By Jenny Peterson
Are you in a pursuit to be symptom free? I mean I get it, your chronic health symptoms are uncomfortable and are often inconvenient. And let's be real, we are programmed to believe that being symptom-free is the ultimate marker of health. But what if I told you that the goal isn’t to be free of all symptoms and never get them, but to learn from them? To use them as signals that guide us toward deeper understanding and healing. Today, we’re going to unpack this idea and explore how shifting your perspective around “getting rid” of symptoms and not wanting to have them, can make your healing experience much easier.
Many of us have been conditioned to believe that symptoms are a sign of failure in your body or that they represent something that needs to be fixed or suppressed. You get a cold and your health nut neighbor says, "It must be your low immune system, better take some vitamin C." But what if we shifted our perspective? What if, instead of seeing symptoms as enemies and like our body has failed, we viewed them as messengers?
Experiencing symptoms does not mean you’ve failed in any way. They are not something you should be ashamed of. They’re simply signals from your body, indicating that it’s responding to something significant in your life.
Shame and embarrassment were emotions I felt when I was experiencing my chronic health symptoms. As a holistic practitioner, I didn’t want people to know that I was “sick.” How could I be this way when I eat so healthy and teach the ins and outs of health? This perception didn’t help my healing. Instead it just contributed to additional stress.
When you experience symptoms, it actually means that you have successfully navigated through a conflict or that you’re encountering what is called a 'conflict track'—a situation that reminds your body of a previous unresolved issue. By understanding this, you can start to see your symptoms as part of a natural and healthy process, rather than as something to be feared or suppressed. When you have symptoms, your body is indicating that it's in the healing process. This is confusing for a lot of us that have been programmed to believe that symptoms mean that there is something wrong. We have not been taught how our body biologically is designed or what healing actually looks like. We accept that a cut healing is painful, swollen and oozing but when that happens in our digestive tract, we immediately want to stop it.
Think of yourself as a detective, piecing together the clues that your body is giving you. Your symptoms are like breadcrumbs, leading you to a greater understanding of how your experiences, emotions, and thoughts are interconnected. By studying the nuances of your perspective and the experiences that led to your symptoms, you can start to connect the dots and gain valuable insights into your own health and well-being.
One of the most powerful things you can do for your health is to study your life. Pay attention to the patterns, your experiences, and the triggers that seem to recur. These are the moments that remind your body of the original conflicts that triggered your symptoms in the first place. By recognizing these patterns, you can start to break free from them and move toward true healing. Awareness is a major player in your healing. You have to become aware of how you perceive and respond to life. When your symptoms appear, they will be directly related to these.
When you deeply understand how your body works and how your tissues adapt to certain experiences, you’ll find that you become more calm and confident in your own health. You’ll no longer feel like a victim of your symptoms, but rather an active participant in your own healing process. This is an incredibly empowering shift, one that can transform your relationship with your body and your health. Instead of reacting with fear or frustration, you’ll approach these moments with curiosity and a sense of purpose. This is what it means to make the unconscious conscious.
This journey is about becoming more awake, more aware, and more adaptable. It’s about growing into a version of yourself that is resilient, resourceful, and responsive to life’s challenges. When you embrace this approach, you’ll find that your symptoms no longer feel like obstacles, but rather opportunities for growth and self-discovery.
Now, it’s important to address a common misconception: Many people believe that their symptoms are caused by external factors—germs, food, genetics, toxins, etc. While these factors can certainly influence our health, they are not the full story. By focusing solely on external causes, we miss out on the opportunity to explore the internal causes—the thoughts, perceptions, and experiences that play a crucial role in our health.
It’s easy to blame something outside of ourselves when we’re feeling unwell, but it’s far more challenging—and rewarding—to look within. By observing the internal causes of our symptoms, we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and take control of our own healing journey. This is where the real work begins, and where the potential for true transformation lies.
If I asked you, what are your healing goals, what do you want to achieve? And your answer is that you want all your symptoms to go away and you never want to see them again. This mindset will bring on a lot of force and focus on your symptoms, rather than focusing on your personal growth. Because it's your personal growth, which includes letting go of old subconscious patterns, that is what really makes your symptoms go away.
And let's be real, if focusing on your symptoms was the solution, you wouldn’t have them any more, right? Because you have done a dang good job having them consume your mind and life. You have focused on them a lot. So what if we shifted that focus and instead focused on stepping into a new version of you. The version that responds to life in healthier ways, no longer reacts with fear and loves yourself unconditionally? Do you know what that would do for your body? It would send a signal to it that it's commander in chief is a rockstar! That he or she is adaptable. To your primal, survival brain it would feel safe. And when you are adaptable and send messages of safety to your body, your body no longer needs to adapt for you. That's what symptoms are, they are adaptations to your experiences. Because your mind was unable to process the situation, your body has done it for you… for survival.
I encourage you to shift your healing goal from getting rid of symptoms, to becoming a new version of you. The focus will then be on you taking action to change you, which is the biggest factor in your healing. With this simple shift, you will notice how you no longer feel pressured to “get rid” of your symptoms. Instead, there will be excitement and motivation to discover the parts of you that are blocking your healing.
I describe it like the excitement that I used to get when I would get a new supplement thinking that it's going to be the one to change everything. I would rip the top off and couldn’t wait to take it. It's that kind of excitement that I now feel when I go internally as a detective to identify what is connected to a symptom. That is what I hope for you to get excited about too.
Each day, I encourage you to set an intention to be curious and learn something new about yourself. Pay attention to your thoughts, triggers, and responses to situations. What can you discover about yourself that you haven’t seen before? Don’t put pressure on yourself to resolve or fix anything. Just notice. Remember, this is a project, not a problem. It’s a journey of discovery, not a race to the finish line. You have to build awareness before you can take action. A curious attitude creates the space for those insights to land and transform your understanding of your health and your life.
Stop being obsessed about getting rid of your symptoms, it's the wrong focus. The prevention and resolution of symptoms, disease or illness is within you, not a pill or a special diet. Because we all know if it was, you still wouldn’t be experiencing your symptoms.
The same goes for prevention. We don’t need to take all this stuff to prevent having cancer, disease, etc. Prevention isn’t in these places, it's in your mind.
The great thing about this work is that when you step into the 2.0 version of you, you will also have less symptoms in the future. By becoming a person that responds in healthier ways, you naturally prevent having symptoms. That being said, if you do get symptoms (because you're human), you understand what they mean, it's not the end of the world, it's an opportunity. There is no shame or thinking that your body has failed.
Shifting your focus from trying to fix or get rid of your symptoms to focusing on your personal growth will make your healing journey less stressful and honestly much more exciting. When I did this for myself, it was a pivotal part of my healing. It's the same for our students. We see such a change in their growth when they make this shift.
So you may be thinking, what do I need to do to create these changes in me? To become this 2.0 version of me? I already mentioned starting with awareness. And really that is the first step. Be the observer of you. Pause when you respond to situations. Notice what your automatic response was and see if it is a response that would be interpreted as feeling safe. Do you respond with fear, self judgement, holding it in and not saying something? These kinds of patterns are going to feel like a threat to your body. They don’t feel safe. Those are the kinds of patterns you are looking for.
From there it's about unwiring those old patterns and where they came from to rewiring new ones. That is going to look different for everyone. That is what requires specific targeted work to you. This is what we specialize in MBR. We are subconscious detectives, putting all the pieces together for you and giving you the exact steps you need to take to unravel all of this and step into your 2.0 self. Transformational work doesn’t come with a standard protocol.
You can get started doing this work now. I have given you 2 ways you can do that today. One is by shifting your focus from fixing or getting rid of symptoms to personal growth and curiosity. Just by doing this alone, your body and mind will feel much more relaxed. There is less force. You're not going to get up everyday and start googling what to do for your symptoms. You shift from being fearful to curious. Which is number 2- start getting curious. Notice how you respond to situations in your life. Is how you respond sending a message of safety to your body? Does it feel safe? Think about this from a survival perspective. Feeling weak, not good enough, fearful, attacked, powerless, etc are all going to jeopardize survival according to your primal brain. We always need to view this from a biological perspective. Survival is priority to the mind and body.
While this might feel like a lot of work to your brain who loves to stay in old patterns, don’t be tempted to just replace all your thinking or responses with positive thinking. Your healing isn’t going to happen by talking positively to yourself all day. While positive thinking is helpful in some ways, it's not even close to the deep level work that is required to make your body feel safe and allow it to complete the healing process. Sorry, but quick fixes, as you know, don’t work for anything. You've got to do the work. You have unconsciously wired your brain to operate this way, rewiring is going to require much more of a conscious effort, but it's worth it!
You are unique, your symptoms are connected to very specific patterns within your subconscious.
Without a plan unique to you, you will continue struggling and miss out on the life you deserve to be living! To help you get started on your long-lasting healing journey, we would love to provide you with a healing plan that is unique to you. Get your custom healing plan today!
You can also download my free healing guide, “Why Can’t I Heal” where you will learn the 5 reasons that you haven't healed despite everything you've tried. These are the missing pieces to your healing and the key to resolving your symptoms for good.
Jenny Peterson is the founder and CEO of Mind Body Rewire (MBR). She teaches those that are overwhelmed with trying to heal chronic symptoms how to simplify their healing by focusing on just one place, the subconscious mind. Learn more about MBR here.
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