Take Your Power Back

Listen to the full episode.

If you’re in body burnout, it can feel like your life has shrunk down to symptoms.

You wake up tired. You push through. You crash. You try something new. You get a little hope. Then the symptoms flare again… and suddenly you’re back in the spiral of Googling, second-guessing, and wondering what you’re missing.

And underneath all of that?

A nervous system that’s on high alert.

In Episode 186, Chris from Chris and Filly Functional Medicine teaches a foundational SPARK lesson from the Ending Body Burnout Method called “Take Your Power Back”. It’s designed to help you get crystal clear on what you can control, what you can’t, and why this one shift can change everything in your healing journey.

Because when your focus is stuck on what’s outside your control, your body stays braced.

You feel anxious, overwhelmed, and stuck.

And that’s often when people start practitioner-hopping, course-hopping, diet-hopping… desperately looking for someone to “fix” them, instead of coming back to the one place real power lives:

Your own agency.

This lesson is a loving circuit-breaker. Not a pep talk. Not a “just think positive” moment.

A practical, nervous-system-friendly way to shrink your worry back into the zone where you actually have influence… so you can stop spiralling, stop procrastinating, and start making consistent progress towards healing.

Why Body Burnout Makes You Feel Powerless (Even When You’re Doing “All the Right Things”)

Body burnout can mess with your sense of control.

You can be eating well, taking supplements, trying to sleep more, doing the “right” workouts, seeing practitioners… and still feel like your body is doing whatever it wants.

That experience can create a specific kind of stress: health uncertainty.

And health uncertainty is a big driver of nervous system activation.

From a holistic health and integrative medicine perspective, your body doesn’t heal best when it’s in constant threat mode. When you’re scanning for danger, obsessing over symptoms, and trying to predict outcomes, your system stays switched on.

Which can affect:

• sleep quality and recovery
• digestion and gut function
• inflammation and immune resilience
• hormones, mood and energy production
• your ability to feel calm, present, and consistent

This is why burnout functional medicine isn’t only about protocols. It’s also about the internal environment your body is living in.

And one of the fastest ways to shift that internal environment is to reclaim your power.

Control vs Uncontrollable: The Hidden Driver of Anxiety and Overwhelm

Chris teaches that one of the most important skills in healing is learning to separate:

What you can control
from
What you can’t control

This sounds simple, but it’s not always easy in real life — especially when you’re tired, emotional, and desperate to feel better.

When you focus on things you can’t control, your nervous system reads it as danger.

Because the brain hates uncertainty.

It tries to solve it by thinking harder, researching more, planning more, and scanning more.

That’s when you get:

• anxiety and overwhelm
• procrastination (because it feels too big)
• start/stop healing cycles
• perfectionism and all-or-nothing behaviour
• a constant sense of “I’m behind” or “I’m failing”

And it’s not because you’re lazy.

It’s because your system is overloaded.

The Start/Stop Cycle: Why You Keep Falling Off the Wagon

If you’ve ever felt like you’re either “all in” on healing… or completely off track, this episode will land.

When you’re focused on outcomes you can’t control (like being symptom-free by a certain date), you tend to swing between:

• intense effort (trying to force results)
• then exhaustion and collapse (because it’s unsustainable)

That’s the start/stop cycle.

And it can make you feel like you can’t trust yourself.

But often, it’s not a character issue. It’s a strategy issue.

Chris invites you to detach from obsessing over outcomes and reattach to what you can control: the steps, the process, and your daily choices.

That is where real progress lives.

Your “Four Powers”: The Only Things You Truly Control

A core part of “Take Your Power Back” is identifying your four powers — the only things you truly control.

Even without listing them word-for-word from the episode, the principle is clear: your power is not in controlling the world, other people, or timelines.

Your power is in controlling your inputs.

Your choices.

Your attention.

Your actions.

Your response.

This is a root cause medicine approach applied to your mindset and nervous system: instead of trying to force the body to comply, you create the conditions where healing naturally becomes more likely.

Why This Helps Your Nervous System Settle

When you return to what you can control, your body gets a message:

“I’m not helpless.”

“I have options.”

“I can take one step.”

That message alone can reduce stress chemistry.

It can soften the urgency.

It can bring you out of spiralling and into grounded action.

And that calmer state is not just “nice emotionally” — it supports whole body health.

Detaching From Outcomes (Without Giving Up)

A lot of people hear “detach from outcomes” and think it means you don’t care.

That’s not what Chris is teaching.

It’s not about lowering your standards or resigning yourself to feeling unwell.

It’s about shifting your focus from:

“I need to be symptom-free by X date”
to
“What can I do today that supports healing?”

Outcomes are influenced by many variables — some within your control, some not.

But your daily choices are within your influence.

And consistent daily choices are what create momentum.

This is health optimisation in a sustainable, non-obsessive way.

Awareness + Intention: Catch the Spiral Early

Chris also teaches using awareness + intention to catch yourself when you’re spiralling into the uncontrollable — and bring your focus back to your powers.

This is such an important skill because spirals often start small.

A symptom flare.

A bad sleep.

A comment from someone.

A stressful email.

A social event you don’t feel up to.

And suddenly your mind is off and running: What if I never get better? What if I’m doing it wrong? What if I’ve missed something?

Awareness is noticing: “I’m in the uncontrollable.”

Intention is choosing: “I’m coming back to what I can influence.”

That might look like:

• choosing your next meal with care (not perfection)
• doing a gentle walk instead of pushing through a hard workout
• getting outside for light and air
• sending one message to ask for support
• going to bed earlier
• doing one small nervous system practice
• booking the next right appointment (instead of ten new ones)

Small steps. Consistent steps. That’s the work.

Diagnosing Your Current Stressors (Including Health Stress)

Another key part of this episode is learning to diagnose your current stressors — including health stress — so you can take your power back and create a calmer nervous system state for healing.

This is preventative health and holistic wellness in action.

Because stress isn’t only “too much work”.

Stress can be:

• uncertainty about your health
• feeling behind in life
• financial pressure
• relationship tension
• decision fatigue
• unresolved grief
• perfectionism and self-criticism
• constantly trying to keep everyone happy

When you name the stressors clearly, you can stop treating them like a vague cloud and start responding with practical support.

That’s how you move from stuckness to agency.

How This Fits Into the Ending Body Burnout Method

This “Take Your Power Back” lesson is part of the SPARK work inside the Ending Body Burnout Method — because healing isn’t only physical.

Yes, functional nutrition matters.

Yes, testing and protocols can matter.

But if your nervous system is constantly activated by fear, urgency, and obsession over outcomes, the body can struggle to settle into repair.

At Chris and Filly Functional Medicine, the approach to burnout functional medicine is holistic: physical + emotional + subconscious patterns, all working together.

That’s what creates real, lasting change.

Ready to Take Your Power Back?

If you’re not sure where to begin, take the Ending Body Burnout Assessment to get clarity on what might be driving your symptoms and patterns right now.

If you’d like to explore support options, you can find out how to work with Chris and Filly.

And if you’re feeling called to an immersive reset and deeper nervous system safety work, Unmask & Shine Retreat is open for bookings — book in by 12 December to receive the $500 early-bird discount.

If you’re ready for a deep, structured approach that supports both the physical and deeper root patterns of body burnout, you can learn more about the Ending Body Burnout Method.

Because the goal isn’t to control everything.

The goal is to stop leaking energy into what you can’t control… and bring it back to the place where healing actually happens:

Your choices.
Your focus.
Your next step.
Your power.

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.