FHP – Ep. 8 – “The Loving Diet” feat. Jessica Flanigan

Transcript

Intro [00:00:03] Welcome to the Fearless Health podcast with host Dr. Ann-Marie Barter. Dr Barter is on a mission to help people achieve their health and wellness goals and help men and women live their best lives fearlessly. Dr. Barter is the founder of Alternative Family Medicine and Chiropractic in Denver and Longmont, Colorado.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:00:24] I’m your host, Dr. Ann-Marie Barter, and you’re here with us at Fearless Health podcast today. I’m so excited. I have this Jessica Flanagan on and she is the author of The Loving Diet. She helps individuals and practitioners identify those deep hurt beliefs in themselves and bring those to the surface. She has almost 25 years of clinical nutrition experience and 15 years of spiritual training. She’s able to meet clients where they are in their journeys. This is essential as most clients find it, find her after they’ve struggled for years with complex health issues. She’s seen our stint have seen a wide range of medical doctors, functional medicine practitioners, naturopath and others and are still seeking the answers. So thank you so much for being with us today.

Jessica Flanagan [00:01:12] I’m glad to be here. Thank you, Ann-Marie.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:01:14] All right. So what brought you into writing the loving diet is suffering?

Jessica Flanagan [00:01:23] It was my motivator. So I was hedger as well. I’m a nutritionist, so I have a health practice, but I’m also a sister and I have an identical twin sister who is diagnosed with celiac and Hashimoto’s. And she naturally came to me and said, What should I do? And this was just as the autoimmune paleo movement was getting going. So her and I both went on that, but I wrote the lemon diet in addition to those things because my life was falling apart and I thought I had been doing everything right. I was following the template of success. If you call it of what society and religions tell you is, you will achieve success. And and and my husband still cheated on me, left me. I lost my house. I mean, I lost everything. So I was had to look at life in a new way. And so I wrote the loving diet as an effort to help those who are suffering from chronic disease. Look at life in a different way and that there might be some benefit to their difficult experience in their suffering. Like there was for me.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:02:37] So you leaned into that suffering and felt like you, you got some resolve in writing that book.

Jessica Flanagan [00:02:45] Yes. You know, resolving suffering is tricky because I don’t think that I was any less upset, sad. Kind of destroyed in a way. But what I did was I learned that I’m still OK in hole and worthy, and my divinity is still intact, regardless of whether something good or bad is happening to me. And that was kind of a light bulb moment where I just I had set up my whole life to look like I was succeeding. And then when it felt like I wasn’t, I didn’t know where to go or what to do, or how to reframe it in a way that I in a way that I didn’t think that I was failing at life. And so what I had to do was go in and just start looking at all the places inside of myself. I was the harshest critic of them all, and I had to be with my harshest critics. I did go in and be four months, go in and be with the person that thought that she wasn’t worth a happy life. And so I just, by the way, this is sort of individual for each person, every time we are catapulted into a suffering of any kind. It’s always an individual blueprint of where it is that you can go and place your own loving and compassion and mercy for yourself. And so what happened was, was that I just stopped fighting against the suffering and that was when I started to suffer.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:04:20] And you are clearly seeing the same thing in there and your clients that come to see that these these people that come and have tried everything, they feel stuck. They feel defeated. They feel abandoned. They feel like everything’s going wrong. I would assume and they’re struggling with autoimmunity. Is that your typical patient or client?

Jessica Flanagan [00:04:46] Yes. So three things autoimmunity. They’re perfect performers. And when they get to me and they’re like, nothing else is working and I’m losing hope, I’m like, OK, good. Like now, now you’re ready to let go of what you thought was the right way. And now we can start dismantling what stories you’re telling yourself that you believe based on ways that you’ve protected your heart throughout your life. And so what I find is that almost in an odd way, the harder life has become, the more willing we are to let go of those things because people are exhausted and they’re also really tired of these templates of success. You know, and I mean, I have had people, this is a true story. I had a lady cry and an appointment because she didn’t like bone broth, and she thought that she couldn’t do ayp unless she ate organ meat and bone broth. But she would get kicked out or, you know, and and so it

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:05:51] wasn’t that perfect performer, right?

Jessica Flanagan [00:05:53] She wanted to be a perfect performer. And then there are some people that do it like to a tee and like, they show you everything and you’re like, Wow. Nothing. I would improve here with your diet. And so it kind of goes both ways of the trepidation of, I want to do it right. I’m really motivated to heal. And then also the people who I want to do it right, I’m really motivated to heal, and they have almost cut almost everything out of their life, which is in order to heal, I have to restrict. There’s a huge belief system that’s going along, which is a gift of autoimmune, paleo, autoimmune, paleo is given so many gifts that are causing us to take, pause and look at, well, what does it really mean to heal? Do I need to suffer? Do I need to go without? Do I need to prove my strength and my courage to heal? And so those are some of the deeper things. Well, God, grant me a healing. And I do is my faith strong enough for God to grant me healing? These are the things that I hear over and over again.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:06:59] And what does it look like to sit with those beliefs, I mean, those are inside someone all the time that is incredibly painful, but what does it look like as you start to unwind these belief systems that hold people back from the life that they desire and want?

Jessica Flanagan [00:07:21] Well, first, it is so scary that it can feel like annihilation. And so these belief systems that we have, they’re almost like energetic frequencies that sit out in our field, protect themselves. And they have they’ve kept us safe. They helped us survive. They’ve dug their heels in. And so when we start going and poking around and to dig, God, forget about me when I got diagnosed with MS. Am I just doomed to be punished? We start poking around. It is so unsettling, and usually that is the fear of it, but not the experience of it when people actually go in. And when I also tell my clients, is that your loving is stronger than what you’ve told yourself, that’s not true. And so that helps, you know, that they’re like and that everybody has the tools they need to do all of this work already because we all got born. So everybody who got born, who has a heart, has the materials and the tools and the framework to love the parts inside of themselves that hurt and have decided things that are not congruent with the evolution of their soul. And so when I tell people those two things they’re loving is stronger than what they’ve told themselves or what they think about their life. They starts to shake something inside of them. And then when we do it together and we start doing baby steps and show them in a practical way how to be with themselves, the part that’s hurting, then they realize that the part that was so afraid that they might go crazy, that their life might fall apart, that they’re inviting disease to come in and get worse. Those things were not true. And so they feel relief.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:09:13] Yeah, and and where do you see these painful beliefs as the origin?

Jessica Flanagan [00:09:22] They’re almost always from ways that we have protected our heart from hurt, so any way a human needs to protect its heart from hurt. That’s what I see in my practice and some time now. So usually it’s individual and people’s lives, like getting fired from a job feeling abandoned by their parents, something like that. But a lot of times it can. That’s most of the time. Sometimes there can be cultural elements like women and their worse. And you know what? What does it mean for them to provide for their families who can be sort of bigger cultural things? But a lot of the times that when I’m working with my clients, it’s it’s an individualized event. You know, all the colors of the rainbow.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:10:12] And interesting, you bring up women because women are very affected with Hashimoto’s, right, and they have which is autoimmune thyroid. And what’s? Deep. Cultural beliefs, do you see with women and autoimmune thyroid?

Jessica Flanagan [00:10:35] What does it mean to have a voice? How do I use my power from an authentic place? How do I sort through the ideas of what I deserve in my life? How do I love all the places inside of myself? Those are a lot of the things that I see. How do I stand up and who I am?

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:11:04] Beautiful. And I’ve seen I see so much Hashimoto’s in my practice and these women I see just want to do it all. They don’t know. They feel like a failure because they can’t be a full time bomb in a full time executive. They they feel like they’re dropping the ball somewhere. And when I watch them, just try to keep it all together, it just seems so overwhelming and they think something is wrong with them, which breaks my heart. I mean, there’s only so many hours in a day and there’s only so much you can do, right?

Jessica Flanagan [00:11:41] Yeah. So we were working together and you were my Hashimoto’s client. I would actually. We can even just do this right now. We should practice, you know, let’s say Emory. Oh, wow, OK. So I just heard you say that I want to do it all. And so what is it that you’ve decided about yourself or decided about your life or your worth if you can’t do it all?

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:12:05] I think from what I see, OK, I’ll just draw myself. I don’t have kids just so you know, so this isn’t this isn’t quite totally authentic, but I would say what I feel if I dropped the ball or can’t do it all is that I’m a failure.

Jessica Flanagan [00:12:23] OK. Perfect. And so then I use self-forgiveness in my practice as the center point of all things. And so what I do is walk my clients through self-forgiveness. And so I would say, OK, then let’s repeat after me, I forgive myself for believing that I’m a failure if I can’t do it all.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:12:46] I forgive myself for believing I’m a failure if I can’t do it all.

Jessica Flanagan [00:12:49] OK, so take a deep breath. And then, Ann-Marie, what do you notice in your body when you say that?

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:12:56] Well, when I say that I feel relaxed because it lets your set, you let yourself off the hook and feel like you do not have to perform to that level, which is honestly my struggle. Well, that

Jessica Flanagan [00:13:11] and it could also be too, that people judge themselves about their beliefs, too. So not only do we carry around these frequencies of belief of like, I have to do it all or else I’m not worthy. I have to do it all or I’m a failure. I have to do it all, or I’m never going to be successful. And so you can start going in and looking at all the little tiny offshoots of that. But then the other part is, is that and then I oh, by the way, I judge myself on top of all of that. And so I work with forgiving people for having people forgive themselves, for judging themselves about it and then going in and doing the forgiveness about it. Now here’s the thing. When we are just doing that, it can sound a little bit hokey, like, are you kidding? You can really just wipe out 40 years of this kind of programing and one sentence when we do it from a place of self-compassion and intention, there isn’t any place that loving can’t go. And so what we’re doing is I’m bearing witness to your loving for yourself. And it creates like a concentration. And so I tell my clients, is that that’s the beauty of that. Everything is already all the tools already built into your heart. All you have to do is have the intention to be compassionate enough with yourself to feel that statement. And what it does is it dissolves the frequencies out in the work field and then the immune system responds differently and the cells respond differently because essentially what you’re doing is is these frequencies are set out in the field, become the lenses, how we look out to life. So the universe is not inflicting, it’s built upon unconditional loving, so it can only support what you allow. So if you are allowing this belief in perpetuating this belief that if I can’t do it all, I’m a failure, it can only meet you at. If I don’t do it all, I’m a failure. So what we do is when we we work on these things from a place of loving ourselves enough to consider that we’re going to give ourselves a break and let go of those ideas. Then what it does is it actually changes how the universe can meet you. So then I can give you a life that includes I don’t have to do it all to be successful. I feel like when I’m talking with you, you notice in your body, as I’m even saying that, you know,

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:15:41] this has been something I have personally worked on for a while, so I know it’s there. But that belief likes to rear its ugly head occasionally. And I, when I feel like I don’t have to do it all and everything will still be OK, then I feel so much better that I can trust. And I feel like I don’t have to be the circus clown juggling all the balls, you know? So I feel so much better and so much more relief when I just take a second and get out of my head like you made me do. But I love to go back there. That’s just my my spot.

Jessica Flanagan [00:16:23] And so we would just say, let, let’s make better friends with the place that loves to go there. You know, let let’s not judge that part, that part that, you know, when things start getting difficult, they automatically go into, I know it’s not going to work. You know, this is just what I see a lot. And so then the other part that is is like, Oh, what would it be like if you just made better friends with that part? So you change the conversation inside of yourself?

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:16:51] And when you’re making better friends, I mean, I feel, you know, it’s interesting. I feel nervous when I lean in. If my myself personally, but I had a patient, I think say something that I think a lot of people think, which is if I lean into some of these feelings, I’m afraid I’m never going to stop crying. I’m afraid, I’m never going to come out of that depression because what I was left behind in my life is so painful. And I I don’t I don’t know if I personally know that level of pain. And I felt like it was a profound statement for what she was walking around with. And it it broke my heart to just hear someone so fabulous and so vibrant walking around with those feelings and those belief systems.

Jessica Flanagan [00:17:45] Yeah, that’s a very common piece. When I started doing this work, mine was I thought I would go crazy, like I thought I would lose my mind. And so what I started to do was identify, took baby steps and I started identifying with this notion that maybe my loving is stronger than that part that is so scared that it might get worse or might be inviting the bad guys in or that my disease is going to get worse, or that I might lose my mind. Now I might lose control. And what also, the other part, too, is we can’t undo the growing of our hearts. So even the even thinking about it counts. You know, even if it so anybody who’s listening to this and they’re like, yeah, well, I’m not going to ever touch that thing with a 10 foot pole. I would say to even just make an allowance that your heart has the tools to do it. And whenever it feels right, you can start working in that area and there’s no time limit here. We’re the only ones who have created that stopwatch.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:19:01] Speaking of the no time limit, how long do you see these belief systems take to unwind? Is this is this many year process? Is this overnight? I mean, what do you what do you generally see, especially when there’s been some substantial autoimmunity going on?

Jessica Flanagan [00:19:24] It’s really different for everybody. I’ve seen some people work on specific things that are sort of like big karmic things over and over and over again because it’ll just manifest from a different aspect like Worth is going to come through with their autoimmune disease. But the lesson of Worth is also going to come through their relationship in their career now. And so you sort of work it from different angles. I have seen, however, though this work is instantaneous because unconditional loving is not bound by space or time. So it is what we would consider to be a miracle. No miracles are manifestations of living love. And so each time we do this work on behalf of ourselves that it is, it is bringing in the own manifestation of witnessing our own miracle. And so it is just a continual work like we’re we’re kind of in bodies and being in bodies is really challenging. So we’re going to keep getting sanded down so the jewel can be more precious. So we almost have to stop looking at it as like when it will be over. We can say, Wow, my jewel is so precious, I’m ready to carve another facet so it sparkles even more in the light. And that, to me, feels better

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:20:51] instead of I’m going to fix this. This is going to be I’m going to fix this, I’m going to move on. I’m going to play tennis like I used to. That’s my jam for right? It’s just going to be instead of, I’m going to really look inside and be different.

Jessica Flanagan [00:21:11] Yeah. So let’s take tennis. For example, let’s say you have a client who is they are losing the love of their life, which is tennis or sport or something. There’s something else that’s coming forward in this work, which is deep trust in full cooperation. And we that is hard work because it is forcing us to completely trust what we have right now. It’s asking us, can can we completely cooperate with the circumstances in our life? And so we always hold, hold it, hold space for the things that we really love. You know, like, I really we love cheese. And I just don’t do great with cheese that I keep holding that thing of like, OK, I’m going to keep working for these beliefs and I’m going to keep trying cheese.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:22:01] This is going to work out

Jessica Flanagan [00:22:05] that kind of thing. But then I’m also going to fully trust my life that if I can’t eat cheese, then I will really sue the part that is bummed

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:22:17] that I can’t get it right now. I love you. I love Sarah doesn’t do well for me either. All of that, except it’s right.

Jessica Flanagan [00:22:29] But notice there. There’s no pass fail. And so I’ve been really looking into the way that the prosperity gospel is infusing itself into that God rewards through faith and commitment. And and so like, it’s not I’m not a failure. If I can’t, if I don’t do it, I’m not a failure. And so I have to spend a lot of time with myself. You know, the part that feels like she is not trying hard enough. And let that all go. Because there’s a ton of rules and restricted diets these days, it’s almost like political movements, tribalism, you know, so I’ve been really looking at these things closely. They’re fascinating to me.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:23:17] It’s interesting when a patient comes in, and in our practice, we put people on an elimination, diet or match. That’s it, period. It’s going to work or it’s not going to work. We’re not going to keep prolonging this thing. We’re going to fix what needs to be fixed. And it’s interesting to me what happens at the end of that. But with certain patients, it’s like, Well, I don’t want to eat anything. Well, I don’t. I don’t want to bring that back in. What if? What if I don’t feel good? I need rules on what exactly I can eat now, instead of trusting their intuition or trusting their body that their body is going to tell them what’s okay or what’s not OK with them versus following the rules of here’s exactly what AYP says. Here’s exactly what I did resonate with whatever diet it is, and it’s interesting for me to see this instead of being like, Well, you know, you can open your diet up a little bit more that way. We can see how you react. Love a pretty good idea, but people are scared to do that.

Jessica Flanagan [00:24:19] Yeah, I’m starting a support group next week. How to make peace with your inner eater because this is such a big part of my practice, and I will say that I don’t mean paleo is helping a lot of people work out issues around safety because ultimately that kind of restriction is built upon. How do I keep my immune system safe? How do I keep myself safe so that I can put my disease in remission? Now, if we look at the real deep, deep part of it and what it’s doing is, is we can’t actually ever find safety through our minds, our minds help us find safety that the only place we truly, truly find safety as humans is in our hearts. And so there’s a lot of people right now experimenting with a diet called autoimmune paleo, and they are getting a fantastic lesson plan on how to find the safety inside of themselves. And so as soon as people start pairing food and sharing their intuition and questioning, that’s awesome. But let’s then look at those places where you feel safe, where you don’t feel safe, where the part that you need safety to look a specific kind of way.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:25:33] It’s at a bigger problem, is that a cultural problem, do you think? Because that seems pretty. Vic, when you don’t feel safe,

Jessica Flanagan [00:25:42] it’s a huge problem. I mean, and so it’s all coming out in our world. The MeToo movement, women not feeling safe walking down the street. Politically, we’re not feeling safe because there’s such a polarization. We can even add climate change. People aren’t feeling safe like we’re going to have clean drinking water in the coming decades. It’s not safe where I live because it might flood. And so it’s this really deep stirring of the soil of where where we’re getting all of these things on the outside of us that look like challenges to our safety. And what’s happening is, from my perspective, is that this unconditional loving of the growth of our soul is pushing on us so that we can we can rework how we feel safe, which is a hard experience. And so it might seem odd that I would connect all of that, but I absolutely do.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:26:36] I think a point that you have really driven health that I think is deeply intuitive and a completely different way to look at autoimmunity is we’ve got autoimmunity that’s so prevalent today, but you’re looking at this as not gloom and doom. But as this amazing opportunity to feel whole, to rise to a different level as society. And and that’s why you feel like we’re getting this huge rise in autoimmunity. It’s not something that we’re doing. And oh, this is terrible and all these chemicals and all these things that promote fear.

Jessica Flanagan [00:27:15] Yeah, we’re we’re going to change the chemicals if we know that it’s causing us to get sick. Women are the biggest decision makers in their house. So you start getting a movement of women. Things get done. But then the other part is is that yes, I believe in the depth of who I am, but anything that happens to us, there’s a gift for us there. And whether it’s a tragedy or it is suffering or is a diagnosis of an illness, there’s a gift there and that that there’s a magnificent thing that’s pushing up against us as we’re all going through this kind of experience that we are. And areas, it is right where it is, it’s not easy to uncover these gifts that we are getting, but that’s what we’re being asked to do. And to me, that means there’s meaning in my experience there’s me people want and I think people feel better knowing that it’s never easy to get a diagnosis of any kind of cancer, autoimmunity, heart disease. But when they know that there is a tool kit that’s inside of them right now, that can help them find meaning in their experience, then that’s going to build wisdom regardless of what the outcome is. Because, you know, we all have it all good and bad set these set up of, Oh, we want to cure someone of cancer. Of course we do. But then there’s this other thing of like, Did I fail if I’m still in a wheelchair and I have MS. And so those are the things to of. Yep, it’s it is. It is deep work. We’re being asked to do collectively as a humanity and our humanity right now.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:29:02] And you know, it’s so interesting as if you saw somebody with cancer or he saw somebody with M.S. from an outside person looking at you never look at that person. They failed. Shame on them. They failed. It would be. That’s more of an internal internal concern. Not not coming from the outside. I would say that’s the pressure on ourselves. That’s the deep hurt within ourselves, not anybody else.

Jessica Flanagan [00:29:30] Well, I do agree with that. I’m one of those people. There’s a woman I cannot remember her name right now, but she’s a divinity professor at Duke University, and she actually taught the prosperity gospel. She has a blog and a podcast. She’s written a couple of amazing books. She was diagnosed with incurable stage four colon cancer, and she is still here, and she has written a book documenting that what it’s been like for her. And she just had a tweet like a month ago that she was going in for a surgery. And she just said to the nurse that told me that my diet probably is playing a role in my colon cancer. I just want to thank you because it makes me appreciate the nurse who held my hand and said, You’re going to be OK. That much more like that makes me cry to think about how we can either have what’s going on in the world, open our hearts or close our hearts. And we’re the only ones that can decide that.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:30:35] That’s really a sad message for somebody that’s suffering so badly to shame that.

Jessica Flanagan [00:30:42] Yes. And it’s happening outwardly, but then it’s also happening in these really subtle ways when people say they shame themselves because they don’t feel like they’re strong enough to do a one month elimination diet. They’re not they feel that that they don’t lack that strength. Because they, you know, we want them to. And they might feel a lot better, but it’s not a measure of their goodness in any way. And so we now with the self-love and positive thinking movement, there’s a lot of that that happens in a really subtle way. And so I kind of work in that category. That’s my perfect performers and not, I mean, paleo movement of people who still hold shame that they couldn’t do it the right way.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:31:33] And cancer or mice or, you know, the ALS, the diagnosis that people get where they feel like their life is ending. How? Challenging is that for you to work with?

Jessica Flanagan [00:31:57] Well, you just said so I follow what my clients say really closely. And so what you just said is I got an A+ diagnosis and my life is ending. And so I would stick with that and like, OK, why would have you decided? And so then again, that would be an individual thing. And so I’d start going and looking at the things that happened to us that are presenting us with gifts can help free us from our perception and our relationship to the suffering that we’re experiencing. It might not mean that we stop suffering, but what we do is we start reworking the relationship that we have to our suffering and what we think that that means.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:32:41] You know, I’ve watched a handful of people really go through cancer, and it’s really painful to watch a family as their young son is diagnosed or, you know, my own personal mother passed away of cancer and it’s so. Hard to make sense out of that suffering and watching the families go through those things and watching my mother actually personally go through, that was very, very hard for me to watch it. Sometimes I wish I could make sense out of maybe what she went through, but it’s, I think, pretty, pretty powerful stuff. And, you know, it was interesting right before she passed away. She really felt like abortions were a big trigger to getting her to where she was with a stage for ovarian cancer diagnosis. And that was a really important lesson for me 11 years ago to watch her be so profoundly convinced that that was one of the triggers.

Jessica Flanagan [00:33:48] Yeah. And you thought that, wait, you’re like an emotion that she was having. That was one of the triggers or,

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:33:55] yeah, emotionally was huge for her and the trigger, which to me was just very powerful to understand that that was what was going on inside of her and maybe the way that she had felt for many years.

Jessica Flanagan [00:34:11] And so then that’s where we get this gift of. Sometimes it feels like a nudge, and sometimes it feels like a kick. And can we trust when life feels like it’s kicking us to examine things because those are the parts again, like we’ve talked about, they’re going to start feeling like annihilation that might take us out that night and in a way that we don’t want that. Might that how wait, how can I trust something that includes my mom not being with me for the rest of my life? How can I actually make sense a.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:34:48] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think you absolutely go through all those feelings and emotions. And I watch people as in here as they go through those and it just it just makes me ache for them because, you know, you know, when you walk through something like that and you’re doing this work because clearly it powerfully impacted your life, what you went through it, it’s the same thing. You just want to help people and take that pain away because you just don’t want to see that suffer and you don’t want to see them hurt.

Jessica Flanagan [00:35:18] So, so I train practitioners now, and so I’ve started the the co-founder of the Institute of Spiritual Coaching, and I take practitioners through a six months training to help them develop these skills of compassion. So no matter what area they work in, how do they be with their clients? And so it’s like what you’re talking about. And one of the things that I go over quite a bit is how do I as a practitioner, how do I hold the container of unconditional loving? And what happens is that we have to throw out what we think should be the outcome for our clients and instead focus on what the highest good is for them. And it makes you feel like I have had so many challenges in this regard inside of myself because I want everybody to get better and we know that none of us get to leave the planet. We all it all ends here. And so that’s one of the things that I work on a lot with my practitioners is constant vigilance to letting go of intended outcomes and focusing on the unconditional loving because a lot of times clients, patients are having a hard time understanding the meaning. And when we vibrationally hold unconditional loving, knowing that there’s a gift and that they can find meaning and love them through their experience, what it does is it almost like a radio. It changes the frequency available to them. And so by us as practitioners holding the light in that that that frequency for them, it makes it more of an available option to them to choose and do that as well. And then it also lets the universe do its work to provide the the good lesson plans for us as humans, we have to grapple with. Sometimes it includes suffering, sometimes people we love get taken away from us. Sometimes there’s natural disasters. So it’s a lot, but I feel like that is really where medicine is going, especially with everything that we’re seeing coming up, challenging us. Does that make sense?

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:37:33] Absolutely. I mean, you cannot separate the emotions they come out. Emotions always come out a treatment. They always come out with autoimmune disease. And you know that there’s a dietary component can certainly help in certain cases. It can definitely make or break the case, but it’s definitely not the end all, be all. And I would say it’s becoming a smaller and smaller percentage as time goes on. What I saw 10 years ago and maybe what I see today are totally different outcomes as it relates to diet and the nutrition protocols I feel like are totally different. And maybe that’s because I’m changing as a practitioner, or maybe because I’ve seen harder cases or what it is, I don’t know, but I definitely see a shift to the emotions. I think people feel disconnected. And I see it just, you know, it could be some of that, I’m not sure or emotions are finally bubbling to the surface. So, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much. Anything else to add?

Jessica Flanagan [00:38:38] We covered a lot of what a great interview. So much

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:38:41] fun. I just always enjoy talking to you. Where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?

Jessica Flanagan [00:38:48] So my new website is Jessica Flanagan.com, and my Instagram is the loving diet. And then if people want to just message me to my email, it’s info at a hippie lifestyle dot com. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Emery.

Dr. Ann-Marie [00:39:08] Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed learning with us today, please give us a five star review. Comment like and share our podcast with your friends and family. As always, if you’d like to learn more information about today’s guest, please head over to FearlessHealthpodcast.com For links to their site and other educational resources.