Candice (00:12.792)

Hey, it's your coach Candice. Have you ever felt like your life looks fine on the outside, but inside you feel like you're barely holding it together? This is probably a very redundant question I'm asking you because I think a lot of us feel this way. Well, today we're talking about nervous system dysregulation. What it is.

how I discovered that I had been living in this state for years and why this has become one of my biggest priorities in my own life and also inside my mastermind this year. I think this conversation matters so much today, right now, because so many of you are trying to grow your business, show up consistently, and also handle more responsibility in your business. But you're doing it maybe from a body that feels overwhelmed

feels reactive and exhausted. So today's episode is for the wedding pro who feels like they're constantly bracing. Bracing for impact.

bracing for the worst case scenario. Like even if small things feel very heavy, emotional, are hard to handle for you right now, and you don't fully understand why, then today's episode is for you. Let's get into it.

Hey there friends and welcome back to the Power and Purpose Podcast. And if this is your first time listening to one of our episodes, I am so glad you're here and I'm so glad you're starting with today's episode. Make sure you're following the show so you don't miss a new episode. And if today's episode resonates with you, if you see even a part of yourself in my story, send it to a friend who you think needs to hear it too.

Candice (02:02.624)

You guys told me that you wanted me to record this episode. I mentioned nervous system dysregulation in my operating standards episode for 2026. If you haven't listened to that episode, I highly encourage you to go back, check it out. It's just a few episodes ago. And in it, I laid out the operating standards that I set for myself and also the women inside my mastermind, wedding pro insiders. And in it, I talked about nervous system regulation.

and why it's so important. So many of you guys reached out to me via email, DMs on Instagram, and said, Candace, I would really love it if you'd share your experience here. I'm very interested. So that is what we are doing today. And before we get into my story, I do want to say a couple of important things that I think are necessary in an episode like this. What I'm sharing with you today in this episode is my personal experience. And it's also what I've learned through my own research and through the support that I've

I am not a medical professional. I'm not even close to a medical professional. am a business coach. And today's episode is not medical advice. You might hear parts of my story and be like, wow, that I can totally relate to that.

And if you do, I want to invite you to take it as an invitation to get curious about what's going on with you, your life, your body, but please don't mistake it as a diagnosis. Just because you can relate to something that I share does not mean that the same thing is happening to your body. So if anything in this episode resonates with you, and I think a lot of it will, and I think there's a reason why it's going to resonate with you. However, I want to encourage you to talk to your doctor.

to get somebody who is a million times more qualified than me who has a lot of letters of the alphabet behind their name who can support you based on your specific situation. My intention with today's episode is to just simply share what I've experienced because that is very powerful and I know that so many people listening are going to pretty much verbatim know my journey as your own.

Candice (04:19.286)

And so being able to share what I've experienced, what I've learned and what has helped me is so important for me to do. But this is not me telling you what to do or to position myself as an expert in this space because I am no expert here. I'm a very much a novice and I want you to listen to today's episode with an open mind and really just stay grounded in your experience and get the support you need from someone who is trained to guide you. Now that's disclaimer number one.

The second disclaimer that I want to share is even if you're listening to this and you're not coming from a place where you feel dysregulated, understanding what I'm talking about today can still be really valuable for you. And here's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that as a service provider in our industry,

you're working with people who are in emotionally high stakes situations. So your clients are making big decisions, they're spending a lot of money, they're navigating family dynamics, like all these different things. And no matter what your role is in the industry, you're working alongside these clients. Plus, you're also working alongside vendors who might...

be burnt out and overwhelmed and carrying a lot of things themselves. We're all walking around with our invisible backpacks and so learning what dysregulation can look like might not just be valuable for you but it could also be valuable for you in understanding what maybe some of your clients might be going through and some of what your vendor friends might be going through. But with that said...

Your role is not to diagnose people. Chat GPT would tell you, slow your roll, stop diagnosing people. You can't go out here and start diagnosing your colleagues and your clients with nervous system dysregulation. But if today's episode can give you a layer of awareness and even some compassion for what people might be experiencing, I think it's going to change how you interact with people. And maybe it will give you a layer of patience or at the very least a layer of under

Candice (06:31.472)

I know for me now that I understand this so personally I can feel when somebody is overwhelmed or operating from a place of Immense stress I can sense it I can feel it, know Jason and I my husband often talk about this

This is like part of our daily conversation on many days. And when we come across somebody who is snapping or aggressive or shouting or flying off the handle with something that doesn't require that much emotional investment, I often say maybe they're just right. Maybe we should just pause for a minute and we can see it clearly that they're operating from a place of stress.

It's not to label somebody but just to help us respond differently and that's what I hope for you I hope that today's episode not only helps you understand what you might be experiencing or even maybe something you've experienced in the past But also helps you to communicate with people better lead your clients better help your vendors more and just hold space for people in a different way

For me, that's very valuable in the work that I do, but I also think it's incredibly valuable in the work that you do. So those are my disclaimers. I wanted to make sure that I was thoughtful and conscientious in today's episode. And of course, I'm not a medical professional, not even close. And I don't want you taking today's episode as any form of medical advice. So let's get into first.

explanation of a nervous system. Before I go into my story, I do want to talk about what we're actually talking about here today because I didn't really understand this until recently. And once I began to understand it, it changed everything for me. I will also say that I am a very skeptical person. I'm highly skeptical. I'm not woo adjacent. I'm not woo in the slightest, I don't think. And I thought nervous system was like woo woo stuff. Obviously I'm very wrong.

Candice (08:26.328)

But I didn't really think that this was anything. I didn't think it was practical and I didn't think that what I was experiencing was anything remotely what I was going to describe to you. Very skeptical about this. So if you're like me and you're a skeptic and you're like everybody's taking supplements and everybody's using red lights and everybody's on these shaking vibrating pads and doing all this crazy stuff talking about nervous system. It sounds like a hoax. I don't blame you. I was there as well until I started to understand what this all means. And so

That's what I want to start us off with first.

To begin, your nervous system is your body's communication system. It includes your brain, your spinal cord, and all the nerves throughout your body. And its job is to send messages back and forth so you can think, so you can move, so you can feel, so you can digest your food, and also respond to what's happening around you and inside of you. And there's a part of your nervous system, it's called the autonomic nervous system. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that right. And this is the part that handles things

automatically. you don't have to and things you don't have to think about your heart rate, breathing, digestion, your stress response, all of these things are happening in spite of you having to think about it. You don't sit there and think I have to breathe. You don't sit there and think I have to beat my heart. Your nervous system takes care of that for you. However, this is also the space that we call fight, flight or freeze. You might think of a deer when you think about that, a deer in headlight.

that is freezing and in our lives and as human beings this is our bodies built-in way of responding to stress or perceived threats around us. I mean back in the day when we were gathering our food and you know doing what we were doing

Candice (10:20.074)

Long time ago, as human beings, before we live in the world we are in today, this served us very well because it kept us safe, it kept us alive. And this instinct, our nervous system is still built to do that. We're just operating not in.

A field trying to kill our food and survive. We're trying to answer emails and not let our clients and other people piss us off. So we're operating in a totally different dynamic these days, but that fight, flight or freeze still lives in our body and it's designed to protect us. And when this system in our body is working well, your body moves in and out of stress responses. I'm reading, continuing to read a book called.

your nervous system and the author of this book talks a lot about your body moving through these different stress responses throughout the day, throughout the month, throughout the year and think about it kind of like the way she describes it is like red, yellow, green, so my mind automatically went to like the terrorism threat levels.

just thinking about the different levels that we experience in our nervous system is sort of similar to that. There's different threat levels that you might experience. And when the system is working well, your body's going to move in and out of stress responses easily. That's probably why you can think back to a time in your life where you were able to manage stress well and things just didn't get to you maybe like they're getting to you at this stage of your life. Something happens, your body reacts, and then it settles itself back down and it goes back

to its baseline. However, when you're under a lot of stress and when you're under a lot of stress for a long period of time, your system can get overwhelmed and that response can start to stay on longer than it should. And that's where things can start to feel off. And that is where we're going to start today. I didn't realize that all of this was happening in my body without my input until I went to go see my

Candice (12:25.876)

physiotherapist. So that is where my journey begins and what I want to talk to you about is that experience and what led up to my discoveries. I went back to my physiotherapist after taking a break for about I think six to eight months I took a break. I continue to have pain and tension on the right side of my body, in my neck, in my shoulder, down my arm.

in my lats, which is my side, in my glute, in my hip, in my IT band, and even in my feet. I've had Pariformis Syndrome. I have had Plantar Veshitis. I mean, I have been struggling with this since 2022.

It got really bad in 2023. I was going to the physiotherapist. It was kind of working, but it wasn't. So I took a break and I continued to have this pain and tension in my body. And I decided I'm going to go back to my physiotherapist because I think what's happened is I injured myself. I've not been working out consistently. I've lost muscle and what I'm experiencing is a muscle imbalance. So I wanted her to evaluate me, tell me where I have muscle muscle imbalances and kind of give me

a workout plan, a calisthenics workout plan, Pilates or something to where I could start building back up my strength and finally shake off this pain. So I thought I was gonna walk in there and she was gonna be like, okay, you have weak hips, weak abductors, weak glutes, like all these weak things, poor posture. You're sitting down too much and that's your problem. That is not what happened.

So I go in, it's been a while, she's observing me, and the first thing she said was, you have a lot of tension. And the reason why you're experiencing all this pain is your nervous system is dysregulated. Your body is constantly bracing.

Candice (14:24.012)

I'm standing there, she's asking me to do a couple of things, stand, walk, lean this way, bend over this way, and that is the first thing she said for me, was that my body is bracing.

It wasn't that I was just tense. She said you're in protection mode verbatim You are protecting yourself. Your body is tense You are bracing because you are in protection mode And she basically told me that my body was acting like it was in danger all the time even when there wasn't danger and in that meeting she really helped me understand that the pain that I was experiencing was because I am constantly tense and

trying to protect myself and I'm in this state of contraction. It was like my body forgot how to unclench or how to relax and I'm gonna be honest with you I was absolutely stunned when she told me this. I remember thinking what what is she even talking about? is she shouldn't she be giving me some glute exercises to do and some hip flexor exercises to do? I was literally floored because I had never thought that my physical pain

could be through the lens of my nervous system. I thought they were separate things. I did not think that this would ever be connected. I thought stress was stress and muscle pain was muscle pain. And I didn't realize that they were also really entwined. I remember leaving her office, getting into my car and thinking, my God, she's right.

And not only is she right, but I have been holding on to tension and I have been in protective mode probably since I was a child, since I got burned as a very young age.

Candice (16:13.428)

It explained something for me that I didn't realize, but now that I understand what it is, I had language for it and I could, started, things started unraveling. It almost felt like a deck of cards getting put together in the right order. So instead of falling apart, it felt like if you were to take a video of a deck of cards, a house of cards falling apart and reverse it, it was as if everything found its place.

And that was how it felt in my mind. Everything suddenly became organized. And all of a sudden, the things that I felt were disconnected started making sense. And what I decided to do as I was driving home and then for the rest of the day talking to my husband, I started to piece things together. I started to go back in time. And I looked back and I said, this has been basically my entire life.

Once she said that to me, I started looking back at my life differently and I began to trace patterns that I was experiencing and I began to ask myself, when did this start and how long have I actually been living like this? And how much of what I thought was just my personality or the way I deal with things or the way I deal with stress was actually dysregulation.

What I have uncovered for myself is I think I've been operating in some level of nervous system dysfunction for a decade or more. And I think that this really started to become a thing for me back in 2012. During my divorce, I had a friend pass away. I had all these life changes that were very traumatic. Although at the time I was moving through them, but I didn't realize how

It was affecting me in my body in ways that I had no control over. And I could see how my nervous system dysregulation followed me for years, even to the point where I believe that I had to get out of wedding planning because I I've been dysregulated for a very long time. And stress is something that I've had a difficult time navigating.

Candice (18:27.66)

since 2012, believe it or not. But some important nuances here is that I was still functioning. I was still working at a very high level. I was still leading my team, my clients. I was still producing.

Which is why I think it's taken me so long to recognize that what I was experiencing back in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, all the way to 2019 where I was like, cannot continue to own my business anymore. I need to let this go. I need to sell my business and I need to go into coaching. All of that, I was highly dysregulated. I think severely dysregulated, but yet I was high functioning.

And there are so many people out there who are high functioning, who are doing so many things well, but they are not well. Maybe that's you. Maybe you're like me and you are functioning at a high level. You're working, you're leading, you're producing, you're continuing to push forward. On the outside, it looks like you're crushing it, but you don't feel like you are. You're feeling crushed. You are not well.

There were weeks.

where I could work at what looked like an absolutely normal level for me, which is very high functioning. I could create, I could coach, I could respond, lead, get things done. And then there were weeks where the smallest thing felt unbearable, where the smallest thing, an email that I would receive would send me spiraling, a message would feel too heavy for me to answer. Even fast forwarding out of wedding planning into my coaching business, you know, somebody canceling their

Candice (20:11.746)

membership would feel extremely upsetting to me. A question, a request, a problem to solve, a task that I didn't expect. Something that honestly should feel manageable would hit me like it was a crisis and I couldn't cope with it or the reaction I had to it was so disproportionate to the circumstance. I felt like

one of those shoes that has been left somewhere too long and has dry rotted. If you live in the Caribbean, you know exactly what I mean. If you live in a humid climate, if you leave a pair of shoes in your closet for too long and you don't wear them, they don't get any action, they're going to sit there and dry rot. And there's gonna come a day where you go to look, pick up that shoe. It looks intact, but you pick it up. And the second you pick it up, it absolutely falls apart. It crumbles in your closet. That is actually how I felt.

I felt like everything was fine on the outside, but internally I was brittle and falling apart. And that is such a difficult place to operate a business from and to function as a business owner, as a leader, as somebody that people look up to, somebody that people count on. And personality wise, you guys know me. You know my personality. I am consistent.

I am high level, I operate at a very high level, I am somebody that you can count on. And there were moments over the last eight years where you could not count on me. And that's a hard place to operate from as someone like myself. And so many of you, probably all of you are just like me in that way.

Every day I felt like I was bracing for impact. Every day I felt like something bad was about to happen. Like I was holding it together. Like I had to hold it together. But I could never exhale. I could never settle in. I was always on edge.

Candice (22:23.244)

And not only that, dysregulation wasn't just constant stress that I'm pretty much operating in all the time and never going back to baseline. But I had a lot of physical symptoms that I did not realize were nervous system dysregulation until I started reading that book, Kill Your Nervous System. And then I was completely shook. So the most obvious symptom for me was the tension that I feel. And I still feel it, but it's gotten so much better you would not believe how

about her it's gotten. The tension and the pain that I was experiencing my neck, my shoulder, my lats, my side, my hip, my glute, my leg, my feet. So those areas all concentrated on my right side which is my dominant side. It was like my body was gripping at all times. So there's that. But then I had sensory symptoms and this is where I my mind was really blown.

So let me take you back to two years ago when we moved into our new home.

I had just recovered from dengue fever. And if you've ever had dengue fever, I know you are like wincing right now. Worst experience, one of the top three worst experiences of my life. Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne illness. I got it at Christmas and it was the, it is the most painful. You feel like every bone in your body is being crushed. It was absolutely horrible.

Well, about three weeks after contracting dengue, we closed on our house and we had to very quickly move into our home. So we moved into our home. We had been waiting a year to do this. It was a very stressful experience that definitely contributed to my nervous system dysregulation. I had just recovered from dengue and I could not function. I mean, this is crazy.

Candice (24:21.664)

I could not be in any room in our house besides our master bedroom, which does not have a lot of natural light. It has almost no natural light in it. I could not go outside. I could not walk around our house. I could not be in our living room. I could not be in my office. I could not be outside on our veranda. The light felt so unbearable.

I went to the eye doctor, I went to my general doctor, I got blood work done. I thought, my god, something's wrong with my eyes. I need glasses, I can't see, the light's reflecting off the floor, it must be something's wrong with my eyes. That was not the case.

One of the symptoms of nervous system dysregulation that presents itself is a sensitivity to light, to noise, which I was also experiencing noise sensitivity and nobody pointed this out to me. No doctor pointed this out to me. The eye doctor, my general doctor, my perimenopausal doctor, nobody pointed this out to me.

It wasn't until I'd actually overcome it that I was reading that book, How to Heal Your Nervous System, where one of the symptoms with severe dysregulation is light sensitivity. And I could not believe my eyes. I could not believe that what I was experiencing was actually real. I thought it was something in my head, or I thought it was just something weird. I could not understand what was going on. And when I tell you guys, I would spend

days in this bedroom working on my computer. I could not leave the bedroom. Jason and I would spend days in there together. We were both so dysregulated. I could not be in a light, bright room. It was as if my body was shutting down. I could not think. I could not function.

Candice (26:25.166)

And to know that that overstimulation was coming from nervous system dysregulation was mind-blowing to me.

So that was one of the severe symptoms that I had, not just the physical pain, bracing, all that tension, but light sensitivity, noise sensitivity as well. Whether it is a weed whacker, my dog barking, my husband chewing, notifications on my phone, they would send me into a spiral. It's as if, it was like my phone would give me a notification and it was as if a bear was charging me.

That's how it felt in my body. Maybe you've experienced something like this in your lifetime. Maybe recently, maybe you're experiencing this right now.

So I had the sensory experience and there was also a lot of emotional and mental symptoms. There were times where I just couldn't handle normal day to day tasks the way I used to. Cooking felt overwhelming, cleaning felt overwhelming, getting dressed felt overwhelming, making my bed felt overwhelming, doing my normal routine. It felt like I was being asked to run a marathon.

is going on here? I'm not lazy. I don't lack discipline. I can do this. Why is this so difficult for me? But my system was completely depleted. I was fragile. I was reactive. I felt like I had no buffer between myself and all these external inputs. Everything was coming at me. It felt loud. It felt fast. And everything felt hard. The smallest thing...

Candice (28:07.064)

could feel enormous because I didn't have the capacity to deal with it. Now reminder on the outside, but my coaching clients are probably listening to this going, what? What? But this was my reality. It was extremely, extremely difficult. And I do what I always do, which is I just deal with it. I just power through it. I just make things happen. Now,

It affected my capacity and also led to lot of inconsistency for me. And so one of the hardest parts for me was how inconsistent I felt. mean, there were times where I could function at a very high level. There was days and weeks where things were fine and I'm like, I'm cured. And then it would come back again where I couldn't handle basic responsibilities. And that inconsistency really messed with me. It made things so much worse because I kept thinking what's wrong with me.

Why can I do this on some days and other days I can't even get out of bed? Why do I feel hopeless? Why do I feel like this is impossible? And I thought that it was lacking motivation, something's wrong with me, I just need to be more organized, I just need to get up and do it, I need to deal with it. And...

Now I know that this was a multi-issue problem with my nervous system being the biggest driver for how I was feeling and how I was coping. So after that physio appointment, really wanted to understand what was happening to me and why I was in protection mode. So I looked for some podcasts first, as we do. I couldn't really find anything that I needed, which was so strange. I still haven't really found something that I think describes what I experienced.

find the book, How to Heal Your Nervous System. reading it was one of those experiences where you feel...

Candice (30:10.542)

So seen that it's unsettling. you, you, you, you finally have a, uh, somebody is actually describing to you what your experience has been. And then the whole time you thought it was in your head. I saw myself in what she was describing the symptoms I experienced, the patterns that I had just normalized. Like, I guess this is just part of being 40. I guess this is just part of what happens in life. Like the pressure, the work balancing things. Like this is just what it is.

But actually no. It's part of it. It's hormonal things that happen. With all of us, male or female.

But it gave me, the book gave me language for things that I had been living through without really understanding. And I think this is why so many women and men stay stuck for so long in nervous system dysregulation because we make it into a moral feeling. We say, well, I'm just bad at coping or maybe I'm too emotional or maybe I'm too sensitive or I need to get more disciplined or I need to get a coach to help me or I just need to be more organized or I need a schedule or I just need to plan things better or I just need to get it together.

I would just tell myself, Candice, you just need to get it together. You just need to get it together. When really, it was my nervous system that was overloaded and maybe your nervous system is experiencing something similar and what you need is support. So for me, naming this was the beginning of changing it. Naming this and understanding it was the beginning of changing it.

Now there is another layer here that is important to share. And it's not only was I dealing with nervous system dysregulation, but I was also entering into a period of time in my life where things were changing in my body chemically.

Candice (31:58.04)

So when I look back even further, I could see that there were some major periods in my life where my system, my nervous system was under enormous amount of stress. Again, going through my divorce, losing one of my very dear friends, holding onto so much responsibility in my business, carrying money pressure, client pressure, team pressure, emotional pressure. I mean, there were seasons of my life where I was literally carrying more than I could actually metabolize.

And I don't think I ever fully came down from those experiences. I think they just kind of got baked into my baseline.

You know, I ran to Barbados to try to escape, as before I met my husband, because I was so overwhelmed. I complicated things for myself in a lot of ways, which did not help me. I was not making decisions from a regulated space or from a space where I could make thoughtful decisions. And many of us encounter this. Many of us encounter this. But to top it all off,

Over the last four years, I turned 40, and there's something that happens when you get to be in your 40s. As a woman and as a man, your hormones begin to change.

And looking back, I think that I have been muscling through hormonal changes for at least six years. So in my late 30s and then of course into my 40s. To be honest, I didn't understand how much hormones affect your entire body, including your nervous system. I I thought hormones were like, you know, hormones.

Candice (33:45.742)

I I thought about them in a very shallow way, not in a sophisticated way. So I was thinking, know, mood swings, sex drive, if you're a female, you're a cycle, know, testosterone, estrogen. I was just thinking about them in that capacity. I didn't understand that hormones affect everything, how you sleep, how you regulate stress, how your brain functions, how your body recovers. And yes, of course, your emotions, but you would not be alive without them.

They literally operate every function of your body. And when your hormones shift, you shift, when your hormones change, when they start to deplete or they're not at the same level they used to, or they're going up and down throughout the month. And if your nervous system is already strained, that hormonal change can actually make things so much worse.

So I wasn't just dealing with nervous system dysregulation. I was dealing with accumulated stress, trauma, burnout, physical inflammation, and hormone changes, which I later discovered through my doctor. So that is a part of my nervous system story. Let's talk about what I started doing. Because now that I was clued into this,

I started doing things differently. And I want to be clear here. There was not one magic fix to this. There's been a lot of layered support. And this has been me learning how to support my body instead of forcing it to keep up or abusing it in a way, talking down to it or feeling less than or making it try to do things that it's not capable of doing.

So the first thing that I started doing was reducing inputs. It's one of the biggest changes I made, especially digital inputs. Social media was dysregulating me in ways that I couldn't fully appreciate at first.

Candice (35:48.014)

What I started to notice was that as I would scroll social media it almost felt like a slot machine images videos sounds the movement of things information other people's emotions opinions on on stuff it all felt like it was coming at me non-stop like it was just like I was in a spaceship and I was like just flying past all these star like it was just coming at me non-stop and I couldn't control it and Even when the content wasn't negative because you know my algorithm is fun. It's fashion. It's like housewives But even that stuff felt over jarred

to me and the pace and the volume at which I was consuming stuff felt like too much for my system.

constant stimulation was over stimulating me. So when I reduced my screen time, I actually started to be more intentional about what I consumed and I noticed that I felt a lot less anxious and a lot less flooded. And anytime I spent too much time on my phone, I know that I need to reduce my screen time again or else I'm going to feel dysregulated. So that was the first thing that I did was reducing inputs. The second thing I did was I started sound therapy.

Specifically, SSP and RRP. One of my mindset coaches, Helen, introduced me to sound therapy. SSP and RRP are two sound therapies that I have used that support me. And from my understanding, these kinds of therapies, they used sound and frequency to help your nervous system begin to feel safer and more regulated.

What they do is they stimulate your vagus nerve, which is a nerve that runs along your ear. And in stimulating that, it sends silent signals to your nervous system that it can relax, that it is safe. And you would not believe how this sound therapy affected me. It affected me in profound ways.

Candice (37:48.278)

It helped me get calmer. It helped me to soften. I truly believe it helped me to stop bracing and holding all of that tension. Now you have to use this through a licensed practitioner, so that's important to note. You can't just use this on your own. You have to use it through somebody who's licensed to prescribe it to you and also deliver it to you through a special app. But I oscillate between the two.

I oscillate between SSP and RRP. I used it very strongly for several months, and then now I use it lightly as I need it. But this was one of those woo-woo things that is actually grounded in a lot of research, and it helped me. It had a profound effect on me. And I'm so grateful that I had access to that, because I truly think it changed how I am responding to stress.

The next thing I did was movement, and I focused on reducing inflammation and getting support for myself physically. Exercise has helped with my nervous system tremendously. So supporting my body physically has helped. I'm also on a GLP-1, and I've been on a GLP-1 for over a year. I started a GLP-1 to lose weight. I could not lose the 20 pounds that I gained. I tried.

everything. I could not lose it. And so I said, all right, I'm going to try this. And it completely transformed my life.

But the GLP-1 has, I believe, has also helped me reduce inflammation in my body. It has certainly helped me to lose 30 pounds. And it's made it easier for my body to function and also recover. Recover after workouts, recover after stress. And I'm not saying that this is everyone's answer. Please know that. But I can't sit up here and tell you that I healed my nervous system or I got into a more regulated state by reading a book. That would be a lie. There are a lot of things

Candice (39:49.096)

that I have done and a GLP-1 has has absolutely contributed to this. When your body is inflamed, when it's overloaded, when it's exhausted, any reduction of that can have a positive domino effect. So taking a GLP-1 has definitely helped me. Highly recommend talking to your doctor about it. If you've been curious, if you have any questions about it, you can certainly ask me and I'd be happy to share my personal experience.

In addition to taking a GLP-1, I also started taking hormones. So I got on HRT. I got on HRT over a year ago. I went to my doctor. I cried. I said, I don't feel like myself. I feel out of sorts. I'm not happy. It's not depression, because I've been there before. Something is off, and I need help. So she said, OK.

We're gonna check your panels, we're gonna check your blood work, we're gonna go through some tests and see what's happening with you. And what we uncovered was that my hormones were operating at different levels, levels that they shouldn't be operating at. So she started me on the GLP-1, which works on hormone receptors, and she started me on estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. And this support...

is change my life in so many different ways. I was trying to regulate a system that was being impacted hormonally and that I have no control over what hormones my body is producing. getting support there instead of white knuckling it was so important for me and I'm so grateful that I did. Just a little side note for all my listeners, if you're a woman,

You may start experiencing hormonal imbalances in your 30s, so this might show up in your later 30s, and it certainly begins for many people in their 40s. If you're a man listening to this episode, and you have a woman in your life who's in her later 30s or early 40s, and you're noticing that she's short-tempered, that she is not herself, that she is struggling a bit, she might be experiencing

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perimenopause, she might be experiencing shifts in her hormone levels and the best thing you can do is support her in this. Send her this podcast episode. Approach the topic with her and she may not be clued in to that this is happening.

Support her in this. My husband has been so supportive and I know there are so many men out there who have wives, who have partners, who have friends in their life who are experiencing this and they don't realize it and they don't know what to do. If you are picking up on this, share with them that this might be something that's going on and encourage them to speak to their doctor, okay? Okay, so I did hormone support. I had movement.

GLP-1, sound therapy, I reduced my inputs.

those had a profound effect on my nervous system. So I want to connect this all back to business because I think a lot of wedding pros are trying to solve business problems right now when what they're really dealing with is a capacity problem and a nervous system problem. When your nervous system is dysregulated, when it is not able to cycle through stress responses in a normal way and come back to a normal baseline, everything in your business is going to feel

harder. An inquiry that ghosts you is gonna feel harder and I see a lot of people upset about this. Not saying that you're dysregulated if you're upset but it's going to feel a lot harder. A client email is gonna feel harder. Marketing your business is gonna feel harder. Selling is gonna feel harder. Raising your prices is gonna feel harder. Delegating is gonna feel harder. Getting feedback

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from your coach, from a colleague, from your spouse, from a team member, is gonna feel personal. Somebody cancels their services is gonna feel catastrophic. And a slow month in your business is gonna feel like the proof, the proof that you need that everything is falling apart and you're the reason why. That's what you're gonna tell yourself. You cannot lead your business, your clients, you cannot lead well from a body that feels like it's under attack.

You can do it for a while. I'm living proof of that. And several people that you probably follow and admire are also living proof of that. But what I've come to realize is the cost is really high. Your nervous system affects everything. How you make decisions, how you handle stress, how you react to disappointment, how much visibility you can tolerate being out there in the world being visible, how much success you can actually hold.

And so if you're nervous system, if you're looking at this as separate from your business, you're looking at it wrong because it's not separate. It is part of the actual foundation of your business. It is as important as knowing who your ideal clients are. It's important as making sure your services are positioned towards those clients. It is that important. I'm prioritizing this for myself because I don't.

ever want to go back to not being able to be outside. Having light sensitivity, sound sensitivity, feeling like my life was falling apart. I never want to go back there. So I'm prioritizing this for myself, but I'm also prioritizing it inside my mastermind. Because the women that I lead and coach...

are experiencing life just like I am. And in some cases, very different. They're caring for parents, they're caring for kids, which I don't have kids. So that's one layer of stress that I don't have. They're still in the wedding industry. They're doing high stakes, high volume, high capacity work. And I, as their coach, want to make sure that they're operating from a place of regulation. I don't

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to my life from a state of being in like this chronic bracing for impact. And as a coach, I see so many people in this state. And if I can help point something out and encourage you, and if I can coach you knowing that you might be a little dysregulated or you might be having trouble with your stress response,

To me, that's so important to be able to recognize that in somebody and to be able to coach them from that angle and to be able to offer support and guidance with that in mind.

And inside my mastermind, I'm seeing how important this is, especially for women who want to expand or grow or work with higher level clients or grow a team or make more money. Because when you want more clients, when you want more money, when you want more visibility, more responsibility, you also have to have the capacity to hold that. You have to be able to support the people that are hiring you. And you have to be able to support the visibility required to get those people. You have to be able to support the team necessary to make all the

work and what you need is a system that can receive and sustain what you're building and I want to make sure that as a coach even on this podcast that we're layering my awareness around this now our collective awareness around this that we're layering this into our conversations because the work that you do in the wedding industry is more stressful than the work that I do today

got my own stresses and not gonna you know sugarcoat it but I'm not producing or working with clients like I used to in events and the wedding industry is high stress it's high stakes and it's highly emotional and I don't think that you can expand to the next level you want to go to in your business the reason why you listen to this podcast if your body is experiencing everything as a threat

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It's so important that you understand how your nervous system might be operating and that you enlist the right tools to support it going forward. And so that's what I'm looking to do inside my mastermind. And that's what I'm helping the women achieve this year in their business. And in fact, a lot of our retreat, which is happening this month at my home in Barbados, is built around this, is around this concept.

And I think going forward, as much as I don't want to be a nervous system expert, I will not be pivoting, because I think you need somebody with real medical training supporting you on this. However, I do believe that I can be knowledgeable enough to add this as a layer to my conversations with the women that I coach. And that's what I intend to do. So that is my story with nervous system dysregulation.

I'm curious to hear if my story and what I share, if any of that resonates with you. Maybe you're being, maybe you are feeling.

What I'm feeling, maybe you're seeing some of yourself in this episode. Maybe you've been feeling this way, but you're just calling it stress. Maybe you're feeling this way and you're just calling it burnout. Maybe you're saying you're just too sensitive, you're too emotional, you're too overwhelmed, you just need a break. Maybe you just need less clients. Maybe you just need to raise your price. But maybe what's really happening is your body is asking for support.

And unfortunately, it's doing it in a language that you don't know how to read just yet. My body was screaming when it was saying, can't handle, you can't even handle a light bulb shining on you. You need to slow down and evaluate this. It was really sending me lots of signals, but I wasn't picking up on it. And I wonder maybe if you're experiencing signals too, that you're not picking up on. So if this felt familiar, I really hope that you'll let this be some information for you. Your next move.

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is to reach out to me and say, hey, I so resonated with what you said in your episode. If you have a question, make sure you ask it. I'm an open book. I'm happy to share more of my journey with you. And also then your next step is to actually speak to your doctor about this. To find somebody, a doctor who you can talk to, and if you'd like to ask me for any recommendations, I'm more than happy to give you that.

So I want you to take a moment, think about what stood out to you in my journey, in my story. Was it the idea of bracing? Was it maybe the pain I was feeling? Maybe the inconsistency in your energy? Maybe my power through it, muscle through it, make it work, make it happen resonated with you? Maybe the small things that felt so much bigger than they should resonated with you? I would love for us to keep having this conversation.

I would love for us to keep conversing about this here. I would love for you to go into your community and talk about this with maybe your business bestie or a group chat you're a part of or a friend who gets it. And if you're looking for support in your business with an awareness around nervous system regulation or with a priority to regulate nervous systems, then I would love for you to learn more about Wedding Pro Insiders, my mastermind, where we're making this a big theme and this certainly is going to be a big theme going forward.

for me inside this program. You can go to weddingproinsiders.com and there is a form to sign up to get on the wait list. I'm actually opening up spots to apply to join the mastermind this week. So that means you could potentially join the coaching program, get my one-on-one feedback on your business, what you're looking to do in this month, as soon as now.

I have just a few spots available. Some longtime members have graduated, and so a few spots have opened up. And I am really looking for women who are looking to grow, who are looking to hit their next level of business, who want to expand in some way, and really want to do it in community with other women, who are six-figure business owners, who have grown a really fantastic business, but who are

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to adjust their capacity, make it feel more sustainable, make sure that their business is giving back to them creatively and also helping them to build.

their meaningful life to give back to them. So if that sounds like you, would love to support you, would love to coach you. You can go to weddingproinsiders.com, learn more about what's included in the mastermind. You get private coaching with me, group coaching with the group, lots of support. It truly is a magnificent experience and we meet in person.

All right, friends. Well, thank you so much for giving me the ability to describe to you my experience and to share with you what I've uncovered about nervous system dysregulation through my own lens. I hope that this episode has given you something to think about. And I hope that it has got you more curious about nervous system regulation and dysregulation, whether it's with yourself, maybe you have a family member who you're noticing some of these things with, maybe also just clients, colleagues, people in your orbit.

it will help you find more patience and compassion for the people that you work with every single day. Share this episode and do me a favor. This is vulnerable for me to share. I think a lot of my clients are gonna be like, wow, I didn't realize that you were going through a hard time.

So if you're one of my clients at the time, you don't have to reach out to me for any reason, unless you'd like to. But it'd be very vulnerable for me to share this with you guys today. I would actually really love to hear from you. So please, open up your phone, go to Instagram, shoot me a DM, share something with me, and I would love to hear from you. I love reading your DMs and I love getting your feedback. You can also email me if you would like.

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All right, friend, well, thank you so much for being here and spending time with me today. I would love to support you, so make sure you check out Wedding Pro Insiders for more details about my mastermind. And I wanna remind you, there's so much power in your purpose. I'll see you in the next episode. Take care.