When your body and mind seem to be fighting each other
There was a time when I thought my body was betraying me.
My mind wanted one thing. My body wanted another.
I wanted to build my business. Write, create, exercise, socialize, dream, dream bigger. Believe bigger..
Instead, there were mornings where simply getting out of bed felt like climbing a mountain.
My hands hurt, my joints ached, my brain heavy in fog.
Every decision required effort.
And if you’ve ever lived with chronic inflammation, autoimmune disease, burnout, prolonged stress, or deep emotional exhaustion… you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.
For years I interpreted those seasons as personal failure.
I thought I had lost my discipline, my drive, myself…
Looking back now, I don’t think I had lost myself at all. I believe my biology was asking for my attention.
What is the PINE network?
One of the most fascinating concepts I’ve come across is something called the PINE network- short for the psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrine network.
It sounds incredibly technical.
In reality, it’s describing something beautifully simple.
Your mind…
Your nervous system…
Your immune system…
Your hormones…
…are in constant conversation with one another.
Not occasionally, constantly. Which means your thoughts can influence your physiology.
Your physiology can influence your thoughts.
Stress can alter immune function.
Inflammation can change mood & motivation.
Hormones shape perception.
The nervous system influences every one of them. None of these systems live in isolation. Neither do we.
Why inflammation changes the way you think and feel
For a long time I tried to solve everything psychologically.
If I could just think differently…
Journal more, visualize harder, meditate longer…
Surely I’d finally feel like myself again.
Sometimes those things helped.
Sometimes they barely touched what I was experiencing.
Certainly not because mindset doesn’t matter.
But because my body was trying to have a vote in the conversation.
And I was actually working to silence instead of listening.
One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn is that inflammation doesn’t always announce itself as pain. Sometimes it arrives as hopelessness.
As brain fog, indecision, emotional flatness. As the strange feeling that the future no longer feels full of potential.
You don’t become less intelligent. You become less able to access the parts of yourself that imagine, create, trust, & move forward.
When your biology shifts, your perception often shifts with it.
That doesn’t mean the dreams have disappeared.
Sometimes it means your system is overwhelmed.
My autoimmune flare changed the way I understand healing
This was one of the biggest turning points in my own life.
For years I had my autoimmune disease almost completely under control.
My psoriasis had dramatically improved.
My arthritis was much quieter, my mind felt clearer & ideas flowed naturally.
Then after a prolonged season of uncertainty, emotional suppression, caregiving stress, financial pressure, poor sleep & nervous system activation…
everything came roaring back.
My body wasn’t only inflamed.
My imagination was suffocated in the fog.
My hope was fading.
Even my relationship with my own purpose began to feel distant.
That terrified me.
Because I started asking myself,
“What if I’ve lost what made me… me?”
Now I can see something entirely different.
I hadn’t lost myself.
I was trying to hear my quiet intuition through the screams of an activated body.
Discipline matters but biology matters too
This is where I think so many of us become unfair to ourselves.
We judge ourselves for not producing while our biology is fighting a battle we can’t even see. Or we swing to the opposite extreme and believe we’re completely powerless.
Neither is true.
The body influences the mind.
The mind influences the body.
Both are always shaping one another.
Understanding their relationship can be a useful step in healing.
This understanding has changed the way I look at discipline.
I still believe we have to act.
Sometimes we have to cook the healthy meal when we don’t feel like cooking.
Take the walk when we’d rather stay on the couch.
Tell the truth when hiding feels easier.
Those choices matter.
They matter enormously.
But now I also understand why those choices sometimes feel impossibly heavy.
That understanding has made me less judgmental toward others & toward myself.
Healing begins when system starts communicating again
I often think about the version of me who believed she’d become lazy.
She wasn’t lazy or broken.
She was inflamed
& overwhelmed.
She wasn’t lacking purpose.
She was trying to find purpose through a nervous system that no longer felt safe enough to envision the future.
That’s a very different story. And stories matter. Because the story we tell ourselves determines whether we respond with shame…
or with curiosity.
Perhaps that’s the invitation.
Not to separate the mind from the body.
Not to reduce everything to trauma.
Not to reduce everything to biology.
But to remember that you are an ecosystem.
Your thoughts matter.
Your relationships matter. Your food, sleep & environment all matter. Your nervous system matters.
None of them exist alone. Neither do you.
The more I learn, the more I believe healing is rarely about finding one missing answer.
It’s about restoring the connection between every part of ourselves that has been trying to speak all along.
- The PINE Network: How Your Mind, Nervous System, Hormones, and Immunity Are in Constant Conversation
- Why we ignore intuition until it hurts
- The Conversation Happening Inside You: Understanding the PINE Network
- Compassion and responsibility
- Nervous System Regulation & Emotional
Authenticity: The Foundation of Real Connection
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