By Jenny Peterson
(For an audio version of this blog, listen to episode #54 of my podcast)
Do you ever feel like you never have enough time, you fill your plate with too much to do and then you are rushing to finish it all? These are some common characteristics among those that have thyroid conditions. I should say common survival patterns because that is really what they are.
The body doesn’t lie, symptoms are giving us a message of how we subconsciously respond to life. Keep reading to learn the subconscious patterns that are connected to thyroid conditions and how they reveal the way we perceive situations.
Thyroid conditions are one of the top physical symptoms that people come to us with. I haven’t yet met a client that has thyroid conditions that doesn’t match the subconscious patterns connected to them. Its always very clear how the conditions manifested based on the subconscious patterns that I’m going to talk about today. This is why I love this work, the body doesn’t lie, it tells us exactly what to focus on.
If you have a thyroid condition you are often told within the medical/holistic field that it's an autoimmune condition, the body is attacking itself, and that it's our gut health and gluten, etc. but these are simply not true. Our body is never attacking itself, it's always trying to keep us alive. When markers like “autoimmune '' show up, this is an indication that someone is in a hanging healing, that's it. Our gut health is not going to influence this body system, as it is a different relay in the brain.
Let's keep in mind that our body is always adapting for survival. When our organs are presenting us with symptoms, its simply that. They have adapted in order to survive. If we want to stop them from adapting, then WE need to adapt to life differently since we are the sole messenger to our body.
There are 3 parts of the thyroid. The thyroid gland itself, the thyroid ducts and the parathyroid glands. And each of those different areas have a different subconscious pattern connected to it.
The thyroid is an endocrine gland and it produces thyroid hormone T3 and T4 and it releases it into the bloodstream. Its function is to regulate how fast food turns into available energy, so it affects things like your metabolic rate and protein synthesis. The thyroid is about speed. It's about speeding things up, revving up your metabolism.
Our organs will tell us indirect messages of what we need to work on, based on the function of the body system.
THYROID
So I mentioned that the thyroid is all about speed. If your body senses that you're behind or too slow, it's going to speed up to keep things in check. This is the subconscious pattern connected to thyroid conditions, not being able to catch a morsel, feeling behind, and too slow.
Remember that our bodies have evolved over millions of years but our brains are still very primitive. We are no longer cavemen looking for our next meal but we are trying to catch other things in our lives. In our ancient lives, it was very important that you were able to catch a morsel, get some type of animal to feed your family for dinner and if you weren’t able to do that, it's very possible that would mean that you and your family would die.
While our environment has changed, our survival brain hasn’t. So when your body is getting the message that you are too slow, behind, it's like, all right let's increase the thyroid hormone so we can speed things up so that you can not be too slow anymore and you can get whatever you need to get and survive.
So examples in our world today could be
Not fast enough to get the position, the promotion, or the money that you need to survive.
You're too slow to finish a paper, to sell enough product, to sell your stocks.
An apology or proposal expressed too late, missing the boat.
You weren’t fast enough to win a race
Always showing up late to events or missing opportunities
These types of issues are commonly seen with people who have competitive jobs with a get it done kind of attitude. Managers who have quotas, sales representatives, athletes, entrepreneurs, people with deadline pressures. So you've got a deadline, that paper, that article better be on my desk by 6:00 PM or else you'll lose your job. So that might cause your thyroid to kick into high gear. If you're working two jobs, you're trying to make ends meet. Single parents who've got a lot on their plate. Kids that are being pushed by parents, teachers, and coaches.
Now the thing to remember with all conflicts is that it all depends on an individual's perception of the situation. So this doesn't mean that just because you are a salesperson with deadlines means that you have a thyroid conflict. It means that some people in that situation may experience a thyroid conflict if their perception is that they feel behind.
So lets look at how this all plays out in the body.
A situation just happened. You're feeling rushed. You're feeling in a hurry, you're feeling like you've got to, you know, make something happen. And so what's going on is you are nervous, you're irritable, your body is sympathetic active and this problem is on your mind. Your body is increasing thyroxine production. It saying we need to speed things up. Cells start to proliferate. This is all for survival. As long as your mind is in this state of feeling behind, you will remain in conflict.
Once you get over the situation, you move into the healing phase.
So remember, you were in prolonged sympathetic dominance and so your body was in an adaptive state at that time. Now the body swings the pendulum back the other way, and now we are in prolonged parasympathetic dominance because now that site, that tissue that was affected, is now a construction zone because we built up additional thyroid gland tissue cells while you were conflict active. Now the body is going to break those tissue cells down and has a plan. And so what happens is there's swelling. All healing happens in a fluid environment and so the area becomes swollen. It may be warm. You may have difficulty breathing and swallowing because of that swelling. Night sweats, fatigue, all healing symptoms.
Now, a very important thing to keep in mind is that all hypothyroidism is always preceded by hyper.
So hyperthyroidism is the state that your body is in when it is experiencing a conflict of being too slow. Now when we are swinging back into this healing phase, there may be a period of time where you have hypothyroidism while the body is breaking down what was built up.
PARATHYROID GLAND
So let's look at the parathyroid gland now.
The parathyroid functions differently than the thyroid gland itself. It is an endocrine gland and it produces parathyroid hormone, and parathyroid hormone controls calcium regulation. Calcium in your bloodstream is necessary for proper muscle contraction. In order for you to squeeze a muscle, you need calcium, and so the conflict related to the parathyroid is about not being fast enough with an element of insufficient muscle activity. So maybe not feeling strong enough. Maybe this has to do with an athlete who didn't feel like they were strong enough to win the game, strong enough to lift the weights at the competition, etc. This is not a very common symptom that is seen, most often conflicts are more common in the other areas of the thyroid.
THYROID DUCT
So let's talk about the thyroid duct now.
The thyroid duct is different from the thyroid gland and the parathyroid gland. The thyroid duct branches throughout the thyroid and it is used to deliver thyroxine to the digestive system. The subconscious pattern connected to the thyroid duct is feeling powerless for females and for males a frontal fear.
This is a feeling of helplessness. My hands are tied. There's nothing I can do. Not able to control the situation. The frontal fear is that fear of heading into a dangerous situation or a danger heading towards you. This could be actual physical danger like a car accident or an attack from an animal or a person or a perceived danger.
Hashimotos would be a diagnosis that is connected to the thyroid duct.
Most people with Hashimotos have been told that their thyroid is being destroyed. It is seen as an error, that the body is messing up, making a mistake. The truth is that the body doesn’t make mistakes, it would never attack itself. The immune system of antibodies that conventional medicine sees, it's really a support system. It's just what the body is doing in order to adapt.
HANGING HEALING
People go through these healing phases all the time and they don’t often even feel them. But what is happening when a person is experiencing thyroid symptoms long term, chronically?
This simply means that they are in a hanging healing.
Someone that has hypothyroidism doesn’t have a body that is attacking itself out of confusion or error. The body is responding to healing interruptions due to constant relapses that result in loss of thyroid tissue. There was a period at one point where there was hyperthyroidism, during the conflict phase, when they were worrying about the situation, and then you go hypo in the healing phase.
And when you have continual conflict relapses where the body never makes it fully through the healing phase before you are relapsed into a feeling too slow once again, what happens is the body is building up and breaking down, and you're building up and breaking down. And what happens during this process is you may lose thyroid tissue, and so this may result in hypothyroidism.
When you've done this back and forth action so many times, you're continually breaking down tissue that is normally going to be producing the proper amount of thyroid hormone that is needed.
This is so very common with those with thyroid conditions. You will never meet someone that has thyroid conditions that isn’t a type A. They are always going to be a person that is a high achiever, is really focused on their to-do list, and never feels like they have enough time to get it all done. They often feel rushed, over-filling their plate.
This type of person isn’t just going to feel slow or behind one time in their life and never experience it again. It's how they are wired. It's their subconscious patterns that are driving this behavior. And because of these patterns, the thyroid really never gets a chance to fully move through the healing phase, which is why their thyroid conditions never get better.
Hanging healings are popular in this area because this pattern of feeling too slow is most likely how you respond to life. It is a program that often just doesn’t go away easily. Its often wired into you from childhood. Maybe your parents were always late for everything and now you are. Maybe you got into the habit of putting everything off until the last minute and now that's how you do everything. Maybe you saw mom always saying yes and filling her plate and now you are doing the same and always feel like there is never enough time. Maybe you commit yourself to too many things in your business and you are constantly rushing to get things done. Remember how you do anything is how you do everything. So this feeling slow is a pattern that has been with you for awhile. There are subconscious reasons why you respond this way.
In the case of Hashimotos, this is a situation where a person is stuck in a hanging healing around feeling fearful or powerless. If someone responds to a situation feeling like they are powerless, again, this isn’t going to be a one time thing because how you respond to life is based on subconscious programs.
A person that feels powerless in a situation, is going to respond to a majority of their life situations this way. Until they learn to look at situations with a different set of eyes, the message that the body is getting about feeling powerless will never go away and the thyroid ducts will continue adapting for survival.
Hanging healings are simply a sign that we haven’t shifted our perception and let go of that subconscious pattern that is driving the body’s response.
HOW TO RESOLVE THESE CONFLICTS
Now some people can consciously start making a different decision with just knowing this information. But for a majority of people, they can’t because there are subconscious patterns connected to the way you respond to life. You will consciously want to respond differently but the subconscious will over power you.
So for example, for someone who always fills their plate too full and feels behind because they can’t get it all done, the problem isn’t them filling their plate too full. While that may seem to be the problem, there is a deeper subconscious pattern that is driving the bus. Why is this person filling their plate too full? What is driving this behavior? Well for a lot of type A’s it is love, acceptance and feeling worthy. If you can do it all, you will finally feel successful.
Remember that everything we do as an adult now is based on patterns from childhood. So this need to achieve and be successful came from there. Parents maybe only gave you attention or rewards when you got good grades or were at the top of your class. Another pattern that could be connected to it is being a people pleaser. Where did you learn that saying no came with bad side affects or did you simply see your mom saying yes to everything and now that is what you do.
As you can see, there is some digging to do to identify where these patterns really have come from. They just didn’t start yesterday. But your subconscious patterns were based on your experiences and your perceptions. When you shift the root to where all this came from, that’s when changes start to happen.
If you consciously start to tell yourself something different and take different actions, you will most likely hit resistance without doing the deep subconscious work. This is because the subconscious has all the proof, the memories to support why doing this new action is risky. There are patterns that prove that this may be risky to your survival according to your subconscious. And because your subconscious is often stronger than the conscious, it wins.
Once you work on the deep patterns that are driving this pattern, you can then start to consciously make different choices and there won’t be resistance. This is individual, personal work that needs to be specific to you.
BECOMING RESILIENT
The goal with this work isn’t to be scared of having a conflict. You cannot live in a plastic bubble and avoid conflict altogether.
But what you can do is become resilient, become a person who is very sensitive to their own emotional state and in tune with how you are responding to life. Noticing this will also help you see your subconscious patterns and take action to change them.
Just know that every time that you are emotionally freaking out, your body is rallying resources to help you.
All of your worries, all of your concerns, all the things you're afraid of, your body is responding and it's trying to help you. You've got this ancient body and you've got this really new age mind where we think that it's silly that our body would respond in this way, but it's old programming.
We can realize, wow, it really is my peace of mind, my relaxation, my relief, my feeling safe, my feeling OK, that makes my body go into the healing phase and stay there. And so you don't need to fear disease. You just know that sometimes you'll be surprised by things. Sometimes things will catch you off guard, but the body has a plan. It's got a program. It's just you're not supposed to stay in that state for long periods of time, because then there's additional tissue breakdown, additional tissue adaptation that the body never planned for.
The body didn't plan for you to be worried about something years after it happened or continuously responding to messages that feel like a threat.
It's our ability to find ease, to tell ourselves that we got this, there is always an abundance of time, its ok to say no, that worthiness doesn’t come from doing it all, that we are powerful and always have a choice, etc. that helps us move past these thyroid conflicts.
Being able to respond to situations in these new ways starts with working on the old subconscious patterns that are driving it. You have to rewire how your body responds to situations by going back to where the original wiring started.
If you have a thyroid condition, remember that your body is not attacking itself, its simply trying to give you a message. Are you ready to listen?
We get it, you're desperate to have your illness be a thing of the past, not something that defines your days. But trying to heal WITHOUT a custom plan is costing you precious time, money and energy!
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.