Ep. 92 | (Concussion Chronicles #5) The Hidden Struggles We Don’t See: A Nervous System Perspective on Healing

In this Concussion Chronicles episode, Dr. Amelia revisits a past concussion and the lessons it revealed about unseen struggles, caregiving, and empathy. She explores how viewing behavior through a nervous system lens offers a universal language for understanding ourselves and others—even when we don’t know the full story. Discover how compassion, curiosity, and connection become powerful tools for healing and leadership in life and veterinary medicine.

Transcript

Intro:

Welcome to the Life Boost with Amelia podcast where we're changing the narrative around what true health and success look like. They should give you energy, not drain it.

I'm your host, Dr. Amelia, multi-passionate integrative health and life coach, entrepreneur, and recovered burnout veterinarian.

Together, we'll explore the science behind how your brain and body work, including the unconscious mind, while also connecting with what your heart needs in order to stand up to the norm of feeling stuck on a hamster wheel — working hard yet feeling exhausted and not where you want to be — and instead live a life that makes you excited to get out of bed in the morning and in love with who you see when you look in the mirror.

The reality is if you do what everyone else is doing, you're not going to feel good. Let's break the norm.

☀️ Morning Walk & Story Time

Hi friend. I am going on my morning walk. It is a beautiful temperature, so peaceful. The sun is still coming up. It's one of my favorite times of day.

And it is time for another little story from my concussion recovery. I am going to be continuing to read some of the posts that I had shared on Post-It Notes during my concussion.

If this is the first episode of The Concussion Chronicles that you're listening to, check back to the first one if you would like the story of the freak accident of how I got a concussion and how the recovery ended up being so much longer than I thought it would.

During the concussion recovery, it was really hard to communicate, but I did discover that if I just put my thoughts on paper, I could share some of what I was going through that way.

And so I was posting Post-It Notes on social media, and so I'm gonna read another one of those stories today:

The Story Behind A Previous Concussion

My heart dog hit me in the head so hard it dented my skull (last year, which is probably why my current concussion is more severe).

Story time: I was trying to give Jameson a simple bath, something we had done countless times before. I wanted this one task to seem simple because everything else at the time felt impossibly complicated.

We had been going back and forth for months trying to decide if it was time to say goodbye. I had supported so many pet owners through this decision, and yet I didn't know what to do. There was no right answer.

Jameson's condition had declined gradually. Canine cognitive dysfunction had slowly taken away the dog I once knew and replaced him with an even more anxious and confused version. He started barking at us as if he didn't recognize us, and because he had lost his hearing, I struggled to comfort him.

Side note: did you know hearing loss and cognitive dysfunction are connected? I didn't until doing the senior dog vet certification. I wish I had known, because I could have been more proactive in slowing the progression.

Despite using all of my pain management and mobility tricks, my walking companion no longer wanted to go for walks and struggled with stairs. As a vet and his guardian, I felt like I was failing him.

And yet sometimes he was there — my Jameson. He still thought mealtime was the best thing ever, and sometimes he'd get a playful spurt, especially with a tennis ball.

He had good moments and I didn't want to take them away too soon just because it was getting hard for me, or wait too long.

In the middle of all this, he had developed diarrhea that leaked out of him, so he needed diapers at all times. I forget what caused it, but I knew this was fixable and didn't want to make a quality-of-life decision until it had resolved — so cue the bath.

I just wanted him to be clean. One thing I could do in the middle of the crippling heaviness of anticipatory grief, caregiver burden, and the guilt, frustration, sorrow, regret, and pressure that went along with them.

But because of his cognitive dysfunction, he wasn't his typical “okay mom” self.

He swung around to get away and slammed his skull full force into mine.

Nothing could be simple.

💔 What We Don’t See in Vet Med

This is a side we often don't see as veterinary professionals — the little things and moments that add up. The internal struggles.

There's so much that we don't see when it comes to the lives of our patients and their pet guardians, just like pet owners don't see the rollercoaster of emotions the veterinary team has been on each day.

And how we don't see the things in and outside of work that are feeling hard for our colleagues.

And that's okay. It's impossible to see or understand anyone's unique internal experience, and we need to remember that.

Why the Nervous System Perspective Matters

That's why adopting a nervous system perspective is so important.

When we are able to quickly recognize signs that someone is in a stress response, we don't need to see everything because we see what matters: a human who is feeling overwhelmed and needs support or security.

Any “rude” or “difficult” person is just a human with an overwhelmed nervous system. There is always a reason.

Recognizing that has the power to make those interactions positive and fulfilling instead of draining and frustrating.

Reframing “Toxic” or “Difficult”

The “toxic employee” may be suffering from chronic pain.

The client with a short fuse who just snapped at you may be sleep deprived because she's trying to take care of her two little kids and geriatric dog, and she doesn't have anyone helping her.

The person who seems rude and dismissive may actually have social anxiety and you misread their body language.

The vet who doesn't seem to care may care so much that they're seeming disconnected so that they don't burst into tears.

This perspective is missing in Vet Med and our world right now. We've normalized operating in survival mode where we are quick to judge and react.

But we can change that.

✨ The First Step

It starts with noticing when you are in a stress response. Then you'll start seeing it in others.

Check out my free Beat The Burnout Resource for more on this topic for sustainable success in Vet Med and life. You can find it at www.lifeboost.today/beatburnout. I'll also add it to the show notes. It's RACE-approved for four hours of CE and recently also received VHMA- approval for CE for certified practice managers.

This is also why I'm a huge fan of the Senior Dog Certification. It's about proactive versus reactive care, including screening pet guardians for feelings of caregiver burden or anticipatory grief so we can support them through that season of life.

That's the end of the post — and that summarizes so much.

A Heavy Week

It's the start of a new week. I'm recording this on a Monday.

Last week was a really heavy week, especially in the United States. There's a lot of polarization and hate and judgment.

And when we zoom out and we look at things from a nervous system perspective, we can see so many humans who are feeling overwhelmed, unsafe, stuck in survival mode.

The tricky thing is that when we're all experiencing these hard things, it's easy to go into that fight or flight stress response — you know that fight stress response: judging, blaming, seeing others as a threat, feeling irritable.

But that just pushes us farther and farther away from what we all want because we all ultimately want to feel safe, and we just have different ideas about how to accomplish that.

And that doesn't have to be a problem, right? All those different perspectives of how to create safety are important to listen to, to understand thought processes.

And this is where curiosity is so important — to understand the why.

• Why are people feeling so hateful that they want to hurt other people?
• Why are people thinking that groups of people are unsafe?

Instead of remembering that we are all so individual, so unique, we all have our own stories and experiences that lead us to where we are and who we are today.

And also, we all are wired the same way. We actually have more similarities than differences.

💗 Choosing Curiosity Over Reactivity

And so what happens if we focus on what we all have in common and we get curious and are really, truly willing to listen — to help somebody to feel seen and heard when we see that someone is hurting, rather than going into that reactive mode and absorbing that negative stress and energy?

It is easier to blame other people than to focus on ourselves, but that is the only thing that we can control.

And so, if we do want to see positive change in our lives, in the lives of those around us, communities, our world, then it does start with tuning into our own nervous system and noticing when we are in a dysregulated state — fight, flight, freeze, shut down, fawn.

Those aren't problems. They're information from our body about what we need.

And when we tune in and listen, instead of just pushing through and ignoring — which is what we have been taught to do from our society — when we do choose to listen with compassion, that's how we get more into alignment.

That's how we are able to confront and be honest with ourselves about what we need so that we don't stay stuck in those dysregulated places.

And so that even during times when there is a lot that is out of our control, we can still be moving forward in a way that is kind to ourselves and helps to create positive change around us.

The Power of Compassion, Curiosity, and Connection

So this week, remember that there is always a reason and a story for each of us.

We are all carrying so many things that aren't apparent from the outside.

And if you're craving a space where you can be in community with others who are choosing to lead with compassion, curiosity, and connection, and are choosing to unlearn and uninstall the malware that we have from hustle culture, diet culture, that teaches us just to push through and to ignore — it creates division — then that is the space I'm creating in the Aligned Success Reboot.

🦄 The Seven Traits of a Unicorn

In that space, everyone will have agreed to practice those seven traits of a unicorn:

U is uplift and unite — releasing comparison, recognizing this is not a zero-sum game, that we all benefit when we support one another.

N is nervous system regulation — we know that the nervous system is a universal language that helps us to understand ourselves and others and animals, and so we prioritize that lens so we can work in a proactive, regulated state versus reactive, dysregulated state.

I is inner compass — despite being taught to push through and ignore your body, the reality is that your body is the one thing completely devoted to taking care of you. And so instead of focusing on external shoulds, we focus on getting clear on our values, listening to our body in order to move forward in a way that is in alignment.

C is compassion, curiosity, and connection — choosing to lead with curiosity over judgment, compassion over contempt, and connection over division.

O is objective thinking — recognizing that we all have our own biases and assumptions that influence the way that we are experiencing life, and we actively look for our own biases and assumptions and stories and separate those from the facts.

R is respect for resilience — recognizing that respect is non-negotiable for any healthy relationship. And so choosing to be respectful to your body, the way that you're talking to yourself, and having kind but firm boundaries where you create a boundary if someone isn't willing to treat you with respect.

And finally, N is norm breaker — recognizing that the norm isn't working. The norm is to be unhealthy and unhappy. And so if you want to be living in alignment, to feel good inside and out, to feel true health and success, then you have to be willing to do things differently and to see that not as a problem, but instead to celebrate that you are leading by example and helping to create positive change.

Closing

I'll leave the link to apply if you're interested in being a part of this community designed for both deep healing and incredible expansion, as you connect with your most aligned, successful self.

Sending you so much love, positive vibes, and energy. 💗