E186: These Hidden Mindset Blocks will Make Your Periods Worse with Dr. Heather Rhodes

Overwhelmed trying to figure out your hormones? Let’s simplify things and help you move forward. 

If hormone balance feels like a never-ending battle of trial and error, you’re not alone. This episode is here to help you cut through the confusion, ease your stress, and start making real progress.

You’ll learn:

• Why trying everything isn’t helping—and what you should do instead  
• How your feelings and stress are affecting your hormones 
• Easy, straightforward steps to get back in tune with your body and see real change.

Hit play now and take the first step toward a calmer, more confident approach to your health.

Connect with Dr Heather Rhodes:
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IG: @drheatherrhodes

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Disclaimer: Nothing in this podcast is to be taken as medical advice, please take informed accountability and speak to your provider before making changes to your health routine.

This podcast is for women and moms to learn how to balance hormones naturally in motherhood, to have pain-free periods, increased fertility, to decrease PMS mood swings, and to increase energy without restrictive diet plans. You'll learn how to balance blood sugar, increase progesterone naturally, understand the root cause of estrogen dominance, irregular periods, PCOS, insulin resistance, hormonal acne, post birth-control syndrome, and conceive naturally. We use a pro-metabolic, whole food, root cause approach to functional women's health and focus on truly holistic health and mind-body connection.

If you listen to any of the following shows, we're sure you'll like ours too!
Pursuit of Wellness with Mari Llewellyn, Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, Found My Fitness with Rhonda Patrick, Just Ingredients Podcast, Wellness Mama, The Dr Josh Axe Show, Are You Menstrual Podcast, The Model Health Show, Grounded Wellness By Primally Pure, Be Well By Kelly Leveque, The Freely Rooted Podcast with Kori Meloy, Simple Farmhouse Life with Lisa Bass

Transcript

[00:00:56] Leisha: Hey friend, welcome back to the podcast. I 

have Dr. Heather Rhodes here with me again today. we get a lot of 

feedback and questions and have felt this ourselves that it can be really overwhelming and easy to get 

burned out in your health journey and in your hormone journey. we're going to talk today about how to Essentially overcome and avoid overwhelm And burnout in balancing your hormones so that you can be not only more clear on what you need to do, but less overwhelmed and more focused. And the reason that this is so important specifically when we're talking about hormones is the more that your brain is 

overwhelmed and your nervous system is overburdened and just overly stressed, the more signals your brain is getting that it is 

not safe to make your hormones well. You're essentially just like in this, hamster wheel of trying to do all the things and your brain is looking for more things and it just is really, really stressful.

So welcome Heather. I know that you've been here. I know that we talk about this all the time, so I'm excited to do this one.

[00:01:59] Heather: Yeah, I am too. I just want to share, , when I felt like that, and when I, experienced that the most, is when the only voice I'm hearing is my own. When, my brain is like, you should be doing this, this, this, this, and this.

And then I start to, , do those things, and my brain is like, but what about this? And then it's like, wait, but are you doing that? You've done all this and it's not working. It's like the only perspective I hear is my own. And the thing is your brain is designed to keep you safe. Your brain is a little bit of a negative Nancy's.

Everybody's kind of is. it serves a really great purpose to be like that. But when that's the only voice you hear, it can absolutely prevent you from being able to move forward in the way you need to move forward. I know what it's like to be in a place where that's all you're hearing.

And that's how you feel. almost anytime somebody comes to me and says they're stuck and they're overwhelmed, or they've listened to a podcast or they've scrolled my Instagram or your Instagram. they're like, well, now I feel overwhelmed because. I don't really know what to do.

And I need more of the practicals of like, do this, do this, do this. And I got some of those, but I always go back to , okay, this is so clear that you do not have that outside perspective of what's going on for you. Because when you know what's going on with you and you know what your specific like root causes right there in that moment and, or maybe a multiple root causes, but somebody has said like, Hey, this is the one we've got to fix first.

It almost allows you to put blinders on. or headphones on and silence the noise. then, you know, this is where my focus is. Sometimes the reason why you might be feeling I don't have enough practical tips is because it's like, Hey, I could give you 75, 000 practical tips.

And you might only need two of them in a very specific order. If you've tried some, then you're like, oh wow, that worked or it didn't work. Or there's too many, I don't know what to do. Or I don't really know which ones apply to me. I'm like, okay, that just means you've got to get some outside perspective.

Which is why Leisha and I offer console calls because we're like, Hey, work with us or not. , we just want to see if it's a great fit, for me, and I know you do audits, Leisha, you will be miles ahead if you get another voice in there. sometimes that's all you need.

It's just another voice. And if that other voice and someone's saying Hey, I think this is it is enough for you to go and to make progress and get what you want out of your healing. perfect. Go do it. And if you're like, okay, that sounds like exactly what I want. And I know I'm going to need some support to do it.

And I know there might be two or three other steps and I don't know which one to do next. Let's spend some time together, fixing it and get what you need out of it so that you don't have to keep, , month after month, after month, after month, which for me turned into year after year, after year.

And I really feel like once I actually had a different voice inside and was very clear, , this is what I need to accomplish first, it was like, 50 pounds was lifted off my shoulder. it also allowed my life to get so much better because I wasn't so consumed and constantly thinking about my body my weight or my hormones.

It's like everything else in my life took a bigger seat. And this became a small thing, which is really kind of what it should be when your body's working really well. Your actual health should just be kind of a piece of your life, not something that consumes your whole life.

[00:05:10] Leisha: Something that I'm thinking about, and this wasn't even on our notes. When I hear you talking about being in your own head and these cycles of like, okay, I should do this and I should do that Thinking about who you are as a woman throughout the month, can be a problem in and of itself, to be honest.

Right. And so Heather and I are, I was going to say, we're famous for this. We're not famous for this because we do this in our own private chat, but we'll come and be like, I have all these things that I'm thinking about that I'm doing wrong that are failing that are whatever. And the other one's like, Oh, it's because you're going to start your period in three days.

I know that in my heart, but also when she says that, I'm like, okay, You're right. I did this last month and the month before as well. that quick little perspective of , you know what? I am not the same woman in my brain every week out of the month.

You can go through these cycles of almost self sabotage where you're like, okay, I started my period. Everything was terrible. I've got to get it together this month. so I'm going to scroll, I'm going to go back to the things I thought I knew. I'm going to listen to 47 podcasts. I'm going to do whatever, get the information and I'm going to make a plan and do it.

, that period brain you've gotten through the first couple of days that are really rough. And you're like, I've got to make a change. And it's almost new year's where you're like, X, Y, Z, here's my goals. And then you get to ovulation and you're feeling pretty good and things are going well and you get caught up in the busyness of life 

Maybe things kind of start to fall off your list already. And then you go into your luteal phase and you start to get closer to your period. And you're like, look at this, nothing's working. Everything's terrible. Whether or not you have PMS PMDD or not, these thought patterns are pretty common, whether they come up in your health or in your business or in your motherhood or whatever they come up for you.

And then you get in that phase again of , , I don't know if things are working, you're questioning yourself, and then you go back to your period. I'm using this example of having really painful periods. And then you recycle that whole system. If you're listening to this and you're like, Oh yeah, this sounds like me.

how could anything that you're doing possibly be working if you're not clear that that is for sure what you need to do? How in the world would you be consistent with that much change in how your brain works throughout your cycle? I think that's really the biggest thing I can come back to is you're getting these changes in your brain throughout the month.

You make too many goals, too many plans, try to tackle them all at once, get overwhelmed, get discouraged, and then start that whole cycle again.

[00:07:29] Heather: , I think it's important to also talk about, what is happening emotionally as all of this is going on, because the truth is that we have emotions and the way emotions are designed in our body is really through energy. Emotions means, the word means energy in motion.

what can happen is when you have emotions, they can actually store in your tissues, which changes the flow of energy to certain places. When I think about that cycle you just described, I'm like, okay, we've got fear. if I don't do something, it's going to get worse. then you maybe start to do things or you don't think you're doing them right, or you're not doing them long enough.

And then that opens the door for shame. So now we have fear, we have shame, a lot of times we have anxiety, and a lot of times there's an issue with control through all of it, right? All of those things, number one, can energetically, store in your tissues. a lot of times the organ system that, negative emotions like shame and fear and anxiety will go to and start to harbor in are your most vulnerable organs.

for a female, especially during certain parts of her mind. your womb, your uterus, your cervix, your vagina, your ovaries, those are all tissues that can have stored emotions influence the way that they're able to function. the body keeps the score is a great book about this from a very scientific perspective.

And I just like to be careful anytime we talk about energy, just to make sure , I am literally talking about the study of energetics and quantum physics, not like, Manifest change your aura stuff. I think that there's a faith filled perspective of that because God designed the universe in that way.

And it's been distorted. But I think a big piece of that is if you're feeling a lot of fear and a lot of shame and a lot of anxiety, then that is also gonna influence the way you're able to make decisions. a lot of times it can keep you a little bit paralyzed and it can show you or make you think that you need to have more control.

when it comes to your hormones and fertility, which is what I work with a lot of clients, one of the big pieces you truly need is trusting your body. trusting that your body is working for you, trusting that it's designed to heal, trusting that you can have cycles that aren't, filled with pain anger and snapping at your kids and knocking you out with migraines or even trusting that your body isn't broken.

 When you have that trust, it actually allows you to be a tiny bit more, aware when your brain is pulling in all those different thoughts. And so I say that because number one, the way to build that trust. especially if you are a type a, you love control, , you know, that's kind of how you operate.

It's really hard to just let go and trust, surrender, just stress less, just relax more. You need a tangible to fall back on. And that is why you need to know how your body works. When you understand how your body works and you can understand what it's telling you and why that allows you to step back and say it makes perfect sense that this is happening.

So I don't have to be afraid of XYZ getting worse. I don't have to be. Feeling shame about this symptom still being there. This is just the way my body communicates with me. And when you've been starting to have that trust, that actually allows you to approach the problem from a totally different place.

And that again, back to the energetics actually can allow some of those emotions that might even be making things worse to release a little bit, which helps those organs to heal anyways. oftentimes when I see this happen, it is when you're striving for control.

You're thinking too far ahead. You're not aware of what is the most pressing thing right now? What am I focused on right now? this month, I'm going to do that really well. basically kind of like having a GPS where the GPS shows you how to get from point A to point B.

you need to drive on this road for three miles and then turn left. It's like, you need both. And Leisha and I experienced this a lot. I know for me specifically, I have known this in my head. my body has still felt a little panicky at times. that's almost always because I have a fear of something not happening.

I have a fear of a part of my body, not healing. I have a fear of not getting this specific result. when I go to Leisha and I'm noticing, I'm really panicking. I'm like, should I do this? Should I do this? Should I do this? Should I do this? She's always like, okay, hold on. Let's talk about three things.

What is God saying? What is he telling you about this? What are you hearing from him? And then we're also talking about, okay, what makes you think you need to XYZ? what happened this month? What symptoms, what is your body showing you? What's your body telling you? She's like, let me look at your cycle.

Tell me again, what happened with your cycle this month? And then we're thinking about what are you doing right now? Like, what are you already doing, and have you actually done it? , what was your GPS? are you actually following that? Or, you literally are supposed to be on that road for three more miles, and , then my husband says, oh my gosh, he does this all the time, I think I should turn there.

And I'm like, what? The GPS says to keep going. He's like, no, I just think I should turn there. And I'm Like follow the GPS and he's like, no, but that looks like where I'm supposed to turn. And I'm like, no, we don't turn where the GPS does not say to turn. , I know I talked about three different faucets of this conversation there, but I noticed all three being really helpful for clients, but also even , I have that trust in my body.

And fear can still creep up and anxiety can still creep up. And I also think it's just important to note that , I have been doing this lately. I didn't think I needed to do it before, but I've really been convicted of it. That fear and anxiety are things that sometimes I feel I need to kind of repent of them because it's saying , Hey God, I think I made it better.

I think I know better. I feel like I can fix my body better than you can, you know, I just feel like that has been really helpful too of realizing that mindset and breaking that agreement then replacing it with what the truth is. Sometimes you have to tell yourself the truth is you created the whole dang universe.

You can definitely fix my uterus. the truth is that you don't want me staying stuck and flipping out and irritable at my kids or disconnected from my husband. So you've given me the opportunity to heal this on a couple of different layers. on a layer of trust and surrender , maybe it's alignment with your spouse or resting in him.

And on a layer of the practical, , Hey, get my body back to working the way it needs to. And that might be through nutrition or through movement or through stress management.

[00:13:17] Leisha: , I think there's a few things that I can pull from that. One of them is just where you're talking about, learning to understand your body and know what your body is doing. , This just to be really clear, this is exactly what we teach inside our programs. And we're so passionate about this because when you have someone come alongside of you, and I like to say , hold your hand, like as women and as mothers, sometimes we need.

That energy to be mothered for a while, it can be so healing to our hormones into our nervous system, even just to , have someone be holding you. And that doesn't mean we have to be old enough to be your mom. maybe it's even just more of a sisterhood, but having someone who has already been through what you're going through.

And who understands what's happening under the surface, being able to hold you and walk you through that can be incredibly helpful you can turn off that crazy, part of your brain. That's just like, I need to check this and I need to check this and I need to look at this and maybe it's this and it's like, okay, no, we have.

A plan. And that's why we work with people in a very intimate capacity where we're looking at you face to face and we're looking at your tracking and we're looking at your food and we're looking at, we can see the big picture of your lifestyle in a different way than you can. not because we're fancy people, other people can see the big picture of our lifestyle in a way we can't, but , we can see .

Oh, well, you're really, really stressed out about this thing over here. And it feels to you like that's normal, but that's jacking up your hormones. And because of that, you're not doing these specific steps that are going to fix what's going on. I just want to be really clear. That is why we can't.

 , give away everything on the podcast. It's not because we, , don't want to, it's truly like, we need to be with you and holding your hand and looking at your life to be able to see what those things are. I just want to be really clear about that. The other thing I wanted to mention is within that fear mindset.

When you're in a fear mindset, or even when it just creeps in sometimes, it's really easy to feel like you have to throw everything out the window and start something new. especially with women and especially with hormones, you are going to see some changes.

If you're doing the things that really your body needs, you can see changes before three months, but The big changes are going to occur in those months, like three months, four, because it takes that long for an egg to develop. It takes that long for hormones to start to change in a really good environment.

if you have this history of trying something in your health maybe you try it for one bottle of pills, So for a month or you do a 21 day fast or a cleanse or something, or you do a 30 day whole 30. that's not long enough and it may not be the right thing 

The things that I mentioned, it's not long enough to be able to actually see if it's working for your body. So you may just not be trying something long enough. If you're like, okay, I feel like I do need tangible steps. Then that's where we can help you. , get that picture and , find out what those tangible steps are.

And then you should have the confidence at that point to stay consistent with them long enough where you're able to actually see results. , and I've done this too. , again, none of this comes with judgment, but just kind of . Rabbit trailing for lack of a better term from one problem to another, it's like you come and you're like, okay, I think I have estrogen dominance and I need to really work on my estrogen.

And so you find 1 or 2 things , this is going to help my estrogen and maybe 1 period is a little bit better and you're like, okay, this is working. I think I fixed it. And then you stop doing what you were doing and your period gets worse. And you're like, well then it didn't work. Well then you're going to be like, maybe it wasn't estrogen dominance in the first place. Maybe I do have low progesterone. And then you go down that rabbit trail and you find two things that you're going to do for that. And then you try that for a little while and it does or doesn't work, but none of it is long enough.

And then you're like, maybe it's my thyroid. Maybe it's my gut. Maybe I need to do X, Y, Z functional testing. But when we're doing that rabbit trail, I'm looking out the window right now and we have snow here. If I was watching a rabbit run through the snow, he'd run over to one tree and then he'd go the other way and then he'd go the other way and he might backtrack a little bit and then he might go in a circle.

 That energy is what I feel so much of the time, especially from women who have been. Crunchy moms for a while, or in the holistic health space for a while where they know so much about their bodies. And I think that's such a gift and it can be really easy to just be like, Oh, well maybe it's actually my MTHFR.

Maybe it's histamines, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. when we're doing this rabbit trailing and going down all these Rabbit trails on the internet and looking up all these things, it just becomes essentially kind of crippling. 

[00:17:54] Heather: Well, and I want to say really quick, why that doesn't work. It's because I think about a mechanic, how you can YouTube, how to change a tire and you can YouTube how to change your oil. But the reason you take your car to a mechanic, especially like your transmission's broken or your engine's broken is they know how it all works together.

 I see so many clients that are knowledgeable. It's dangerous. But it's because they do exactly what you said. They hyper focus on these certain areas in an isolated way. they know so much about their thyroid and so much about their estrogen, but they can't put it all together. Simply because they did not go to four or five, six, seven, eight years of school or have that much experience seeing a lot of different people to know, Oh, this is how it all works together.

You cannot YouTube your way to understanding how it all works together. That's why people get degrees, , because you have to learn them all separate and learn them all together. in pharmacy school, we spend two years after you learn every system. learning how they all work together. I just think that can be helpful because I know it's easy to hear , Oh, you can't jump from one to the other.

But when you're really smart and really good at research and know a lot. Sometimes it can help to be like, wait, you do know a lot and you will not be able, in my opinion, to know how to put it all together unless you're truly studying it as a program or certification or like you got to actually do the thing, ?

[00:19:13] Leisha: absolutely. I think there is so much power in knowledge. sometimes the pursuit of knowledge can be a detriment to your emotional and physical health as well. And being able to just , find the way. To come back to the middle with that of your pendulum swing of , whatever your catalyst was for starting to look into your health, whether that was you or your kids or you started peeling back the layers of like, I don't want to do this the traditional Western way.

, it's easy to swing from that to , we shouldn't need any medicine ever for anything. And then we find that , maybe that isn't true in this fallen world that we live in either. how can we go back to the middle finding the perspective that , in our bodies, we do have control to some extent.

 Like you said, we have to be working with the one who created our bodies and not only just not working against our own bodies and our own emotions, but also realizing that we aren't in control of everything. as much as we know, there are things we don't know. And so being able to , Zoom out and see, those can be really helpful.

So to kind of wrap this up, I want to bullet point a little bit. If you've been feeling overwhelmed, you've been feeling burned out. I want you to just take this moment right now or literally schedule with yourself for later today and just sit down and write down the things, you know, help your body from experience, the things you've done that have helped you before in your physical body, in your emotions.

And just ask yourself, , am I doing these things consistently? Because there is a lot, even within what you know, that is just very unhelpful knowledge. If you're not taking that consideration of like, Oh, I already know that this worked for me and this was working. And then I just stopped doing it because of whatever reason.

And then I think also, within that fear mindset, sometimes it can be victim mentality too. I can't because I don't have enough time because I don't have enough money because my kids need me because I have a job because I, whatever, I think that being able to just question each of those beliefs, any of those you have or different ones you have, just saying Hey, okay, I'm going to give myself the grace that maybe that is true to some extent, but also what do I have control over that can be so powerful, even as a mom who has a business, I'm homeschooling.

 There's a lot going on. It's easy for me to be like, I don't have time to take a 20 minute walk every day. And then , if I just take a second and say, is that really true? It's not really true. I could make that time and something else would have to go , that is what's true.

My time is full. So something else would have to go. And instead of just saying, , I can't because X, Y, Z, some other person , Maybe you just question that and take that accountability back in yourself of, I know these things that work for me. I know that I'm not doing them.

Let me just have a little come to Jesus moment with myself and just ask why, , how is it serving me to not be doing them? Maybe I can blame somebody else. Maybe I can, take the accountability off myself. Maybe just realizing that helps you say, you know what, maybe there is something that can come off my plate.

That's different for the next two weeks and I'm going to change my focus. I think there's a lot of that within our mindset that can shift in a really simple way if we're just willing to step back and look at it.

[00:22:41] Heather: I don't have anything to add. I think that's good.

[00:22:44] Leisha: Well, I think that's all for today. We will see all of you next time.