Ep. 93 | Concussion Chronicles #6: From Control to Trust - Making Peace With Discomfort

Healing isn’t about control — it’s about trust. In this episode, Dr. Amelia shares the lessons her concussion recovery taught her about releasing resistance and the need to control, embracing discomfort, and finding peace in uncertainty.

In This Episode

• The surprising lessons from slowing down when life forces you to
• How resistance and control keep your body stuck in survival mode
• Why allowing discomfort is essential for nervous system regulation
• The power of “compassionate resilience” — trusting yourself through uncertainty
• How to begin shifting from control to trust (and why this changes everything)

Mentioned in This Episode

• The Aligned Success Reboot (ASR): A 6-month mind-body coaching experience for high achievers ready to replace hustle with sustainable success. Learn more or join the waitlist → https://www.lifeboost.today/aligned-success-reboot
• Earlier Concussion Chronicles Episodes: Start from the beginning to hear how this journey unfolded.

Get all the Aligned Success Reboot details: https://www.lifeboost.today/aligned-success-reboot

Disclaimer: The information provided in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical, mental health, or professional advice. I am a certified health and life coach, not a licensed medical or mental health professional. Please consult with a healthcare provider before making any changes to your physical or mental health routines. If you are experiencing a crisis, seek help from a qualified professional or contact emergency services.

Connect with me on your favorite social media channel: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn!

To learn more about my approach and the programs and free resources available to support you, visit my website: www.lifeboost.today

I love to hear from you. You can always reach me at amelia@lifeboost.today.

Transcript

0:30

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.

amelia: 1:22

Hi friend. I am going for my morning walk. It is beautiful Outside. The sky is blue. Fall in North Carolina is just the best. It feels slightly cool, but the sun is out. And, yeah, I'm loving it. And so it means it's time for another concussion Chronicle story. If this is the first concussion Chronicles episode that you are listening to, I had a freak accident a couple months ago that led to a slow concussion recovery. And even though that experience felt really hard, there were also a lot of pearls and wisdom and important reflections that happened during that time. So if you're curious about what happened, how I got it, check out the first in this series, but today we are going to continue to read a post that I had created. I was writing down my feelings on post-it notes because that was the only way that I was really able to be processing or sharing my experience. And the one today was very raw. It was really a glimpse into how I was feeling in the thick of things and how I was processing. So I'm gonna start with reading the post. I cry multiple times a day. I am okay. This feels really hard. I am adapting. All of those can be true. As a society, we have an interesting response to crying. We tend to want it to stop. To make things"better", to not seem weak, not be too sensitive, not be such a downer. As someone who used to be a pro at compartmentalizing, being tough and rarely crying, I see it differently now. I see crying as brave. It's processing. It's vulnerable. It's a release. It's honest. I've had a concussion before, but it was mild. My head hurt for a couple days, I took it easy, and then I was fine. I didn't realize what a concussion could be like. Everyone's experience is different, but for me, a concussion feels like having most of the things that brought me joy and comfort suddenly taken away and not knowing when they'll come back. It is like navigating my day with an invisible electric fence. If I cross the fence, it'll set me back. So I try to stay away from the fence based on what I've learned the day before, but it moves. Sometimes I wake up and I've already crossed the invisible fence like today. How do I get back to where it's safe? What can I do? I don't know. I feel a lot like a Roomba spending my day quietly wandering around my house, being mildly productive, doing mindless tasks, and then needing to return to my charging station for my brain to reset. If I'm overly ambitious or something gets in my way, I require assistance or may be down for a while. When I look at it from that outside perspective, I can find amusement. I know in the future I'm going to look back on this experience and be grateful for the lessons and perspectives that I gained. But that doesn't mean finding them is easy. I can see how needing to completely detach from screens, my work, physical activity, et cetera, could be a useful reset, an opportunity to pause, turn inward. Reflect, and gain wisdom I would've missed if I hadn't been forced to pause. But the thing that makes me cry the most, because I don't yet understand the lesson, is the lack of connection. I'm so grateful to have Matt helping me so much, but I miss my family, friends, and community. Connection is one of my core values. Genuine connection with others fills up my cup, but right now it feels like there's a wall between me and everyone else. Every message and comment I've received means so much, but the invisible electric fence makes it hard to talk back. Yesterday, I just wanted to be able to talk to my family on the phone for my birthday. It made me so happy to hear their voices and to connect in that way. But the invisible fence showed up just a couple minutes in. I had to say bye way before I was ready. Connection lights me up when everything else feels hard, and yet trying to connect sets me back in my recovery. The recovery without clear steps and an unknown end date. And so I cry. Because I don't understand. Because I feel sad, and this feels frustrating, and all those big emotions need to flow through me so they don't consume me. And also, I'm okay. I'm adapting. I'm accepting. I'm writing down the successes and glimmers. I'm seeing how lucky I am to have so many amazing people in my life. How lucky I am to have a career I love so much that it feels hard to have to hit pause. And how lucky that all of this is temporary. How lucky that I'm at a point in my life where I have so many tools to help me move through and process hard things. That doesn't mean that it's easy, but it means I'm not stuck and I can see the light in the darkness, like an opportunity to deepen my spiritual connection and meditation. I am mostly writing this because it helps me to process. And maybe this is an opportunity to think about how you've been taught to react to crying. Is your automatic reaction to try to stop it, fix it, or to feel bad? Or do you embrace that beautiful way to process and complete the stress cycle? If you've reached out, thank you. I'm not looking at screens at all for a few days, or longer, so Matt is posting this for me. Can't wait until this wall comes down so I can connect with you again. I'm okay. This feels hard. I'm adapting. It's interesting reading that back. Now, being on that other side. I was so right that there were really important lessons. And that I was getting really great perspectives. And I am really proud of myself for trusting that that was going to happen even when in the middle of it it didn't make sense and it felt really hard. And that is what has given me what I think of as compassionate resilience and so much deep trust in myself and navigating life even when things are outta my control, is knowing that I will be okay, that I can adapt, that things can feel so shitty and hard, but they're not going to consume me. They're not going to weigh me down so much that I can't move forward. And the old me just resisted so much. I resisted discomfort, resisted feeling. I resisted anything that was going to make me uncomfortable, and that was like anything that wasn't perfect, a fear of not being liked, fear of being nervous or making a mistake. I just wanted to grasp on and control everything so I didn't have to feel discomfort and that was exhausting. And so, so uncomfortable. All of those unprocessed feelings, and that resistance and that constant vigilance and being in survival mode was hurting my body. Like I couldn't just keep operating in that way. And learning how to exhale even in the middle of discomfort and to trust myself and to know that I am going to be okay has been life changing. That's how I know, if I make a mistake. If someone doesn't like me, if I lose something that is really valuable to me. If I share an idea and everybody thinks that it's stupid. Yes, all of those things are going to feel uncomfortable because that's a normal human emotion. And also I know that I will be able to adapt and to be okay because nothing external has the power to take away the way that I feel about myself, the trust that I have in myself, and my ability to be okay feeling the discomfort so I can move through it. And that has been just the most empowering and liberating shift of being able to release the need to control external things just because I have deep trust in myself. And that's the kind of approach that I teach in the Aligned Success Reboot. If you wanna learn more about that, the link is in the show notes. Today maybe explore what is your conditioned reaction to big emotions like crying, and how can you give yourself permission to feel those normal human emotions. To start getting more comfortable with'em. To not see them as a problem, but instead to see them as a part of the beautiful human experience, so that you can move forward. Sending you so much love, positive vibes and energy.