Ever notice how pain always seems to show up at the worst time?

It interrupts your work, your relationships, your plans.

But what if that interruption isn't the problem — What if pain is a gift?

Today's guest is Dr. Nicole Evans, a chiropractor who discovered something profound while treating patients in chronic pain: Their symptoms weren't punishments or random accidents, they were divine signals trying to get their attention.

Nicole now helps people decode the deeper messages behind their physical, emotional, and spiritual pain — and use those insights to align their lives with God's design.

Join us as Nicole shares how anxiety often reveals a fear of the future, and why our bodies respond to perceived threats even when we're just walking into work.

This conversation will change the way you think about every symptom you experience and help you see pain as a gift, not a punishment.

Redeem Your Business Today by the Following:

How can we honor God in our business?

By extending the kind of grace we've received from God — not the cheap, human version, but the real thing.

So many people carry religious wounds or shame that keeps them stuck. When you show them what God's grace actually feels like, it breaks chains. Your business becomes a place of healing, not just transactions.

One challenge from today:

Pick one physical or emotional symptom you're experiencing right now. It might be stress, anxiety, anger, or chronic pain. Instead of judging it or trying to eliminate it, ask: "What is this interruption trying to tell me?"

Listen for the answer without shame or fear. That symptom might be a divine trigger.

More About Dr. Nicole Evans

Join a Community group with Dr. Nicole Evans

Instagram- @drnicoleevans

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I had a jogging class in college and my coach who was our teacher said that you need to listen to your body. When your body's in pain, if your knee's in pain, your ankle's in pain or something, basically something's wrong and you need to stop and that pain is your body telling you something's wrong, you need to take care of it. Physical pain is a warning and it's a warning to us something's wrong, we need to listen to it, pay attention to the consequences and in life there's a lot of physical pain.

but there's also psychological pain, emotional pain, spiritual pains, all these things. And so it's been interesting. Today I brought on Nicole Evans, who started out as a chiropractor, but then realized that people's pain was given them for a gift. And so she's been helping people look at their pain differently, helping them solve it of course, but looking at it differently. So Nicole, great to have you on board today. To start off with, one question is,

What is one way that you have found to honor God in your business that others may not know about?

You know, I think the biggest thing is grace. I don't think that people actually know what grace feels like. And oftentimes I'm working with a lot of people who have spiritual wounds or religious wounds in quotations, right? And so they don't actually know what grace feels like because what they think grace is they've experienced from a human perspective. And so

Giving grace like I've experienced grace from God is is one of the best ways that I allow it to flow through my business

Absolutely, and I can tell you for personal experience, me showing grace to other people has increased at the older I get because I see so many more experiences and people go through things and all that. It's like, instead of holding someone's like, why didn't you do this? You you're extending grace because you don't know what's happening in their life. ⁓ Very good, love that. So yeah, yes, everybody has a unknown battle to you. There's fighting a battle that you know nothing about. So be gracious.

⁓ huh. Yup. Yup, exactly. Yup, everybody's in their own worlds.

Exactly.

Yep. Yep.

Nicole, give us a little background of how God has led you to this different mindset and then what are you doing today?

So it started, it honestly started with my pain. So I was raised in the church and ⁓ I was raised very ⁓ Lutheran, very ⁓ structured, which I love. I love having that structure. I love having the classes, the knowledge, but it led me to a certain type of experience. And when I hit a turmoil, when I got outside of my bubble, ⁓ I didn't know what to do with it.

And so as I'm moving forward and going through my life and trying to get answers to my own problems, my own pain, I fell upon different things each time. And I look back and I'm always like, man, each one of those, like even the pain was perfect. Like even the pain, I wouldn't trade it today. And so some of the most painful experiences, like people will talk about, ⁓

like sexual experiences as children that it's like today I can look at that and I can say, I didn't give that to the devil. I gave that to God. And it's looking back at all of those things and looking and saying like, God was with me each time, even in the hardest of them all. And so that led me to chiropractic, ⁓ which was talking about the power that made the body heals the body. And that really resonated with me. And I was like, my gosh.

mind you in chiropractic school, I was in like six years of pain and like really weird pain. Have you ever had like really weird pain where it's just like, I don't, I don't, I don't understand it. It's like, was down the, you could draw a line down the center of my body and the whole left side of it just hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt. was anxious. I was depressed. I was, ⁓ I couldn't eat anything and all of that was in chiropractic school and I had a couple of

Hmm.

of experiences that allowed me to really see the grace of God that he swooped in and picked me up. And one of them being a technique where we look at a lot of neurological patterns in the brain. And as I started looking at, okay, we're looking at physical neurological patterns, but I was also starting to see emotional neurological patterns that were correlating.

Hmm. Interesting.

And with that, it led me to recognizing that there's something that's when we are judging a symptom, it almost makes the symptom hold on or scream louder, or it just transfers the symptoms somewhere else if we're just trying to get rid of it. said, so what if we just stop and look at what it's trying to say? And when I started doing that, not only my chiropractic patients started flourishing, but then I started to notice I didn't even have to lay hands.

on them, although laying hands on them is super powerful, I noticed that we could make leaps and bounds even in physical pain or mental pain or emotional pain just by looking at, what's the symptom actually trying to tell us? And so I've started calling them divine triggers as a matter of fact. So.

Okay,

very neat. Okay, so when you say that the statement pain was there for them as a gift, what does that mean? Define that, would you?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

yeah. So I teach a lot of the biology. So I teach physiology, teach microbiology, I teach genetics to students. And when you're really digging into that microscopic level of the body, you really get to have an understanding of, wow, it's really working for me. It was really designed for me to stay alive. And the more that I was digging in and teaching that, because when you're teaching it, you get a whole new depth.

to it, right? And there would be just little insights of, look at this enzyme. It's going before you. Like every time your DNA is replicated, this enzyme is going before you. And I was like, there's no way, there's no way a symptom is there to punish us. It's not there to test us. It's not there to punish us. So let's just look at, let's take a global perspective, take a step back and look at, okay, how should the body?

be functioning? What's the natural way that this functions and what is it doing instead? And that gave me a way of really looking at, okay, this is definitely happening for them. And so maybe it's a pattern that they keep stepping into. Maybe like you hear about stress all the time, but maybe they love their stress. Maybe they just have a perspective that makes their nervous system defensive. And therefore it responds with

hormones that are made to be defensive. And so now their body is defensive just from one thought, even though they think they're on the right track. Does that make sense? Yeah.

A little bit. Do you

have a story to kind of illustrate? Because you're talking a lot of theory. Do you have a simple story that this person was hurt in the foot and this happened or that happened?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. So for example, I

could just give a little one right here. So we were working in this girl's She we were, this is more of a physical, okay. So we're working in her ankle and I'm just having her explore and listen to the thoughts that she thinks, listen to the thoughts that come up. And it's crazy because she's just moving into her ankle and all of a sudden, and we have an intention before every

Okay.

every workshop, like I said, an intention for it. And she discovered that the expectations that she was placing on her spouse came from fairy tales that she read as a child, which we kind of know this, like the Disney fairy tales, but her neurology was functioning off of that. So every step she took, it was a painful step. And as soon as we cleared that perspective of, you know,

you don't have to have this fairy tale husband. You don't have to have this. Her ankle pain cleared, right? Her ankle pain just because it was no longer needed, right? And the same thing goes for like patients with anxiety. If we really dig in and we just ask why is the anxiety that like, what are you anxious about? Okay, well that just shows us that you have a fear of the future or a fear of repeating the past.

Hmm, interesting.

And what that just looks like is your nervous system is going to function a certain way, right? Your nervous system is going to mount defenses, mount protective mechanisms. It's gonna make you hesitate. It's gonna make you anxious because it thinks it's trying to protect you. And so once we just change the thought pattern, bring grace into the thought.

Did I freeze?

Oh, sorry, okay. Put grace into that thought pattern, remove judgment from that thought pattern. They have a completely different experience and the anxiety is no longer needed. So people have been getting off of heart medication, anxiety medication. It's just watching how your body is responding to its environment, which is what it's to do.

Sorry. It reminds me of a book and I can't remember the author, but it was a doctor. It's called None of These Diseases. And he said, this is from Exodus 15, 26, I believe. He says, this is the prescription I would have given to every one of my patients had I had the time. And he went through chapter by chapter showing from the Bible how what the Bible said affected you. And one of those chapters was, don't be anxious, love your neighbor,

You're okay.

Yeah.

Hmm? Yes.

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Don't be hateful.

All these negative emotions. And he didn't even go as deep into it as what you're saying, but it's just interesting that God tells you to love, don't hate, forgive, don't be bitter. And we have no idea the physical consequences that result of that. And you, feel like you are starting to tap into that a little bit. what, okay, if I have an ankle problem, do I automatically think as a...

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's, sorry.

anger problem or not loving people or what, how do you, how do, what steps do I take to even diagnose that?

you

Well, oftentimes it's, it's, you're not diagnosing, you're just listening. Like you're just listening. And some people, ⁓ it could be what shows up is I'm sitting too long or the way that you're sitting will start to show up and you'll just be like, that was an easy fix. Well, let me just change the way I sit. But for other people, imagine your nervous system. If you perceive that you're walking into work and it's constantly a threat.

right? Your heart's going to start racing. You're going to start releasing stress hormones. Your blood vessels are going to start constricting from the digestive system and you're not going to be able to digest your food and you're not going to be able to reproduce because all of those blood vessels are responding to thinking that you're running from a tiger. And so your symptoms are there just to they just show me where you think you're running from a tiger. So if

I just ask, and it's really just taking a really good history. So it's just saying, okay, well, when does the anxiety start? Right before I walk into work. Okay. So what happens at work? Okay. And what do you think is going to happen with your coworker? And so it's just following the trail of what they're, they're, they're projecting their ghosts and their fears into their future. And their body is responding to that just like it should.

Right? And because we've been given these really, really, really cool bodies, but we've also been given the ability to think. So our thoughts are like, my thoughts are higher than your thoughts. My ways are higher than your ways. Right? And then if you combine that with Romans, I believe it's 828, all things work together. Right? If you just look at that and you just look at, okay, if I truly know nothing,

But if I truly believe that all things work together and I truly believe that your ways are higher than my ways, that's ultimately what I'm really leaning into and trusting and just finding where they hold the judgment and where they don't believe that. And then we just neutralize that and their body no longer has to fight, fight or freeze or, you know, whatever it is doing to defend itself.

It reminds me of what Jesus said, you should know the truth. The truth will set you free. That's what it reminds me of where you, like you said, you're confronting why you angry or why you stressed. Is it a certain person? Are you going down to a certain meeting or is it a certain task that you're on that for whatever reason? Yeah, so what, for us common people who don't get to work with you.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

What do we do? mean, is there simple steps that we could do to help recognize this and to not cure ourselves, but help resolve these things in our life to be healthier?

Yeah.

Yes. Yes.

Yes. Okay. So one of the big things is, and this is a starting point is first, it's being absolutely honest with yourself. And sometimes you can't be honest without help. So if you feel like some of the thoughts that you're thinking are scary, the biggest thing is getting help first, because you can't be honest if you're afraid of what those thoughts can do to you. So that's, that's

very important right there. A lot of people have a faith and they have a Bible to turn to and they're still afraid of something. There's shame and there's guilt around some of the thoughts that they're thinking and that will prevent them from even being able to take a step forward. So some things, right, we're not meant to go through alone. We need a community and so that's important. You have a community with your podcast so it's super important to have that community.

The next thing is to look at your emotions and look where you're judging them as right, wrong, good, bad. Because again, we truly do not understand the concept of right, wrong, good, bad. Like we've been given, love your neighbor as yourself. We've been given like a series of like, here, just do these, love God, right? We've been given that, but.

We have taken upon ourselves to think that judgment or to think that emotions equal sin And having certain types of emotions like resentment. We're human. We're gonna resent we're human. We're going to have guilt We're human. We're gonna have shame and that's the first step is taking the the Judgment off of the fact that you're going to have those things happen, right? We're gonna walk through life with challenges

And I'm sure you know a verse right off the top of your head that says that we're going to walk through and we're going to mess up and we can't get through this perfectly. So recognizing and removing the judgment from those emotions and then looking at it. OK, well, if I'm resenting, that means that I think it should be a certain way. So let me just take a step back and say, because it's happening this way, how how how is it beneficial? How is God using this?

And if it were to happen my way, my way and how I want it to happen, how could that be against what God wants? How could that harm people? And what that does is it allows a neutralization in your mind, which transfers over to your nervous system and your body. It's neutralizing that resentment or that guilt or that shame.

So guilt and shame are a little bit harder, but resentment is an easy one. And expectations is a really easy one. Like, where are my expectations that I'm placing on others? Where are my expectations that I'm placing on myself? And where are the expectations that I am allowing others to place on me? And then just looking at them and saying, taking the judgment out of them, right? If it happened my way, it could be harmful in this way. And it just...

takes your pride out of it, that humbles you a little bit, but also looking at it because it's happening this way, well, and that brings up your spirits again, because you're looking and you're seeing it through a new set of eyes. It kind of gives you the ability to see your life through God's eyes, because you take the judgment out of

Okay, no, I get it. I get it. And I thank you for that. ⁓ I find it interesting when I was in college, one of my teachers talked about cultural filters in that you use a certain word all the time and this comes through your mind. And so we have to define what we mean. And when you say no judgment, my mind immediately goes to all these people who say, hey, quit judging me and all this stuff. But that's not what you, when you talk about, I have resentment,

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And I say, don't judge that. Why that it's there, it's there for a reason. I'm not a bad person to resent somebody. I shouldn't, I can't stay there. I got to resolve it. But for me, just for coming initially is not bad. And that's a good differentiation to make.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yep. ⁓

Yeah. Yeah. It takes, yeah, it takes the pressure off of you. And, and what we don't realize is that that judgment has so much pressure on how your nervous system functions. And the reason that I always go back to the nervous system is this is the system that we were given that knows what's going on in every cell in our body. It's coordinating all the cells, all the organs, all the tissues, and it's

It's releasing hormones. It's trying to balance this environment that we live in. And it's allowing us to respond to not only internally, but externally. And if we have a judgment that automatically will put, it will influence the way that we move. And so if you're trying to move in an obedient way, but you have a habit of judging yourself or others, then it's automatically going to hinder the way

that information can flow through you ultimately the way that God can flow through you. And with symptoms, are just those divine triggers that say, hey, can we just stop and look at this for a moment? Notice how symptoms are always interrupting. They interrupt your thoughts. They interrupt the way you move. They interrupt your relationships, your finances. And basically pain points are interrupting

so that you can take a step back. And I ultimately just think that those symptoms, those divine triggers are so that we can take a step back and say, hey, I see that I've been acting this way. It gives us an opportunity to repent. It gives us an opportunity to shift directions. It gives us an opportunity to be obedient, to pray, to surrender.

So that's why I call them divine triggers. Pain is a divine trigger. Symptoms are divine triggers because I ultimately think that they are the best way to get our attention and bring us back to the source.

No, I get it. That's very neat. And you kept using the word interruption. It's very interesting because when I look at interruptions in general, years ago I went and studied how did Jesus handle interruptions? And He viewed interruptions as part of God's plan. When people came, hey, would you come heal my daughter? Okay, let's go. He viewed it not as interruptions, but as, this is God's next step in our plan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep, yeah, me too.

which is kind of what you're saying is these interruptions are just, hey, God, hey, you, something's wrong here. Even as, you if you put your hand on a stove and it's hot, you're going to pull it away. I got a burnt finger. I'm not a bad person because I got a burnt finger. I put my, I shouldn't put my hand over there when it's hot, you know? We need to, we need to align that with what happens physically and spiritually, emotionally for us. So I think that's all helping

Yeah? Uh-huh.

Yep. Yeah.

Yes, exactly!

Yes.

This is what it looks like in the physical realm. And you just talked about spiritually to help understand that. Very good. I think for me, I've done this a little bit. Bad, not doing it right now, it's journaling. You I've gotten a habit of journaling at one time. It's like just picking one thing throughout the day. like, I was happy today. Why was I happy? Or I was angry today. Why did I get angry? And that somewhat digs down to what you're kind of saying, but you are going to step further saying,

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

huh.

Because you have the anger, it could be affecting you physically, not just emotionally, not just spiritually, but could, the uniqueness, the intricacies, the incredibleness of our body, it connects. So.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yes.

Yeah, it does. It's and when you're looking at like, okay, if we just remove like the health aspect of it, like the symptoms, the pain, if we were to look even further, like when people are dreaming and they're creating their future, right? Looking at, do we hold a judgment for the creations that are for the things that are in our heart?

You know, do we hold a judgment for wanting more money? Do we hold a judgment? And when we, if you can zoom into that, even you can see how people get stuck and they, they can't create and they, they get stuck in their businesses and they get stuck in their finances. They get stuck in their relationships. It all just comes back to, ⁓ looking at that judgment piece and do we have an anchor point for our future?

And that anchor, you can, if you anchor it to anything else, which you know, and I'm, you probably have a Bible verse. If you anchor it to anything else, you're going to get torn and thrashed around. But if you anchor it to the source, the power that made the body, the power that made you, if you anchor it to God, then you automatically, you know that each step ahead, even if it's a challenging one, even that ankle pain that that girl had, like I knew it was a gift for.

So we weren't like working on rehabbing and getting it back to where it was. We were looking at it of, how was this getting you, how is this on the way versus in the way? had a mentor that used to say that this is on the way versus in the way. Yeah. And so if you're anchored to God, everything is on the way. Everything is on the way. As long as you're talking, communicating, it's all on the way. So that means the challenges are on the way, the health, the pain points, things like that. So,

On the way, not in the way.

Yeah, it's quite interesting to see how vast this really goes.

And I'm sure it's not everything that's like that. Cause if I fall off the house and break my leg, it's not because I had a bad attitude that I got a broken leg. ⁓ So that just parts, just heals. So not, maybe not every ailment comes down to spiritual things, but spiritual things you definitely need to take care of all the time. That's what I'm kind of, is that true?

Right?

Yeah. Yeah, or.

Yes.

Well, you think of that inner when God, when Jesus said that interruptions are God's way. Well, if you fell off the roof, right? Because some people, we can take this as like the market crashed and they lost everything. Well, okay. Well, I fell off the roof and I broke my leg. Okay. So let's just sit here and what do you get to do during this time? I get to reassess. I get to realign. I'm struggling. So I get to get a deeper faith.

I broke my leg, so now I'm really having to trust God, right? You can do it in every scenario. It's just easier to do it with health, but it's easier to do it in those things like finances. But really, honestly, if you get interrupted, because that's one of the big things is like, this didn't go my way in the past. And that is a big like clearing thing. I've done everything. I've tried everything. ⁓

yeah, okay.

and it's not working and we just, just look at it and I say, okay, this is, this not working as a gift. So let's see how it's a gift and it completely changes the way that they perceive it. And so then they can go forth differently, right? So yeah, it is, it, really can, you can carry God over into everything, even if you slipped and fell off the roof accidentally, because it can, you can build a resentment from that, right? Yeah.

No, yeah, yeah. yeah, you sure can. Yep, there's

two verses. I can't tell you specific ones, but one is be thankful for all things and then in all things. It's like everything, everything be thankful for. And the verses you were quoting, Romans 8.28, 29 is the catcher. All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. Essentially that, who we,

Yes.

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm? Yes.

predestined them, he also called to become conformed to the image of his son. That's the ultimate goal is he brings all these things upon us so we can be conformed to the image of Jesus. ⁓ Nicole, absolutely, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

Yeah, yeah. And we're all working together, right? And yeah, that when we're all working together, it's

making even more of an impact. So yeah, yeah.

Yeah. We are going to wrap up here, but Nicole, final parting words. Do you have a final challenge for my audience today? Something that you would like them to remember.

something again, goes to how here you can look at it this way. You can either look at your life is 90 % the circumstances that happened to you and 10 % what you make of it, or you can look at it 90 % what I make of it and 10 % the experiences that happened to me. And by doing that to do that, you can not judge those experiences. That's the best.

way to move forward and experience that true peace, that true love and that true joy is recognizing that I have the power to either judge and give this experience to something that's considered bad, or I can take this experience, these set of symptoms, this trigger, and I can give it to God and use it for, in quotations, good. Use it for something.

Very good. Thank you so much. Thank you, Nicole, for your time, your encouragement today. And friends, if you're looking to go deeper, want to learn more about Nicole and her work and seeing pain as a gift, check out your show notes for some sites and links and resources and contact information for her. Yeah, for her. And if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating or review and subscribe and sign up for our newsletter to get a verse. And you also get a verse of the week and a challenge with that. And remember, your business represents the great God you serve. So build a business.

Yes.

Yeah.

worthy of God's great name and in a way that honors him.