The thyroid is influenced by far more than medication, nutrients, and lab numbers. It also responds to the emotional environment you live in and the patterns you learned long before you were ever diagnosed. In today’s episode, we explore how those patterns shape the nervous system, the immune system, and ultimately the expression of Hashimoto’s.
Many people with thyroid issues carry internal habits that feel normal because they developed so early in life. Yet these habits quietly affect how your body regulates stress and how safe you feel being yourself. When safety is compromised, inflammation rises and the immune system becomes more reactive. This is the part of Hashimoto’s no lab test can capture, but your body feels it every single day.
In this episode, we look closely at three common patterns and explore why they form, how they influence physiology, and what begins to shift when you finally see them clearly.
Minimizing Your Emotional Reality
One of the most overlooked patterns is the reflex to downplay what you feel. You may dismiss comments that hurt, invalidate your own discomfort, or instantly talk yourself out of the significance of something that affected you. This habit often develops in childhood when staying quiet feels easier than risking conflict.
As an adult, minimizing becomes an automatic way of bypassing emotion. The nervous system stays burdened because the energy of the emotion never gets processed. Over time, this contributes to dysregulated cortisol, heightened reactivity, and immune strain. Owning your internal reality, even privately, helps your system settle and reintroduces a sense of internal clarity your thyroid depends on.
Feeling Responsible for Other People’s Emotions
Another deeply ingrained pattern involves taking responsibility for how others feel. This can look like monitoring your words, reading the room constantly, or shrinking your needs to keep the environment stable. When you live this way, your nervous system stays on alert, scanning for potential reactions instead of resting.
The thyroid is closely connected to voice, boundaries, authenticity, and expression. When you regularly silence yourself or adjust who you are to keep others comfortable, tension builds in the very pathways your thyroid influences. Releasing responsibility for others’ emotional responses allows your system to relax and creates space for more consistent regulation.
Doubting Your Inner Knowing
A third pattern shows up when you already sense what the right decision is but hesitate to trust it. You may check with a friend, partner, or family member to confirm what you felt internally. While asking for input can sometimes be helpful, needing external validation repeatedly teaches your system to question its own wisdom.
This habit often comes from early experiences where your feelings were dismissed or misinterpreted. As a result, self-doubt becomes a default setting. The tension between what you feel and what you do places pressure on the body and keeps stress hormones elevated. Rebuilding trust in your own perception restores coherence in the system and supports thyroid balance in meaningful ways.
Why This Matters for Hashimoto’s
These patterns may appear emotional, but they consistently influence physiology. The thyroid is highly responsive to the state of your nervous system. When you live with internal pressure, suppressed expression, or chronic self-doubt, the body remains in a low-grade stress state that drives inflammation. In Hashimoto’s, this contributes to immune activation and symptom escalation.
Addressing these deeper layers does not replace labs or biochem support but rather it complements them. When your internal environment becomes safer and more aligned, your body has a very different foundation for healing. This is where shifts in energy, mood, reactivity, and resilience begin to emerge.
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
00:04
Today’s episode is a special one because it airs right in the middle of the holidays. And no matter what you celebrate, this time of year brings us into a very different emotional and energetic space. It is a season where so many expectations, memories, family dynamics, and old patterns resurface. And for those of us with Hashimoto’s, our thyroid feels all of it. I want to use today to talk about something that isn’t discussed in the thyroid community nearly enough.
00:34
Yet it’s one of the biggest pieces of healing and that is the energetics of the thyroid, the mindset patterns that shape how your body feels and the ways that we learned often very early in life to silence ourselves, even if we didn’t realize we were doing it. We spent so much time talking about biochemistry, antibodies, labs, nutrients, inflammation, and all of that is very, very important. But here’s the part that people forget.
01:03
Your thyroid also responds to how safe you feel being yourself. It responds to truth, to how you express, to how steady you feel and whether you feel permission to actually take up space in your own life. And this is where so many patterns show up for all of us. this is where so many patterns show up for people with Hashimoto’s. Patterns we don’t even think about as patterns really.
01:32
They feel normal a lot of the times because we’ve been doing them for so long. So today I want to walk you through three of these energetic themes that I see so often. hear versions of these stories every single day in my practice in our community and I’ve lived all of them myself. Trust me, I have lived them. And they affect your thyroid far more deeply than you realize. So let’s start with the first one, which is minimizing.
02:00
It’s the quiet habit that is shrinking you without you even noticing. So you may be minimizing things more than you realize. And I say this because I did too. Think about all of the moments when someone says something that maybe stings a little bit. Maybe it’s a comment that lands wrong or the tone feels a little sharp and instantly you may soften it in your minds. You may think, well, maybe they were just tired or
02:28
They’re in a bad mood. They didn’t mean it. And you know what? It wasn’t that bad. Or maybe someone crosses a line with you and instead of acknowledging it, you may tell yourself the same thing. It wasn’t so bad. I should be fine. They didn’t really mean it. It’s really a big deal. And sometimes it happens even with small trauma. Maybe something really did hurt you, but you talk yourself out of it. You may say other people have bigger problems. I should be fine. Does this really matter?
02:57
And here’s what many people don’t realize. Minimizing is not harmless. When you minimize something, you don’t actually let yourself feel what happened. You override it, right? You shrink it and slowly with that, you shrink yourself.
03:14
For so many of us with Hashimoto’s, minimizing was learned early. We learned to tiptoe, we learned to keep the peace, to avoid upsetting anyone. And the way we did that was by actually pretending that we were fine even though we weren’t. I know for me, I didn’t want to upset certain people in my family. And I knew that if I just tiptoed, it would be easier. They would be happy and I wouldn’t get yelled at.
03:42
and I can just go about my day and no one’s going to bother me. But there’s a cost. When you spend years minimizing, you start to believe that your own feelings don’t matter. You start to bypass those signals that your body is giving you and showing you. And then eventually you actually disconnect from yourself. And that disconnection, it’s its own form of stress and that stress raises inflammation. It affects your immune system. And yes, it’s the kind of stress that actually can trigger
04:10
or worsen Hashimoto’s, which is why minimizing is not just an emotional problem. It’s actually a physiological one. The good news is that it is never too late to change it. And the simplest place to start is by telling yourself the truth about what happened. Now, it doesn’t have to be super dramatic. You don’t have to do it in a public way, but just privately to yourself acknowledging, you know what? This did matter to me, even if it was something from 10 years ago or maybe something from last week.
04:39
And then starting to get curious and pay attention to what you notice as you go through your day, today and over the next few weeks. As you feel a feeling, stay with it for a few seconds. Notice it, feel it and see what comes up. For me, there was also this realization that my feelings are not going to kill me. I think for so many of us, we’re afraid to feel because we think the feelings are going to be so big and it’ll be so uncomfortable.
05:09
that it’s going to hurt, you know, or worse. And not to say that it’s not going to be uncomfortable, but once you have a feeling and you actually feel it, even just for a few seconds, that feeling is going to start to shift. You’re not going to feel it forever. It’s not going to last forever. I promise you. And getting over that fear of feeling can really, really help. But it is important to notice if you minimize and to work on that because when you stop minimizing, you stop disappearing.
05:40
But it is important to notice if you minimize and to work on that because when you start, but it is important to notice if you minimize, but it is important to notice if you minimize and to work on that because when you stop minimizing, you stop disappearing inside your own life and your thyroid will feel that in a very, very positive way. Now, the second theme that I often see
06:06
is the belief that your actions are responsible for other people’s reactions. It’s really deeply tied to the thyroid because it shapes how much space you allow yourself to take. And unlearning this belief that your actions are responsible for other people’s reactions is very, very healing. I see this constantly with people with Hashimoto’s and maybe you’ll recognize this in yourself as well. So if someone’s upset, maybe you changed yourself so they could be okay.
06:36
If someone seemed disappointed, maybe you tried to fix it, even if it was something that wasn’t as good for you. If there was tension in the room, maybe you became smaller, quieter, easier. So the tension wouldn’t turn towards you and so that you wouldn’t create more tension for the person that was already potentially agitated or aggravated. And at first it feels harmless.
06:59
Even responsibly, I know it did for me. thought I was doing something good. Like I’m not being a burden. I’m doing this so that I’m not adding more stress to this person or those people. But what happens is that after a while, slowly it then becomes the way that you live. You start measuring every action against, will this upset someone? Right? Instead of is this true for me? Is this really what I want? Is this really what I’m trying to say? And
07:30
And naturally you stop saying what you want and you likely stop showing how you feel also. And without meaning to, you start managing the emotional weather of everyone around you. And here’s why it matters for your thyroid. Your thyroid governs your voice, your expression and your boundaries. And when you consistently change yourself to keep everyone else comfortable, your thyroid feels that contraction. feels the tightness and the holding and that internal pressure, right? All of that causes stress, AKA. uh
07:59
cortisol, inflammation and Hashimoto’s. So if you unlearn this pattern, you give your thyroid something that it hasn’t had in a really long time. You know what that is? You. You give it yourself. And so I want to remind you that you are allowed to be who you are. Like really hear those words and feel into that. You are allowed to be who you are. You’re allowed to speak and
08:29
You’re allowed to express what it is that you want. And just so you know, I’m right here with you on learning this myself. It’s a process. It’s not overnight, but it’s so important to be aware of. And I want you to start to think about that and get curious about that. the third, now the third theme is trusting yourself instead of outsourcing your intuition.
08:56
It’s another super common theme that I see with so many in our community. And yes, you guessed it. Something I’ve been working through myself quite a bit as well. Sorry. This is another super common, this is another super common theme that I see with so many people in our community and something I’ve been working through myself quite a bit as well recently too. And it’s subtle because it looks like you’re just being thorough. You’re careful.
09:26
You’re just really like making sure that things are correct. But there’s more to this. The way that this shows up is that if you’re making a decision about something and very likely you already know the answer or what it is that you want to do. However…
09:45
Oh, sorry, I’m going to repeat that. Now, the way this shows up is that if you’re making a decision about something and very likely, you may already know the answer. You know what you may want to do, how you want to go about it or what you want to pick. But even though you intuitively know and you have a sense of what it is that you think you should do or how you feel about it, you don’t trust it. And instead you go outside of yourself for validation. So
10:11
Maybe you ask a friend or a sibling or a coworker, hey, I’m thinking about this. What do you think? And maybe they agree. Maybe they don’t. And suddenly you’re questioning something that was probably right for you all along. And my gosh, I can’t tell you how long and how often this was me. Every decision, even once that I really truly felt that I knew I would ask a friend or coworker and many times they agreed with me, which made me feel better. But there were times they didn’t.
10:41
And it would just create so much extra confusion and turmoil for both of us. And sorry.
10:52
Many times they agreed with me and that made me feel better, though made me question. Hold on. I don’t want to say that.
11:01
Let me start from the top. Gosh, I can’t tell you how long and how often this was me. Every decision, even ones that I really felt that I knew about, I would ask a friend or a coworker or sometimes a family member. A lot of the times they would agree with what I was saying and that made me feel better. And I think that’s what made this pattern go on and on for so long. But then there was times when they didn’t agree with me and
11:29
That would create so much extra confusion and turmoil both for me and my thyroid. And there were times that I actually went against what I thought that I knew trying to follow other people’s advice. And guess what? It backfired every single time. This is so common. This is so common for many of us. this… Sorry. This is so common for many of us. And this goes…
11:59
This is so common for many of us. And this too goes all the way back to childhood. Surprise, surprise. Right? What happens is that if you weren’t properly validated as a child, which is super common, and especially if you’re now in your forties, fifties or sixties, right? Things were often done differently when we were kids and different types of parenting. And of course our parents did the best that they could. And it’s not about blaming them. It’s more about just figuring out that.
12:29
And so if you were not validated as a child for the things that you did, you then had to look outside of yourself and you learn that your own answer isn’t enough unless someone else confirms it. And so naturally, little by little, you stop trusting the things that you already know. And here’s where the thyroid comes in. When you don’t feel safe trusting yourself, when you override your own intuition, you’re essentially not expressing yourself and that creates stress.
12:57
and your body feels all of that tension, especially your thyroid, because it is so connected to that truth and that self-trust. And of course, yes, the lab work matters. And of course we need to know your thyroid type. And of course we want to optimize and we want to look at all the triggers and the infections and the toxins. They’re all a huge part of this with Hashimoto’s, but the energetic piece matters too and often just as much.
13:29
If you know what you want, but you don’t feel safe choosing it, that becomes another puzzle piece in that Hashimoto’s picture. One that no lab tests can measure, but your body whispers about constantly. So if you could pay attention to this over the coming weeks, notice what happens when you make decisions. Do you feel confident in them? Notice when you ask others for their opinions. Now, of course, I’m not saying that you should never ask advice or opinions, but notice when you ask because I
13:58
bet you may find times that you ask even when you really already know. So as we’ve reached the end of this year and step into the holidays that can bring them so many emotions, I want you to remember this. Your thyroid is listening to how you treat yourself. It’s listening to whether you honor your feelings. It’s listening to whether you minimize yourself or allow yourself to truly be you and whether you trust your own knowing.
14:28
The biochemistry matters, but the energetics matter too. And healing happens when both of these areas are supported. And if any part of this felt familiar, please know you are not alone. These patterns are incredibly common in our Hashimoto’s community, and none of them are your fault. They were learned, which means they can be unlearned.
14:53
And so as you begin to unlearn them, even if it’s very gently and very slowly, your body will notice. Trust me. I hope today gives you permission to be you. And if you could think of someone that can also use this information, sorry, and you can, hope today gives you permission to be you. And if you can think of someone that can really use this information,
15:21
Can you please share this with them?
15:26
You can do it through any of your podcast players or over Instagram and definitely tag me if you repost this because I… Sorry, this sounds… Let me try it again.
15:45
I hope today gives you permission to be you. And if you know someone that needs to hear this today, please, please share it with them. You can do it through your podcast player or you can also do it over Instagram. And if you share on Instagram, be sure to tag me because I always love reposting. I’m at in a top alert on Instagram. I’m wishing you a very, very, very happy holiday season and a very happy and healthy upcoming new year.
16:13
I’m sending you so much love and I will see you next time on Thyroid Mystery Solved, Hashimoto’s and Hypothyroidism Revealed.
Thanks for Listening
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