How Hypervigilance Keeps Hashimoto’s Stuck, Even With the Right Protocol, with Karyn Shanks

Inna (00:01.718)

Karen, I am so excited to have you here on Thyroid Mystery Solved, Hashimoto’s and Hypothyroidism Revealed. Thank you so much for coming.

Karyn Shanks (00:09.558)

And thank you for having me. I’m excited.

Inna (00:11.66)

It is such an important conversation because so many people listening to the show already know that traditional conventional medicine isn’t getting to everything that they need. They find the show because they usually feel like they’re being failed by their primary or perhaps their endocrinologist or other providers that they go to because it’s such fragmented care. And so what often happens and what we see is people then seek out functional medicine.

Which is wonderful because then we’re looking at all of the pathways and how they work together and how everything is intertwined because everything is so intertwined in the body. However, what I find, and I know you do as well, is that sometimes with functional medicine, you are replacing medicines for supplements and not that there’s anything wrong with supplements, of course, right? But it’s like, you have this symptom.

So I’m going to give you this supplement for it versus this medicine, right? Or for this symptom, we do this, but there’s still a lot of pieces that are missing in this approach because is it really a whole body approach all of the time? Not necessarily. So I’d love to start there and tell me more about what else is missing and why people are not getting well.

Karyn Shanks (01:28.974)

That’s a really good question and I think that while shifting over to a functional medicine approach is a huge advantage no matter how it’s practiced. It’s still often very protocol based. Like, okay, you’ve got Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Here’s the protocol for that and here’s how we look at it. Protocols are fine. They can begin the process, get us started.

Everyone with any type of problem is coming to you, coming to us as a unique, nuanced individual. And there’s no way to apply a protocol or a blueprint that works for everybody, right? In fact, even those that appear to work, believe would work. We would be…

doing so much more and take people so much farther toward resilience if we see them as individuals, take the time to understand them as individuals and not just look at the systems biology, which is a huge advantage over conventionally practiced medicine, is to go from like the disease box and the…

drug protocols for that disease and shift to that wider lens of systems biology. That’s huge. But we also need to look at people as whole people and that systems biology in fact contains all the things that are often not thought of as the biological aspects of people. Like what’s going on with them emotionally? What traumas have they experienced, right?

and how those past traumas are still active and are influencing how people are able to function. thus through many pathways are altering our systems biology and leading to all kinds of problems. it’s so much more…

Karyn Shanks (03:46.134)

The road to resilience, the road to like deep recovery of the ways we suffer really requires that extensive whole person approach that’s taken on with care and time and lets the individual who’s suffering kind of lead the process, set their own agenda.

It’s actually a beautiful process of healing that I find lacking in all the growing and large and growing systems of medicine. so, you know, I don’t want to knock. I mean, I just think functional medicine is such a, you know, it’s taken us so far, but I think there’s more to do.

Inna (04:41.853)

Yeah. And I think that that’s something that’s inspiring and really good for people to hear because there are so many people who do the different protocols and yet they’re still not 100%. They might be better than they were, but they’re still not 100 % or they backslide or they feel that something is still off. So when we look at

Karyn Shanks (05:00.161)

That’s right.

Inna (05:02.144)

the whole body, right? And you mentioned emotions and trauma, but you also mentioned the person being in charge of things. And I think that’s a really important thing. So why don’t we start there then we’ll get into some of the other things. Because typically if a patient walks into a provider’s office, usually, and it doesn’t matter so much, I think if it’s an MD or a DO or a chiropractor or whatnot, you know, usually it’s say, okay, well, what’s going on with you?

Karyn Shanks (05:10.881)

You can move.

Inna (05:26.974)

And then they’ll say, okay, well, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do ABC, right? XYZ. We’re going to do this protocol and this, that. So the patient doesn’t have as much agency. Why is that a problem? And how can we do things where the patient is more in control? Because I think the other problem too, is that patients come to their providers for help. So they’re already coming from this place of feeling hopeless in a way.

Karyn Shanks (05:54.093)

Perhaps.

Inna (05:54.184)

Right? And feeling, well, I don’t know anything, so I’m looking to this person to educate me, inspire me, to lead me to do all the things. And, hopefully they do that for them. But a lot of times, unfortunately, that doesn’t happen. So how does a patient even come to a place within themselves, right? That they’re in charge because they feel like they don’t know what they should do.

Karyn Shanks (06:15.403)

And I think that there’s a difference between not knowing what to do and then directing your own process. So of course we don’t know what the experts know. I don’t know a bunch of things. And I’m a physician and I can go to my chiropractor and have no clue what’s going on. But I’ve made the conscious choice, even in that not knowing, to get this person’s point of view.

And then I check in with my body. Does it feel right? Do I feel heard? Do I, and even if my body is saying, okay, let’s go, this feels good, I feel like I’m being heard, I feel like they get me, but I don’t get better.

Okay, I need to continue to direct. Maybe I need to see someone else. Maybe I need to go back to that person and just give them that feedback so they can help me go in a different direction. So it’s really just always about directing your process, observing how things feel in your body, being willing to say to yourself, something’s not right here. I need, I need more. I need something else. So and

Sometimes it’s really hard for people to like speak what they need or to say to their kids. Yes. yeah, we don’t want to hurt their feelings or we don’t want to be that oddball outlier or what you write, whatever it is. But that is like the that is the most necessary ingredient to to navigating all the the types of help that we could consider for ourselves. And

Inna (07:35.188)

Especially those with thyroid issues since the thyroid is in the fib chakra, yes.

Karyn Shanks (08:00.621)

I can’t think of anything more central to successful healing than that. Because we’re not always gonna get our needs met, or we’re not gonna get all of our needs met that are important to what we are aspiring to. My whole practice is centered around whole person medicine and removing time constraints and going deep.

But that doesn’t mean I meet everybody’s needs. people come to me and like, okay, I think we need to get some other people on this team. And I try to, I feel like part of my mission is to help people check in with themselves, know when they have needs that aren’t being met. We can verbalize that together and then I can help them go out there and find.

other people to join their health care team, you know?

Inna (09:01.068)

Yeah. Checking in with yourself is a big one because I don’t think most people actually, not only do they not do that, I don’t think they know how to do that because they think we’re so conditioned. The doctor tells me what to do or the internet tells me what to do or Instagram tells me what to do or whatever it is. So let’s talk about that. How does someone know if they are checking in? How do they start checking in? How do we make this process simpler?

Karyn Shanks (09:20.299)

Right. Right.

Right. We’re so used to outsourcing our agency and kind of outsourcing our wisdom. It’s there. I think we need it. We have to practice. I had to practice. I had to learn. I had to learn how. why do I get, why would I get a squeezing feeling in my neck and my throat when I need to say something that’s true, but you know.

It’s hard. yeah, it’s helping people reestablish that connection to themselves and the various unique nuanced ways our body speaks to us. And some of us have feelings that arise. Some of us are just really good at knowing instantly when something’s not right or when something needs to be said.

or we need to take a different direction. But I would say the vast majority of us have room for improvement and learning to understand that language. I would say that our symptoms themselves are the language of the body. Sometimes our…

our emotions and feelings about our circumstances and what’s going on and whether our needs are being met or not arises as a sensation, not necessarily a feeling we can identify. So it’s like, can’t say I feel scared or I feel like, you know, I feel hesitant or it’s more like, you know, we get that uncomfortable feeling in the in our gut or our chest is tight or yeah, our neck is, you know, there’s just all kinds of ways.

Karyn Shanks (11:11.445)

that, people can experience that. You know, I think we can learn on our own to just like, if we even sat for a few minutes each day and just sort of checked in, or if we know there’s something, some big decisions we need to make, just taking that time to check in and kind of scan the body and ask what’s there.

I recognize that this can be very difficult, especially for those of us in the Western world. We’re not taught to check in. We’re not taught to decipher the language of the body. can work with experts, work with coaches and therapists to learn how to notice and then decipher.

and understand, learn to understand what our needs are as they’re being expressed through all these avenues. Our bodies are giving us information all the time. We just don’t always see it, feel it, hear it. It’s so hard. It’s so hard.

Inna (12:15.87)

Right. And that’s the hard part, right? Because I think that, especially for people who have a lot of different thyroid symptoms, usually when they feel a sensation, they will interpret it as a bad thing. I mean, I know I did for a really long time and you you mentioned sometimes we feel, you know, a tension or constriction in our heart or in our neck. And that’s something that happens to a lot of people. It used to happen to me all the time.

Karyn Shanks (12:30.85)

Right.

Inna (12:39.892)

And now I know that constriction is more emotional, but for a long time, I felt that when that constriction was happening, I thought, like what’s going on? Is there food stuck in my throat or, you know, is my thyroid inflamed? And of course, obviously emotions can inflame the thyroid, but it was very much like thinking of those as physical things. And it does feel like a physical sensation, but it’s typically because of an emotional trigger, right?

Karyn Shanks (13:02.957)

Sure, sure. And it is a physical sensation. And I I don’t know how to separate physical from emotional sensations, right? Because for me, it’s usually both. You know, I can feel a very strong emotion that I can name, you know, like say, you know, anxiety, for instance. I’m very familiar with anxiety. There’s always a physical sensation with that.

And some people are scared, are really afraid of those physical sensations, because they haven’t learned the nuances. I think the best way to learn the difference between a physical sensation that is a symptom, like it is an issue that’s arising from the physical body, let’s say a muscle spasm.

You know, you’ve been sitting too long in front of your computer with your, you know, and you’ve got muscle spasm in your back. That’s a physical sensation versus a physical sensation that’s arising as part of an emotion like throat tightness or chest tightness. And I think learning how to check in and sit quietly and then just let it be without any kind of judgment, without trying to fix it, but just observing it with a certain curiosity and openness.

there’s going to be something that shifts usually if you give it enough time if you can sit there and enough time can mean 90 seconds right I’ve heard that often that it takes about 90 seconds for an emotion to to begin to flow through the body

and to shift into something that’s a little more discernible. And when I do that with myself, and when I’m able to keep my hands off that sensation, in other words, leave it alone and just let it have its voice, and let it just observe with curiosity and without like a predetermined idea about what it is or the desire to fix it.

Karyn Shanks (15:05.965)

But just let it be in about 90 seconds I know something about it that I didn’t know before and it shifts in a way that it’s not the same physical sensation versus you have a muscle strain from from whatever that’s gonna stay put because that is a more of a physical phenomenon it can have emotional influences Like you know if you’re a super hyper vigilant person you’re sitting at your computer like this you

Inna (15:33.654)

Yeah, absolutely.

Karyn Shanks (15:33.677)

We’re too long, you get how the distinction I’m trying to make. It’s tricky, but I think that with enough observation, we can start to see these patterns.

Inna (15:40.288)

Yes.

Inna (15:45.758)

Yeah, and I think it’s really important for people to hear that. And, you know, we’ve talked on the show before about emotions and, so many people are afraid of feeling, but it’s like once you feel it, your feelings aren’t going to kill you. And so once you feel the feeling, it does shift into something you have to know. And I love that you say that it’s like if you just give it time. But so often people do exactly what you said. They either look at it with judgment, like, why is this here? I don’t want this here. Right. And that’s not observing. That’s blaming. Right.

Karyn Shanks (16:05.325)

Thanks

Inna (16:15.828)

Or I know for me, I used to look at it with fear and I think a lot of people do that as well. Uh-oh, what is this? Uh-oh, uh-oh, wait, wait, what did I do? What did I eat? Wait, where did this come from? Wait, wait, my gosh, yesterday I accidentally went to somewhere that I had this piece of something that maybe had something in it, right? And then your mind’s like this. So 90 seconds go by, but you’re not feeling it. You’re literally just thinking, my, you know, about it.

Karyn Shanks (16:39.211)

Telling stories. So we’re telling a story to describe what that sensation in our body means. Instead of sort of, what’s the word I want? Just sort of letting that story go, which is hard to do, very hard to do. Let the story about it. the story, so the feet, let’s say the feeling is fear. The feeling is fear, but then the story we tell about the fear.

Inna (16:57.772)

Mm-hmm.

Karyn Shanks (17:09.005)

is a whole other layer that we put on that. I fucked up. Excuse me, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to cuss on your show, so you can delete that out. I messed something up. I’m bad, I’m guilty, or the world is not safe. I got into something, a contaminant at the restaurant, you know. That’s the story that we lay on the feeling. And it’s really good to learn.

how to just let feelings be so that we can get closer to what they actually are and they’re never, they are seldom as scary as we think they are. And like we were both saying, they flow, they shift. As soon as we give them space, they shift. And sometimes they shift on out. And we never even really know the meaning of that feeling. But…

It’s just that we’re feeling beings. We feel all the time and the feelings are meant to flow, right? And we need to learn how to give them space to flow and differentiate the feeling from the story that we tell or what we make the feeling mean. That’s huge.

Inna (18:24.62)

Right. And that’s huge. It’s, what we’re making it mean. And I think for everyone listening, it’s just a really important thing to notice because I think there’s so many instances in our day where we make things mean something that it doesn’t have to mean. Yeah.

Karyn Shanks (18:40.065)

That’s right. But it’s how the brain works. See, it’s kind of this double-edged sword, these brilliant minds we have and our ability to think things through and understand things and make things and, you know, sort things out. our brains are telling stories all the time to make sense out of things. And it’s really a strength, but also a huge limitation.

Inna (18:46.635)

Yeah.

Karyn Shanks (19:03.851)

You know, I look at my dogs who have very small frontal lobes compared to me and they don’t worry about anything, you know. My little gurus, you know.

Inna (19:15.904)

Yeah. So when someone is trying to really deal with some symptoms that are very uncomfortable and very frustrating, as so many people with Hashimoto’s do, and they’re likely changing their diet, they are taking thyroid medicine, they’re likely doing supplements from the various practitioners. So one of the things that

they want to do of course is observe feelings like you’re saying, but also when we look at them as a whole person, right? In addition to these biochemical pathways, you mentioned before past experiences and traumas, and obviously there’s so many different types of trauma from big T to little T to tiny T, but where can people start? Right? Because so many of them are likely not addressing those things, even in a more functional perspective. So what are some of the steps that they can do?

you know, they start with noticing feelings, which I think is great, but what’s next after that? Cause we’ve all had past experiences and all sorts of traumas.

Karyn Shanks (20:14.227)

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that, you know, the steps are going to depend on the person. How kind of big and unresolved those traumas are. And I think people tend to know what those are. They’re the things that kind of, you know, they’re just sort of circling through.

Even though, you know, it’s so much a part of our background experience, sometimes we fail to notice how impactful those, the memories of those experience are actually, actually are on our current experience and how our bodies are functioning or how they may not be functioning as well as we would like them to and need them to. I just think it.

There’s, I think everybody should go to therapy. I mean, because nobody living on the planet today isn’t traumatized by something from some time and experiencing trauma now or are experiencing events in today’s.

political climate, emotional climate, what’s happening to the earth, all kinds of things that can make us feel really unsafe and can trigger old experiences and past memories of feeling unsafe. There’s nothing like a good therapist, someone who’s trauma informed, who knows how to get people to pay attention to their bodies and how the body expresses that trauma.

and how to learn to give space to emotions and to give an appropriate context to our emotions, which is to not define them based on the stories we tell, but to learn to understand them in a, and this is, I find this very hard to talk about because people either get it or they don’t, but.

Karyn Shanks (22:21.053)

trauma and those painful or emotions reside in the body and they’re associated with all kinds of ways that we’ve learned to adapt to them, adapt our lives around them. And so it gets to be a very sort of complex milieu of all kinds of feelings and thoughts and experiences.

It’s hard to do. It’s hard to sit down and process that on our own. I think we need, a lot of us need help with that. And you don’t even have to have experiences with severe trauma. I think everyone can benefit from learning to understand themselves at that deeper level. And how some of that, all that old, those painful feelings and painful stories from the past.

affect our current lives in a way that we’re not even conscious of. It’s just a way we’ve learned to react and to be in the world, if that makes sense.

Inna (23:28.652)

Yeah. Now a lot of people are scared of going back to some of those feelings. They know they may not have resolved it, but they’ve shoved it under the rug. They don’t feel it as strongly as maybe they have felt before, or maybe these are not like big traumas, but these are things that are constantly happening over and over where someone’s not valuing them or someone is rejecting them or whatever it may be. So how do you suggest that people

Karyn Shanks (23:50.583)

Right.

Inna (23:57.684)

I think about that because a lot of times people are like, well, it, you know, it’s not really affecting me. Or if I go back to talk about this, it’s going to bring up all of these memories and I don’t, you know, I’ve like shoved them down. don’t want to bring them up and re-traumatize myself.

Karyn Shanks (24:13.729)

And I get that and that’s why you want a trauma-informed, preferably like a somatic-based trauma-informed therapist. So you’re not going back and just rehashing the story. We want to get out of the stories and go into the actual emotions. And I would say it’s hard. There is no way that’s not hard.

You have to learn some new skills. You have to feel very uncomfortable feelings sometimes. But I always like to say what we can feel, we can heal. So if you want to heal it, you have to feel it. And it never ends up being as bad as we think it’s going to be. Our anticipation of suffering is it’s always greater than the suffering itself.

And it’s always worth it. Because once you resolve that and you get to know and you just get to understand the wisdom of your emotional body, man, not only is it very freeing, but the skill of that is so invaluable for reckoning with all the hard and difficult challenges that come up in life. It makes us more resilient.

and less controlled by our unconscious, the unconscious ways that we’ve processed past trauma.

Inna (25:39.83)

Now, emotions, traumas, kind of sitting with what’s happening in your body, those are really big things. What are some other things that people are missing in their care?

Karyn Shanks (25:52.418)

Well, what else are they missing? Well, you know, I think that if you are checking in with yourself and you understand that you haven’t reached that potential that you had hoped with regard to having energy, feeling well, feeling like very capable, feeling like you can function at a very high level, but you don’t.

You just have to trust that. You’re not where you want to be. Trust that and honor that. if there isn’t anybody on your health team currently who can work with you and go those extra miles that you need to go.

Because maybe you’ve looked at maybe you’ve, you know, you’ve done the supplements, you’ve done your you have a meditation practice, you know, you’re doing a bunch of things to address, you know, issues that have been identified as likely having something to do with the way you’re feeling. The suggestion is that

you haven’t done all there is to do. There must be more to do, or maybe there’s less to do and doing is part of problem, right? Like I would say that, I see that a lot. People overwork and they over stress and they’re vigilant in just their approach to everything. That’s a trauma response that a lot of people exhibit in our, well.

Inna (27:17.344)

Bye.

Inna (27:33.962)

Interesting. More about that.

Karyn Shanks (27:37.662)

Why would we be hypervigilant and perfectionistic and we have to do all the time? If we weren’t on some level not okay with the rest and the sleep and the play.

and laughter and downtime that we really need that we know nourishes us on a very deep level. Like, why is that so hard? I don’t know about you and your clients, but we’re all of my clients are resonate with this idea that we just feel driven to do driven to be like on all the time and take care of all the things. Why?

Inna (28:18.23)

Right. Yeah. So why? Because I feel that way too and so many people that I know.

Karyn Shanks (28:24.151)

Where did that come from? What does that do for us? What is the function of overdoing and hypervigilance? I think it has a function. And I think it makes us feel okay. It keeps us busy so we don’t have to feel. It keeps us busy and distracted so we don’t have to feel.

It keeps us really busy so we can prove our worth. Like for a lot of people, there’s this just sense of unworthiness that’s behind a lot of that. Like we prove it, we’re accomplishing, we’re doing, we’re proving, we’re pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps, we’re working hard, we’re making money. Like part of it is the cultural narratives that are embedded in capitalism.

Inna (28:53.664)

All

Karyn Shanks (29:06.539)

this notion that to be a successful human being, have to work really hard, work relentlessly, produce in some way constantly.

Inna (29:17.482)

Yeah. You mentioned that this is a stress response. you know, so then is it that people, there was like some kind of an unworthiness that created the trauma and that they’re trying to repair that? Is that what mean?

Karyn Shanks (29:31.66)

I think that’s often the case. I could say that’s the case for me. That’s something I’ve had to work on a lot. And I feel like it’s a work in progress. That is so deep. Because it comes from not only our childhood experiences and our families, but also the culture at large. So it’s come at us from so many angles that.

It’s hard to even identify that it is a learned response, a strategy, that it has a function to help us stay safe. Safe, feeling worthy. like, yeah, it’s just so embedded in the human experience and the human body. It’s tough one.

I’ve come a long way, but I’m constantly, I had this last summer, I had a very minor acute COVID infection, but a huge post-COVID neuroinflammatory syndrome that I had to figure out because, it’s hard to find good health these days. But in that process, I had to be on the couch. I could not function. And one of the things I noticed,

Inna (30:17.26)

Yeah.

Inna (30:38.176)

Yeah.

Karyn Shanks (30:47.041)

during that period of not doing. It felt really uncomfortable, uneasy. And I’m like, what is that? geez, it’s the not doing. it’s like, and so I really worked on that. I kind of surrendered to that process and I just, I…

Inna (30:52.172)

you

Karyn Shanks (31:06.889)

affirmed for myself that it was part of the healing cycle, this whole beautiful healing cycle that I was going through, that part of this was is this deep emotional piece for me, that has kept me vigilant, kept me super stressed, kept my cortisol too high, you know, and that that was like one of the deepest pieces of healing that I was being asked to tend to. Like, was my assignment. Yeah, yeah.

Inna (31:11.03)

Yeah.

Inna (31:31.084)

Yeah, well, we’re given what we need, right? It was your assignment. Yeah. Now I want to just speak about what you said that as you were laying on this couch, unable to move, you noticed how uncomfortable it was of not doing. Now, I think we could break this up a little bit because I think a lot of people feel this and I think a lot of people can really resonate with this. one of the things that, because I feel that too, but one of the things that I notice is that

If I am sick or unwell or whatever it is and I’m resting, right? Cause I have to. I mean, I try to rest not only because I have to, but you know what I mean? It’s using this example, right? It feels uncomfortable to me too, but the feeling for me isn’t the fact that I’m resting. It’s the fact that things that need to get done aren’t getting done. So it’s the other side of the same coin. So how would you address that? Because it’s the same, but yet not.

Karyn Shanks (32:09.729)

Yeah, I do.

Karyn Shanks (32:31.408)

I hear what you’re saying. That’s a really good question. And I would say that it’s both. It’s both the not doing and true. There are things that kind of need to get done.

But most things, when we’re ill and we’re healing, most things don’t have to get done. Someone else can help us. We can ask for help. So that might be a piece that’s coming in there as well. Like not only how doing is part of our, how we feel good about ourselves, but how we hate to ask for help. Do you know what I mean?

Inna (33:15.67)

Yep.

Karyn Shanks (33:16.929)

So I feel like what you just described, those two sides of the coin are both operating at the same time. There’s so much operating there that.

keeps us from accessing our full potential in some way.

Inna (33:36.726)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then kind of going back to that, I mean, there is the asking for help. I think it’s huge. And especially people with thyroid issues, we as a population don’t like to ask for help because God forbid, like someone does something for us because we’re always doing things for other people. But I also think there’s the piece that if you are trying to do less, sometimes there are things that only you can do, like seeing your patients, right? Or seeing my patients or

Karyn Shanks (33:54.379)

Well, I

Inna (34:05.684)

you know, whatever it may be. And obviously, of course, then timelines have to change and circumstance happen. But I think the issue that a lot of people experience that they talk to me about, and I’m right there with them in kind of a work in progress is, you know, how do you do less without it affecting what, you know, you, you know, and again, asking for help is one thing, but what if it’s only something that you can do?

Karyn Shanks (34:31.787)

Yeah, that’s it. you know, yeah, I hear what you’re saying. It’s very how to handle that and how to orchestrate a lifestyle that is doing the amount that you feel good about that you feel is good for you, sustains you.

which is a tricky thing to identify in the first place when you’re identifying our worth based on what we do and how we make people feel about what we do. I mean, we’re screwed. No, we’re really not. We’re really not. It’s just tricky, that’s all. What did you ask me though? What was your question with all that? How do we what?

Inna (35:05.632)

Yeah.

Inna (35:21.228)

Well, when we are trying to do less, but there are certain things that only we can do. So we can’t ask for help because things like seeing patients.

Karyn Shanks (35:24.844)

Right.

Karyn Shanks (35:29.067)

You know, we have our obligations, you know, the kids have to be fed and you know, the dogs have to be walked and you know, all those things. So we’re not talking about not being able to take care of our obligations or you know, working with our clients. And that’s a very special relationship that we’ve been cultivating sometimes over a long period of time. And really, we’re the only ones who can take care of that.

And sometimes we have to take care of things when we feel crappy. That’s the reality, right? But we can start to imagine the lifestyle that we believe is the most nourishing for us, protecting our sleep, making sure we have, you know, protected downtime.

when we can play and do things that just are not about fulfilling any kind of responsibility to somebody else, we can manage our schedule to a certain extent. And maybe we need to make long range plans for that, because it takes a while to get the schedule to like, you know, get not so crazy. And I’ve spent my entire career working on that.

and I still mess it up. I looked at my January schedule when I got to January. I’m like, what did I do?

Inna (36:45.996)

you

Inna (36:54.7)

Been there.

Karyn Shanks (36:56.8)

I had rules in place and I didn’t follow them for myself. So yeah, so it is a work in progress, but it’s work well worth doing.

Inna (37:00.972)

Hmm. Yeah.

Inna (37:06.7)

Sure, sure. Yeah, and I love what you’re saying that you have the control to plan for that because I think so many people think that things are the way they are and it’s completely out of their control. But really, there’s so much more in our control. We just sometimes don’t want to ask or don’t want to make an uncomfortable request or make a change that maybe someone else has been used to for a while. you know, thinking about what’s best for us and in terms of whether that’s work.

other obligations and asking for help. That’s really, really, really big.

Karyn Shanks (37:40.703)

And as you’re speaking, I feel my throat tightening because I’m like, I’m thinking, yeah, you got, have to learn when to say yes and when to say no. And then my throat just gave me this little squeeze because that’s, that’s a really tricky thing to do.

Inna (37:52.404)

It is, it is, it’s a, it’s a lifelong work in progress, but I think the more that we practice it, the easier it gets. It’s probably never going to be completely easy, but after a little while, it’s certainly easier than it was. And I can speak from personal experience on that for sure. Yeah. Karen, how did you get into this? Cause you’re a medically trained physician. So how did you go from there to what you’re doing now?

Karyn Shanks (38:09.751)

Can I? Yeah. Yeah.

Karyn Shanks (38:17.324)

Yeah.

Karyn Shanks (38:21.003)

I started out as an internal, an internist. did my residency in internal medicine and I knew, I knew from the beginning of my second year of medical school that something was really wrong with what we were learning. And, but then by the time I completed my, but something kept me going, even with all my disappointment and my, you know, icky feelings and something kept me going. And when I finished my residency and started seeing,

clients in the real world, I realized I didn’t learn a whole lot that allowed me to help them with their real world problems. Medical training has always been very oriented towards acute.

and catastrophic care and for good reason because that’s basically what conventional medicine does well. That’s the only thing they do well. Okay. So if we, it’s a, it’s a, a very genius system for taking care of catastrophic life threatening acute problems, though we wouldn’t need as much of that care if we had other kinds of care, right? Because there wouldn’t be so many.

know, devastatingly sick people. so then I was, that just sent me on a whole new trajectory of education. I’d learned functional medicine, I learned nutritional medicine, I…

became board certified in functional medicine and integrative holistic medicine. And I changed my whole practice, basically had to step out of the grid, so to speak, of conventional medicine and conventional practice style so that I could spend up to four hours sometimes with a new client who’s chronic complex. There’s so much to look at and so much to learn about them. So it’s been a…

Karyn Shanks (40:14.975)

I’m still in evolution, I’m still learning, I’m still figuring things out.

Inna (40:21.036)

It’s amazing though, the transformation and how much you help people. You know, in four hours, I mean, my gosh, so much can be done in that time, but I hear you. I don’t see you patients as much anymore, but when I did, it would be like two and a half hours. And even then, it’d be like, hi, two and a half hours is not enough. And people look at me like I have three heads. Like, what do mean two and a half hours? And I’m like, we could talk for longer, you know, because there are just so much to figure out and so many puzzle pieces to put together. So.

Karyn Shanks (40:47.423)

Right. That’s right. Which is the, to me, the incredible fun and richness of working with chronic complex people. Most physicians to whom I describe my practice style are like, I wouldn’t want to do that. So some people, that’s not for all practitioners. So they hopefully find a different niche that doesn’t.

Inna (41:06.86)

It’s not for everyone.

Karyn Shanks (41:14.145)

really require them to look at people in a more whole person way, which, I don’t know. So, yeah, that’s my story and it’s continuing to evolve.

Inna (41:31.276)

Yeah, well, it’s amazing the work that you do and how much you help people. Tell everyone listening more about where they can find you, how they can connect with you.

Karyn Shanks (41:43.841)

Yeah, so my hub is my website, karenshanksmd.com. And you’ll find links to my books. My new book is called Unbroken, Reclaim Your Wholeness. And it covers a lot of the stuff we’re talking about today. And I’m creating a online platform that is focused on restoring safety because

I think everybody with chronic complex illness who arrives at least at my door, that’s the first thing we have to do is help them feel safe. If they weren’t traumatized as children, they sure as hell were traumatized by their experiences with conventional healthcare, which probably most of your listeners have had a bit of that experience. And that’s huge. you know, safety then healing.

Inna (42:32.519)

yeah.

Karyn Shanks (42:39.613)

Safety is like the beginning of the healing process. I’m also on Instagram. I don’t like social media. It’s a rabbit hole that just causes a lot of pain. I tiptoe in and tiptoe back out. But yes, you can find me there as well.

Inna (43:02.924)

Well, thank you so much for being here. We’ll put all of this in the show notes, all the information about your book and your practice and everything that you do. And thank you so much for being here and sharing all of this with us.

Karyn Shanks (43:12.625)

Thank you. Thanks for the conversation. was great.