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[00:00:00] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Sometimes the bravest thing that we can do is to stop fixing and start witnessing, because that's where the healing really begins.
[00:00:15] Okay. Let's just name it, I've got a cold, so if I sound like I am recording from inside a fog horn, well that's real life folks. Maybe it's fitting because this month we're gonna be talking about what it means to rise when things don't look, feel, or sound. Perfect. Here we go. Welcome to mindset Medicine.
[00:00:36] This month's theme November is how to fall down, get up, rise higher. It's real. Talk about how bouncing back from the hard stuff can happen. Because let's be honest, life knocks us all flat. Sometimes I'm here to say, right now I'm feeling it. It's not a question of if it's how we get back up and not just about functioning, but kind of back to faith, back to trust, [00:01:00] and eventually to transcendence.
[00:01:03] I'll be sharing stories, the messy ones, the human ones, about falling apart, finding grace and rising again, because resilience isn't about being tough all the time. It's about staying open while life remake you. So if you've been carrying a heavy season, if you've fallen and you aren't sure what getting back up looks like anymore, stay with me.
[00:01:25] Take a deep breath and let this episode meet you where you are. I'm Dr. Julia Bowlin, and this is Mindset Medicine, and I want you to let this episode meet you where you are because sometimes doesn't test strength. It tests, surrender. It drops us into ordinary moments of fluorescent lights, grocery carts, canned food aisles, and say, well, let's see what's left when all the scaffolding gives away.
[00:01:54] For me, that moment happened in Kroger, our local grocery store. No [00:02:00] symbolism, no poetry, just a missing can of keystone beef and a body that had finally had enough. I was running on fumes after my flu shot. I had a fever that was climbing. My muscles were aching, and I was trying to do the one thing that still felt like care instead of feeling like chaos, and that was to make soup.
[00:02:22] My husband fiercely fighting cancer, unable to speak or eat. Solids, still loves our vegetable soup. We perfected that recipe together years ago, and it only works with one particular key ingredient. That specific canned beef, and my mission was simple. Find the beef, get the vegetables, come home and make soup.
[00:02:45] That's it. That was my sense of purpose for that day when I felt so crappy. But when I got to the aisle, the very top shelf between canned Turkey and can tuna, it was empty. And not only that, at four [00:03:00] nine. Even if the beef had been there, I wouldn't have been able to reach it 'cause they always put it up so high.
[00:03:06] So my heart started pounding, my gut started twisting, and I literally started having a little bit of a panic attack, which hasn't really happened to me like that before. That kind of quiet panic that doesn't really show on the outside, but absolutely hijacked everything on my inside. I tried to look calm just like another woman shopping while my nervous system was screaming.
[00:03:30] So I started moving finally after about five minutes of staring. I kid you not, I was just in shock and my brain was trying to calculate how I could make vegetable soup the way I normally do because this is one of the few things my husband can eat right now. So I headed towards the deli and the fresh meat aisle hoping that maybe they move the cans over there.
[00:03:49] 'cause sometimes they do that. And I was trying to keep this massive flood of emotions inside at this time, and that's when a familiar face appeared in front of me. It was a former patient, and [00:04:00] he stopped and he smiled, and he hugged me and he told me how much he missed me. And before I could even explain, before I could speak the truth about my missing beef, the soup, the fear of the exhaustion, I literally unraveled right there in front of someone who used to come to me for care.
[00:04:19] My past patient. That moment cracked something open in me. It was the first time I'd really been publicly vulnerable, not as Dr. Bolen, but you know, the Dr. Bolen, the strong one, but just as a human being coming apart in the middle of Kroger. And when I got home, I was still trembling. I was feverish, exhausted, and dizzy.
[00:04:40] And I went looking for him, my husband, just outta habit, hoping he could help me bring in the groceries like he always used to do. But when I glanced downstairs, he was in the basement watching TV spooning very tiny bites of pureed vegetable soup that I had made earlier. He was coughing and struggling to eat, and a lot of the [00:05:00] times, most of the time when he's trying to even eat that soup, he's aspirating and coughing, trying to get through.
[00:05:07] I didn't have the heart to interrupt him. I was exhausted, shaky, afraid I might pass out. But at the same time, I was so grateful that he was eating anything at all. So I unpacked the groceries alone, forcing my body to move while my heart splintered between love, fear, and bone deep fatigue. A few minutes later, he came up and he saw my face and he realized he didn't speak because he can't, but he came and he held me close.
[00:05:35] I fell apart all over again. By the way, the butcher man, the butcher I guess is what I should call him, uh, helped me find the right beef, taught me how to make it, which I'd never done before. I never cooked a chuck roast 'cause I don't normally eat beef like that. And it was lovely, but let's back up a little bit.
[00:05:53] That reversal in the kitchen being held by the one person I was trying to protect and help broke [00:06:00] me open in a way that wasn't failure. It was grace. Because sometimes love shows up exactly like that, fragile, quiet, and even holy in its imperfection. That's where this episode begins because resilience isn't about staying upright.
[00:06:17] It's about the sacred moment when faith steps in after the body and the spirit have nothing left to hold. So let's take one more breath and let's really talk about what it means to be bruised but not broken. Here's the truth about falling apart. The thing is the body usually knows long before the mind admits it.
[00:06:44] When I was standing in that aisle, my head kept repeating, you're fine. Just keep moving. But my body was having a completely different conversation. My heart was pounding so hard, it echoed in my ears. My breath got short, my gut twisted, and [00:07:00] I could feel the electric calm in my arms that wired hollow can't catch up feeling that says, ho ho.
[00:07:07] There's a dam that's being blocked and something is about ready to give. That wasn't weakness, folks. That was my physiology. That was my body talking. The nervous system had been holding so much, too much for too long, and even though the doctor in me knew exactly what was happening, the adrenaline surge, the cortisol dump, the classic fight or flight reaction, the woman in me was just trying to survive in the grocery store.
[00:07:35] This is where science meets the soul and they collide. When the body hits over well, the sympathetic nervous system takes over. It's not dramatic, it's protective. It narrows focus, floods energy to the muscles, and it shuts down everything else that feels unnecessary just to survive. That includes slowing down digestion, reflection, and emotion.
[00:07:58] That's why panic feels [00:08:00] sharp and numb at the same time. Here's the spiritual truth. That same surge, that shaking, that shortness of breath, that racing heart is often the body's way of saying, it's time to stop carrying this alone. It's not betrayal, it's a sacred override. The ego hates that part. The ego is addicted to order to looking calm, competent, professional, and when that starts to slip.
[00:08:27] It panics too, and mine definitely did. There I was a physician, a hospice medical director, someone who literally teaches people about nervous system regulation, trying not to hyperventilate in front of the canned meat section. But collapse isn't failure, it's just information. And it's the body's emergency broadcast system saying we are not okay.
[00:08:52] And it's okay to admit that. The moment I finally let myself unravel when the patient hugged me and I couldn't hold the [00:09:00] mask up anymore, my system finally exhaled. That's what falling apart really is the nervous system, finally trusting that it's safe enough to release. So many people think resilience means not breaking.
[00:09:18] Resilience actually starts inside of the break in the raw trembling moment with everything we thought we had to control. Just let's go. That's where faith begins to stir, not as a concept, not as a belief system, but as an energy shift. The quiet knowing that maybe just maybe there's something holy happening here, even in the grocery store aisle.
[00:09:48] Let's move on to the next section. Faith as a first muscle of resilience. Faith doesn't always come wrapped in words. Sometimes it looks like exhaustion, silence, and [00:10:00] finally letting someone else hold the weight for us. Just a little while, when I came home that day, fever rising body trembling, and the grocery bags felt heavier than they ever should have.
[00:10:10] Every one of my muscles was tired. Every thought was really just about survival. I wasn't looking for grace or strength or even peace. I was just trying not to fall apart, just breathe. That's all my mind could manage. And that small, stubborn breath, that was the first flicker of faith. Faith for me isn't a polished concept or even a spiritual assignment.
[00:10:36] It's what happens when the body stops performing and the heart whispers. Let life just meet you here. When I walked in, I expected to find my husband upstairs in bed where he's usually resting. Oftentimes too weak to do, much more than that, but he wasn't there. He was downstairs in his old man cave, the place he built years ago for comfort and [00:11:00] escape, but had been rarely visiting.
[00:11:01] Now the TV was on. He was sitting up quietly, spooning small bites of the pureed vegetable soup. He'd warmed himself the same soup I'd gone out to make more of it stopped me cold. That was his sacred space. Seeing him there, doing something he loved brought a wave of relief and heartbreak to me all at once.
[00:11:24] I didn't ask him to come up to help with the groceries. I was just grateful he was eating and in his man cave. So I did go to the kitchen, still trembling, exhausted, a little heartbroken that my partner, the man who used to help me unpack groceries, couldn't anymore. The sounds of the cans hitting the counter echoed against the silence of everything we lost.
[00:11:50] And somewhere between the rustle of the plastic bags and the hum of the refrigerator, the tears started coming quietly at first. Tissues in [00:12:00] hand, back to the doorway, trying to pull myself together before grief finally showed or even fully showed. And a few minutes later he came upstairs and he saw me there.
[00:12:11] My back was turned shoulder shaking, and he picked up his writing board and wrote, what's wrong? I turned and everything spilled out. I mean everything, the missing beef, the panic, the fever, the emptiness, the frustration of holding it all in, and he just listened. Then he set the board down and he reached for me.
[00:12:34] That moment right there is what faith looked like. Not because it fixed anything, but because I finally let myself be seen. For months I'd been bracing, managing, proving, pretending. But when he opened his arms, something in me said yes. I didn't analyze it, I didn't plan it. [00:13:00] I just allowed it. That allowing that tiny wordless surrender was faith in motion.
[00:13:08] Faith wasn't about believing everything would be okay 'cause folks, it's not, not in my household, not right now. It was trusting that I didn't have to hold it all in by myself. It was giving up the illusion that strength means doing it alone. Faith is the first muscle of resilience because it lets us unclench long enough for help, for comfort, and for love to reach us.
[00:13:34] It's the moment we stop gripping and we start receiving. So wherever this message meets you, pause, let your shoulders drop. Let breath remind you, you are not the only one holding this. That's faith. And sometimes that's where the healing really begins. All right, let's jump into a little moment called Witness versus fixer Energy.[00:14:00]
[00:14:00] There's a line in every caregiver's heart between wanting to help and needing to heal, and most of us cross it without even realizing it. We start fixing instead of witnessing. I'm gonna say that again. We start fixing instead of witnessing. For months, I had lived on the fixing side, maybe, probably, well, I'm gonna say decades.
[00:14:23] Really. If something broke, I patched it. If someone struggled, I solved it. My husband, when we first started dating, had a mantra, see a problem, fix a problem. I did that my whole life. That's how I showed love through doing, through managing through control. But when my husband wrote what's wrong and then simply held me, everything I thought I understood about strength shifted.
[00:14:53] He didn't try to comfort me with logic or make sense of my pain. He didn't strategize, [00:15:00] suggest, or soften it with words he witnessed. That's the quiet power. We forget. In a world obsessed with outcomes, witness energy doesn't try to remove pain. It stands beside it. It says, I see you, I see this and I'm not leaving, and here's where it got to me.
[00:15:23] This man who so deeply needs to be seen, witnessed, and understood himself was the one seeing me. The reversal was stunning. It was as if life flipped the script to show me what true resilience looks like. And when I talk about resilience, this is what I mean. Resilience isn't toughness. Resilience is tenderness that doesn't run.
[00:15:51] It's the energy that says, even if I can't fix this, I can face this. That's [00:16:00] big. Because in that moment, being seen by the person I've spent so long caring for, it pierced something in me. It leveled everything. We'd built our roles, our habits, our patterns, and left only humanity. Two people, neither rescuing the other, just being in hospice.
[00:16:21] I see this every day. We can't fix, we can't cure, but we can be with. We can share space with another human soul facing the unfixable. We can breathe in sync with suffering and not turn away from it. That's witnessing. It's not passive. It's the most active form of love there is. It's standing still inside a storm without trying to change the weather.
[00:16:51] When my husband held me that day, it wasn't him rescuing me. It was him staying with me. That moment was mutual witnessing [00:17:00] his illness didn't cancel. His ability to love my caregiving didn't make me immune from needing it. We met in the middle of our shared humanity, and that is what resilience feels like when it's real.
[00:17:15] That's the invitation of this kind of witnessing, whether you are in healthcare, leadership, caregiving, or just trying to survive a hard lesson. True presence must stretch in every direction. Emotionally. Can we allow ourselves to feel grief, guilt, joy, or fatigue without editing it? That was a biggie for me.
[00:17:38] Mentally, can we stop overthinking long enough to just observe our thoughts instead of judging them physically? Can we honor what our bodies are asking for, for rest, for nourishment, for stillness, without labeling it a weakness[00:18:00]
[00:18:00] spiritually, can we trust that there's meaning even here, even when we can't see the map? Environmentally can we build surroundings, our homes, our workspaces, our teams that invite compassion, silence, and breath instead of constantly doing? Witnessing is a full body practice. It asks us to see life as it is, not as we wish it to be.
[00:18:31] It's presence without agenda. It's not about courage that charges forward. It's about courage that stays. So take a slow breath, feel the weight of your body, and remember this, sometimes the bravest thing that we can do is to stop fixing and start witnessing. Because that's where the healing really begins.
[00:18:53] That's where the faith breathes in. Again, that's where resilience grows. Not as armor, [00:19:00] but as tenderness. That doesn't run.
[00:19:07] Commercial Break: If stress and overwhelm or that relentless inner critic has been running the show, it's time to take back control. You don't need another motivational quote or a feel-good pep talk. You need a system, a tool, something that actually works when life gets messy. That's exactly why I created mindset medicine worksheets.
[00:19:23] No fluff, no filler, just proven strategies that are powerfully designed to help you rewire your thoughts for clarity and confidence. Break the cycle of overwhelm in minutes. Set boundaries that stick without guilt and turn stress into focus and action. This isn't about theory, it's about real transformation.
[00:19:41] And the best part is each episode of this podcast comes with a worksheet designed specifically for what you're learning today. No more wondering how to apply this. It's all mapped out for you. And if you're ready to stop spitting your wheels and start making real shifts, grab today's worksheet below because life's too short to stay stuck.
[00:19:59] Check out the [00:20:00] episode specific worksheet in today's podcast. Show notes below. The link is right there for you.
[00:20:11] Dr. Julia Bowlin: So let's take a little hypnotherapy moment. Let's reclaim some inner stability, and we're gonna kind of really bring this home into the body if it feels safe to do so. Take a nice, slow, easy breath, and if you are not operating machinery and are safe to shut your eyes and are comfortable with that, let your body settle into comfort.
[00:20:33] Not perfect posture, not performance. Just rest. 'cause what we're gonna do right now isn't magic, it's medicine. The kind that happens when the conscious mind takes a backseat and the subconscious finally gets a word in hypnotherapy is simply a focused state of awareness. You'll hear everything I say, you'll stay fully in control.
[00:20:57] This is just a guided conversation [00:21:00] between your body, your breath, and the deeper part of you that already knows how to heal. So as you breathe gently shutting your eyes. If you haven't already, imagine, exhaling everything that's been borrowed. Breathing out the noise, the worry, the holding on. With each breath in, draw the energy closer to your center, to your core.
[00:21:28] With each breath out release, what's no longer belonging.
[00:21:39] Notice how your awareness begins to shift the air around you starts to feel thicker. The sounds a little softer. Your thoughts start to drift. Not gone just quieter, like clouds passing across a wide steady sky. Your every [00:22:00] exhale. Imagine stepping down one level deeper into calm and peace. You might sense yourself descending through layers of stillness, of calmness from the surface, going deeper down into the depths, from noise to quiet, from doing to being.
[00:22:27] If the mind wanders, that's fine. It's proof that you're just human. Just return to your breath, the gentle rhythm that's keeping you alive since the very beginning and now imagine a soft, golden light beginning to rise from beneath you. A calm patient, unhurried light. It's not there to fix anything. It's simply there to witness you.[00:23:00]
[00:23:00] The light has no judgment, no agenda only awareness. It sees the strength it took to get here, and it honors you for being here. Let that awareness move through your body. Slow, steady, kind through your shoulders and your chest and your belly, and down your legs into your feet. Everything that's held too tight now begins to loosen everything heavy, starts to find the ground.
[00:23:47] As this calm settles in, notice something beautiful. This isn't escape. This is reentry. You're not stepping away from life. [00:24:00] You're stepping back into it with presence. See yourself ahead in the days ahead. Walking up, walking into work, caring for loved ones. Sitting with patients or friends or family navigating the noise of the world and in the same calm that your experience right now is walking beside you all the time.
[00:24:32] You don't have to remember every word from this moment. Your body already knows what to do when challenges rise. This grounded, steady, calm, beautiful energy will rise with it. When emotions surge, the breath will know its way home. And when life calls for action, faith, quiet, [00:25:00] patient, faith will be the undercurrent, guiding every step.
[00:25:06] You've just rehearsed resilience in real time. Your nervous system has memorized what it feels like to return, to calm, to belong to yourself again. So let's integrate this experience through time on your next inhale return to this hour.
[00:25:31] On the next inhale, returning to this room
[00:25:39] and with one more breath, returning fully to this moment now feeling the surface beneath you. Notice the temperature of the air, the subtle sounds nearby, maybe wiggles your fingers and your toes, letting color and light and clarity. Return to your awareness, [00:26:00] and when you are ready, open your eyes. The calm stays with you.
[00:26:06] It travels in your voice, in your posture and your breath. You've trained your body to remember what peace feels like, and that memory is now alive in every cell of your body. Let's take one last slow breath and let these words settle deep. This calm is not a pause from life. It is life remembering itself.
[00:26:32] You've reclaimed your inner stability, and with it the quiet power to face whatever comes next. And let's take one last deep breath.
[00:26:47] And let this moment meet you again right here between the inhale of what's next and the exhale of what's been today. We didn't just talk about resilience, we lived it. We went to places [00:27:00] where strength looks like trembling hands, where faith sounds like breath, and where being witnessed becomes its own kind of medicine.
[00:27:09] The truth is. Life will still hand us those fluorescent lights, those grocery store moments, the ones that bring us to our knees. But what's different now is the body, the mind, and the spirit know their way back home. They remember the feeling of faith, the quiet, steadied, embodied feeling of faith. If this episode stirred something in you, stay with it.
[00:27:35] Don't rush to patch it, name it, or fix it. Just notice what it wants to show you. Maybe write about it, maybe share it with someone who's also holding more than they can say. Because resilience doesn't live in isolation. It's built in connection. We heal in witness. We grow in presence. We rebuild one breath, one truth, one act of [00:28:00] grace at a time, and this is just the beginning of our resilience reset series.
[00:28:06] Next week we're gonna step into episode two, the Art of the Comeback, how to rebuild when life falls apart. We'll move from faith to trust the next muscle of resilience, and we're gonna explore what it takes to rebuild when the dust hasn't even settled. Until then, let this week be your practice of presence.
[00:28:24] Meet the world gently. Hold yourself tenderly and remember, being bruised doesn't mean being broken. It means you're still here, still healing and still human. Take one last breath with me.
[00:28:42] Let it all integrate and may you be happy. Be healthy and be fulfilled.
[00:28:53] Outro: Thank you for listening to Mindset Medicine with your host, Dr. Julia Bowlin. To learn more about mindset [00:29:00] medicine, go to www.juliabowlinmd.com and connect with Dr. Julia to find out how our team can help you today. Join us again next week for more expert tips, tools, and strategies to become healthier, wealthier, and wiser in your personal and professional life.
