81. Your Nervous System Is the Missing Piece: Healing Chronic Symptoms with Mitch Webb

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If you've done everything right, the clean eating, the functional labs, the supplements, and something still won't budge, this episode was made for you. I sat down with nervous system and trauma coach Mitch Webb, and honestly, this one hit really close to home because I was exactly that person for years.

Mitch has been through Lyme disease, black mold, heavy metals, two traumatic brain injuries, and long COVID. And what he found underneath all of it was a nervous system that never learned to feel safe. What he shares here is some of the most honest, practical nervous system work I've come across.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• Why your body is not broken and your symptoms are actually an intelligent response to what you've been through.
• The difference between nervous system dysregulation and sensitization, and why the people who try hardest to fix themselves are often the most stuck.
• How the drive to optimize and biohack can quietly become a form of emotional avoidance.
• A simple somatic scanning practice you can do in five to ten minutes that combines body awareness, emotion, and belief work.
• Why healing is not about never having a hard day again. It's about building the capacity to move through hard days without getting lost in them.

About Mitch Webb: Mitch is a nervous system and trauma coach who blends somatic work, parts work, and emotional processing to help people with chronic symptoms get out of the cycle of efforting and into real healing. He meets his clients in the truth of it, without shame and without pressure.

Resources Mentioned: https://mitchwebb.com/free-resources/

Connect With Mitch Webb: https://mitchwebb.com/

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Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only.  Information discussed is not intended for diagnosis, curing, or prevention of any disease and is not intended to replace advice given by a licensed healthcare practitioner.  Before using any products mentioned or attempting methods discussed, please speak with a licensed healthcare provider.  This podcast disclaims responsibility from any possible adverse reactions associated with products or methods discussed.    Opinions from guests are their own, and this podcast does not condone or endorse opinions made by guests.  We do not provide guarantees about the guests' qualifications or credibility. This podcast and its guests may have direct or indirect financial interests associated with products mentioned.

Transcript

Welcome And The Healing Promise

Dr. Rachaele Carver 0:00

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Root of the Matter. I am your host, Dr. Rachaele Carver, and today I'm very excited about our guest, Mr. Mitch Webb. And he is going to tell us the secret to getting over those chronic symptoms once and for all. I think, you know, which Mitch really spoke to me because we have a very similar story, you know, constantly trying to chase symptoms and never really understanding the root cause of all this. So he's going to talk to us about our nervous system, which, as I said, is really the key to healing. So thanks, Mitch. Why don't you uh introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about how you got to this point?

Small Traumas And Nervous System Safety

Mitch Webb 0:41

Yeah, Rachel, thanks for having me. And and like we were saying, for we hopped all our kind of kindred spirits here and uh chasing symptoms and uh seeing that the nervous system is the missing piece and a lot of uh uh healing stories. You know, that that was me. My story started with a bunch of traumatic stuff when I was maybe 20 years old. I fell out of a second injury, broke out in autoimmune, um, moved into a house that had black mold, had Lyme disease, had heavy metals, was metabolically compromised, you know, you might say pre-diabetes or something like that. So I started, left the corporate world, I started doing everything right and healing and reversed the mold, reversed the lime, cleaned up the diet, fell in love with health and wellness. So when I was became a health coach, going to see one of my first clients, had another massive TBI, got hit by a dump truck, um, had post-concussion syndrome for a year, followed by three years of of long COVID that I would say, and here's the thing, you know, looking at all of that, I think everything was pointing back to a dysregulated nervous system, uh, insecure attachment or not having secure attachment when I was a kid, just never feeling safe, and then really falling into this trap of optimizing and trying to fix everything and figure it out, which eventually led to burnout. And when I found the nervous system and started learning about that, everything kind of clicked. It's it's been a hell of a journey unpacking Pandora's box. It's kind of an endless rabbit hole. And and even found myself in more of a sensitized nervous system state. So there's like there's dysregulation, there's sensitization. We've been dysregulated for a really long time. We can find ourselves in sensitization, people like us that are trying to fix it, trying to figure it out. And and when I heard that, it kind of stopped me in my tracks. And so I've um really been sharing whatever I could learn over the years and and found that, like we were talking about before we hopped on, that the nervous system really is the missing piece.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 2:40

Absolutely. And and obviously you've been through quite a lot with all the you know the physical trauma, but but then you also kind of mentioned, you know, the insecure attachment. So I think I want people to really understand that. Like in my life, I I never had any big T traumas for the most part. My life's been, you know, relatively easy if you're somebody, you know, looking from the outside in. So, so, but yet I have that dysregulated nervous system and I have that sensitized nervous system from you know, things that developed in my childhood. And again, you could look at my childhood and say it was picture perfect, right? There were no abuses, no traumas, nothing like that. But the way that we develop, and hey, we can even bring ancestral, right, in generational trauma and stuff with us. But I want people to understand that it doesn't have to be a big T trauma. It could be, you know, that that girl, uh, you know, I had acne as a kid, right? The the kids who would make fun of me because my skin was all pimply, you know, right? That becomes a a trauma in of itself. So um, so again, I just I, you know, you've been through tremendous and it's it's amazing when you hear all these stories, but but it can be, you know, some relatively seemingly benign things that also dysregulate um that nervous system. So, and and obviously our parents are, you know, kind of well-meaning, but they only know what they know, right? And so all the the, you know, again, that lack of safety. And I look back at my own kids and I think, you know, did I give them that sense of security? Is my daughter's anxiety a result of me working so much, right? And and and being the doer and not the the caregiver. But anyway, that further contributes to nervous system dysregulation, right? When you go back and you, you know, you just the guilt and all those, like those, those kind of feelings really don't serve us. So tell us, once you kind of learned about the nervous deregulation, which again, I think most of us who have any chronic ailment suffer from, maybe without knowing, how do we, how do we unpack? How do we know? You know, is there a way to to test that or just believe that we all have that? Is this when you're coaching your clients, is this something you dive into first, or do you do some of the physical work first?

How To Spot Dysregulation Early

Beliefs Filters And The Need To Be Fixed

Mitch Webb 4:46

It's a good question. Um, and I love that you asked that because how do we know? You know, I think the way that I found this work and and I knew was because I had these symptoms that that wouldn't get better despite doing everything right. You know, I certainly benefited greatly from cleaning up my diet and you know, learning how to move appropriately for my body instead of forcing myself to have energy. Um, you know, back in the day when I was biohacking, that looked like if I had low energy, I would wake up and fast and drink coffee and do a hard workout and then, you know, eat lunch at at two o'clock in the afternoon. Guess what everybody was doing in the fasting keto world, and and um that wasn't helping. But uh, you know, I got into this work because of anxiety. And one of the first things I got diagnosed with was uh gluten sensitivity. Um and I thought I'm I can find the perfect diet and I'll and I'll get better. And then I found all these other um, you know, findings that we see in functional medicine, lime mold, heavy metals, metabolic issues, and and I thought I was gonna play whack-a-mole and eventually I would get better. But and but I didn't find the nervous system until later. But I do remember my functional medicine doctor saying, hey, when are we gonna unpack your childhood trauma? And it was just like, how dare you, man? Like my childhood was was perfect. But I think it going back to your question, how do we know? I think it's just pointing a lot how many clients have I worked with over the years that resolved they get better when they clean up their diet, when they lose a couple pounds, when they, you know, getting some sunlight and and not punishing their body with diet and exercise and you know, getting good sleep and water, like all the basics. And then there's the the rest of us that uh even despite so many people having these findings on functional medicine labs, there's a deeper issue here. And uh that would be the my clients. And to answer your second question about where do we start, there's so many doorways in this work I found. Whether I'm working emotionally or physically and nutritionally, the client's gonna tell me whether that's a behavior, whether it's an emotion, whether it's thoughts and words that we're using, relationships, stuff. Just it there's so many it when you can listen, and trauma conditioned me for that because I learned to read a room so that I could respond to how other people's emotions and how they were showing up. And so being a trauma coach, I I see those things. And it's like your nervous system is the map. You don't have to go looking for things. I remember having a list of these traumatic situations, and I haven't really touched those in four or five years of work. Just whatever comes up, comes up, and I can trust that. But if we're if we're if I'm looking at a client and they don't understand, if they're eating a standard previous standard American diet before we had these new changes that came in, I like those a little bit better. But you know, if they're eating McDonald's and drinking soda and sitting 18, 20 hours a day, then I got a good idea of what's going on. But when we start checking off those boxes and we're not getting better, and and also I'm not following a plan because, you know, it's gotta be perfect, or it's all or nothing, or I get just completely overwhelmed and shut down when I'm trying to make changes. Well, that's that's giving us some more indications that there's a deeper issue going here. You know, I can't get out of bed, chronic anxiety that doesn't go away, insomnia, gut issues, you know, all the gut issues that I had that we tried to throw the kitchen sink of protocols at didn't get better until I started going to therapy and working with those sensations or the lack of sensation, the stuckness in my gut, and and basically getting curious with what that sensation was. And worked through really difficult things. I would start burping, I would fart in and uh in sessions, and and that was the fascia releasing the tension from this lack of safety, this bracing, this waiting for a threat, or scanning my environment through hypervigilance, constantly looking for what's wrong, you know, and these physical issues can cause trauma, right? I've kind of always looked, what's the root, and it's not black or white, it's an and conversation. Um again, I'm a big believer that the nervous system gives us a layup or or an alley. Like it is kind of it wants to heal, body wants homeostasis. And if we slow down enough and we get curious, we have compassion, we meet those symptoms, and we allow them actually, and quit trying to fix them. Nervous system's always gonna tell us what's going on.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 9:22

I think that's awesome. You brought up so many interesting points. Number one, what I love about health coaching is completely personalized to you, right? You know, you can go to functional medicine to, and you know, like you said, they have these protocols and the questions that you ask. But like you said, everybody's gonna take you on their own way. And like you said, what's most important to you? Like one of my first questions is what's your goal? How can like I cannot fix you? Because that for me, I think I spent so many years looking for the thing or the person, right, that was gonna fix me. Yeah. When I had all the capability within myself. And so so that's what you want to know up from when when I have a person coming to me and they're like, you know, you need to do this or fix this. And I'm like, you know, pause right there because right there, you know it's gonna be a very difficult person to work through because they they're outside of themselves, right? And so again, you can change the diet and exercise more and sleep better. But if you don't really believe that you can get yourself well, then you never will. I say to my kids all the time, thoughts become beliefs and beliefs become reality. You know, just change, and again, it's not talking about positive, uh, what do they call that? You know, affirmation. The the toxic positivity, right? It's not that like trying to just, you know, happy think yourself at it, because you can maybe say something, but if you don't really believe it, right? So, so yes, we want to have more positive, or we want to think about when something challenging comes our way, right? You know, then maybe it happened for a reason. I think that really helped me too. You know, something bad happens or whatever, and and it's so easy to go, oh my God, what was me, that's so horrible. I'm so unlucky, right? Is that the universe saying, hey, we need to shift gears? This actually happened, like you lost your job because maybe you weren't supposed to be in that job, right? There's a whole other world somewhere else. So, you know, when we're doing that nervous, it's also thinking about how you think about things, right? Because all those traumas that happened to us at a young age, or again, it doesn't have to be trauma per se, but our experiences create filters. Yeah. Oftentimes, you know, yeah. With my 17-year-old, it's like we'll be in the same room, hear the same conversation, and what she takes away and what I take away, I'm like, wow, you know, like we're living in total different realities here. So again, it's that filter. So things that don't bother me create anxiety in her, right? So that nervous system works. So, so a person, you know, take fibromyalgia, for example, right? You know, all that achiness, just like you said, all of that, the the tension, the trauma, the pain gets trapped in the body, right? And so when you I I know when I have energy work too, uh, my stomach will start to gurgle, make all sorts of kind of noise. And my practitioner was like, oh, now your energy is moving. Yeah, you've been holding on to it so long, you know. And again, all of those thoughts, they create different frequencies in our body that can create pain and all sorts of things. So, you know, it's really, really fascinating.

Mitch Webb 12:20

You know, one thing you were saying there that I want to, I I learned about this yesterday. I think it's so cool. I think you'd like it. The Berlin paradox. Have you ever heard of this?

Dr. Rachaele Carver 12:28

I don't think so.

Mitch Webb 12:29

Yeah, I think it's this Dr. Hoffman. I can't remember where she, I think it's a she was from. But basically it's these people like us that um are fixated on optimization and and getting better and better in the next thing. And and these are the pair of people that have this isn't me, it used to be me, that have like a two-hour morning routine and evening routine, and they got the blue-like blocking glasses, and they're looking at the sunrise every morning and they're doing their intermittent fasting and their carb cycling and they're working out and they're doing it four days a week. You know, it's all these things. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Well, the more we try to optimize, it's really a uh an avoidance of our pain. And we're saying, I don't want to feel this, and I need to be better. That's attachment, right? It's it's um perfection. And the more that we optimize, the more we get away from ourselves. And and so much of this work that I've really been leaning to into in the last uh six months, I'd say understanding nervous system sensitization is allowing symptoms, accepting them, seeing them, like you mentioned, as an opportunity to meet these parts of us that we've said don't belong. And and that energy, this block is emotion that wasn't allowed. That we said, you know, I can't be sad, I can't be angry, I can't have grief, whatever that may be. And when we can slow down and sit with that, sit in the fire, teach our body that that's not gonna hurt us, it's not dangerous. It would express those emotions that have been trapped, that energy can flow again. I just thought that was really cool because I could see myself so much in that definition.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 14:05

Absolutely. There's there's something I read somewhere that calls it love substitutes. So I'm a big reader. Like I love to read. That's kind of how I wind down before I go to bed. And I was thinking about, I was like, huh. I was like, is that, you know, I used to think, well, I'm a good reader, you know, that's that's something great about me. But then I then I was reading this and I was like, oh, so instead of like having a nice conversation with my husband or my daughters or, you know, talking about maybe something uncomfortable, oh, I just want to read, right? Because I want to shut off my brain and not deal with the uncomfortableness. So I was like, so same thing. It's exactly like you're saying, when you have a routine, right? It's like, okay, I if I stick to this, I don't have to think and I don't have to feel, I just, you know, this is what I'm gonna do. So it's really interesting that you bring that up, right? Because in that biohacking world, right, and and wellness, you know, we're supposed to do all these different habits. But but you're right, we also have to to feel, you know. I I talked to my daughters too a lot about feeling because once they they were diagnosed with anxiety and depression, and I had to say, Whoa, let's let's rethink that. You feel anxious, you feel depressed. Right. But it's not like it's a feeling, which means it can go away, you can change it. So, yes, feel it because I was the kind of mom where, like, ah, suck it up, you know, you're fine. That scrape meal, get up, uh, really, and not letting my kids, you know, oh yes, that hurts, you know. So that's the kind of thing is that, you know, tell me it's okay, it's okay to have those feelings and they're normal and they're valid, but that's telling you that something, right? You know, I think of that anxiety too, is like a feeling that your deep soul is out of congruence with the environment, right? And so anxiety is trying to tell you out of this situation, right? Now it doesn't have to be necessarily that you're physically unsafe, but emotionally and mentally, that's not the very beginning of this year. I did a podcast about values. And I was like, if we live in our values, everything just is better. You know, one is trying to figure out what those values are, but I think a lot of that we are supposed to do X, Y, Z. We're supposed to be. And when that is really not in line with who we are, we create anxiety, we create depression. You know, if you I think so many with kids today, they're on these devices all day and they're seeing what they think it should be the idealized life, the idealized look, you know? And when they are not living up to that, they feel bad about themselves, right? Because what they're seeing, it's not even reality, but in their mind, they're processing it as reality, right? So yeah, I mean, it's just it's just fascinating when when you when you think about all these things. Oh, yeah. So tell me about some of the techniques that you've learned to one kind of recognize this and like how do how do you start?

Mitch Webb 16:51

Yeah, great question. I think it all starts with awareness and observing. Um and and and instead, like kind of like you mentioned, like I have anxiety, it's more like a part of me is is experiencing anxiety and learning that that's a good thing. And so there's awareness and observation. And next I think we go into education and start to understand physiology and how the nervous system works. And in my work, I don't um, you know, it kind of felt like for a while in this world of mental health, I would say that there was a battle between like the the brain people, top-down CBT, DBT, you could say, but really I think uh in terms of like brain retraining, working with exposure, and working with our beliefs, and then there's the the bottom up, which is the body, and where we started. So it's it's education, it's learning how our beliefs impact our body and and and learning how our physiology works and how the nervous system works and understanding what dysregulation is. And the big thing that I like to take people to is you are not broken. Your body is responding perfectly to the environments and the people or places and situations that we've been in. And if it feels threatened, you know, part of that is feeling what that feels like. Typically, we're living in our head and avoiding going into our body. We're thinking our way to safety, but we can start there. It's not like one is better than the other. The beliefs can be our doorway in to the nervous system and into this sensitization that caused these symptoms of the dysregulation. And so there's education, there's awareness, there's tiny slow bits of being with the sensations, dipping into, we call that titrating, what it feels like when I recognize these beliefs that I'm not good enough, or I need to be perfect, or I can't rest. What happens in my body when I recognize that? Maybe I don't feel anything at all. And that would that tells us a lot of information. There is no good or bad in this work, it's just information. If we can be meet that with curiosity, we can go, oh wow, you know what? You know, after I had this conversation with Susie, it kind of upset me, and then I shut down the rest of the day. And so we have language to go with these experiences, and we start to build capacity to be with those intense sensations that we've been avoiding. The reason that we've been living in our head, and that's what our society does. It's, I feel like this work is the ultimate red pill because you see what's going on in your body, you see what's going on in your family, in society, in the world, and it's a lot to take in. And we don't want to do that all at once. That would push the system into more unsafety and collapse and fear. And so it's just awareness, compassion, curiosity, education. From there, we kind of start with reconnecting. I like to start with reconnecting with the body and simple things like orienting, using our senses to be here in the take my eyes away from the screen right now and look at the colors in my room. And can I find something that excites me or um that I like? Like I'm right now, I'm I'm looking at a bumper sticker that says, I believe in you. I love that, right? And what's that feel like in my body? And uh maybe that is intense to do that, to not be in our head. And so we learn about resourcing and things that allow us to feel good. Maybe that's a pet or a blanket or a warm bath or nature or a food, a beer, you know, whatever that is. Uh, we're not gonna shame resources if it's uh a beer or a joint or whatever it is, you know, it's like, yeah, that's what's working right now. And and over time, we want to build um internal resources. You know, can I feel my my feet on the ground? Can I connect with nature? Can I talk with a friend? And that makes me feel good. So when we start to dip our toe into the unknown or into these sensations in our body, well, then we can pendulate, meaning we can swing our awareness to something that will settle us. And over time, that builds the capacity so that we can actually do the work. And the work is going into the sensations. And over time, the more we we call it follow your impulse, which starts with going to the bathroom, landing, go to the bathroom, eating when I'm hungry, drinking water when I'm thirsty, like listening to the body, attuning to the body. Those of us that didn't have safety or secure attachment, that's what we were missing. Attunement. So guess what? Parents aren't going to come back because the to the teacher, the coach, they're not gonna come back and attune to you. Guess who gets to attune to you? Right here. So that's parts work. So that's working with these parts that have been pushed away. They want to laugh. There's emotions that go with that. There's images that go with that, there's behaviors that go with that. We snap into our child consciousness, and then we start to recognize that and observe that. Oh, that's really interesting. And see how we judge that part of us and how we avoid it and run away from it. And again, it's just our nervous system responding to the environment. I love um saying when I go on podcasts, this is kind of A male approach to looking at trauma where it's like, I have these things in me and I gotta get it out, like I need a release, right? And that kind of makes sense. But then that's also sounds like shame to me. It sounds like there's something bad in me. No, our nervous system gets its shape from the environment, right? So it's not that these things are bad. It's a very intelligent, protective way of keeping us safe from resources. And so can we get curious with that? And the more we can can be with that, allow that, accept that, express the emotions, the more we build trust in our own body, the more we build safety, and the more these symptoms don't have to get really loud and and try to get our attention. They just they relax because now we're we're being authentic. We we have resources, and it doesn't mean that I don't have emotions or I don't shut down or get anxiety sometimes. It means that I don't get stuck there because I have the education, I have the awareness, I have these tools, I know what I can do, and I can move through that and I can regulate.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 23:04

I I love that. I so much that a couple of things that really stand out is the word curiosity. When I first, and I say that I've said this a million times if you've listened to this podcast a lot, but my turning point was, you know, they gave me a drug that was an immune system altering, like cancer drug for my eczema. And I just said, I just had this awareness that I said, I'm out. My body is trying to tell me something. I just have to figure out what it is. I don't know where that thought came from, if it was downloaded or whatever, but that was my first like it was my like, okay, wait a minute. There's nothing wrong with me, right? This is a signal. And I think that that's where we need to shift our uh that that awareness to. Like, and and I love that also how you said there's nothing wrong with us. You know, when we think of autoimmunity, we are taught in, you know, by the media, right, that the body is is going awry, the body is doing something wrong. Absolutely not. If that's the one thing that we can educate people, your body is the most intelligent computer that was ever, ever existed. And it knows exactly what it's doing. So it's responding to a toxin or an infection, right? And yes, it attacks its own tissues because that's where that toxin is, right? So, so again, we have to have that curiosity, you know, why are all my muscles hurting? Why am I so tired, right? Why are my joints aching, right? It is not, oh, sorry, genetics, you, you know, drew the short straw, right? Like, no, not at all. We know that you can completely reverse autoimmunity, right? If if you go down the right path, you learn what the root of it is, you know, they said eczema, you can never get rid of it. I mean, it was all over my hands, my hands are perfect now. And even though sometimes if I feel like it's been a long time now, but if I feel like something coming on, I know I need to stop, listen, maybe change my diet. But again, a lot of mine is nervous system, you know, related. And I I really like how you're talking about, you know, the five senses. That's one, I think that's a really good starting point for people. One of my favorite things that I learned way back was the body scan, right? Joe Dispensa talks about the body stand. And oftentimes, sometimes, you know, there are women, maybe especially, we wake up in the middle of the night, or maybe we can't fall asleep because the thoughts are going and going in our head. And again, like you just said, right? We got to get out of our head and into our body. So when you're laying in bed and you're ruminating about silly stuff, you start doing the body scan. And it's as simple as I feel my toes in space. I feel the tops of my feet, I feel the bottom of my feet. And you can work, usually for me, I barely get past my hips and I'm asleep. So I started doing the head down because I'm like, my legs are doing great. I'm never getting any uh stress to the top of my body. But that's a really simple, easy kind of starting point of how to get back into your body. And then I love what you said about the senses, right? You're having an anxiety attack or something is stressful. Just look around the room. What do you see? What do you smell? I do energy work. One of my mentors, I guess, that's how we start every conversation, right? Like get into your senses, what do you smell? Or thinking about a memory, you know, something that maybe is causing anxiety, right? You kind of get into that space and what is the color, right? What is the sound? What is the smell? All of these things again to bring yourself into your body so you can reconnect, right? The nervous system to the to the physical body. So I I think for me, those have been really impactful to calm down in and understand that each one of us has the ability to heal ourselves if we're that's the thing.

Choosing Safety Over Perfection

Mitch Webb 26:38

You're the medicine. Like the thing you've been looking for, it's not outside of you. And you're right about society tells us that these are wrong. We gotta figure it out, we gotta fix it. We gotta basically that keeps us stuck in the cycle. It's it's more like, how can I be with this? How can I accept and allow this, interpret that? Like I woke up this morning, you'll laugh at this right here. Uh, last night it was St. Patrick's Day. I had to do labs today. I take TRT. I had like every six months or something like that. So I've put a lot of pressure on myself in the past to be perfect, to get it right. Last night I had two beers with my wife, and uh woke up all night. I was having knife mares about a, I don't know, test or something going wrong, not being perfect, basically. Well, I woke up this morning with so much anxiety, I'm like, oh my God. Now I know so much, and what I could tend to do is weaponize that against myself. And I'm like, oh, your cortisol's gonna be high, your estrogen's gonna be high, your testosterone is gonna be blunted. And I had to, and I but it's really easy to go in and fix that or avoid that. Like in the past, I'd say I'll wait till the next day or something like that. But this was an opportunity to meet myself. It was a signal that I need to tune in. And so I went and sat with that, and I felt that my body on fire, and that's a big part of the capacity. It means I can sit in that fire and it's not gonna burn me. And I started getting images. I remember when I was on thyroid medication years ago and was trying to manage everything. I was checking my blood pressure, I was looking at the heart rate, I was looking at the stuff all day long, it made me crazy. And I would do get ready for tests, and I couldn't sleep at all. Now, does that mean that that's what's happening now? No, it's an opportunity for me to close the loop on that. And so I went and laid down, all these images came up, all this grief. I mean, it was, I can feel right now. It was grief, it was anger, pissed off, um, you know, what else? Um, and it was it was control. And so once I was able to express those emotions and really, you know, comfort that part of me that felt like it had to be perfect, and really go, hey, thank you so much for keeping us safe. And we didn't have any other resources or we didn't know how to feel safe. Like I needed you then. And now I've learned, I've learned differently, right? And it's like, this is an opportunity to show myself that I don't have to be perfect, that that this is okay, and that I can accept and I can allow. And man, as soon as I did that, boom, like all of this activation just moved through. So my system was brain, it felt like it wasn't safe and it was doing the only thing that it knew was to control. And that and and dysregulation tells us we don't have a choice, but regulation says you got a choice. And it's also kind of with the brain, the brain saying we're not safe. The opportunity here is to teach the brain, oh no, I do have a choice and it is safe, and uh, we don't have to be perfect anymore. And damn, that really frees up uh a lot of energy by by taking the pressure off.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 29:44

And that's a really important thing to remember too, is that, you know, when we overcome what I like say my eczema, that doesn't mean, you know, now when I get the eczema, I used to be like, oh, you know, so frustrated, I'm never gonna get better. Whoa was me, right? And now, you know, if it were to come up and be like, okay, maybe I need to I need to do X, Y, or Z, but I know I can get rid of it because I've done it over and over and over again, right? So it doesn't, it's like that choice. I can be upset and frustrated, or I can be like, okay, that's just means I need to tweak a little something, right? Which I think, I think is really important for us to understand that, you know, once we feel maybe fixed or better, doesn't mean we're never gonna experience something bad again. But so it's learning that everything we experience is actually for us. It's for our benefit. And I love how you said it's a choice. We get to choose how we can respond to it and teach the brain. It's that's so vital what you're saying. We teach the brain like I'm safe. You know, how many of us when we pass a cop, right, and the road, we our heart starts beating, right? Well, maybe, you know, if you've never been pulled over, maybe you don't get that. But if you have, right, you know, you get that anxiety or whatever. But you can, you know, train yourself like, you know, that it's it's all good. That is a that is a nervous system reaction, right? Nothing happened. That person didn't do anything to me, but it's creating uh an emotion in my brain, which is creating a physical reaction. And so knowing that that's like, hey, that's you know, it's fine, nothing's gonna happen to you. You can nix that anxiety almost immediately, but understanding that you have the control to do that, right? And I think that's where that's where that the coaching comes into play of teaching, teaching us how to how do we do these things? How do we, how do we create that that choice? Or again, you knew in your body, you know, that things weren't right. And so you took yourself, you took a few minutes, right? It wasn't like your whole day. You could have just been like, that's it. My day's gone, I'm just gonna go in the dark, right? Right. Like maybe in the past, but but now you have the choice, like, okay, you know, this happened. All right, how do I get in touch with that? How do I, you know, control those feelings and move move through the day? So it's important to know that we're always gonna have ups and downs. And it's just how we choose to to deal with them, basically.

Mitch Webb 31:57

It's giving ourselves permission to be human and to know that there's no right or wrong, whether whatever decision I make or whatever happens, I can meet myself either way. If the cop pulls me over and I get a ticket, I'm gonna live. I didn't die. If I got just I speed right past them and they don't catch me, awesome. You know, that that's good too. I didn't, I'm not wrong or bad. We can easily spiral on any of that. If we allow those emotions to move through, we show our without without reacting and trying to fix them and make them go away, then we show the brain, you don't have to, this isn't actually a threat. And I'm not gonna not gonna leave you or disconnect you, disconnect from my body, my nervous system, however it goes. And so that's just building resilience, it's building capacity and it's building safety.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 32:44

Yeah. Which really is the goal, is is really creating more of that resilience, kind of desensitizing the nervous system a little bit. And, you know, I I've seen that in myself over, especially over the last few years where I've really focused so much on my nervous system work and doing biofeedback and again, like giving myself grace. Like, you know what? If I just want to lay and binge a TV show for four hours, that's okay. Right. I don't have to feel guilty about that. Like if that's what I need, you know. I mean, my whole life and like go, go, go, go, and I've got to achieve all these things, and there's, you know, so much, so much to learn. And, you know, like, okay, that can serve its purpose, but it's also okay to relax. If you, if you're feeling tired or, you know, whatever that feeling may be, you know, own it, right? And and feel it. And and then, you know, and it's so important to observe those feelings and like you said, not judge them, right? That's what we do all the time. We're always judging ourselves and others. And that's, you know, it's it's we're here on this planet to learn how to love. Love unconditionally, ourselves first, yeah, right, and then others. And I think too, we're we're too hard on ourselves, and that is at the crux of all of these kind of chronic illnesses that we can't seem to, you know, break out of, but it's completely possible.

Mitch Webb 34:03

Totally.

Why Fixing Becomes A Trap

Dr. Rachaele Carver 34:06

So, any other kind of techniques or or tricks that you think have been helpful for you or you've seen be really powerful in your any of your uh clients?

Mitch Webb 34:14

Yeah, I mean, I've kind of touched on this a little bit, but I'd love to drive this one home. And it's um, you know, if we're chronically fixing and and figuring out symptoms, that means our amygdala is really overacted. It's it's constantly scanning for threats, and everything becomes a threat. And when it doesn't go away, it tells our nervous system there's a tiger at the door, and I can't, I can't uh make it stop. And so um, oddly enough, right next to that amygdala, I can't remember what the name of the brain center is, but it's basically it's where shame is. And so when that amygdala gets activated, so does shame, and so we make ourselves the problem. Um and then we're and then society rewards putting a band-aid on it and fixing it and figuring it out. And I was the dude that had every freaking biohack and tool and supplement and protocol, and I prided myself on fixing things. And you know, when I had uh Simona Irwin on my podcast, and she said, you know what keeps you stuck in sensitization? And I'm like, what? And she said, trying to fix it and figure it out. And I'm like, whoa. Uh and those of us that have been in this world, that's our MO, that's what we do. And so that was really hard for me to put that down. And one of the things that I did was I learned to muscle test. I learned to go to the cabinet in the morning and and and I would see me at the grocery store, I'd be, you know, uh trying to figure out is this food good for me, you know? And um that that's a lot of of pressure and control and a lot of doing.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 35:43

That's so important. I I was the same way, you know. I was just at a conference with a bunch of my colleagues, you know, who are into this, and I'm like, oh, you you don't have an aura ring, you don't have this, and I'm like, I threw all that away. I was like, because they're just sessing over every little data detail. And they were like, hey, you're not gluten-free anymore. I was like, well, I don't, I'm not, I don't worry about it anymore, really. So you know what? If I have some wheat here and there, you know, I'll just take my binder later, you know. I was like, but the thing on it and the worrying all the time just made it worse. So I'm like, I just I just don't worry about that stuff anymore. If I come into contact with something, okay, you know, I've got the biners. And, you know, talking about the muscle testing, my kids now will be at a restaurant, right? And they'll reach under the table and be like, should I have the chicken or the beef? You know, and they asked me to do the o-ring test. That's so fun. Once once a waitress caught her and she was like, What what are you doing?

Mitch Webb 36:35

Yeah, yeah. I mean, what what I learned. Exactly. What I learned it was that these things are OCD, you know, and and is it is it intuition or is it hypervigilance? Do I and intuition is such a big part of this work, and it can be hypervigilance, and we gotta lie, it's very different. Hypervigilance says you gotta do this right now, it's urgent. And intuition is an opening, a different kind of feeling. But back to back to like one of the first things I had to do was I had a coach and she was working with me, and she said, Yeah, take those supplements. And it's not that you can't take supplements, it's not you can't take, so I go all or nothing. I go, Oh my god, I gotta get off all these things. They're actually supporting my body. And it's like, no, no, you don't. It's more about the the urgency to respond and fix them. And so what you do is you organize them. So for me, putting these supplements that every day I was managing, and one thing I was using a lot was pregnenoline and DHEA. And I was like changing, I mean, I was like microdosing differently, you know, and and I learned that that causes a I mean, think about pregnenoline, that's a grandmother hormone, it feeds into everything, testosterone, pregnenoline or whatever you call it, all those different hormones. Yeah, you're gonna feel something with that. So I had to put it into a pill organizer. I froze when that happened. It took me two weeks to figure that out or to be okay with that. You know, and so ultimately we we have a schedule, we organize things, we don't respond in the moment. It's more about, you know, I would I would run into another room and and do nervous system exercises. And now I think that's counterimproducti uh uh productive because I was teaching my nervous system this sensation in my body is not okay. But I may do that at the end of the night. It may be something that I do um at at 7 p.m. when I'm done with everything, and that fits into my schedule that way. And maybe I look at it over a week or two and I teach my system in between when I have that activation, when I have that fatigue, when I have those gut issues. Hey, this is okay. Not to avoid it and shut it down or make it go away. It's more of, hey, I'm gonna keep doing my life uh and I'm gonna do the things that I love and use my values, like you said. I'm gonna go do the workout. I'm gonna go have the freaking beer, yeah, have the gluten that I said I can't have because that's that's what feels good to me. And what happens when we have these OCD and sensitization, and we're constantly responding, is that we we teach the nervous system that it's not safe and the things that we love, uh we start avoiding. And so I was afraid, my world got really small, and I was waiting for myself to heal before I could do these things that I love. And that hurt more uh than the symptom. And so I had to learn to do what I want to do, no matter what, no matter if I have fatigue, if I have anxiety. And the crazy thing with that is it's so counterproductive productive because society rewards fixing the symptoms go away. You know, like I'll give you one funny one for me. My therapist and I were talking about this is probably three, four months ago, but I didn't have dairy. I love dairy. I love I have a nice raw milk supplier here near me. And uh, I had a gut sensitivity test done maybe a year ago. Everything was really clean. There was some gluten in like the yellow, there was some, but I was drinking raw milk every single day. And it was in the sensitive thing. And so I was, you know, my doctor said, you know, avoid avoid milk for six months. It's something I really like. And so when I brought that back in, even just pouring the glass, my stomach would start hurting. Now, that took me really slow it down to see that. Same thing would happen when I wanted to have a beer with my buddies after not having any alcohol and telling myself that's horrible uh for so long. But I could see it, like go on vacation and and like I knew that I was gonna have some margaritas or whatever with my wife. My body would just lock up. My life became small, but I had to go like, hey, I don't have to be perfect. Let me let me figure out what I want to do and let me teach my brain that this is okay. Bye, not respond to, but and eventually the symptoms just let go, and that's where the freedom is. That's real safety and real capacity. And then we have choice. Again, the the a dysregulated sensitized nervous system said it has to be this way and it has to be right now, or it's gonna last forever. Eventually you learn that's my signal, uh, and that's my body telling me that I need to slow down and meet this pattern because what I really want's on the other side of that fear.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 41:00

Yeah, so so valid. I mean, I just been there, and it's it's only in the last few years that I've really been able to again chill out. I'm like, I started to notice, I'm like, you know, every time I go on vacation, I'm always eating worse. I, you know, I don't drink a lot, but yeah, maybe the occasional beverage. Um and I'm like, and my eczema actually gets better. I was like, hmm. So it can't just be the wheat and the the dairy, you know.

Mitch Webb 41:23

Yeah.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 41:24

So but you know, you kind of have to learn these things over time and you experience. But I would say I just read something, and I think, you know, maybe we can leave with this that, you know, I love the body scan, but another thing I just read this past weekend as I was coming back from the conference was, you know, at the end of every day, you know, whatever you want to do at the end of it, but even just taking a few minutes to like, you know, did anything anger me today? Did anything make me upset today? You know, try to, you know, what made me happy today? Like when we go to sleep and ignore, like for me, if I'm like, I don't want to deal with anything that happened today, I'm just gonna read, right? I'm just I'm burying those emotions, you know, those feelings. And those, all those emotions are frequencies, right? That vibrate in our body can get stuck in certain tissues. So, you know, what if instead before reading, because I do I love that helps me go to sleep, but maybe what if I took five minutes before that and just did a little survey of everything that I felt that day, thinking about it, trying to resolve it in my mind, or just allow it to be, you know, how much easier would, you know, my next day or future or whatever, whatever be. So I think again, that we've what we've talked about is like acknowledging those feelings without judgment, acknowledging them, feel them, let them be, and then choose to be okay with them.

Mitch Webb 42:38

I've got an exercise for you.

A Five Minute Accept And Allow Practice

Dr. Rachaele Carver 42:40

Okay, let's hear it.

Mitch Webb 42:41

I think everybody liked this too. This is like what really helped this is something I do. I used to do it every day. I even did it twice a day for a while. And this is what uh a mentor of mine taught me, and it really helped me with the I'm a big Joe Dispensive fan too. I went and studied with him for a while back in the day. And this is similar to what you're it sounds so very similar to what you're doing, but it gives you like an extra couple of things, right? And so it's like bringing in the somatic awareness, it's bringing in the parts work, it's bringing in building capacity to be with sensation and feeling. And basically what you're doing is you're accepting and allowing. And so you start with the head, then you just feel that you're feeling into it. And you take the story, every time the story comes up, you let that go, you let it float, kind of like a meditation type thing. And you just go back to sensation. So it's somatic scanning and what's going on. Feel the places that are loose, feel the places that are tight, and just say yes to it. Yes, yes. Notice when those stories try to take you out of it. The the story is gonna take you out of the somatic experience. This is when we're saying we're feeling, right? And so can I just allow it, accept it, let the tight and the loose stuff be the same. Then I move into the lower body. Well, what stories come up here? What sensations, what temperatures, what tightness comes up, and what story do I have attached to that? Can I accept and allow? Then let's move down into the legs. A temperature there, my toe is cold. Do I have a story about that? Can I accept and allow that? And then once I've done that, I go, whatever is loudest in that experience. This is what I did this morning. Whatever is loudest in this experience, let me move to that. Let me put my hand on it, right? Let me just bring some awareness to it. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I got you. I'm listening. Tell me everything. And that's where eventually we start to get images. And instead of like, if this is a this is tightness or this is pain, what else could it be? And I had this one with my hit the other day that was really interesting. I would call it tightness, but eventually got to a place where I go, okay, if I can't call it these labels that I've learned, it's actually gripping, it's holding on, right? And I'm learning to let go of all these compulsions to fit. And so that's that's really interesting. And so I went deeper into that. It gets louder, right? It hurts more, right? You can go, oh man, this is getting bad. But we build capacity to be with that. And there was a lot of grief in that thing, you know, and the grief comes out and the images come. Oh, what does this remind you of? This reminds me of a football injury that I had in 10th grade. And I remember what what did you believe about yourself? So now the beliefs are coming. Well, I believe that I was broken and I was never gonna get better. Well, damn, that's a lot for a uh a 14-year-old kid to carry. So what's it feel like when we notice that? Boom, here comes all the emotion. What did that kid need? And you once you've done this and worked for yourself, the answers just come. You know, you've done the dirt as pens and stuff too. And it's like, oh, I just needed to know that it's okay. And who better to tell me that it's okay than me? Right? And and once I was able to do that, then you can bring in ancestors or earth or or God or a spiritual thing, a deity, whatever you get into. It's like, man, it it really we give ourselves what we need. We build capacity to deal with the sensation, we let the emotion come, we work with the beliefs, and the body settles. And that is how we accept and allow and move through. And that's combining the brain and the body, the top down, the bottom up. They have to work together. If we're just analyzing the story, we're reinforcing the pattern. If we're just working with the body and the pain, we're missing all these beliefs that say it's not safe to work with this pain. So it's a wonderful process that I learned from Simona Irwin. Uh, gonna be doing a mentorship with her, but it changed my freaking life. And that is a that takes five, 10 minutes, and it's life-changing.

How To Work With Mitch

Dr. Rachaele Carver 46:25

Yeah, absolutely awesome. Well, I think this has been one of my most favorite episodes so far because it's so near and dear to my heart and so, so valuable. Because again, you don't have to spend any money on this, guys. You you know, you don't have to get anybody else's all totally within you, and that's what's super exciting. So, Mitch, tell us a little bit about your coaching. If somebody's interested in kind of reaching out, maybe working with you, how can we find you?

Mitch Webb 46:49

Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity sharing. It's been great talking with you too. Yeah, I mean, these if if this if this conversation resonates with you, you're my client. You know, my client has uh I do one-on-one coaching, and my clients have tried everything and nothing seems to work, or it definitely makes improvement, but we still have chronic symptoms like anxiety and fatigue, uh, issues, autoimmune, all the mystery illness. And and what I do is help people get out of the efforting and performing and trying to do everything right and learn that it's it's my nervous system and it's it's not broken. And we do a practice like we just did to to beat the body, to work with the emotions, to work with the sensations and the beliefs, and we get to a place where the mind can relax and the body learns to release and and we learn how to be our own medicine. And um, yeah, I'm I'm all over social media with LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, even learning that one. And I'm on YouTube with my podcast, which is uh Rooted Conversations. And uh, if people want to find me, they can or I I'll offer a free 30-minute consult to any of the listeners, no pressure. I'm really just do we feel like we're a good fit. Um, I don't try to I used to, you know, as a health coach, I had six months and a year packages. Like, I want to work with you for a period of time, but pop in and do one and just talk to me and see if it if it fits. I'm not trying to uh put a hook in you for a long period of time. On my website, there's a contact page. You can reach out to many on the any of the social medias. You check out some podcasts, and if I haven't, I have a quiz for you that's free for the audience. They can check that out. There's some free resources. There's a meditation simple similar to what we did today at the end and talking about that. And if that all sounds good and this feels like it's you, reach out. I'd love to love to work with you.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 48:35

Well, thank you so much for this great conversation. I hope you all enjoyed it. Please reach out to Mitch. We'll put all that stuff in the show notes for you to easily access him. Otherwise, I hope everyone has a beautiful day, and we'll see you on the next episode.

Mitch Webb 48:47

Go on their podcast is giveaway free session, whether you want to use that or somebody you think of while we're doing those. I'd love it. I'm just getting started with this work uh probably the last six months to a year. And after like taking, I don't know, maybe two years off from coaching, I've learned a lot. And it's it's amazing to see the results that I get with clients in a shortened period of time compared to what I was doing with health coaching. But I'm I'm blending all that stuff too. I just I don't really touch the health coaching much anymore. Every now and then, you know, I'll tell people how to eat, but it's it's more this emotional work, the nervous system work, working on the sensitization. And like we said earlier, there's a million doors to work with. And I teach people like how to how to do this at home. Like the you you become your own medicine, but you have to work with someone typ you know, people that are I don't work with everyone, it's people that have been in the store that I have, and that I know that world. And uh it's crazy to see the results. It's it's uh it's true. It's really cool to watch.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 49:45

Yeah. I mean, I really got into this too because after doing some, you know, one-on-one coaching stuff, I would see this very specific subset of like older women, late 60s, maybe early 70s, who are alone, right? They have no support, and they're like have every diagnosis under the sun, and they're and I would just was like, wow, look at the emotional, like all these women, you know, again, there's no support system, right? So they're they're totally emotionally fragile. And I was like, like, and I would have to tell people I can't work with you unless, you know, you're gonna do the emotional work. Yeah, you know, because I'm like, you know, obviously in a little bit more nicer manner, but you know, that that's what I came to. I was like, look at all the everybody fits this category, myself included, right? I was like that, oh yeah, the emotional less like too worked up all the time, so type A. And I was like, wow, just need to chill the F out, you know?

Mitch Webb 50:33

Like Yeah, yeah, definitely. Maybe buzzing.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 50:37

Well, awesome. My editor, um, this should come out in uh a few weeks. I do one every two weeks. Um, so they'll reach out to you and give you, you can use it however you like. And yeah, I'd love to keep in touch. I'd love to do a session because like I said, I mean, this is this is the key. This is the gold sauce stuff.

Mitch Webb 50:51

So um I'll I'll send you. Do I have your email? Um You should. I sent you an email today too, just to make sure you have the um I think he sent me the that's where I got this link to go to Riverside. Should I respond to that email? Because I'll send you my course.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 51:06

I sent you one right out. I sent you one at like 331 or something. Okay, cool, cool.

Mitch Webb 51:13

I'll respond to that and give you all these resources and cool. Yeah, I mean, give it to somebody you know, use it, whatever you want to do.

Dr. Rachaele Carver 51:19

That'd be awesome. Well, enjoy the rest of your afternoon. I'm gonna go have some craniofascial therapy. Woo!