Why You're so F*in Tired
Episode 231
In this episode of Integrative You Radio, Dr. Nicole Rivera tackles the pervasive issue of chronic fatigue and its deeper implications. Sharing personal insights from her recent move to Italy, she discusses how exhaustion often signals the body processing past stresses and misalignments. Dr. Rivera emphasizes the importance of listening to your body's feedback and understanding underlying causes, whether biochemical or lifestyle-related. She illustrates how making peace with certain life decisions can significantly alleviate physical symptoms. Additionally, Dr. Rivera highlights the importance of identifying and aligning with your core values to reclaim energy and achieve fulfillment. She shares her journey in discovering her values, such as leadership, teaching, fun-loving spirit, and expansive adventure, and how living out of alignment with these values contributed to her fatigue. This episode encourages listeners to reflect on their own values and make bold, values-based decisions to enhance their quality of life. Tune in to learn more! What you’ll learn: Listen to Your Body's Feedback: Chronic fatigue often signals the body processing past stresses and imbalances, which can provide insights for healing and growth. Align with Your Core Values: Identifying and living in accordance with your core values can significantly boost your energy and overall fulfillment. Make Bold, Values-Based Decisions: Making decisions based on your true values, even if challenging, can lead to a more purposeful and energized life. Quotes: "I'm more scared to stay stuck than I am to make bold decisions." - Dr. Nicole| "If you had to get real fucking honest with yourself about why you're tired, it's because you're doing a bunch of shit you don't want to do."- Dr. Nicole Curious about Integrative You? Dive into Integrative You Radio with Dr. Nicole Rivera, where she explores the intersections of holistic health, personal growth, and living in alignment with your core values. Each episode
Topics: values, body, integrative, fatigue, unknown, tired, nicole, core
Key takeaways from this episode
- Chronic fatigue is often your body's way of processing unresolved stress and imbalances.
- Pay close attention to your body's signals as they offer valuable insights for healing.
- Identifying and living in alignment with your core values is key to increasing energy and life satisfaction.
- Making decisive, values-driven choices, even when difficult, can lead to a more purposeful and energized existence.
- The connection between stress, misalignment, and physical fatigue
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. **Unknown:** But buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive.
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.
**Unknown:** But buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive. This is Integrative U Radio. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Integrative U.
**Unknown:** Dr. Nicole rolling solo. Third one in a row. And I'm here to talk about why you're so fucking tired.
**Unknown:** We're just gonna, we're just gonna start there. So I was thinking about this a lot. When I... So for those of you that don't know, Dr.
**Unknown:** Nick, myself, our son, we moved to Italy recently. And when we got here, holy shit, I was so tired. Like, like barely could function tired. And I was like, "Oh my gosh," like, "what is this?
**Unknown:** Is this jet lag?" Like, what? Like, "Is this gonna go away?" And obviously I have lots of tools, but I was, I was in a different mindset. I was thinking, "What is this feedback?" Like, "What is this telling me?" And this is something that I actually bring to the forefront for a lot of my clients. I always ask and if they talk about pain, they talk about, you know, "Oh, I started my supplements and my...
**Unknown:** I'm, I'm having, like, light-headed dizziness," or, "I did this therapy and, you know, I'm, I'm having a little bit of gut distress." And I always invite them to think about, what is your body processing and/or what is the feedback? Because not everything that's uncomfortable is actually bad. Sometimes your body is just working through some shit, and it's processing something that has actually been holding you back in your life, been holding you back mentally, emotionally, physically, and your body sometimes has to work through that to release it. So I always ask people, you know, "What?
**Unknown:** What is it telling you?" You know, "What... w- If you had to sit and think about it, you know, what is the feedback from what you're experiencing?" And in the event that it's actually something physical or biochemical, we obviously intervene, and we troubleshoot accordingly. But it's funny to me because some people within 24 hours, they're like, "You know, I've been really thinking about it, and I realize, like, you know, from the last thing that we did or the last session that we had, like, I really have just relinquished this wanting to control X," or, "I really made peace with the idea that, like, this job is not serving me, and I'm ready to take action on, on something new." And then, you know, the ringing in the ear or that stuffy nose or that gut distress dissipates within 24 to 48 hours. And so I always want people to sit back and ask, you know, "What is this?
**Unknown:** Why is this happening?" Especially when you're fucking tired. Because if you had to get real fucking honest with yourself about why you're tired, it's 'cause you're doing a bunch of shit you don't wanna do. And I know that we've all been programmed that that's life. That's what you gotta do.
**Unknown:** And we have a million reasons why we keep doing shit that we don't wanna do. But at the end of the day, you will continue to get the feedback. You're gonna get the feedback until you learn the lesson and you make a fucking change. So when I got here, I...
**Unknown:** It wasn't that I wasn't serving myself. It was just I was processing all of the time that I didn't serve myself, all of the time that I lived to serve everyone else, that I took care of everyone more than I took care of myself. And I literally had like a month that I felt like I was hit by a fucking bus. And so instead of just thinking, "What's wrong with me?" I realized, I'm like, "This is a processing and an integration phase." Because I made the change.
**Unknown:** I took the leap, and I set my life up that was more in alignment with my values, which is what we're gonna talk about. But there was a processing, there was a, a, a release, there was energy that was stuck in every cell, part of my body that had to get expelled out, and it took a fucking month. So yeah, it, it was an experience. But if you're a person that's just living in this chronic fatigue state, you really have to start asking, "What is this?" Because yes, 100%, could it be biochemical?
**Unknown:** 100%. Could it be that you have tons of toxins in your liver and your liver's not working? That will make you tired. If your blood sugar is off the wall because you're not eating properly, you're not eating breakfast, and you're eating l- only one meal a day later in the day, you tend to eat more carbohydrates, your blood sugar is on a rollercoaster ride, you drink coffee all dayThat'll make you tired.
**Unknown:** Your hormones are messed up because your liver and your pancreas are jacked up. Listen to the other podcast. That will make you tired. If you have a bunch of toxins that are burrowed in your lymphatics, your lymph, when it's clogged up with toxins, that's usually when you can't lose weight, it's usually when you have more water retention, rings feel tight, shoes feel tight, you get double chins or a fat neck, people call it.
**Unknown:** You get a lot of like bumps on your bikini line because all those lymph nodes are clogged. You get a lot of ingrown hairs in your armpits 'cause those lymph nodes are clogged. You always feel like you have a moderate sore throat. That's all lymphatic issues.
**Unknown:** 100% those will all create fatigue. But coinciding with that, because I've been doing this 13 years now, coinciding with that is going to be the fact that you're saying yes to shit that doesn't serve you, and then you're biting your, your tongue and you're just like, "Oh, why did I say yes?" And there's this internal dialogue of regret and... But you feel guilted into doing things, which is the lowest vibration emotion that exists. It's literally like being in, in the complete shitter from a mental capacity.
**Unknown:** And you serve other people more than you serve yourself. You're unclear on how to make decisions because you don't know what you value the most, and so you tend to say yes to things that you should be saying no to. So for the person that says, "No, I love helping people," great. That's amazing.
**Unknown:** Help people. Be altruistic and serve others. It feels good. How good does it feel to make a difference in someone's life, to make an impact on the world, to make an impact on a person, to make an impact on a family?
**Unknown:** Like, that feels really good, hence the work that I do. But if there's a level of giving that doesn't feel like a fair exchange, if there is a level of kicking yourself because you're doing something you don't wanna do, that's gonna drain your energy. It's gonna put you in lower vibration states. So if you're like, "What the fuck is she talking about, lower vibration states?" That's fine.
**Unknown:** There is this map of consciousness, that... Consciousness that was created by David Hawkins. He was literally a medical doctor that had a profound experience, and he was able to data-tize, if that's even a word, emotions and, and understand, like, how certain emotional states will affect our body and mind. And essentially, there's this neutral point, and this neutral point is like you're just all...
**Unknown:** You're, you're good. You're neutral. You're not, like, in a very positive mindset, but you're not in a negative mindset. You're just in the middle.
**Unknown:** The negative mindset is, like, anger, fear, resentment, guilt, shame, desire. Desire is like comparing yourself to others, wanting what other people have. And then above that is love and enlightenment, joy, et cetera. So I'm sure that when you are in those shit emotions and you're totally freaked out, you're worried, you're scared, you, you feel guilty, you feel grief, you feel anger, life feels chaotic.
**Unknown:** More shit things happen to you. When you're like, "I feel pretty good," like I'm feeling like I'm really... Like, I have gratitude for my life, or I, I'm enjoying doing X, Y, or Z. Like, I'm, I'm just feel like I'm in a good place.
**Unknown:** You tend to find things go more smoothly, more interesting opportunities come your way. You have better conversations with people. You have better connection with people. Things flow.
**Unknown:** When you're in the lower vibration state, you have a lot more chaos, and it's very easy to get into that place of bad things happen to good people. Life is hard. Life is a struggle. I'll never get out of this.
**Unknown:** So you have to remember, our minds are designed to default into negative thinking because it's a survival mechanism. So back in the day when people lived in Africa and they were in tribes, hunter-gatherers, if they didn't... If they heard something rustling in the bushes, they defaulted into, "Oh shit, protect," because if they didn't default into that, they could wipe out their DNA, their gene pool, they could die. And so the brain created the ego to default into that negative thinking as a protective mechanism.
**Unknown:** But most of us nowadays have not been able... W-we have not been taught to s- to say, "Okay, I just defaulted to protect myself, but I actually am not... I'm not in a posit- position that I'm at risk or I need to be protected. I just need to take this in as information and then be able to deduct it and move forward." So negative thinking for most people completely hijacks their body.
**Unknown:** They get a stomach ache, they get heart palpitations, they get shaky, and it hijacks your biochemistry, and then it hijacks your fucking day, maybe your week, maybe your month. And these are the things that keep us drained, drained, drained, drained, drained. The other interesting thing, I've talked about this idea of values. The way I explain values to people is knowing what you value is a compass of where to say yes in your life and where to say no in your life.
**Unknown:** It's a compass for decision-making because your values dictate who you are at your core.So it dictates who you are in your character, and it also helps you to understand the action-based things that are going to give you more energy opposed to take away your energy. So I'll give you an example. So I- my values, I didn't... It was hard for me to understand in the beginning of how to, how to, how to really nail down my values.
**Unknown:** So I'll say that so that you don't feel like, "Wow, this is... Like how the hell do I know my values?" There... I learned about this idea from Dr. Demartini, and I did my first iteration of my values, and we realized that, you know, some of the things that really gave me a lot of energy was leadership, leading people to a better version of themselves, if that was in my employees, if that was my clients, friends, whomever.
**Unknown:** It was just something that I, I loved doing. I could talk about it all day. I would do it for free, essentially. I always ask people that question, "What would you do for free?
**Unknown:** Like if you did not have to make a living, what would you get up and do every day?" A lot of people don't know the answer to that question. It's why you're fucking tired. Okay, back, back on track here. So leadership, teaching.
**Unknown:** Two things. I taught a webinar every week for a year free because I love teaching, hence I'm on this podcast right now. So those were really clear, and then my other two values were really hard to come up with, and I had all these different iterations of it, and it just didn't make sense. But I knew something was off because I was tired.
**Unknown:** I was tired, and I just didn't feel right. Like I was just like, "I, I should... Like why? Like I have a, a good life on paper.
**Unknown:** Like why do I not feel like overly energized and happy and joyous and gracious every day?" You know, like why... Like there's something missing here. And so as I continued to work on this, I realized that two of my other values, one was fun-loving spirit, having fun, laughing, and the other one was expansive adventure. So let's start with the fun-loving spirit.
**Unknown:** There was a period of time in my career as a doctor that I felt like I couldn't be myself. I couldn't curse the way I do now on these podcasts. I had to be super buttoned up and super professional, and I had to... Like I couldn't, I couldn't, you know, like HIPAA, you can't be friends with your patients, and you can't say hello to them in a grocery store.
**Unknown:** Like there were just so many things that were against who I was at my core, like my true character. In addition to that, work took over my life for many, many, many years. I wasn't going out. I was too tired.
**Unknown:** I wasn't going out with my friends. I wasn't laughing until I almost peed my pants anymore the way I used to when I was in high school and college. Like I wasn't doing that. Life was really serious.
**Unknown:** It was really serious because I had a lot of responsibilities. I had to be this doctor. I had to be a good boss. I had to...
**Unknown:** I, I was in charge of paying people. I had to make sure that all the costs of my business were covered, and that wasn't... It wasn't fun for a long time, the model that I had. It wasn't fun.
**Unknown:** Expansive adventure. I always knew that I liked nature, but I didn't know that I needed it. Like expansive adventure is... I put those two words together very specifically because this was not just about like take a walk in nature, go on an adventure.
**Unknown:** This was about things that expanded my mind, expanded my physicality, expanded my, my body. It was like a challenge. It was allowing me to learn. It was allowing me to grow.
**Unknown:** It was allowing me to test myself, challenge myself, and it was allowing me to connect with nature in a very expansive way, if that's going for an intense hike, mountain biking, uh, snowboarding, et cetera. And again, there wasn't a lot of time for any of these things. I was also living in a place, New Jersey, that the climate wasn't always allowing for me to do that. Most of the winter, went to work, went home, went to a restaurant.
**Unknown:** That was it. And so essentially, if you look at this, I have four top values. 50% of them were being fulfilled, and 50% were not, and it's not that one is more important than the other. They're all important.
**Unknown:** And so what I invite you to think about is, one, do you even know what you would do if you did not have to earn a living? Do you have any idea what you would do every single day? Like what would be your contribution? Like what would be fun?
**Unknown:** What would light you up? What would allow like hours to go by that you would be like, "Oh my God, I didn't even... Like holy crap, it's been eight hours. I had no idea," 'cause you were s- you were enjoying yourself so much.
**Unknown:** Most people can't answer that question. Most people have no idea what they will do. And the reason why this is important is if you start to observe and ask around, you know how many people now are dying in their 60s and early 70s? When do people retire?
**Unknown:** People are retiring in their early, mid-60s, and they're only living a few years more because the old generations worked. That was the mindset, work, provide for your family, put food on the table, put a roof over their head, you know, try to have things so that you feel accomplished, and they worked and they worked and they worked and they worked with the promise that they were gonna retire and enjoy their life. 60 to 65 years of doing the same thing every day and being in this program, this cycle, and then that's not there anymore?These people don't even know who they are. They don't know what they enjoy.
**Unknown:** Who the hell wants to really fucking sit still, sit- stare at a wall? "Oh, you're retired, relax." They don't know how to relax. Who wants to relax? You wanna enjoy yourself.
**Unknown:** You wanna do things that energize you and have... that make you laugh and have fun and enjoy yourself. Like, they don't know what that is. They knew...
**Unknown:** They only knew their life as the 9:00 to 5:00, and chances are their kids are grown up, they're out of the house. They might be widowed, but even if they're not widowed, how well do they really even know their spouse anymore? They only f- how many hours in a week did they actually spend with their spouse? Because they worked, they came home, they ate dinner, they went to bed, they did it all over again.
**Unknown:** So there are so... Th- this is... If you start, again, paying attention, you're gonna realize this, and you're gonna realize also too that the last few years of these people's lives, they just spent in a doctor's offices. But somewhat happily, 'cause it gave them something to do.
**Unknown:** It gave them something to focus on. "Oh. Oh, shit, I have this. Well, I guess I'm gonna have to go to a bunch of doctor's appointments now for this." So understanding your values, helping your kids understand their values, this is one step in the direction to create a life that feels more fulfilled and more energizing.
**Unknown:** If you wake up every day like, "Fuck," slam the alarm, it's just a feedback mechanism to say make a fucking change. And that's not easy. It's super uncomfortable. I literally closed my business of 11 years, my physical business, and I moved because I had a baby, and I just knew I...
**Unknown:** It was, it was the hardest decision I ever made and I knew that if I s- kept doing this, I was always gonna have a hole in my life. But I was, I was willing to take this huge leap and be super, super, super, super uncomfortable, and, and uncomfortable be- beyond you can even understand, from an emotional perspective, a mental perspective, a physical perspective, a financial perspective. Like, the list goes on. I just knew that I had to take that step back to take a step forward in my life.
**Unknown:** A lot of people are not always willing to do that, and that's okay, but you just have to make peace with the fact that you're always gonna feel like something is missing. You're gonna feel like energy is being drained from you. You are going to have a lot of difficulty enjoying yourself, enjoying your life, enjoying your people around you. But if you can take the time to understand your values, you could start making decisions, bold decisions about your life, bold decisions that you never felt confident about before.
**Unknown:** 'Cause I'm gonna tell you this, everyone's gonna fucking derail you from it. Everyone. So you have to know why you're doing it. You have to understand why.
**Unknown:** You have to keep that why in your heart, because everyone's gonna tell you you're crazy. If you wanna quit your job, you wanna get a divorce, you wanna move to Europe, like, if you wanna do bold shit, everyone is going to tell you no. Everyone is gonna tell you all the things that's gonna go wrong. Everyone's gonna tell you why you shouldn't do it, how it's totally risky, you're out of your mind.
**Unknown:** Everyone's gonna tell you that. But if you know your why, you know your values, and you see, you see what lies ahead, even if it's a little blurry, you will feel more confident in that decision every step of the way. So not only did I close my business, then I go to South Carolina for two years and I decide to move to Europe. And I've always been of the mindset of I'm more scared to stay stuck than I am to make bold decisions, and I think it's because I observed a lot of people stuck for many years, very miserable, not thriving, not making the more money, not working their way up the ladder.
**Unknown:** It was just all the same shit and they were just stuck, and I always thought, "That's scarier to me." Staying stuck is scarier. So I rather take my fear and make a bold decision with it. And you never know what's really going to give you everything you've ever wanted and light you up in a way that you didn't even think was possible. And I know a lot of people ask me, like, "Talk about Italy in your podcast," and I'm like, it's hard to put into words, but having a feeling of peace, having a feeling of fulfillment, satisfaction, having energy that you've never felt before is just something that, like, you just...
**Unknown:** Y- it's hard to understand until you experience it. But I realize that I lived most of my life feeling very uncomfortable, feeling very out of place, out of sorts, and I f- now feel like I'm in a place that allows me to live in all four of my values, and that in turn has given me the ability to wake up energized, satisfied, on purpose, and honestly ready to fucking do some shit, make a huge impact on this world, you know? You guys think that I... If- if you guys like me and you think that I've made an impact, it's gonna be even better.
**Unknown:** I hope this was inspirational to you guys. I'm not saying everybody needs to move to Europe. Hey, maybe not a bad idea. It really comes down to understanding your values, and being able to make values-based decisions is going to be a huge step in improving your quality of life, giving you your energy back, and allowing you to expand beyond what you ever thought was possible.
**Unknown:** 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. 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.
**Unknown:** 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.
Further reading
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