COVID-19 Trauma - Part 2: Eliminating Negative Experiences

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If you listened to last week’s conversation and thought, “Okay… that explains a lot,” you’re going to love this follow-up. Because understanding trauma is one thing. Actually shifting what your nervous system is still holding onto is another.

In Episode 158, Chris and Filly go practical. They walk you through a powerful process designed to help “eliminate” negative experiences from your mind and body — not by pretending they didn’t happen, but by changing the way the experience is coded in your neurology. This matters for Ending Body Burnout because unresolved distress can keep the body stuck in survival mode, fuelling chronic fatigue, gut issues, anxiety, insomnia, body pain, and that sense of being “on edge” even when life looks fine on paper.

This episode includes a replay from a live root-cause workshop taught inside the Ending Body Burnout Method, and it gives you a real taste of the deeper work that sits alongside functional nutrition and functional testing. It’s the part that many people miss in health and wellness: the mind-body coding that can keep symptoms switched on.

How Distressing Events Get “Coded” in the Nervous System

A key idea in this episode is that your brain doesn’t store memories like a filing cabinet. It stores experiences with sensory detail — what you saw, what you heard, what you felt, and what you decided it meant.

In mind body medicine, this is important because the nervous system responds to internal representations as if they’re real. That means a memory can trigger the same stress response as the original event — even years later — if it’s still coded in a high-intensity way.

Chris and Filly explain this through the concept of submodalities: the qualities of your internal experience, like:

• how big the “movie” is in your mind
• how close or far away it feels
• how bright or dark it is
• whether it’s sharp or blurry
• whether you hear sounds, voices, or tone
• where you feel it in your body

These details might sound subtle, but they can be the difference between “I remember that happened” and “my body reacts like it’s happening again”.

This is one reason people can be doing all the right things in burnout functional medicine — diet, supplements, rest, exercise — and still feel stuck. If the nervous system is still running old threat coding, the body can keep producing symptoms as protection.

Why Negative Experiences Often Get Stored in “Movie Size”

Chris and Filly describe how distressing events often get coded in “movie size” — big, immersive, close, intense. When the brain stores an event like that, it’s easier for the nervous system to re-enter the emotional and physiological state of the moment.

Think of it like this: if your brain plays the memory on a giant IMAX screen right in front of your face, with loud sound and strong body sensations, your system is more likely to interpret it as danger. If the memory is smaller, further away, dimmer, quieter, and less embodied, it’s more likely to be stored as “past”.

This is not about erasing your history. It’s about changing the intensity of the coding so your body can stop reacting as if the event is still present.

That’s a huge piece of healing naturally — because the body can’t fully repair while it’s still bracing.

Altering the Memory to Reduce and “Eliminate” the Charge

The practice Chris and Filly teach is essentially a way to alter the memory coding so the emotional charge reduces — sometimes dramatically.

When the charge reduces, people often notice immediate shifts in:

• body tension
• breathing depth
• heart rate and calm
• gut sensations
• mental clarity
• emotional reactivity
• symptom intensity

This is why integrative medicine is so powerful when it includes both physiology and neurology. You’re not only supporting the body with functional nutrition and protocols — you’re also switching off the internal triggers that keep the stress response active.

In root cause medicine terms, you’re not just managing symptoms. You’re changing the driver.

Using the Process to Reprogram Core Beliefs (and Switch Off Symptoms)

One of the most exciting parts of this episode is the link between distressing events and unconscious beliefs.

When something painful happens, the mind often makes meaning fast. Especially if you were young, unsupported, or overwhelmed. Beliefs can form like:

• “I’m not safe.”
• “I’m alone.”
• “I have to be in control.”
• “It’s not safe to relax.”
• “I can’t trust my body.”
• “I have to be perfect.”

These beliefs don’t just live in your thoughts. They live in your nervous system. They shape your habits, your relationships, your boundaries, and your stress physiology.

Chris and Filly explain how this process can be used not only to process past distressing events, but also to reprogram unconscious core beliefs — and when beliefs shift, symptoms can switch off because the body no longer needs to protect you in the same way.

This is a big part of holistic wellness: healing from within isn’t only about what you eat or what supplements you take. It’s also about what your nervous system believes is true.

Real-Time Changes: “Magical” Shifts Seen in Practice

Chris and Filly share that they’ve seen “magical” things change in the moment with this process, including real-time client sharings.

Now, “magical” doesn’t mean random. It often means the nervous system finally got the update it needed.

When the brain stops coding something as present danger, the body can soften. When the body softens, symptoms that were driven by chronic threat can reduce. That can look like:

• a sudden drop in anxiety
• a release of tightness in the chest or throat
• a shift in pain intensity
• a sense of calm that hasn’t been accessible
• a new ability to sleep or digest more easily

In health and wellness, these shifts can feel surprising because we’re taught change must be slow. But nervous system shifts can be fast when the right lever is pulled.

The Guided Process: Follow Along to Eliminate a Negative Experience

A major value of this episode is that Chris and Filly take you through the process in real time, so you can follow along and work with your own negative experience.

If you choose to do this, it’s worth approaching it gently. Pick something that feels workable — not necessarily the biggest trauma of your life on the first go. Your nervous system builds trust through pacing.

As you follow along, you may notice:

• where the memory sits in your body
• what images or sounds come up
• what beliefs appear underneath
• what changes as you adjust the coding

This is mind body medicine in action: you’re working directly with the way your system stores experience.

Troubleshooting When the “Code” Feels Stuck in the Body

Chris and Filly also cover troubleshooting when the code is “stuck” in the body — when you can’t shift it just by changing the mental representation.

That’s important, because many people have a strong somatic component to trauma. The body holds it as tension, nausea, heaviness, pain, or shutdown. When that happens, it can help to bring in body-based support: breath, grounding, movement, touch, slower pacing, or guided facilitation.

This is also why a whole body health approach matters. If your body is depleted, inflamed, under-slept, or running on stress hormones, it can be harder to process anything. Supporting the physiology with functional nutrition and recovery habits can make the nervous system work more effective — and vice versa.

Where This Fits in the Bigger Picture of Ending Body Burnout

If you’re trying to heal chronic fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, gut issues, or body pain, it can be frustrating when you’ve “done everything” and still feel stuck.

This is where Chris and Filly’s approach at Chris and Filly Functional Medicine is different. They look at the root-root cause: the physical drivers and the deeper nervous system and unconscious patterning that keeps symptoms switched on.

That’s exactly what the Ending Body Burnout Method is designed to do — blend functional medicine and functional nutrition with the deeper rewiring work so your body can finally trust it’s safe to heal naturally.

A Gentle Next Step If You Want Support

If this episode resonates and you’d like support connecting the dots between your symptoms, your stress history, and what your nervous system is still holding, you’re warmly invited to book a Discovery Call or connect the dots with us. It’s a calm, no-pressure way to explore what might help you move forward.

Listen to the full episode.

Chris & Filipa Bellette are the Founders of multi award-winning health practice Chris & Filly Functional Medicine, which is best known for ending body burnout (for good!) in “busy” people with energy, mood and gut issues. They have worked with over 3,000+ burned-out clients in the past combined 30+ years, with their own passion for ending body burnout coming from their own personal experience of body, mind, family & business breakdown, after a prolonged period of physical and mental stress.

Filipa is an accredited Clinical Nutritionist, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Coach & Trauma Therapist. She is also a Ph.D. Scholar, author & regularly featured the media, such as Forbes, Body+Soul and The Daily Telegraph. Chris is a Burnout Recovery Coach & an accredited Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner, with a Bachelor of Human Movement Science. He has existed in high-performance realms of the sporting (think national athlete) & business industries and knows what it takes to get out of hustle-and-grind culture to thriving. 

They were recently awarded as the Tasmanian State Winner & National Finalist for the Telstra Best of Business Awards, and Winner of the Australian Women’s Small Business Champion Awards.