it, but not going through that process through the lens of fear and not assigning meaning. The best thing you said about your sciatica is you said, and this is my words, but I know that they were, that's what was happening for you.

With open hands, however this goes, it's okay for me. If I have to have a surgery, so be it. That'll be that day. But right now, I'm going to do the yoga. I'm going to see what happens. That's what I call wearing it loosely. That is the best posture for all body health. Well, I think ultimately, look, we say MindBodyGreen, one word, not three. Mental, physical, spiritual, emotional. Spiritual and emotional are paramount. And I think in our world, and myself included, I consider myself a spiritual person.

Sometimes it goes by the wayside when you're doing all the testing and it's so easy to go to Dr. Google and oh my God, it's, it's, it's,

It's bad. And you start, you start, I think we've all done that. I've done that at least. And I think I want to touch on, and also I love that you have protein. You got to send me your address. I'm going to send you our grass-fed whey protein powder to try. So let's touch on belief systems, affirmations. You know, we've all heard the cliche, whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right.

How do you think about that and language more generally, whether it's our internal language or the external language we use on a daily basis? Yeah, I mean, words have power. Words are the way we communicate with each other. They're the way we communicate with ourselves. The voice in our head is constant. I don't know if you've ever read Michael Singer's The Untethered Soul. I mean, it's like you're constantly with this horrible roommate who you can't freaking stand. And it's yourself and it's your voice.

And it's so important to become aware of the power of that voice and that communication, and then also have a ton of self-compassion and acceptance for the fact that it's not always going to be a nice voice and that's okay. You know, one thing that I learned when

When I was, God, how old was I? Probably in my early 40s. I went to this immersive program where you lived in a house for a week with like 10 different people and you did a psychodrama. Have you ever heard of this deep dive kind of stuff? No. Oh my God. It's...

It's so wild. So essentially, you're living with these people and then you are doing exercises to kind of get really kind of deep into your emotions, deep into your history, you know, kind of looking at the stuff you can't really let go of. It's kind of fun, but it's also really intense. And then the week commences with what they call a psychodrama where everyone in the room and you've gotten to know them over the week.

participate in the story of your life. So you have the therapists and they've already obviously done a lot of intake. And so they start bringing you through the stuff that maybe you've gotten stuck on, you know, in your life. And then you choose someone. So, you know, who do you want to play your mother? Who do you want to play your self-worth?

Who do you want to play? Money. And everything has a voice, you know, whatever is the thing that, and you immerse yourself in this experience. It's really emotional and really, really beautiful because first of all, you're playing the role for other people and then they're doing it for you. But it all comes down to at the end, how you become acquainted with the most powerful voice in the world, which is your own.

And you are the center of every single thing that happens to you. And it really helps clear out. And this is what I teach people through my book because a lot of all of my personal experience is kind of filtered through me and go into my work. That the most powerful thing you can do is that which you can align with that is good for you. So affirmations. Affirmations are great if you're not lying.

You know, I mean, the joke about Stephen Smalley, you're good enough, you're whatever, and you're, God darn it, you know, you're worth it. Guys, remember that from Saturday Night Live? Like, it's okay and it's great if you believe it. There is nothing more toxic than the spiritual bypassing of a lie of an affirmation because your whole body will scream, that's not true.

And so I teach people sort of like a step before affirmations to get into this emotional reservoir, to get into these places of sometimes hidden truth and to emerge knowing what happened. It's not a predator anymore. It's not a surprise to your nervous system. And then you can find affirmations within that, which is like, remember who you are.

I love the affirmation, remember who you are, but you won't like it unless you've come into alignment with who you are. Because remember who you are is a pretty dangerous statement if you don't like who you are and you've never had the willingness to get intimate with who you are. But

I love Remember Who You Are. I had to go on national TV last week with the launch of my book, and it was the scariest thing. It was live. I had four minutes. You guys have heard me drone on for 45 minutes about my work. Four minutes is super stressful. And I was just in such a dissociative state. I was just in a panic. And I'm not a shy person, and I am confident, but

but this was hard. And I sat on that couch as the cameras were about to roll to me. And I just said, you don't have to make anything up. You know, my favorite Mark Twain quote is tell the truth and then you don't have to remember anything. And I just sat there and I said, remember who you are.

Remember you were a suffering person. Remember you have shepherded thousands and thousands of people to totally change lives. Remember you have interviewed hundreds of people on your podcast and heard their stories of recovery. You know this. Remember who you are. And that is

brought me through the interview and it was a great success. And so those affirmations work. So how do you think about that? You mentioned your brother of three. I'm the dad of two young girls. They're much younger. They're eight and five and a half. How do you think about that with children? How do you instill those beliefs? How do you build that confidence?

You know, that's a conversation we could have at a totally other podcast about parenting. That's one I have a lot to say on. But here's what I'll say when it comes to children experiencing these normal pains of human existence and not getting scared and helping to create the right mindset in children. Because I have three kids that were raised in the soil of this. They were fertilized and they were raised and they know.

they know that we live in a mind-body system. So for example, my oldest daughter, she just graduated from college. She's living in New York City. And she called me and she said, oh, I'm so annoyed. And I said, what? And she said, my back hurts and I have to do the work and I don't want to do the work. And I said, oh, baby. I said, what happened? And she said, well, you know, this and this with my boyfriend and this and this with my job and this and this with my friend and this.

And she said, and I know there's, I can tell you that much, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. She's like, I know there's stuff inside of me that is just getting me and I'm feeling much more angry than I have access to. And I said, I get it. It's total human resistance to do the work, but I'm not scared. I'm not worried anything's wrong with you. You're not scared. So do the work.

It'll go away. And she called me later that night. She goes, fine. I took to the page. I did my journal speak. I threw it away because journal speak is to be destroyed. As one of my favorite clients once said, it's like blowing your nose into tissue. You don't need to look at it again. You're getting something out. It doesn't stay true. It morphs. It changes. It's the voice of a really powerful

angry and entitled inner child. They teach this all in the book. But anyway, she did it and she said, you know, my back's feeling fine. And I was like, I knew it would. So what I will say to parents more than anything is your children look to you. Children don't know if they're safe. They know if they're safe through the mirror of your eyes.

And so if you are scared for them, if you are wringing your hands, whether it's because of a bully in school or their headaches that won't go away, they are taking that impact from you. And so, you know, we did a program last year. We were looking to create content for Gen Z, you know, for teens who want to do this. And so we brought Kate, who is our teen ambassador to Omega, to the retreat I teach every year at the Omega Institute last week in June.

And she had been doing the work for a year and a half, totally eliminated her chronic stomach aches and her crippling anxieties. This is a fantastic kid. She's a senior in high school now, and she came and spoke on the Omega stage. And if anyone's interested, we offer the recordings of not only Kate's talk, but also the Gen Z cohort. There were about eight kids that were there. When I say kids...

also in their early 20s, who were in a panel. So we have a roundtable of them sharing their experience to help bring kids into this work.

So you can go to my website for that. But what we found is her most powerful message to the audience was, you are the mirror. You have to speak to your children. You have to hold space for your children to feel like you know. Because kids never feel like they know. And that's why my biggest advice for parenting is,

is work on yourself, continue to excavate, continue to get curious, continue to be willing because the more you can be centered and sure and wear it loosely and say, however this goes, it's okay for me, you create children who can do the same for themselves. Well, also too, I'll add what I think with children, it's also important to figure out how to instill a little confidence in that they do have agency. They're

They do have maybe an innate power to yield at the same time. This is, in my view, this is where spirituality comes in. This idea of there's a greater power, you know, you can let go here. There's a master plan. And I think science is actually, Dr. Lisa Miller has been on the show, a big fan of her work. She's a friend, like the science of spirituality as it relates to children.

and their mental health. And so like, how do you think about confidence? Because all the concepts you're talking about does come back, in my view, to self-confidence. If I don't think, I may be looking in the mirror and saying, I can heal, I'm great. But deep down, it's just not happening. Yeah, you know, I think that

So I'm Gen X. I was raised in the 70s and 80s. And I would say we were raised pretty solidly to give away our power. Give it to a doctor. Give it to a pill. Give it to, you know, whatever the latest trend is, you know, that you can do to yourself that like somebody else is going to determine your outcome. And so...

So I think confidence, like you just said, is based tremendously on agency. So when I work with young people and I talk to my kids and I talk to their friends, you know, when I have them over my house, what I'm telling people more than anything is you have so much more power than you realize to affect your physical and emotional health.

You don't have anxiety. You're a human being having an experience of human anxiety, which is totally normal. You're not in the grips of something that is owning you that you can't control. Here are some tools. Here's some mindset shifts. Here are some ways to look at it. You have power. And I believe that is the greatest source of confidence. So I think you're hitting on something much bigger than that. If you look at 2025,

I don't have the numbers in front of me, but we're not exactly a healthy nation in terms of

Obesity, diabetes, mental health. And like you astutely pointed out, you can't just eat donuts every morning. You got to have your protein, you got to eat healthy, you got to eat real food, not processed food, et cetera, et cetera. So that's definitely part of the equation. But I'm of the view after our conversation that there's also something much bigger emotionally that's contributing to our mental health, our diabetes, our obesity, assuming you'd agree. Oh my goodness. Like I said...

I think it's the biggest factor. And the only reason I say this, and this is not to discount diet or sleep or exercise or protein, any of this, is because I watch the healthiest people, the people who run marathons, the people who formerly were at the top of their game, sidelined with chronic conditions when their brain and their nervous system decide,

Nope, you are. It's too dangerous for you to move forward because life is this, this, and this, and they don't even know it. And so what I'll say is I think understanding that emotions have gotten a very light rap

in the world of health. It's like, oh, are you feeling bad? No, emotions are energy in motion. Emotions are the thing that allows our brain to know if we're safe or not. It's so central to our functioning as humans. And so I think that

I know that if we ignore something that's so easily to ignore because societally they are not prioritized, our emotional experience, our stress, our overwhelm, our trauma, our attachment to outcomes, we will be sidelined because it's a survival technique.

And so it won't ask our permission. It won't ask our opinion, just like you don't take your hand off a hot stove based on your opinion. Take it out of reflex. So among the people you described, you know, they're healthy, they're successful, they're doing all the right things, they're testing, and then boom, something happens. Have you found any commonalities? Is it anger or is it a specific type of trauma? Like, what have you found in your experience? Because

These people shouldn't be sick. Correct. Correct. I found that there's not one factor, but I'll say a really big one is this urgency to be a certain thing like that you've defined yourself as. So I worked with a guy and I don't see private clients anymore, but I had a very dear friend and it was her boyfriend. And we met when I was in the city and

his back went out completely. And this is an incredibly successful guy, athletic, young, healthy, eats well, the best of all things. And his back went out completely. He was really in despair. And he was talking to me about how like, Nicole, I'm the type of person that I don't get tired. Like I go, go, go. Like nothing really gets me that much. I can power through. And they had this definition of himself that to me was attached to a ton of fear, even though he wouldn't have said it. That he...

He has to see himself as this thing or else what is he? You know, if you cannot reach and meet the criteria that you have subconsciously attached to success and to being able to show up in the world a certain way.

That's like a real crisis. That's a real crisis in there. It's an identity crisis, a crisis of identity. And it's real. It's a physical crisis when it's attached to who you are and what you are. So I helped him to understand that he was doing the work and, you know, he's almost completely out of pain at this point. And so I'm just going to tell you that this is capital T true. I can only say that if you hear my words and you're even slightly lit up,

Just replace your fear with curiosity. Replace your skepticism with curiosity. The only thing that is a bar to our learning and to growing and to feeling better as a human species is contempt prior to investigation. It's unwillingness to look at something. If you can just be curious, that's all I need.

Well, I think of hearing your example, the professional athlete who retires. I think of celebrity and influencer culture. Oh, that's a bad one where, you know, you're...

fame is fleeting obviously i think of an entrepreneur high-powered executive who retires i think of someone who a mom you know i think of a stay-at-home mom or dad or what have you the identities of children i think of all those things i think that hits for a lot of people something i think about so i know we have to wrap of all the anecdotes in the book the book is filled with everyone's got to buy the book and i don't say that often of all the anecdotes which really stands out

Oh my goodness. Well, as you pointed out, the end of every chapter is a different person's story in their own words. And this is people from all over the world. This is people from different socioeconomic statuses and genders and cultures. And so it's definitely, it's a real mix. Which one stands out? I'm just going to have to pick one because quite frankly, they are all so stunning. But I'm going to talk about Gary. So Gary is,

was a, is a man in his 60s. He lives in a remote village in New Zealand. He had COVID. He was a regular COVID, a mild COVID infection. And then he came down with long COVID.

which was severe. Chronic fatigue to the point where he couldn't walk upstairs without going to bed for days. He was short of breath. He was in tons of physical pain, horrible brain fog. And then toward the end of what finally became his acquaintance with my work, he even had aphasia. He was not getting words. He wasn't able to speak properly. He could no longer speak on the phone. So it got...

He was so severely ill. And this is, by the way, a man living in truly the mountains of New Zealand in a remote village, hunting, fishing, hiking in his 60s, miles and miles. Like, this is a man not only in top health, but in real nature, you know, living that kind of a lifestyle. And he was so sick that he had to move into a camper on his property. He couldn't be with people. He was just...

He really was in such a state. And so he couldn't even read. His wife read a newspaper article about a woman that found my work in the Netherlands. This is what's beautiful to me. The reason I'm telling you this is because to me, the striking, and this is spiritual as well, connection of humans, the humanity of us humans.

handing stories, you know, and this is like the most ancient cultures, like we hand stories around from generation to generation. We hand them and now with the internet and with the ability to connect the way we do, the most positive part is we're handing our hope to one another. His wife read an article that was published in the Netherlands about a woman who had

found me through a Dutch influencer and did my work and recovered from very severe long COVID. Her name is Lika. Her story is also in the book. But the reason Gary's is even more stunning is Gary heard about Lika and he started to investigate my work. He had never heard a podcast before in his life.

He was so completely new to this and he started listening to my podcast, which is called The Cure for Chronic Pain. And it's been around since 2018, hundreds of interviews. And he started to have some hope. He started to replace his terror with curiosity and he started to do the journal speak work.

He was so not in the mind-body-green world. I mean, he told me when he heard me talk about self-compassion, he had to Google it to find out what it was.

He was just so completely not of this mindset. And he began to recover. He began to get back his general ability to live life. He moved back into his house. He kept doing the work. He kept regulating his nervous system, doing all of my – I think he took my online course. I have a course called Freedom from Chronic Pain. He took that. He talks about it in the book. But anyway, he is –

completely and utterly well, not a stitch of long COVID. He hikes, he travels, he hunts, he does all his life. And now he has decided in his late 60s that he is going to be a voice of this work to people in New Zealand and Australia. He teaches, he travels, he helps people, he takes phone calls. And

And this is the way we change the world, one person at a time. Incredible. Are you able to share, in your opinion, was the root cause that led to such a severe case of long COVID? You guys, we're all the same. We're all the root cause. You know, death by a thousand paper cuts. Some people have capital T trauma. They've abused, they have neglect, they've had horrible experiences, war, you know, whatever they've been through. Many, many more of us

And by the way, you're not going to be excluded from this work if you've had capital T trauma 100%. It can work for you. And many of us just have, like I said, death by a thousand paper cuts. You were an energetic mismatch to your family. You had some strife growing up. You had issues with friends, issues with your body, issues with love, issues with self-worth. It's just human. I have...

I had to call my podcast something. So I called it The Cure for Chronic Pain. And I have to be an expert on something. So I use chronic conditions. But the truth is, this is every human being. There is no cure for the human condition. There's no cure for human pain. You're going to still feel things, sometimes in your heart and sometimes in your body. But there's a cure for chronic anything. Because when we are chronic, we are fueled by fear. And it's leaving our nervous system in a place where it thinks we need constant therapy.

Well, I think chronic pain or that chronic or that severe health event is often the wake up call that a lot of people experience. So much we covered. Is there anything we didn't cover that you'd like to touch on before we go? And also, please tell us where people can find you. You know, the only thing I'll say is as much as I do think we actually covered quite a bit of ground today.

I never want people to leave a conversation confused or thinking, yeah, I got it, but that'll never work for me. So that is why I wrote this book. I took 20 years of best practices, the best human stories. It is truly a toolkit for living. So

The only reason I'm saying that is because I don't want people to leave with questions they're all answered in that book. Literally, I cannot think of anything that I need you to know that's not in there. So that's the first thing I'll say because I'd want everyone to know this is an option for them. There is a tiny percentage of the human population that probably can't do this work and it's because they are completely, completely unable to look at themselves.

I'm sure there are, you know, severe narcissistic conditions. I was going to say narcissists. Severe narcissism, you know, severe to the point where like nothing is your fault and you've never, you know, been part of the problem. Like, okay.

That small sect of people, maybe I can't reach you, but most of you I can. They don't listen to us. Yeah, they don't like this stuff. So, you know, point being, you know, this is work for everyone, every human being, even if your only chronic condition is you are lacking the joy for life you think life is supposed to be giving you. If things should just be a little bit more beautiful than this, this is also for you. It will set you free. We all have the reservoir.

It's part of being alive. We all have times it bubbles over. And it's just, this is a tool in your toolkit and it will not fail you. So where can people find me? Everything I teach and everything that's available is at NicoleSacks.com. We spent a ton of time building the website in preparation for the book launch. So it would be a hub and a community place for everyone. I have a private community that I...

The only way to work with me, people often say, oh, I want to have sessions. I don't do private sessions, but I run a community. It's on the website. It's just called Healing with Nicole. And I meet with them twice a month on Zoom. I'm on a private messaging community with them every day answering questions. So that's the way if you want me.

You come and be part of Healing with Nicole. We also have other forms of membership where you can just get our exclusive content. I have courses. I have retreat recordings. I've spent so many years just being out there with this stuff, and I have it all collectively in the NicoleSachs.com space.

And my podcast is called The Cure for Chronic Pain. Totally free. Go listen to hundreds of success stories, teachings, you know, just way to do this work. And at Instagram, I'm always on Instagram, putting more stuff out at NicoleSacksLCSW. Amazing. Nicole, thank you so much. Congrats on the book. Thank you, Jason. Pleasure to be here.