Follow Us for Free:
About the episode
“You have to find a way to find safety within the world.” – Dr. Cathleen King
When someone has been living with chronic illness for years, talking to them about the nervous system can be really tricky. So many of our patients have already been told that their symptoms are due to anxiety, their tests look “normal,” or they just need to push through. The last thing we want to do is make someone feel like we’re saying their illness isn’t real. Because it is. There may be infection, inflammation, immune dysfunction, environmental exposures, pain, or other very real physiological issues happening, and the nervous system is also responding to everything the body has been through.
This is why we need so much more nuance around nervous system regulation and chronic illness. Helping someone build more resilience doesn’t mean pretending that every environment is safe or that we can think our way out of a physiological illness. We can reduce environmental risks where we can, support the physiology, and use tools like breathwork, somatics, co-regulation, and trauma work to help the nervous system feel safer too. And somewhere in all of that, we also have to help our patients get back to living. Healing shouldn’t become a full-time job where they need to constantly monitor whether they’re doing everything perfectly.
In today’s episode, I’m joined by physical therapist and neuroscience-based mind-body practitioner Dr. Cathleen King, founder of Primal Trust™ Academy & Community. Cathleen shares her own experience with complex chronic illness and how nervous system work became such an important part of her recovery, the physiology behind nervous system regulation, medical trauma, why sequencing matters in chronic illness care, building a sense of safety when life doesn’t always feel safe, and the identity shifts that can happen as someone begins to get better, and more.
Enjoy the episode, and let’s innovate and integrate together!
Join Dr. Jessica Drummond to learn proven strategies to confidently address perimenopause, menopause, and chronic conditions while growing a profitable and impactful practice.
Discover proven strategies to attract high-value clients, deliver transformational results, and position yourself as a sought-after expert in this rapidly growing field.
Highlights
- Cathleen’s chronic illness journey and how nervous system practices impacted her recovery
- The physiology behind nervous system regulation
- Balancing risk reduction with living in alignment with your values
- Different approaches to COVID risk and the broader role of clean air, food, and water in health
- Ways to cultivate a sense of safety when your environment feels stressful or outside your control
- The role of Primal Trust™ in building nervous system capacity alongside medical treatment
- The impact of medical trauma and invalidating healthcare experiences on recovery
- Navigating symptom flares and identity shifts as health begins to improve
- The challenge of moving beyond an illness-centered identity while maintaining purpose and community
- Cathleen’s experience balancing her healing mission with burnout and her own needs
- The three complementary pillars of healing: environmental risk reduction, physical treatment, and nervous system training
Learn more about Dr. Cathleen King
- Dr. Cathleen King’s Website | Primal Trust™
- Dr. Cathleen King on Instagram @primaltrust_official
- Dr. Cathleen King on YouTube @primaltrustofficial
- Dr. Cathleen King on Facebook @primaltrust.drcat
About Dr. Cathleen King, DPT
Dr. Cathleen King, DPT, is a doctor of physical therapy who loves teaching neuroscience principles. She is an intuitive mind-body practitioner, mom, and the founder and CEO of the Primal Trust™ Academy & Community. Her superpower is helping people with chronic health conditions see the patterns that have bound them, help them regulate their nervous systems through a multifaceted brain-body approach, and create transformational life changes.
She found her own liberation from over a decade of debilitating chronic Lyme disease, mold illness, microbiome imbalance, CFS, PTSD, and a host of other challenges that left her mainly bed-bound in a dark room. After unlocking her own healing through neuroplasticity-based methods and her own intuitive approach, she created the Primal Trust™ Academy & Community to combine the latest neuroscience education, wisdom from mind-body leaders, top-down brain retraining, and bottom-up somatic healing techniques to help others reclaim vibrant health.
Her program and style challenge the status quo while also coexisting with other methodologies. Her courses interweave biomedical teaching and neuroscience with both ancient and modern mind-body wisdom.
Learn more about The Integrative Women’s Health Institute’s Programs
Ready to revolutionize your career and grow your practice?
- Integrative Women’s Health Institute on Instagram | @integrativewomenshealth
- Integrative Women’s Health Institute on YouTube
Click here for a full transcript of the episode.
Dr. Jessica Drummond
Founder & CEO
The Integrative Women’s Health Institute
At the Integrative Women’s Health Institute, we’ve dedicated 20 years to crafting evidence-driven, cutting-edge programs that empower practitioners like you to address the complexities of women’s health.
Dr. Jessica Drummond’s unique approach focuses on functional nutrition, lifestyle medicine, movement therapies, nervous system dysregulation, trauma, and mindset – essential elements often overlooked in traditional health education.
In addition, your training will be fully evidence-based, personalized, and nuanced (this is not a cookie-cutter approach) in functional nutrition, exercise, recovery, cellular health, and all other lifestyle medicine tools.
You’ll learn to support your clients with cutting-edge tools safely and effectively.
