MARTIN: You are draining your health bank account without noticing. You may end up being bankrupt long before your time runs out. And that's really awful. I want to stay well off until somebody decides that it's my time. You have toxins in your body. You are blocking normal expression of the homeostatic regulatory systems if you don't have the nutrients that you require, same trouble. If you don't move enough, if you don't maintain the physicality of it, your lymphatic system starts rebelling on you, things will not work. But more than anything, unresolved trauma. 

Greetings. This is Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast podcast and with me today a delight for you, Filly Bellete, PhD and whatever. Woman with titles and accomplishments to her name. Welcome Filly.

FILLY: Thank you so much Martin. It's lovely to be here.

MARTIN: Yeah. Oh, just by you saying as you said it, we know you are from a different world.

FILLY: Yes. Down Under. Australia.

MARTIN: Awesome. I just love that accent.

FILLY: That's cool.

MARTIN: Very cool. So Chris and Filly.fm. FM as in radio?

FILLY: Functional medicine. Yeah. So, along with my other titles, I am a functional medicine practitioner. I came into this world after my body started speaking to me very loud and I didn't know what was going on. 

MARTIN: You also, huh? Yeah, you know my story. I got very broken. I guess that forced my hand into health. Were you in health all along?

FILLY: No, I wasn't. So, before I got sick, I'll kind of go back in the timeline. I was studying and this is when I got my PhD. So, I did a PhD in using the power of words to transform self and others. So, it was more kind of like the philosophical psychological realm. And I was definitely running high-achieving or overachieving perfectionism, imposter syndrome, people pleasing type patterns, teaching at university at the time as well. And I was pregnant with my first baby. So this was kind of, I think I was 26 at this time. So quite young to be teaching at University, too.

And after I had the birth of my first baby, it was quite a traumatic birth. And from then on, I had a lot of health complications. So, in the hospital, I had bucketloads of antibiotics. And then month by month, after I had my first baby, I just accumulated more and more what I call weird health issues because I would go to the GP, they'd run the blood test, everything was fine. They told me it was just part of being a mom, but I was watching other moms bounce back. And I wasn't. I was getting worse. And by the time my first baby was one, I felt like an 80-year-old.

MARTIN: Yes, that's actually, in some way a beautiful way of becoming very motivated to try and understand just what happened to me. Right?

FILLY: Yeah. Well, it was. Yeah. I was given a book called Deep Nutrition. And so that really was my first “oh, there's this whole natural world of health out there” and you can heal your body with food before. That was just like such a light bulb moment. I'm pretty sure people who have been listening to you are like so on board with that now. But that first moment of the cardboard box foods I'd been eating could actually be preventing me from healing and making me feel worse. So I definitely got on the bandwagon of eating healthy fermented foods, bone broths, raw organic everything. My kitchen became a lab of sprouts and all sorts of stuff,

MARTIN: You know, I think in some way it was a gift that you broke down as hard as you did because it creates a big enough impetus. Most people are just sort of okay, not too bad and it's a very slow slide to hell. In your case and mine too, it was like doing fine, doing very bad. And that thing usually lights the fire. It reminds me of the frog in the slowly warming pot, right? Most people don't notice that their health is just going away and so they don't get the urgency that you felt or I felt back then. Right? I think it's the impetus that's really good. So folks out there, please note that you are draining your health bank account without noticing. You may end up being bankrupt long before your time runs out. And that's really awful. I want to stay well off until somebody decides that it's my time, right? I want to die in a skiing accident at 97.

FILLY: Yeah. Yeah.

MARTIN: Something like that, right?

FILLY: Yeah. It's so interesting you say that too, because even as a teenager there were definitely some things going on. So I developed, it's called vaso vagal episodes or syndrome where I would faint, fit, and pee myself when my body was under stress. And so it was obvious for me now looking back that I had some pretty intense nervous system dysregulation things going on, infertility, PCOS, but I could function. I could still go to the gym. I could still study really hard. I could teach, I could socialize.

 MARTIN: Just lying to myself. I'm okay. I'm good.

FILLY: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I'm okay. Just pretend that it's not there. Next minute I'm lying in a pool of wee. So, that was actually quite traumatic as a teenager and early 20s, because it happened quite a lot. But it still wasn't enough. It wasn't until that breaking point of, now I'm in bed all day and I've got chronic pain in my body and I can't even pick my child up and I can't mother and I can't work anymore. That was the impetus.

MARTIN: All right. So, there we are. Impetus. So, you had to learn a lot, right? Like, you were in philosophy, which is great. I mean, I'm of the opinion that having a good command of the big picture is really important because without that we are kind of lost on the sea of life, no rudder, just winds blowing us wherever they want, so I think it's good. But anyway, so there we are with you finally digging in and studying a lot, right?

FILLY: Yeah, so I started not only applying what I was learning in books, but I became a nutritional medicine practitioner.

MARTIN: There you go.

FILLY: And things got better until… My things got better, but I still feel like I hadn't quite got to the root. So, changing the way that I was eating was really important. Changing some lifestyle habits, super important. But, I still felt like I had wrapped myself up in bubble wrap and I was quite sensitive to things. So, if I had a little bit less sleep or I ate a tiny bit of dairy or something, my body would flare right up.

MARTIN: Yep. The resilience was very thin. Very.

FILLY: Yeah, exactly.

FILLY: Again, I kind of tricked myself though. I'm like, "No, I'm good. I'm good." But then again, now in hindsight, I look back and I'm like, I still wasn't quite there. And things flared off again after my second baby. And it was really bizarre cause I'm like, "Things are going to be so much better now." I'm eating well, I'm sleeping, I'm saying no to stuff. But 2 weeks after the birth, bang, all the same symptoms came back. And this time anxiety was really quite bad, like panic attacks. And that's when I discovered functional medicine and really dove into that. I started specializing as a practitioner and running lab tests and discovered that I had parasites and adrenal fatigue and low dopamine and detox issues and it was like a year-long project of really supporting those body systems. But again, things got better. Yeah.

MARTIN: Yeah. So, how many people have you worked with in these intervening years? How many cases do you think, just put a number to it, that you've?

FILLY: Well, I reckon over two and a half thousand. Yeah.

MARTIN: Yeah. So, you have a pretty clear idea now of what people complain of, how they get there, how to get them out of it. It's just like when you see the largeish numbers, you start seeing the patterns, right?

FILLY: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, we now specialize. It's part of my story as well. So, ending body burnout, and the people that find us are usually the people that are running those overdoing, overachieving, perfectionism, people-pleasing type patterns, doing all the things, but overwhelmed, exhausted, and they get to a point where the body's now screaming at them. So, it usually shows up as energy, mood, and gut issues. And something that we do, so we're working on the physical bodies, on parts of the body. But also again my story, so, I had three main body burnouts. One after my first baby, second baby, and then Covid. Yeah, everyone has their Covid story, I'm pretty sure. And the Covid one was interesting because there were a lot of patterns that I still hadn't addressed. So yes, I had fixed up my nutrition and my lifestyle and yes, I had really deeply healed body systems, but I was still running the same patterns. I was still; my nervous system was still dysregulated. I had dysfunctional beliefs about myself that were very hidden, unprocessed trauma, and Covid brought all of that to the surface, and this time it also added in insomnia.

MARTIN: Whenever I talk to people it's, I use four fingers and it's the toxicity, malnutrition, stagnation and trauma. These must be resolved, right? If you have toxins in your body, you are blocking normal expression of the homeostatic regulatory systems. If you don't have the nutrients that you require, same trouble. If you don't move enough, if you don't maintain the physicality of it, your lymphatic system starts rebelling on you. Things will not work. But more than anything, unresolved trauma. That's what I was hoping that you'll tell me: “All my philosophy courses help me a lot, but apparently not enough.”

FILLY: I was the student. I was the student, never the practitioner. I learned a lot, but I actually never thought I needed to apply any of it to me. I'm like: “Look at me!”

MARTIN: Yeah.

FILLY: It's like, look at all the things I can achieve. So, I thought I actually had no issues because, even when I started healing, I remember I was treating candida. I'm like, okay, not that this was recommended to me by anyone, but it was my own pressure on myself, no sugar, including fruit at all for 6 months, bang! And like I could do it so and then I would work with clients that would really struggle to implement things so I didn't think I had anything wrong with my mind until Covid came along and this time nothing physical budged any symptoms. I ran the tests again, I tidied up some lifestyle stuff, even did the elemental diet for SIBO but nothing shifted at all, and it was very clear to me that there was something deep metaphysical that was driving the burnout in the first place.

MARTIN: Okay. Well, apparently, you did find your bottom, a rock bottom, right? We always try to not get there, but life will just have its way with us. We will ultimately have to face the dark limits of our perhaps pride or unwillingness to see it fully, right?

FILLY: Yeah. Yeah.

MARTIN: That's what you sound like to me, is that you actually were peeling the onion and not wanting to really get to the center of it until life just said, "No, you will.".

FILLY: Yeah. And it was forced upon me, but a gift. I see it now.

MARTIN: Yeah. I see that people who are having to do this end up finding wisdom. And I'm so glad that you took the time to actually build it, share it. You flashed the book at me, but I think you should just hold it up with pride and say, "I put this out”, right? This is when you take the time to put words together, you probably think carefully about what goes into that, right? This is your intellectual baby, so there's probably a lot of investment of time that has gone in, right?

FILLY: No. It was very interesting because the writing of the book, okay so covid had happened, had my third flare-up up and I still hadn't got to the root when I started writing the book but I had a section. So there's four main parts, body systems, heal thy mind, heal thy body heal thy environment. So my husband Chris, he's the master NLP practitioner, kind of like the mind guy, and I always always thought like, “oh that's his thing. That's really important for a lot of people but not for me.” So there was a whole section in the book that was all about healing my mind and I was just drawing on a lot of, I was leaning on Chris to write that. But I think the Covid thing and my symptoms saying like: “Hey you can't write this book if you're not embodying it yourself.” Either you take that part out or you're flaming well look at what's going on at the deepest root and heal yourself. So the writing of the book I actually put a pause for about 6 months before I returned back to. I'd written the first draft, I guess, and then I paused it for six months to do the deeper work. So, I had the authority, ability and the authenticity to be able to write the whole book.

MARTIN: Right on. When I see the word burnout, I always think of the HPA axis. Is that playing in your book?

FILLY: Yeah, absolutely. Adrenals big time. Brain, adrenals. When we get stuck in that chronic state of fight-flight or if it drops down into functional freeze. That is the adrenals are a big part of the body systems that 98% of our clients have issues with.

MARTIN: You know, this should be highlighted a little more. You just sort of gloss over it, but people don't understand the freeze, fawn, fight, flight. There are actually four F’s in the sympathetic side of the autonomic system and it just gets glossed over. Most everybody says, "Well, it's fight or flight. Well, how about the rest of it? Right.

FILLY: Yeah. So, we've got fight, which is angry, aggression, defensiveness. Sometimes it shows up to self, it's not necessarily to someone else. It might be like, oh, you're frustrated with your body and you feel broken. Then flight. So, flight is running away. Running away. And that can show up in many different ways. So it might be,

MARTIN: That's fear driven. Yeah. Fear drives that right like if if the fear is big enough we just run away from it. But actually but if it's big big big enough we don't run. We just collapse. Right. We just fold.

FILLY: Yeah. Well that's being in the fight-flight zone for too long. At some point the body's just like we got to shut some tabs down because this is too intense. We have to freeze. So then it drops down into that functional freeze. And the fawn is often where that people pleasing, if I don't cause contention, if I appease to you, then I'm safe. And that definitely shows up in a burnout picture because then often, especially women and men, but doing a lot of things for everyone else, not filling up their own cup,

MARTIN: Right. Yeah. Well, you said it well. I don't need to restate it, but it's totally obvious. And so many of us have moments of that when we are feeling not strong enough or not able to cope with the inputs that are coming at us.

FILLY: Yeah.

MARTIN: Well, so the solutions. What all do you want to give away here of the book? Tease me.

FILLY: Okay, so you can't have symptoms without there being some sort of body system imbalance so the first step is, let's have a look at the body systems. In our practice, we run lab tests that look at the neuroendocrine system. So the adrenals, neurotransmitters, the mitochondria, sex hormones. Also looking into the gastrointestinal system, so parasites, pathogens, microbiome, digestive organs, and then how are you detoxing? How well are you clearing out toxins, heavy metals, your own metabolites from your body? And we do that straight up with clients. And it is in the first part of the book as well. Because a lot of people, okay, so there's deeper work to be done and there's changes to be made, but sometimes, a lot of the time when someone's in a deep state of body burnout, they find it hard like they're kind of in survival mode and the capacity is very low. So if we can do some quick wins where it's give us some specimens, okay, we can clearly see what's happening in the body. Now let's highest priority what's going on that can make you start feeling better faster. And that's where therapeutic support with supplements depending on what the labs show up is really helpful and important. 

And then the next step is to heal thy mind. So why? Why have the body systems burn out in the first place? Yes, we're going to address the world and the environment, not the like save the world where yes, we're going to address your environment and your lifestyle, but it's very hard to do that if you're running patterns of self-sabotage. There's resistance, there's walls up. We get a lot of clients who are ticking all the boxes. It's like I'm doing all the healthy things to be well, but I feel crap and I haven't responded to anything. Even all the lab tests and the protocols. So, there's deep metaphysical imbalances happening. And in our practice, we take our clients first and foremost to what's the deepest fear you have about yourself? So, these are deep unconscious core beliefs. For me personally, and this is what came out of the Covid burnout was that I had a deep and hidden fear that I was weak and incapable. Which was just mindblowing because I'm like “What? Look at all the things I have done. I'm strong. I achieve. But my behavioral patterns were driven from a place of fear and hiding out. If I can do more and if I can achieve more, then no one's going to find out how weak and incapable I am, and I'm also going to trick myself as well.

MARTIN: Yeah. I will appear strong by the accomplishments.

FILLY: Exactly.

MARTIN: Well, that's the inner child, right? That's childhood development. That's the infant and toddler in us that, if that gets damaged, it stays within.

FILLY: Yeah. And you talked about your fourth pillar, trauma. So my trauma, and this is why I never looked, this is why I never thought I needed to do any work in this area because I looked back in the past, I'm like, I had a great childhood. I had loving parents. I had everything that I needed. I was popular at school. I got good grades. And it wasn't until I understood that distressing events, even if it appears minor from an adult perspective, it can be huge for that child if they don't have the capacity to make sense of it. And that's where I started creating these beliefs about myself. So, a really simple example, well, the very first time I was standing on a stage. I think I was like six or seven, and I had a little talk that I'd memorized. And it was about a minute long, maybe even less than that. And I'm like, "Yeah, I'm going to memorize this and I'm going to stand up on the stage and I'm going to do my talk and my parents are going to be so proud and it's going to be amazing." Got up there next minute, couldn't remember anything. Didn't have the piece of paper with me and I just went beetroot red. I was completely humiliated and I had to stand on that stand crying my eyes out as all the other little kids went up and did their talks perfectly. 

MARTIN: Well,when the Stress hormones flood the brain. The frontal cortex goes away. Yeah. Just can't say a thing. Don't remember a thing. I have to have a list. Without a list, my travel brain takes over and I will forget half the things because I can't think. Yeah. I have a clear memory of myself at a I don't know what age, probably nine. A recital. I was learning to play piano and I was just not really into it but I was made to go and perform and I remember knowing that I was going to do badly. I did badly and I hated the whole thing.

FILLY: Yeah.

MARTIN: Yeah. It was terrible. I just.

FILLY: Is that something you had to work on as an adult?

MARTIN: Yeah.

FILLY: But I share that example in case there are listeners that are like, "Oh, you know, I had a lovely upbringing." It's like if you're unwell and you haven’t addressed that side of healing. There's going to be something. There will be something. No child comes out of childhood unscarred in some way. 

MARTIN: Yeah. 

FILLY: And I don't know if you've heard this statistic. I mean, I haven't seen research papers on it, but it is something that people talk about, but only 5% of the population actually do this deep healing inner work. So then therefore 95% of the adult population are dying as children, which is just crazy.

MARTIN: Sadly, yes, I went through so much work dealing with the whole thing, dealing with mommy and daddy and brother and classmates and you name it, all of that. It was a pile of stuff. 

FILLY: Yeah. Yeah. 

MARTIN: And had I not done it, I'm sure I would not be nearly as effective as I could be or am now. 

FILLY: Yeah. Yeah.

MARTIN: I don't want to overstate that I'm just some kind of a superhero, but at the same time, I know that having done the work, it's helped tremendously.

FILLY: Well, it is. You do feel like a super hero, though and some magic can come from it. So, when I was diving into that side of things, things were changing. Definitely my thought patterns and my behavioral patterns and I noticed my work patterns and my marriage a lot of things were improving. It took a few months later until I saw some significant health improvements, but one of the symptoms I had was histamine intolerance and 20 years of chronic heartburn, essentially and then other histamine-type symptoms. And I remember getting to the point where I'm like, "Oh, why has this this and this changed, but my physical body hasn't changed yet? What's going on?" And I realized that I was still doing some behavioral patterns that was sending the message to my unconscious mind that I still didn't trust my body fully, that I didn't trust that it could be fully well. And when I saw that and I changed some of those patterns, literally overnight my histamine intolerance disappeared. It was magic and I did feel like a superhero. It was amazing.

MARTIN: Yeah. All right. Filly, do you still work with people one-on-one or in groups or any such thing? Do you do any programs?

FILLY: Yeah, we do. So, we have our “Ending body burnout method” program. Which is essentially taking people through the steps in the book. I haven't talked about step two or step three or step four yet but we can talk about that later if wanted or needed.

MARTIN: You want to leave it for people as an open bracket that they will have to buy the book to figure out the rest of it.

FILLY: Sounds good. That sounds good. Yeah. So, we have our program. It's a six-month holistic healing program and there's two different options in it. So, there is a VIP one-on-one but the other option is semi-private, which includes both one-on-one and group. I do find when we were creating how do we deliver this to people, I really wanted there to be one-on-one component to it, cause this work can be, it's simple but hard.

MARTIN: And it's personal.

FILLY: And it's very personal. And humans are very tricky at hiding from their own blind spot. So it's not until someone can hold up a mirror, shine it on them, if they're ready to receive the information, then transformation can happen really quickly. As opposed to: “I'm trying to do it on my own or in a group setting with heaps of people on the call and I don't know, I'm stuck!” But we do have that group community component inside the program as well because there's research to show that healing can be more effective in a group setting because you're combining other people's energies, and it's also validating to see that you're not the only, often people start feeling like the weird one or the broken one. Then it's ah, there's other people with similar issues, and external collecting of evidence is really important as well. So when you can see other people healing then it's like, “oh well if it can happen for her then surely it can happen for me. I just have to follow these steps.”

MARTIN: Right. Yeah. So do you do this in person or is it virtual?

FILLY: Mostly virtual. I mean, we do have a clinic locally but 90% of our clients are from Australia and worldwide. So yeah, it's all set up so that anywhere, wherever you are in the world you can work through the program.

MARTIN: That's awesome. Yeah. Good. Well, what's more to be said? Do you want to tell more secrets from the book?

FILLY: Oh, I'm happy. Well, maybe I'll just go over the other two components. So, the third one, part three is ‘Heal Thy Body.’ So, that's where it's looking at the core physical habits that you can implement to help support the healing of your body, your body systems. So that's sleeping, moving, eating. I know you do a lot of work in these areas as well.

MARTIN: Yeah. The routine. Yep.

FILLY:  And then the fourth part is “Healing Thy Environment.’ So toxins you mentioned before. We have a lot of similarities.

MARTIN: What soap are you using? And what's the furniture? What have you treated this with that?

FILLY: Yeah. Is there mold in your environment?

MARTIN: We dread letting people into our home because they come in, and with them comes in all their laundry detergent powder and their deodorant and their whatever, and the smells they leave behind. I'm not offended by body smells. I am deeply offended by cosmetics.

FILLY: Yeah. Nasty.

MARTIN: Right. And they just don't even know. They just don't know that that's what's going to five years from now or ten years from now be the major contributor to their health challenge. 

FILLY: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's so big. It's hard to heal in a toxic environment and by the environment as well. So, that's those physical chemical toxins. It's also what's happening in your family or in your, well, especially family. So, if you've got a partner or children, are there toxic things happening there as well? Or it might not be a big T trauma. It might not be abuse. But you have trained the people in your life to treat you in a certain way for many, many years and now it's no longer working for you or serving you. And so how do you retrain other people to treat you the way that you're now starting to treat yourself so that you can heal and thrive? That's a huge one. But it's so possible when you can do the work for self first.

MARTIN: Oh gosh. I remember the conversation with one of my kids, and I was saying, "I'm so worried for you with these vaccinations.” She's working in the public sector, having to take it, right? 

FILLY: Yeah.

MARTIN: I hear back, I'm so worried about you that you'll be dying alone somewhere behind a plastic curtain, right? The propaganda, how it was fed to us and the dynamic of it, right? I'm thinking, I'm saying, you're doing too much, and they're saying you're doing not enough.

FILLY: Yep. I had that too. I mean, luckily my husband and I share the same language. But definitely extended family. You're going to kill your dad if you don't have the vaccine. It's like, hang on, I'm not going to be doing any of the killing here.

MARTIN: Right. Well, anyway, the dynamics, right? The dynamics of familial relations and how to navigate that and especially people who are living in relationships that are out of balance, right? It's hard to leave and yet you shouldn't stay that kind of thing. Or you shouldn't stay in as it is. Change the balance somehow.

FILLY: Yeah. The way that it was showing up for me, and this was part of the burnout pattern as well. I was just doing way too much, but it was all coming from this weak and incapable and past distressing events that hadn't been processed. But even though I kept saying “I need help, I want help. Help me clean. Help me cook.” I wasn't stepping up to be the leader to actually make that happen. Or my husband would be like, "Oh, yeah, I'll do that." He hadn't done it in 5 minutes, so I'd dive in and do the dishes, so I wasn't even giving him a chance.

MARTIN: Yeah. Right.

FILLY: But it was all coming back to the deeper root beliefs, the deep fear I had about myself. If I'm weak and incapable, then my house has to look spotless. And if no one else is going to do it straight away, then I have to do it. I had mommy issues around that, too. What if mom comes over? She'll come unannounced and she'll see how messy the house is and she'll think I'm a no good housewife or mother. And so unraveling all of that was really important because then I could let go of those perfectionism habits, but then also voicing what I needed in a way that was authoritative but also not naggy. So it made a big difference when I actually had a real conversation with Chris and said: “On days when I come home from work, I don't want to come home and the kids are not cleaned, fed, the kitchen isn't clean, I don't want to have to do that after I've been at the clinic all day.” And I didn't explain to him why that was important to me. And until I explained why it was important, then it clicked in his brain. He's like: “Oh, okay, that's why she wants help because then it's hard to make the lunch for the next day and there's not enough dishes for breakfast and xyz.” It was less around I need the house cleaned, it was more around it just creates a happier lifestyle when this is done. 

MARTIN: Yep. 

FILLY: And then we played a little game, too. And we do this with our kids. So, if I want something and I negotiate it with Chris, for example, my husband, and it might not be as important to him, but he can see that it's important to me. And so, we use the metaphor of a game. So, a game can be won or lost. Games have rules. Games also have consequences. So, if you're playing basketball and you do a foul, you get sent to the bench, you can't play anymore. So, Chris and I have little consequences as well. For example, if the kitchen isn't done, this is the consequence, I get to be an overtly angry wife and I tell him why. My old pattern was passive aggressive and like, oh, he should just be able to read my mind. Now, it's not to shame him. It's not to necessarily be mean to him, but it needs to increase the pain level for him. So, it's actually less painful cleaning the kitchen and having a happy wife. And we play the game together. So, it's not like sometimes people are like, “Game? Oh, I don't play games. That's manipulative.” It's actually just that we have a clear game plan and this is how we play it and if Chris comes home to a grumpy wife, he knows why and he does a thing.

MARTIN: Yeah. Rules of life, rules of a game. It's really actually good when you know how it's supposed to be played, right? The consequence is a beautiful thing. 

FILLY: Yeah. 

MARTIN: Consistency is a beautiful thing. So, you need to apply the rules evenhandedly in all situations without getting upset about it. You just fouled. You’re going on the bench.

FILLY: Yeah. Yeah. And it is kind of then, we don't take things personally. I get to be a grumpy wife, but I'm not taking it personally. So, I'm playing out the grumpy wife rather than, oh, I'm so mad at you and you don't love me because you didn't do that thing. It's actually, I just get to be put on that character.

MARTIN: Oh, funny. All right. Well, it's well lived, well organized, well thought through. I think this is what matters the most is being able to make sense of what's coming, being able to sort the inputs. I find that a lot of people are overwhelmed by reality as it's coming at them because they just don't know how to interpret what's happening. And I think the book goes a long way toward helping to sort it out, toward preparing us to actually maintain a healthy core because when we are healthy in the middle, when we don't blow out, then we can cope with stuff.

FILLY: Yeah. It's the capacity thing again. So, you highlighted that, back in the day when I thought I'd healed, but I was wrapping myself up in that cotton wool, my capacity was low. Essentially the healing journey is also building up and building out your capacity, right? Having the tools but also not taking things personally all the time. And it's easy to do when you deeply love and trust yourself and you're your own safety anchor.

MARTIN: Yeah, I think that it goes back to when you were saying that you had only a very small margin of resilience. When you have a deep margin of resilience, you can let all kinds of things slide because it doesn't set you off. When you are easily set off by the inputs, it's you're in a reactive rather than responding mode.

FILLY: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Taking back your power.

MARTIN: Yeah. Well, great. Show us the book one more time.

FILLY: Here you go, people. Pretty little brain on there. 

MARTIN: Body Burnout, right?

FILLY: Ending body burnout.

MARTIN: Yeah. You see the metaphor of the burnout, right? You have nothing left. The healthy core is lesser and lesser and lesser so that almost anything gets you over the top. And that's what we need to undo, build back.

FILLY: Yeah. Exactly.

MARTIN: And so a manual for that is a great tool.

FILLY: Yeah.

MARTIN: All right. So we shall find it at the website. My reminder, Chris and Filly. That's www.ChrisandFilly.FM for functional medicine. 

FILLY: Good job. 

MARTIN: Yeah, sure thing. Filly, It's a total delight, it's so good to speak with someone who has mastered it, knows she has done it, can teach it to others, right? That's the mastery of it. Learning something intellectually, you spoke of it earlier where you knew intellectually but you were not living it. Once you live it and you can teach it to others, that is the level that we all need to attain for mastery and I appreciate that you have it.

FILLY: Thank you. I agree. I feel it in you too.

MARTIN: So people go to the website chrisandfilly.fm. It's well worth the visit. Filly, thank you so very much for taking the time.

FILLY: Thank you so much. It's been awesome having a conversation.

MARTIN: Thank you. This is Martin Pytela, life-enthusiast.com. Much gratitude for all of this. Thank you.