Why Fearing Your Symptoms is Keeping You Stuck

Click Here to Listen to this Podcast!

By Jenny Peterson

Are you constantly fearing your symptoms? Whether it’s pain, digestive issues, fatigue, or skin problems, it’s easy to think something is wrong with you when these symptoms arise. But what if I told you that fearing your symptoms is actually keeping you stuck and preventing healing?

In this blog post, I’m going to dive into how fear interferes with the healing process, why understanding your body’s messages is crucial, and how shifting from fear to trust can finally allow your body to heal.

Why Fear Keeps Your Body in Survival Mode

Let’s start with something most people don’t realize: fear keeps your body in survival mode. When your body perceives a threat — whether it’s physical, emotional, or mental — it enters Survival Mode.

• Survival Mode: Your body’s resources are directed toward survival, not healing.

• Rest-and-Repair Mode: Healing only happens when your body feels safe.

When you fear your symptoms, you’re sending a message to your body that it’s not safe to heal. This keeps your body stuck in Survival Mode, where healing can’t take place.

Key Takeaway: If you’re constantly fearing your symptoms, you’re stuck in Survival Mode. Your body cannot heal while in that state.

The Subconscious Programming Around Symptoms

Most of us are conditioned to fear symptoms. From a young age, you were taught that symptoms are problems that need to be fixed, not signals from your body. When you experience symptoms like a fever, sore throat, or headache, the immediate response is to treat them with something — whether it's medication or a natural remedy. But the truth is, your body was already working to heal itself.

• What we were taught: Symptoms need to be suppressed or eliminated.

• What’s missing: Symptoms are your body’s way of adapting, protecting, and healing.

We’ve been conditioned to fear symptoms. This fear keeps us stuck in a cycle of looking for the next quick fix. But here’s the truth: Your symptoms are not a threat. They are your body’s messages, and when you listen to them with understanding, healing becomes possible.

Key Takeaway: Your symptoms are messages from your body, not malfunctions. Trusting your body’s natural healing ability is the key to breaking the cycle of fear.

Acute vs. Chronic Symptoms

Let’s talk about a critical distinction: acute symptoms vs. chronic symptoms.

• Acute symptoms: Short-term symptoms that often go away within a few weeks.

• Chronic symptoms: Symptoms that signal something deeper is blocking healing.

Chronic symptoms don’t go away easily because there’s an unresolved issue that needs to be addressed. The body wants to heal, but it’s getting a message that it’s not safe to heal. Whether it’s fear, unresolved stress, or subconscious beliefs, something is keeping your body stuck.

Key Takeaway: Chronic symptoms are not a sign of failure. They’re signals that your body is still adapting to something and needs your help to feel safe enough to heal.

Fear Fuels the Need for Control 

When you fear your symptoms, you feel the need to control them. You might obsessively check your symptoms, try another protocol, or eliminate more foods. But here’s the kicker: this cycle of trying to fix your symptoms only reinforces the fear.

Fear keeps you stuck in Survival Mode, preventing healing. Every time you react to symptoms out of fear, you reinforce the belief that your body is unsafe. The real work is learning how to shift from fear to trust.

Key Takeaway: Stop chasing fixes and start trusting your body. When you do, healing happens naturally.

Understanding Your Body First

I often see clients who want to jump straight into working on their symptoms. They think that if they just focus on the symptoms, healing will follow. But here’s the truth: without addressing the fear of your body first, working on symptom patterns is pointless.

The first step is to understand the biological reasons behind your symptoms. When you take the time to build a solid foundation of trust with your body, you’ll naturally stop fearing it. This calming of your mind and body will create the right environment for deeper healing work to take place.

Key Takeaway: Understanding your body first helps you calm your mind and create the right environment to heal.

What Your Symptoms Are Really Telling You

Let’s reframe how you think about your symptoms. Chronic symptoms are not a sign of failure. They are a sign that your body is still adapting to something — and it needs your help to feel safe enough to heal.

Your body is doing the best it can with the information it has. If your symptoms are chronic, it’s because there is a message of threat still blocking the healing process. Once you address the root cause and create safety, your body can finish the healing process.

Key Takeaway: Symptoms are messages. Your body is adapting and healing, but it needs to feel safe to complete the process.

Rewiring Your Subconscious to Trust Your Body

The key to healing is rewiring your subconscious. This isn’t an overnight process. You’ve been wired to fear symptoms for most of your life, and rewiring that deeply ingrained fear requires persistence and repetition.

In my mini-course Your Body Speaks, I provide a 7-day plan designed to help you rewire your subconscious to trust your body and let go of fear. One of the key things I recommend in that plan is to find evidence every day that your body is working perfectly — whether it’s a cut healing, a pimple clearing up, or even something simple like digestion working properly.

Key Practice: Find small moments every day to see that your body is working perfectly. The more you do this, the more your subconscious will shift from fear to trust.

Key Takeaway: Consistency is key. The more you practice this daily, the more you will shift from fear to trust, allowing your body to heal naturally.

Conclusion: Reframe Your Narrative

I want you to walk away with one powerful realization: Your body is not broken. It is trying to heal, and your symptoms are part of that healing process. But fear keeps you stuck.

If you’ve been stuck in the cycle of fearing your symptoms and chasing fixes, it’s time to do the real work. It’s not about doing nothing — it’s about addressing the deep-rooted fears that are preventing your body from healing. To get started, I invite you to check out my mini-course Your Body Speaks.

---

Jenny Peterson is a Chronic Illness Expert and the Founder of MBR (Mind Body Rewire). She helps those struggling with multiple chronic symptoms reclaim their health and freedom—without diets, detoxes, or pills.

For 10 years, Jenny worked as a holistic practitioner, relying on supplements, diet, and detox protocols to support healing. But when she faced her own chronic health struggles, those methods failed her.

Determined to find a real solution, she turned to mind-body healing. Using the very techniques she now teaches, Jenny fully resolved Lyme disease, digestive issues, panic attacks, skin conditions, cystitis, and more. Her own transformation ignited a mission: to help others break free from chronic symptoms and take back control of their health.

Ready to say good-bye to symptoms and hello to freedom?  START HERE