The Real Reason You’re Not Healing: Beyond Discipline, Into Breakthrough
Episode 273
This episode of Integrative You Radio dives deep into the real reasons some people experience radical health breakthroughs—while others don’t. Dr. Nicole and Dr. Nick get raw and honest about why following every protocol doesn’t guarantee results, why “being the perfect patient” is not the secret, and the three foundational mindset shifts that create true transformation. Through powerful client stories, they unpack the difference between just “feeling better” and actually becoming a new version of yourself. If you’re ready to stop hustling for symptom relief and start building a legacy of health, this one’s for you. #IntegrativeYou #FunctionalMedicine #MindsetHealing #GenerationalHealth #RadicalRemission #BreakthroughHealth #HolisticHealing #WellnessPodcast #HealthTransformation #LegacyHealth 3 Key Takeaways: It’s Not About Discipline—It’s About Mindset: The biggest health breakthroughs come from openness, trust, and having a vision beyond just “feeling better.” Doing all the right things isn’t enough if you’re not willing to think differently. True Healing Demands Vulnerability: Letting go of control, being willing to get uncomfortable, and breaking old patterns (even generational ones) is what actually creates lasting change—not just supplements and protocols. Symptoms Are Feedback, Not Enemies: Your body’s challenges might actually be serving you or teaching you something. The real work is shifting your perspective and asking, “Why do I want to be well—and who am I becoming in the process?” Quotes: “It’s not about being the A student or doing everything perfectly. The people who get the best results are the ones who are open, trust the process, and have a vision beyond just feeling better.” “Sometimes you just need to burn the old template and build from the ground up. Stop fixing. Start building.” Find Integrative You Radio On: Website Youtube Apple Spotify 2 Doctors Committed to Innovating the Healthcare Experience. Integrative You Radio is hosted by husband-an
Topics: healing, integrative, health, unknown, beyond, mindset, real, radio
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## The Real Reason You’re Not Healing: Beyond Discipline, Into Breakthrough
- Mindset shifts for health breakthroughs
- The role of vulnerability in healing
- Transformation beyond symptom relief
- Generational patterns and health
Pull quotes
This is the place where you become limitless. **Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior.
We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare.
If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place, but buckle up because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive. **Unknown:** This is Integrative U Radio.
Transcript
**Unknown:** Welcome to Integrative U Radio, hosted by Dr. Nick Carruthers and yours truly, Dr. Nicole Rivera. This is the place where you become limitless.
**Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior. We are also covering how those topics affect the human and family dynamics. We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare. If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place, but buckle up because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive.
**Unknown:** This is Integrative U Radio. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Integrative U Radio. You guys are so lucky today.
**Unknown:** We have Dr. Nick here . The luckiest. So we, uh, we have survived, um, a month and a half of a newborn, and we are happy to say that we are actually continuing our cadence of our podcasts.
**Unknown:** Uh, with Quentin, who was our first, we, um, we were full year hiatus . We've learned a lot in the past, uh, past timeframe. Yep, that's, that's for sure. Uh, so for those of you that have been following us for a while, and you also follow us on social media, you may have seen one of our amazing case studies that we have posted recently.
**Unknown:** For those of you that have no idea what I'm talking about, that is okay. So essentially, we were working with someone who came to us with very, very severe psoriasis, and we did our thing. We uncovered the root cause, which was a multitude of different things, and this individual had significant, significant progress in six weeks, and actual complete resolution of psoriasis, 30-year long psoriasis, in 12 weeks. And it, it was just so wild to watch how quickly this unfolded, and he's the one who initiated the photos.
**Unknown:** We don't really ask our clients to do that. We're just focused on getting them better. And he took photos of what he looked like, uh, before, and then photos of after. And I remember we were doing his 12-week reevaluation, and he said...
**Unknown:** I go, "How are things going?" And he's like, "It's like it never happened." I was like, kinda like, "Okay." And then he sent the photos, and I was like, "Holy shit." That was my exact response. And so we had the opportunity to use this and showcase it on our social platforms, and it led to a series of inquiries and phone calls. And one of the things that I do is I will hop on our calls just to answer any clinical questions for potential new clients, but it's also because it's a dual interview process. We don't really take anyone, um, because we know that we are looking for individuals and families that are aligned to who we are and what our company stands for, and we also wanna make sure we, we are a fit for them and their expectations.
**Unknown:** So anyway, the whole moral of the story is, is that those phone calls and the conversations that unfolded really led to this podcast. And something that I found mys- self saying to certain individuals is, "Based on where you are at, there is a strong probability that you will not get the same results as this individual in the case study." And they were pretty floored by me saying that. And I, I said, "There are three major components to why this individual had such success in a short amount of time, and it was not because he was disciplined and an A student and did every little thing we told him to do." I mean, he, he did the majority of things we told him to do, but like you said, that's not why he got the results that he did. Yeah, because more recently, we had a similar situation that an individual, you know, followed everything we told them to do, did all of the therapies, you know, was religious with the red light and the detox therapies that we had them doing at home, supplementation, and didn't yield the same type of results in 6 to 12 weeks.
**Unknown:** If anything, felt a bit frustrated with the process because they were kept getting stuck. And the biggest thing we wanna bring to you guys is that it's not about going balls to the wall because we work with a lot of people from New York, New Jersey, and, you know, they have these strong personalities. They wanna take the bull by the horns, and they're like, "Just tell me what to do, and I'll do it." And that's great. There is a level of discipline that will yield success in your health in a variety of areas of life, but there are other foundational components that are really what's going to lead to long-term outcomes, long-term success.
**Unknown:** It's, it's like the, the idea of, of compounding on a strong foundation.And so Nick, you can tell me if you, one, want to elaborate on these or you feel like there was other components. But to me, some of the, the three core things that led to this individual's success in his health outcomes was one, openness. He had a very open mind, open to all possibilities, open to even the idea that this might not work. He wasn't putting pressure on this has to work.
**Unknown:** He's just like, "I'm here. I've definitely tried things. I am getting nowhere, and I am open to new ideas, new possibilities. I am open to the idea that this isn't even psoriasis, that this might be something fucking else.
**Unknown:** I don't, I don't know. I just am looking for direction and help." Which leads to the second, which was trust. And I wanna be very clear on what I mean by this. He relinquished control because people say, "No, I trust you.
**Unknown:** That's why I'm on this phone call with you." But they will not always relinquish control. They still need to be in control of aspects of their healing, and they don't surrender to the possibilities that maybe you're gonna start supplements and maybe you're gonna feel like shit. Maybe you're going to start a detox protocol, and maybe you're gonna gain a couple pounds because you're gonna have all of this inflammation that's going to increase before it decreases. And you, you're relinquishing the idea that I'm gonna control every little aspect of this, and that I'm gonna roll with the good and the bad, and I'm gonna trust in how you're guiding me and what you're telling me.
**Unknown:** The last one that I think is one of the most important is a vision beyond feeling better, a vision of being better, not just feeling better. This was an individual... We ask this question consistently on our getting acquainted calls. "Why do you wanna be better?" "I just wanna feel better." That's not good enough.
**Unknown:** That's not good enough, I'm saying for us. It's not good enough to be the catalyst to healing. If you know how you're gonna use your health, you're gonna use your healthier brain, your healthier body, your healthier mind, that's where you're gonna have more success. It's the vision beyond the vision.
**Unknown:** And he had a vision of who he was gonna be for his family as a dad, as a husband when he was better. And what's actually fucking awesome is I just talked to him the other day, and his wife actually chimed in and she said, um... I'm so emotional easy, so I could get teary-eyed right now. Mm-hmm.
**Unknown:** But she's like, "I was watching him in the pool," because they went on a vacation together. And I... And she's like, "I realized that we would have been robbed of this experience, but because he's feeling better, he can move. He couldn't move 'cause his skin would crack and he would bleed.
**Unknown:** Um, and the fact that he's in the pool, not ashamed of his body, playing with our kids w- was one of the most amazing moments of my life." And that was really fucking cool to hear. Yeah. It's, uh... I haven't heard that, that, that before.
**Unknown:** That's pretty awesome. Um, you know, for, for him, you know, so three things, the openness, the trust, and the vision beyond feeling better, um, but more just being better. And I don't disagree with any of those. Um, you know, it was...
**Unknown:** And I think it's probably, for him, it was created in that order. I don't know if you said that specifically or not. No. Um, but we...
**Unknown:** Initially, he came in with that openness, and that was, that was what he had, which was amazing because, you know, most people when they come, they, they wanna get back to a point in their life of where they were, and that's always a downfall because- Yeah ... anytime that we go backwards to who we were, well, that was the start of who we became. So if you're trying to ever get back to where you were in life, it's always gonna be a downfall because that was a part of creating who you are today. So he was open initially from the standpoint to what do I have to do?
**Unknown:** What do I have to be? What do I have to learn? Like, he was just open, like you said, to everything and through that, he didn't feel better. He became a different human being, which allowed him to change, which allowed him to feel better, which is a completely different scenario.
**Unknown:** So it was that openness and then, you know, how we explain everything going through the psychosomatic aspects and connecting and challenging his old belief patterns that had been a part of creating that old version of himself that was creating that breakdown of the body to, to challenge him to see different, and then to become that different human, you know, allowed himTo then have different experiences, like you said, going on vacation and being able to go in a pool, probably chlorine that's not actually that great for your skin. But he was strong enough and resilient enough, not that, you know, he did things for his body, but he really understood that his body was just a, a tool for him to be able to feel how well his mind was doing. 'Cause it's your mind that dictates, 99.9%, dictates the expression of the body. Mm-hmm.
**Unknown:** And it was- Which is gonna be an interesting story that we're gonna get into momentarily. Nick doesn't even know where I'm going with this, by the way. We never talk before these podcasts. Yeah.
**Unknown:** It's... And it works better, better than- It's real and raw. And that, that was... It was all of that, that education.
**Unknown:** And even going through what some people would talk about, like, the woo-woo aspects, but having it be able to be backed by science, and understanding... To him, understanding how powerful the mind is. And once he understood that and had the tools to be able to utilize the mind in a better, more efficient way for himself, well, then the body was directed and responded accordingly. And- Mm-hmm ...
**Unknown:** that actually was a part of building the trust. And then, like you talked about, a vision beyond a vision, once we helped him see that, that's what connects with your spirit. And, you know, we've all heard of body, mind, spirit, but your spirit guides the mind, and the mind directs the body, and it's the flow of energy above, down, inside out. So once we helped him really understand and how to connect with the three tools that we have to experience life, the, the spirit, the mind, and the body, and to use those tools efficiently to serve himself, well, then his quality of life just got better.
**Unknown:** And it just keeps getting better. One thing I wanna say about what you're describing that I think is really important, um, a- and it goes along with everything that we mentioned with the, the three keys to success, the openness, trust, and vision beyond the vision, but when we started to do the work with him, this is part of that relinquishing control. He was willing to be extremely, extremely vulnerable when we were helping to do the work around releasing things, past experiences, emotional adversities, traumas, if you wanna call them that, that were experienced in the past that were a contributing factor to the first time that he had skin issues, which was literally as a small child. But he was not coming from a place of such significant guilt and shame that he was not willing to be vulnerable.
**Unknown:** He was willing to be vulnerable with experiences that he had that, that allowed him... Again, this is going back to that openness. It was like, "If this is gonna help me, I'm willing to go there." And, and that's not something that we experience often. We've actually modified how we do our onboarding process, w- essentially the process where, you know, we, we figure everything out, and we've modified that so that we could dig a bit deeper when it comes to experiences all the way down to childhood that could be contributing to the compounding of decreased health or health issues.
**Unknown:** And it's because sometimes, you know, you see people hit a plateau and, you know, people are not willing to relinquish that control, or they're not willing to be vulnerable enough based off of guilt and shame that they have from past experiences in order to break through that glass ceiling. And, and I do think that that was another factor in why he was able to elevate his mind so quickly, because he broke the chains of the past through the work that we do. Yeah. It's...
**Unknown:** I mean, I don't know how deep you want me to get. As usual, I like to go- ... deeper than people give a, an F about. Um, but it's, you know...
**Unknown:** The quantum part of life is, you know, there's the past, there's the present, and there's the future, but they're all happening at the same time. So we can, we can only... We're dictated by our past and our future. And a simple way to put it is, like you were talked about, it's like y- you have to, quote unquote, "heal the past." But healing the past, the, the funny part about it is there's really nothing to heal, 'cause the past was actually perfect.
**Unknown:** And once we can see it for being perfect, well, then we're actually just grateful for it because we've grown our awareness and changed our perception to not be a victim of it, but to know how to actually use it to serve ourselves. So there's not really anything to heal, um, which is the interesting part of everybody's trying to heal the past right now, and 'cause that just means you're a victim. So that, that lets him, quote unquote, "have"- You just fucking mic dropped that real quick. We're gonna move on.
**Unknown:** That, that lets... That gave him the freedom to be able to move forward. But if you don't have clarity and a sense of direction, quote unquote, "your future," you know, there's no... You're gonna be dictated by your past.
**Unknown:** You live in the past then. You're gonna be dictated- It's... Yeah ... b- by the past, but also you're gonna be dictated by your environment, the people around you- Yeah ...
**Unknown:** the space around you, everything, unless you have such a strong sense of direction of your future. Mm-hmm. And that's the vision beyond the vision. So, so once he released himself from the shackles of the past and he actually gave himself a new foundation in the future, well, then he could just be present with himself, and he could be present with his kids, uh, 'cause he didn't have the fear.
**Unknown:** He didn't have the worry. Mm-hmm. Wasn't carrying, like, any of that shame or guilt. Like-None of all of that is just a feedback mechanism that we're not grounded and authentic to who we truly are.
**Unknown:** But once- It's interesting this phra- uh, phrase saying that I just heard that is so congruent with what you're saying is, stop fixing and start building. You know, i- if we could spend a lifetime trying to fix ourselves or fix the past or, or fix and, and improve the old template, but sometimes you just need to burn the fucking template and build from the ground up. And, and I, I say that just- Everything's a, everything's a half-truth, yes. Yeah.
**Unknown:** Um- But, but I, you know, I just ... For some people, that will resonate really well and f- and for some it won't. But, you know, sometimes when you just feel so fucking stuck and paralyzed by your pa- past, like, just understanding that, you know, everything could change tomorrow if you, if you choose that. You know, if you say, "I'm fucking done being this.
**Unknown:** I'm done feeling sorry for myself. I'm done being, being the victim," you know, you know, just i- you don't always have to have this master plan and do fucking 25 inner child healings. Like, you know? Like, sometimes you can just make a very bold choice in your life and start being a, that new version of yourself.
**Unknown:** So I'm not saying that's easy by any means. All small growth is a balance of challenge and support. So it's, it's, it's never, it's never a one-sided view of, you know, not working in the past and only working in the future, or only working in the future and not the past. Yeah.
**Unknown:** Um, it, it's really just about getting both to a point where your past and your future are serving you, so you can just be here now in the present. Um, and that's what, that's what actually allows one to truly heal because that's when they're ... The only time you're truly present is when you're grateful. Yeah.
**Unknown:** Um, and when you're grateful, that's, that's when you're present with your kids. That's when the wife sees that everything's perfect and she has tears of gratitude to, to seeing that there's absolutely nothing wrong with this path. This helped him become the best version of himself- Yeah ... which is beautiful, which is why she had tears.
**Unknown:** Um, yeah, it's ... That's, that's where we ... That's the goal in life. Well, because we always want to ground this into reality, we want to be transparent about the fact that this individual got fan-fucking-tastic results, but we also have worked with another case of, it wasn't technically psoriasis, but it was extreme, extreme, um, eczema.
**Unknown:** It was a young girl, and she got no results. And we want to share this primarily because we're talking about how this individual, b- you know, the vision beyond the vision, relinquishing control being a, a core factor, and the fact that he was able to free his mind, elevate his mind, which also played a role in his physical body healing. Don't get me wrong, we did a variety of physical types of therapies, detox therapies, and it was the two worlds coming together that yielded the results that it did. And so with this individual that didn't get results, it was a young girl, so, you know, we definitely ...
**Unknown:** There, there was a little bit of a struggle with being able to pull things out that were of value just because of the emotional maturity. But essentially what it came down to is, yes, there were physical components. Yes, there was mold toxicity. Yes, there was gut dysbiosis.
**Unknown:** There were all of those things. And, you know, those things when it comes to our protocols, that's the easy part to be honest. And then there was the mental/emotional. And what was on the surface, she was struggling in school.
**Unknown:** She was struggling with being bullied. She was struggling to the point that they, um, moved her to a different school because there were girls that were bullying her. She was getting into physical fights at school, et cetera. And so when we started to ask better questions, one of the things that she said, and it was very quick and very almost nonchalant, was, "Well, I rather have skin issues so that I'm the one who gets bullied, as long as everyone leaves my brother and sister alone." And essentially we say this, and this can sometimes trigger people, that sometimes our health is at a standstill and we're in poor health because we're using it.
**Unknown:** And some people are using poor health because it gets them love. They, they get a lot of attention, they get a lot of support because they are the sick one. Some people, they get some type of financial support because they are unable to work, they're unable to function. So sometimes there's those types of scenarios.
**Unknown:** But then there are other types of scenarios. There are infinite amounts of scenarios. And for this specific individual, she was creating a, a protection to her siblings, and she was essentially using h- her physical skin issues as a way to create a distraction from her brothers, brother and sister being bullied.And this was something that she was just not willing to work on. And mom and dad actually moved her multiple times to multiple different schools because she was consistently getting into fights and being bullied, and it was all because of her skin.
**Unknown:** So they were focused on the skin being the problem, but it was actually the mindset of this individual wanting to protect her brother and sister that was a contributor to the skin, and obviously the external circumstances. I'm not gonna get deeper than that 'cause it goes a lot deeper. Share, share one l- level of deepness. The foundation of the programs of children are, for the most part, developed by, you know, the, the parents.
**Unknown:** More than that, you know, there is the school system, depending on how young they are, and there's, you know, religious systems, depending on how young they start. There's a lot of different systems. Um, but it's more of the family system that's probably the biggest, uh, driver of, uh, belief systems for, for children. And it, it's not always the same belief system as the parents.
**Unknown:** You know, sometimes it's, it's the exact opposite. Um, but it's, it's those drivers that either create, you know, the value or the void, um, based on the perception of the child, uh, based on pain or pleasure of what's happening, um, within that one. But then there's the interesting aspect of looking at it through genetics and, you know, we had a conversation the other day, is that, you know, you know, half of my gene, half of your gene are in our children. And, you know, my dad, your dad, roughly a quarter of their genes are in our children.
**Unknown:** And when... The way genes work is there's always a suppression, repression. You know, it's like, are, is that gene dormant or is it active, uh, expressing itself? And, you know, sometimes there's, the things are skipped, generationals, traits, et cetera, um, that we can actually physically map out looking at the genome.
**Unknown:** But a lot of those suppressions and activations is all based on the mental perception, um, because that's what actually goes through and creates that first, um, actual energetic charge, and it's the charge that is either activating or making a gene dormant or not. Mm-hmm. So it's, it's the charge, but the charge is actually a mental charge, and that's based off of did, was this beneficial or was this, you know, detrimental? Yeah.
**Unknown:** And, and that is passed along generation to generation to generation. Mm-hmm. So part of it is, you know, how she was looking at and coming up as a victim, but getting deeper into it, there was actually more of a, a history, a lineage of that belief system coming into play for her to have the opportunity to actually heal generational shitty belief systems before her- Yeah ... um, which is crazy.
**Unknown:** Well, it's interesting you say that too because there was some level of skin issues in multiple generations from her mom to grandma, but nothing was severe. But there was that expression, and then obviously there is the behavioral, uh, expression generation to generation. Um, so yes, that's the thing is, you know, I think the way that the world in conventional medicine is looking at genetics is, is such a skewed perspective because it, it's essentially creating the idea that, you know, bad genes, bad luck, or, you know, bad genes, bad health. And really, it's all about the expression because things could be activated, things can be silenced, and that has so much to do with how you think and also your environment and what you put into your body.
**Unknown:** So there's a lot of variables that can put you back into the driver's seat of your health outcomes regardless of your, your genome and, and the, you know, the bad family genes, quote unquote. So what we wanna kind of circle this back to is, number one, there are those three foundational factors that you need to think about when it comes to why you might be stuck in your health or, you know, why you're not making any progress with your health. You know, do you have an openness to the possibilities? Are you relinquishing control or are you still trying to control in some capacity?
**Unknown:** And is that control paralyzing you? And one of the big ones is, do you have a vision beyond less symptoms? Do you have a vision of being a better version of yourself with your new reclaimed... I don't wanna even say...
**Unknown:** So either your new health or your reclaimed health. And, you know, I really, I think the final significant question is, what if your body's symptoms are actually serving you in some capacity at this time? You know, is it trying to tell you something? Is it trying to open your eyes to something?
**Unknown:** Is it trying to deliver a lesson to you? And-You know, and it is, is healing really truly just about discipline? You know, from the 10, over 10 years that we've been doing this, this isn't about being the A student. This isn't necessarily just about I did all the supplements and I did the diet and I cut all the things out, because there are people that have done that and got no results or limited results.
**Unknown:** So this isn't about doing more, and you've probably heard us say this before. This isn't always about doing more. It's the same idea in business. It, just because you do more or you hustle harder doesn't make you wealthier.
**Unknown:** Some of the wealthiest people in the world, it's because of how they think. And so really what it comes down to is how do you think about yourself? How do you think about your health? You know, why do you want to be well?
**Unknown:** Nick's pause. Yes. Okay, I was like, I was like, I don't know if he's ha- he's got something brewing over there. No, it's...
**Unknown:** I mean, life is a feedback mechanism, you know? I, I try to look objectively as possible because for the most part, what I do all day with people is subjective, deal with their subjectivity. Um, and the only way around that is to be like a scientist and be truly objective. So the more objective we are, quote-unquote, the more truth, uh, we have, the more information we have that's balanced on both sides of that spectrum.
**Unknown:** And when we can see everything as just a feedback mechanism, well, then nothing's really honestly like good or bad. It's just a feedback and saying, "Hey, is this working for me or is this not working for me?" And if, if you weren't so attached to it, hence Buddha says all of our suffering is due to our attachments, if we weren't attached to it and we're just like, "Okay, I need to change this to get a different result, a different feeling," the feeling is just the effect from really our mindset, um, but our thoughts. So if something's not working out, well, we need to change our thought which dictates our actions, and our actions is what gives us the feeling. And then if that feeling's working out for us, let's continue and do more of that.
**Unknown:** If it's not working out for us, well, we need to go back up that river and figure out what thoughts are causing us, um, suffering. 100%. All right, guys, well, we hope you enjoyed this, and we want to just reiterate true health is not about being perfect or being a perfect patient, being the A student, and this is really just leading with creating a relationship with a doctor practice team that you can have enough trust to relinquish that control. You have the vision that is bigger than resolution of symptoms and being open, and also that openness is, is about trying to remove some of the things that are creating fear, AKA your Google searches and your WebMD searches.
**Unknown:** Oh, we're gonna end it there. That's a whole nother podcast. We're gonna end it there. Um, but if you guys resonate with this and you are looking for a different healthcare experience, you know where to find us.
**Unknown:** Check us out. You'll have all of the links below, and we thank you guys for being here. We thank you so much for being an avid listener of Integrative U Radio, formerly known as Integrative Wellness Radio. We appreciate all of your support.
**Unknown:** We love your comments. Please visit us on social media as well as our website to see all of the fun things happening behind the scenes and the new amazing content and courses that is being rolled out on a monthly basis. We hope to see you there.
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
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