Why isn't my body healing? Dr. Tabatha Barber — a triple board-certified OBGYN and robotic surgeon who walked away from the operating room — says the variable nobody tests for is the story running in your head. Liz and Becca get into negative self-talk and inflammation, why an emotion only lasts 90 seconds, what happens when a doctor tells a 24-year-old with PCOS she'll never conceive, and why your genes load the gun but don't fire it. If your labs are "normal" and you're still exhausted, start here.

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Dr. Tabatha Barber: By like complete faith, left my job as an OBGYN, left

the accolades, left the stable salary.

Girls, I come from nothing.

I had no money, and here I am making quarter million dollars of a year with a

stable paycheck, a 401, health insurance.

I never had health insurance growing up, and I gave it all up because God

was like, "We're doing a new thing over here, and I need you to teach women the

truth about their bodies, and you need to stop practicing this Band-Aid medicine."

Welcome back to the Health Revival Show.

Today, we are joined by Dr. Tabatha Barber, and I was actually just on her

podcast a few weeks ago, and now this is her second time joining us here.

We had such a great discussion the first time around fasting and

how you can lean into your faith during some of those long fasts.

She's got some amazing programs.

So if you're not following her, you can do so on Instagram @thegutsydrtabatha.

And I love that, because you have a great story of leaving medicine and

turning functional, and so we'll let you reintroduce yourself again briefly

to our followers and listeners today.

Perfect.

And then we are gonna dive into believing that you can heal and the

importance of having a, a strong mind and spirit through your healing journey.

So welcome back to the show, Tabatha.

Thank you for joining us.

Dr. Tabatha Barber: Oh, I'm so happy to be here.

You are just a bright light in a sea of darkness.

There's a lot going on.

Even in the functional medicine space, I feel like we're losing sight of the

work that we're supposed to be doing.

I'm seeing a lot of people just having tests run and labs done,

and no one's interpreting them.

No one's actually taking the time to sit down and listen to their entire life

story and see the bigger picture and, and really dig at the root cause of stuff.

So it's kind of going in the direction of conventional medicine, right?

It- it's heartbreaking.

So I appreciate the work that you ladies do, and you take the time with

women, and you invest in them to re- really figure out what's going on.

And it wasn't until I did that for myself that I was able to heal.

So, you know, that's my journey is I've struggled with gut issues my entire

life, diagnosed with Hashimoto's at 17 after a very traumatic, uh, pregnancy

and delivery as a teen mom, and, um, conventional medicine failed me.

I had failed back surgery, all the things, right?

And it wasn't until I started to sit down and really take a look

at how I'd lived my life, and that requires time and contemplation.

And I encourage women to do it from a curious perspective and not from a

guilt or shame or regret perspective, because that is how many of us live,

and it literally keeps us stuck in our illnesses, stuck in our disease, stuck

in our, um, negative thought patterns.

You call them ANTs, like automatic negative thoughts.

They just, they take over.

Like, the ANTs just invade, right?

And so I had to go through all of this, and once I came out on the

other side I just felt like, oh my gosh, I just conquered a mountain.

Like, I just slayed a giant.

I need to share this with the world because it's possible.

Like, you actually don't have to live with chronic gut issues.

You don't have to live with outrageous autoimmune

conditions on fire all the time.

Like, I was literally in chronic pain, chronic inflammation- Mm-hmm … brain

fog, carrying an extra 30, 35 pounds.

Like, I've gone a decade now without that stuff, and it's

just, it still blows my mind.

I just wanna praise God every day that there is a way out of that mess.

There really is.

I love that so much, and I love that you share your faith with

people because this is a big topic, uh, you know, that we're gonna talk

about today, how we have faith that we can heal, how we start to change some

of those thoughts and really lean into faith, whatever that looks like for you,

but meditation, too, in the way of I…

There's something better for me.

There's a challenge here that I'm facing, but if I overcome this, I'll be stronger.

And so I'm really excited to dive into that topic with you today.

But first, I also wanna just highlight that you're a

triple board certified OBGYN.

And so you've seen women in various seasons of their life

go through really hard times.

I'm sure that you saw it all in the doctor's office, right?

Pregnancy, miscarriage, postpartum, all the mess that we would say is

beautiful at the same time of, you know, bringing birth to life or, or life here.

And so can you just elaborate a little bit on that before we go into this?

Like, what was the turning point for you where you said, "I'm

done with conventional medicine.

I've got, you know, probably an amazing practice here, but I'm choosing to

be gutsy and go out on my own" Um, in functional medicine because I think

that's also really important when people start to see more and more and hear

more and more, and we have a lot of these doctors who come on our podcast

that say, "You were told that you were normal, and I left because I couldn't

stand practicing medicine that way."

So share a little bit about that with us before we get into

the mindset, if you don't mind.

Dr. Tabatha Barber: My goodness.

So many things happened between 2015 and 2019 in my life.

I was At the pinnacle.

Like, I spent 15 years becoming this doctor, you know?

Be- going from high school dropout teen mom to being board certified, being

the chief of the department, eventually the chief of staff of the hospital.

I started the robotics program at the hospital, so I was a robotic

surgeon, and I was so good.

I loved it.

Oh my goodness.

I would take on the cases that nobody else would touch, like stage four endometriosis

with bowel scarring and gigantic fibroids that needed to be removed because women

still wanted to attempt pregnancies.

And so I have always been bold in what I have done, but when God started, like,

revealing the truth of what was going on in my personal health journey and

having a failed back surgery and, like, being on five different medications.

I was on antidepressants, proton pump inhibitors, Bentyl for

irritable bowel syndrome, and my thyroid meds, and all the things.

Like, He started to reveal to me that the way He designed our bodies to heal,

most doctors are actually preventing that healing process from happening.

And as a surgeon, I was thinking I was the healer.

Like, let me cut you and remove your disease and sew

you back up, and I'll heal you.

And God was like, you don't do the healing.

I created that body.

I cause those cells to grow back together.

You facilitate, you help the process, but e- ultimately, I'm the healer.

And it was kind of a rude awakening to my ego of like, wait, what?

And so I just went on this journey of like, okay, God, if you really

designed our bodies to heal and thrive and overcome these things,

like, why isn't that happening?

Why are we seeing more cancer and more disease?

And He just started to reveal the truth of everything to me.

And you get to the point where you're like, wait a second, I can

no longer do things the way I've been doing them because the truth is

telling me that that's not the way.

And so I, by, like, complete faith, left my job as an OBGYN, left the

accolades, left the stable salary.

Girls, I come from nothing.

I had no money, and here I am making a quarter million dollars of a year with a

stable paycheck, a 401, health insurance.

I never had health insurance growing up.

And I gave it all up because God was like, "We're doing a new thing over

here, and I need you to teach women the truth about their bodies, and you need to

stop practicing this Band-Aid medicine."

And I just, I think about all the surgeries I performed,

especially endometriosis.

We just, we get in this mindset of like, "Yeah, come on in.

We'll, we'll clean you up.

We'll remove some endometriosis.

We'll probably remove some cysts or maybe even your ovaries, put you on a

medication to put you into menopause at 20 or 30 years old, and then we'll

do it again next year because that's just how you manage endometriosis."

And God was like, "That's not helping women. That's f- a false sense of

security that you're actually treating disease. You're not treating disease."

And so the more I just had these revelations, the more I could no

longer live and practice the way I was.

And the truth of it is now I don't do any surgery and I heal way more

women than I ever had as an OBGYN.

Amazing.

And, uh, very ti- I was actually listening to a podcast this morning about

endometriosis and surgery and how w- you know- Healing, per se, endometriosis can

be near impossible in some cases, but getting inflammation down and all of the

root issues are what driving it, you know?

And it's crazy.

It's crazy what it can do to the body, and you start to realize that

it's so much bigger than just this is how you were made, 'cause it's not.

You know?

It's, it's all these different things going on in terms of inflammatory

levels and mast cells and histamine, and it's, it's not talked about enough.

So coming from a place where I think you have the credibility, obviously,

and the experience of your history of being an OBGYN and doing these

surgeries and knowing these people were back because it grow back, you know?

And it didn't actually fully solve things.

Given the space that you're in now, you obvi- like you mentioned earlier, you

get to see a lot more about the person.

You know?

You get to see a lot more about their life and maybe their stressors and things that

they have allowed into, you know, consume negative emotions and all of these things.

How much do you feel that plays a role in where people find themselves in terms

of dysfunction and disarray and symptoms and feeling like they're kind of stuck?

'Cause, um, you know, we see it a lot where people will come to us

and you can tell, like, they don't believe that they can get better yet.

Yeah.

They don't truly believe that their body can heal, and you can hear it in

the way that they talk, in their voice and, you know, you know that those cases

are probably gonna be harder because these people have so much doubt because

of everything they've been through.

So do you see that in most of your cases, all of your cases?

What, what are you seeing with, you know, the, the mental, emotional side of this?

Dr. Tabatha Barber: This is such an important topic.

So I do a lot of in-person events.

You know, we, we talk about mind renewal and identity and things like that, and I

had a young girl, she was probably 23, 24, come up to me and say, "I have PCOS and my

doctor told me I can never get pregnant.

Do you believe that?" And I was like, "You need to rebuke that right now because you

are being spoken death over your body by a trained health professional." And it just,

like, literally set fire inside of me.

Like, I was passionately angry, and I realized I used to do that as a surgeon.

I would be like, "Well, we did a good job cleaning up everything

inside your abdomen and pelvis.

I'll plan to see you next year 'cause that's probably the point at which,

like, you'll be in pain again and have issues again." And they would say, like,

"Can I attempt pregnancy?" And I would say, "Well, no, because we're putting

you on these menopause-inducing drugs, and I don't think, um, your ovaries

and fallopian tubes are gonna work.

I don't foresee pregnancy in your future." And, like, all these things started

flashing through my mind at the moment she had said that to me, and I was like, we

have to stand up for our patients- Well- … and speak life over their bodies-

Okay … and over their healing abilities.

We have to quit, you know, going to the doctor and letting them

be the final word in everything.

Because if you believe that diagnosis and that thing that they're telling

you, you will live that out.

Mm. That is what your future will be.

And so we need to fight against that and say, "Wait a second.

That's not actually true.

You might think that because of your training or whatever, but I actually

know my God is a healing God, a God of restoration and redemption, and my

body was created to overcome and heal.

So I'm gonna just not believe that and go over here and find somebody who speaks

life over me." And that has been the most powerful thing I have seen in my

practice and in my programs is y- you- if you give people hope again and tell them

that they can heal, they actually will.

They will reverse their diseases.

They will get rid of that cancer.

I… When I first started my coaching academy, our first cohort that graduated,

one of the women got diagnosed with a huge brain tumor, cancer, glioblastoma,

like, weeks after the graduation.

And she was so dead set on the fact that God brought her through this coaching

academy to understand and learn her body and her physiology and all the things

that she was just at complete peace.

Like, "I know he's gonna heal me.

He just showed me what was possible.

I just went through all of this training.

He's equipping me." And I just thought that was such a beautiful

example of like, yes, let's armor up.

Let's get equipped and start believing in our body's ability to heal.

And I just tell women over and over, you cannot heal a body you hate.

You cannot speak defeat and beliefs of, like, destruction and expect your

body to do something else, because it literally listens to your thoughts.

Your thoughts produce chemicals.

Your emotions produce chemicals.

They go throughout your body, and they tell your cells to either

start destroying or start repairing.

Like, we have so much more control over our body than any doctor tells us.

So a couple things I wanna just call out that you said there,

just to kind of reiterate this.

First is I, I really love what you said about doctors are preventing

our bodies from healing the way that God designed them to.

And I believe what you were talking about there is just pumping more

and more medications, right?

We know that the average person is on five or more medications, and a lot

of it is because they're trying to mask the symptoms that… or the side

effects, excuse me, you know, from another medication instead of truly

trying to figure out what's going on.

But then the second thing that you said is that you cannot heal a body that you hate.

And I think a hate is a, it's a strong word, right?

But we know that so many women have this internal dialogue

that they're very negative.

Maybe they don't choose that word outwardly, right?

They don't say openly, "I hate my body," but the words or the thoughts

that they have in their mind may align with that type of feeling.

And so I just wanted to bring that up because I think as we continue this

conversation and, and how we try to use methodologies and use different mantras

or, or things to help us shift away from those thoughts, that's really important.

And I would just challenge you to sit with what some of those thoughts are

and ask yourself, "How do I feel when I think this compared to how I might

feel if I'm taking the approach that Dr.

Tabitha's saying here in terms of my body can heal.

I know that God's gonna heal me.

I know that I'm gonna make it through this.

I know that I have hope and I have restoration, even though it may take

longer than I want, and it's probably not gonna look like I want it," 'cause

we all want instant gratification, right?

So we, we can, we can be human here to say that too.

But one thing that came to mind when you said this is a

story that I heard long ago.

And basically it was a woman's conference.

And actually I believe that I was 18 years old.

It was Rockford, Illinois.

It was a woman's, uh, conference at a church.

And the woman speaking was basically saying, "If we were to separate all of

you and you were to go in to write down some of these thoughts that you have

about your body, how you feel about yourself, your physical being, and your

outward ex- uh, you know, looks, and then I were to bring you back and I

were to put you in a room with either your daughter or your best friend,

would you read those things to her?"

Yeah.

And I j- Never

Dr. Tabatha Barber: would.

For 20 years, yeah.

So let's talk about this a little bit more in-depth, because I, I think

it's important to get granular with that, and for women to really, really

pay attention to those thoughts, because I think we just go through our

day and we know that they're there.

We know we have these feelings, but then we don't try to course-correct.

So how does that impact us?

How does that impact our nervous system?

How does that impact our molecular level, right, where we can see

that healing start to happen?

Dr. Tabatha Barber: Percent, yeah.

I didn't know I was talking mean to myself.

I didn't know I hated myself.

J- just to your point, like, it wasn't until I started meditating.

So I was so stressed out as an OBGYN.

My health was falling apart, and I was starting to study functional medicine,

and one of the f- first things I learned was get control of your monkey mind.

So, and I'll just be fully transparent.

I was not living for Jesus at that point.

Like, I may have gone to church a- and checked off the box on Sunday, but I

didn't have a relationship with Christ.

I wasn't, like, being guided by the Holy Spirit or anything.

I was just living my regular, normal life.

And so I'm doing meditation, and I start to notice all of the junk in my

head, all of the crazy thoughts that I would never say to my enemy, let

alone my daughter or someone I loved.

And I was like, "Wow, I'm really critical.

I'm really mean to myself," you know? I didn't wear yoga pants for

10 years 'cause I told myself, like, "You don't look good enough in them.

You look disgusting.

You can't possibly wear those." Um, I didn't wear a bathing suit in

my 20s because my husband had said something about my cellulite, and I

was probably 110 pounds at that point.

Like- The, the stuff we think isn't rational, it doesn't make sense.

I wish I could go back and just tell myself, and I have, like, "I am so

sorry I was so mean to you. You were beautiful. You were actually healthy

and skinny and amazing, and, like, I'm sorry I talked to you the way I did."

But it wasn't until I even realized it that I could start to course correct.

And so that's why I encourage women, get curious.

What are you saying to yourself?

And journaling can be really helpful.

You can start to see it on the paper.

It's, like, right there in black and white.

Oh my gosh.

Um, if you write a list of what you truly believe about yourself, about your

body You might be a little surprised.

But the truth of it is, whatever you're telling yourself creates a feeling.

And feelings, they're not always true.

They're just physiology.

They're just chemical reactions happening.

And so it's information.

Emotions are information.

And so many of us try to ignore those emotions.

We, so we eat to just, you know, to cover up that feeling, that emotion

just created, or we drink to numb it up, or we shop to, like, h- get

a dopamine hit, or we go on social media, 'cause the dopamine feels much

better than the crap we just made from those thoughts and those emotions.

And so if you can learn how to just sit through them, they

only last like 90 seconds.

That wave will dissipate and go away, 'cause it's a chemical reaction.

It's like y- it just, like, flooded your system and it will dissipate.

The way it doesn't dissipate is if you continue to think the thoughts

and, and drive those feelings.

So I always say, like, think about the last big fight you had.

If you start thinking about it and telling your girlfriend about the whole

fight and like, "He said this to me and I couldn't believe he did that,"

you will feel all of those feelings.

Like, your heart will race, your palms will sweat.

You'll get all pumped up.

You'll be like, "I wanna do something about it," and it

happened five years ago, right?

Because it's just a chemical response to those thoughts.

And so if we can just, like, start to disengage from some of that and say,

"Wait a second, I'm creating a lot of this stuff I'm feeling. It's not

necessary. It doesn't serve me," which means I can actually create different

thoughts and different feelings and emotions, and have a different response.

And so I just started doing that.

I just started, like, speaking life over myself and like,

"What does God say about me?

I'm actually His daughter.

I'm an heir.

I've, I'm more than a conqueror.

I've, was created to heal.

Like, my body is not my own.

It's the temple of the Holy Spirit.

What?

God's living inside of me?"

And those started creating emotions and chemical physiology

responses that felt really good.

And it was wild to just see the inflammation go away, the weight fall off.

I was not trying to lose weight, but I finally went back to the size

that God created me to thrive at.

So the 35 pounds came off, and they stayed off.

And so I just, I wanna encourage women, we are doing it all the wrong way.

We are trying to do this of our own fruition and our own muscle and manpower.

I just need more willpower.

I just need more discipline.

And that is not what you need.

You need to get in alignment with how God created you.

I heard this thing once.

This guy was talking about the fact that cars, you could put a bunch

of car parts in a garage, and the car isn't gonna create itself.

And so if a car is broken, you can't expect it to, like,

fix itself or change its oil.

You have to go to the creator, the source of who knows how the car was built,

who created it, and have them fix it.

And so I now just teach women, like, go to your creator.

Ask him what's wrong with your body.

He'll tell you.

He will t- he will bring you the people that you need to help you through this.

I mean, we're created to do life together, so I'm not saying, saying, like, your

body's magically just gonna heal.

No.

He wants you to search out the right functional medicine providers or the right

spiritual guides or things like that.

But unless you talk to him directly, you're not gonna know what you need.

So we have to stop, like, going to food and alcohol and supplements.

That's another thing.

Like, let me just supplement my way out of this.

No.

Like, that is not the answer.

And the truth of it is modern medicine separated what God

created to work together.

So the body, the mind, and the soul were always created to work together

in harmony, and we silo that out.

We're like, "If you have a spiritual problem, go talk to your pastor. It

has nothing to do with your cancer diagnosis." That's total garbage.

We have to reconnect them, body, mind, and soul, and address all of them

together in order to actually heal.

So when people are in kind of these spirals, right?

'Cause a lot of times a client will end up with, like, I was in, you know,

a social gathering, or I was really stressed after work, or my kids were

getting, you know, like, getting really overwhelming for me, and I either didn't

eat or I, you know binge ate whatever or drank a bunch of wine with my

friends or, like, whatever it might be.

Or they're in kind of that spiral of, I know this is a common one too I see, is

like, "I woke up, I'm bloated, I didn't have a bowel movement," and then my mind

just spirals of like, "What's wrong?

You know, I feel worse now." And it almost exacerbates the bloating because of the

stress that you're creating around it.

What do you recommend in those moments?

Obviously, yes, kind of leaning on God and leaning on, you know, what is going on?

Can you please help me through this?

I know that this is just temporary and kind of, not downplaying, but allowing

it to kind of work through itself.

But what else?

Do you have any, like, tools or tactics that you give clients to kind of

work through those things mentally?

'Cause I know that they can be, you know, really debilitating, especially

when it's something that someone has been consistently dealing with.

And I know for a fact, like, I'm not happy when I'm bloated.

It definitely ruins my emotions for a little while.

So, like, what do you typically try to encourage people to kind

of work through in those moments?

Dr. Tabatha Barber: Yeah.

My mantra is begin again.

Do not sit there and beat yourself up and throw out all your progress

because you made one bad choice or you had a few off days or a week.

Like, I travel a lot, and so sometimes I fall way off the wagon.

I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I haven't been to Pilates in a week and a half.

I haven't been sleeping.

I haven't,

you know,

Dr. Tabatha Barber: done all the things" And you have two choices in that moment

of realization that you're in this space of, okay, I can double down and continue

to spiral, or I can give myself love and grace and move forward and begin again.

And what the majority of us do, and this is what I did for 40-some

years, is I spiral in the shame and the guilt of shoulda, coulda,

woulda, shoulda, coulda, woulda.

And I say, "Stop shoulding on yourself. Like, you are not helping

yourself" Or what if, what if, what if, and worrying about the future.

Like, get in the present moment.

What do I need?

I need to be loved and encouraged and reminded that I'm an imperfect human, and

I'm doing the best I can, and it's okay.

And so- What do I need in this moment?

And if we just started showing up for ourselves the way we

show up for children, I know not everybody's a mom, but everybody

has loved somebody at some point.

They know how they would show up for that person, and we need to

just show up for ourselves that way.

So I just love to get curious.

What do I need right now?

I probably need more water.

I probably need to start my supplement regimen back up.

I probably need to move my body.

But for me, what I teach in my programs is I start in the Word.

I start my day in the Word, I end in the Word.

I, I end in prayer and gratitude and reading the Word of God

because it's like my GPS.

It just keeps me in the direction that I'm supposed to go.

And if anybody out there has ever, like, learned how to drive a boat or do anything

like that, you only need to be off a little bit in your coordinances to end

up in the wrong fricking town or country, you know, days later, weeks later.

It's just this little bit at a time that over time adds up.

So every single day you wanna be like, 'What's my goal?

What's my plan here, Lord?' And that's what I do.

I just say, 'What are we doing today?

What do I need to be reminded of?

Where did I get off track?' And a lot of the times it's like, 'Oh, you're leaning

to food again for your numbing or your comfort, and I need you to not do that.

I need you to, like, talk to me instead, or to journal, or to put some worship

music on, and just redirect.' So it's different for everybody, but you have

to figure out what works with you.

And I encourage women to create a mantra for your life, something you

believe, something that you can speak over yourself and remind yourself

when you're not thinking right.

And maybe you have to write it down everywhere.

Maybe you have to have sticky notes.

I have, like, two monitors right now I'm sitting at, and my second monitor

has a couple scriptures that I always want to remember because it keeps me

anchored in who I am, what I'm doing, and that I'm more than my diet plan

or my kids being perfect or, you know, and be- bringing all the snacks

as the mom and doing all the stuff.

Like, that's not who you are.

Those are cool things that you do, but that's not who you are.

So you gotta get anchored.

You gotta find your identity And it's okay that you didn't know it before then.

Like I said, I was in my 40's before I figured any of this out.

So you ladies who are younger, this is amazing.

But if you can, once you get to that point of like, wait a second,

I've just been sailing through life.

I've just been trying to do all the things, be all the

things, have all the things.

No, that's not who you are.

And we gotta just go deeper.

Like, who am I at the core?

What the heck am I doing in this earthly experience?

And step into that clarity, and it's absolutely messy.

Don't be afraid to get messy- Yeah … and to grow and to evolve.

I've lost a lot of friends because I'm no longer the person I was 10 years

ago, and that's okay, because I know that God is doing a new thing in me.

And if you can step out into that boldness, you won't have all the

guilt, all the shame, all the stuff that keeps you spiraling all the time.

That comes from trying to please others, trying to live up to somebody

else's perspective of you or whatever.

Like, I serve an audience of one.

Like, I just care what God thinks.

Like, everybody else, if you like me, great.

If not, I'm sorry.

Like, that's the point I'm at, and it feels amazing.

I think it's great.

I love that.

I, uh, I saw something yesterday that I think is really powerful, too,

from, like, a coach's perspective and a practitioner's perspective.

A lot of times when clients do spiral, you know, they, they will reach out to you,

and they'll, they'll be kind of freaking out, and they'll look to you for comfort,

and they'll look to you for support.

And sometimes it's good to let people also just sit with it- Mm-hmm … and

work through it on their own because when you're constantly being that support,

not saying to n- ignore your clients, right, or ignore a friend or whatever

it might be, but to an extent it's also somewhat enabling it, you know?

And it's, it's allowing that s- kind of continuous spiral to happen,

and for them to think, "When I'm spiraling, I lean on this person.

They say it's okay to do that, but also that this is gonna happen," and then

it's like a repeated behavior, you know?

And so from a coach and practitioner standpoint, it's sometimes

letting them work through it.

And sometimes I'll come back to messages that, like, maybe I've been

gone all day on calls, and my client will have sent multiple messages of

them working through it themselves.

Like, the first message is them freaking out.

The second message is like, "Okay, actually this happened, and it's

not that bad." And it's like letting them kind of work through things

and not always being an enabler if you're on the other side of it, too.

Whether it's a friend, a family member, you know, a client, because they'll

never get out of it themselves if we are the only thing that allows

them to keep doing it, you know?

Yeah.

And like you said, finding God, working, journaling, working through it on your

own, I think is the real answer, with guidance in other areas, of course.

But it was really powerful.

I saw someone talk about that yesterday, and I was like, "Huh, it's a very

interesting way to think about it," in terms of you wanna be supportive,

you wanna be helpful, you know, you wanna guide, but I think that there's

definitely a fine line in terms of how much you're doing that for these people,

so.

Dr. Tabatha Barber: Absolutely.

I just recommend be curious.

Don't come at yourself with judgment.

Ask yourself, "Why am I feeling this way right now?

Why am I having this belief that this is…" what's happening because you

have to remember you only have one perspective of the actual truth of

what's happening based on your lived experiences, all the things that you

have gone through in your life, your big traumas, little traumas, all the things.

And so you're not seeing the full picture.

Our reticular activating system filters out like a billion things

a second so that we don't get overwhelmed, and we can actually,

you know, focus and, and function.

And so you're focused on w- whatever your subconscious is worried about.

Yeah.

And

Dr. Tabatha Barber: so if you could just step back and say,

"Huh, why am I feeling this way?

Why am I believing this right now?

Why am I thinking this person is out to get me?" Or, or, "Why do I believe

they're judging me?" You'll be surprised at the story that you're telling

yourself because the truth is the biggest stressor is not the toxins in the world.

Yeah, they're, they're awful toxic.

It's not the Cyclospora you're getting exposed to.

The biggest stressor is the thoughts going on in your mind, the stories that

you are creating about the world around you and your interaction with people.

Those stories are often not true.

They are very one-sided.

They are very skewed, and if you could just say like, "What am I telling myself

right now in this moment 'cause it doesn't feel good," it might not even be true.

And I wish we could teach kids at a younger age to do this because I

think they would avoid so much of the heartbreak and misery that we have

already gone through and experienced.

That's what I try to teach my kids.

Like, "Are you sure that person actually came at you like that?

Are you sure that's what they meant with that text?

'Cause I don't see it that way." And if we could do that things

would really start to shift.

Yeah.

One of the things I am kind of getting here and just wanna call out, and this is

something that I say a lot to my clients is, you know, when you're in the trenches,

you feel like everybody's out to get you.

You feel like nothing is working.

You are just dragging through mud, and you're never going

to get to that other side.

So it can be hard, right, to have this belief and to have all these

mantras and to change these thoughts that have been so ingrained,

'cause they're still gonna come.

Automatic negative thoughts, the ANTs, they always come.

Mm-hmm.

It's just that you get quieting them.

And a lot of what I challenge my gals to do is to look for the good and to

find joy in their day, or create joy.

So okay, you're not feeling super great today.

Energy is not, you know, it's up to where we want it to be.

Maybe we didn't sleep our best.

Whatever.

You're bloated.

You're gassy.

I'm like, okay, what can you do for 10 or 15 minutes?

For me, it's usually a walk in nature.

I'll put on my worship music, or I'll dance in the kitchen,

or I'll pick something to cook, whatever that looks like.

But I think one of the things that you brought up earlier that I, I wanna

kinda call out before we close out here is that not only have you changed and

you've changed the people around you, you've also set boundaries it sounds

like, and stopped looking at a lot of the things that may be dragging you down.

And so we cannot end this podcast without the elephant in the room,

which is all these Facebook groups of everybody who is so sick, and

they've got all these diagnosises.

Because I will hear from clients, and I was just chatting with one yesterday.

She's starting with me next month.

The research papers.

"Well, I read this, and it said this." And I'm like, "Well,

who, who ran the research?

How many participants?

What was the control?

Has this been peer reviewed?" I mean, all the things, because

now we're demonizing melatonin.

And I'm like, there is a mountain of evidence that does not align

with this, so like let's just, you know, understand the actual facts.

Because I think that so many people, and I wanna hear your thoughts on

this, are turning out of desperation to the social media groups.

But then it is going to what Becca said, right?

It's enabling them to stay in this place of we, we know your symptoms are real.

We are not disregarding that.

But if you're always looking at the negative, you're never going

to start to feel better because you're not attracting that, right?

And I think that comes from, uh, you know, uh, many belief systems,

whether it is God our creator or it is another belief system.

We know that you're the law- The Law of Attraction is a really great book.

If you haven't read it, it's definitely something to read.

But I wanna hear your thoughts there, because what do you tell these people

when they're first coming in to you?

Like, do you ask them, "Are you part of these groups? We need to remove

ourselves from these groups. We need to get into communities that

are supportive of our healing."

Dr. Tabatha Barber: This goes back to what I was saying about your identity.

You are not your diagnosis.

And some people just step into that as their identity.

Like, that I just, I have fibromyalgia that it runs my life, or I have

irritable inflammatory bowel disease.

It, it runs my life.

Um, I'm always gonna have to go to the doctor.

I'm always gonna need surgeries.

And they just make these declarations over their life and their health, and I promise

you, that is what is keeping you sick.

So absolutely.

It's fine to have some information, but we have infobesity.

We have so much information, we're fat with it.

It is making us sick.

And I was just saying this yesterday in my group call that when I was

young, they would run commercials for malnourished little kids in Ethiopia

and, like, feed the children, and malnourishment looked like someone who

weighed 40 pounds and was skin and bones.

In the United States, malnourishment looks like obesity.

The more weight you're carrying, the more deficient you are.

And so You know, I'm not trying to get off on a tangent, but I want people

to understand that what you see is not the truth of what's going on.

It's not… You can't take things at face value.

And so you are right.

I say, "What does the Bible say?" The Bible says to pray

incessantly with thanksgiving.

That means I need to be in gratitude all day long.

I need to be focused for my reticular activating system, find the gratitude.

And the more that you speak it out and praise it and look for it,

the more your brain will find it.

It's amazing.

Like, the… If you say, "Let me find all the red cars on the road,"

all of a sudden everyone will be driving a red car when you've never

noticed red cars in your whole life.

That is your RAS, and the same thing happens in… Let me find how

God is working in people's lives.

Let me find how God is healing people.

And if I start focusing on that and looking for that, it's amazing, and it

feels like it's happening to everyone.

And then I can start to believe it's happening for me.

That is why I'm so grateful that I left conventional medicine before

COVID, because my ex-husband and his wife, they're both in the hospital.

They're both doctors.

They literally, all they saw was COVID and disease and death.

And here I was in the world of health and wellness, and I was never happier

or more healthy, and all I knew about was, like, everyone thriving in COVID.

And so we just were having a completely different experience of the same,

quote-unquote, reality, because my RAS was looking for the miracles in

everything that could come out of it.

And guess what came out of it?

I created a virtual medical practice where I saw women all over the country.

I helped more people than I ever had as an OBGYN.

Like, I thrived dur- during that time, and I'm not saying,

like, bad things didn't happen.

My heart goes out to so many people.

I took care of people who lost many family members.

But Y- what your perspective is is everything.

It determines your outcome on all of that.

And that's why the law of attraction works, because God

set it up to work that way.

That's how he designed us, right?

Yeah, and can you just … Uh, this will be the final thing.

From a genetics perspective, can you touch on that too?

Because I think so many people walk around right now and say, "Well, this

happened," and we can absolutely use that information to help us improve.

Like, my mom passed away of ALS.

She had thyroid issues.

Mm-hmm.

She struggled with her weight, right?

There's a lot of information that I can gather from that.

But I know there are many people who, we did a podcast

recently on the BRCA gene, right?

Got the BRCA gene, take it all out.

Just remove it.

We're not asking deeper questions.

We're not looking at the metabolic health, all of that.

So what are your thoughts here?

Because so many women are walking around just thinking

doom and gloom because my genes.

So and so had cancer, so and so had cardiovascular issues, so and so had X, Y,

or Z, and so that's just, "I'm gonna enjoy my life and live it because, you know,

who knows what might end up happening?"

It's like, if we take that approach- Yeah … we're probably

gonna end up in the tomb, right?

Absolutely.

We have to see, 'cause this is something that God designed us, and

he created us as unique individuals.

He's the only one that knows the s- the hairs on our head.

He's the only one that knows what's happening at the cellular level.

So how do you tap into that, and what do you look at with, you know,

all the things you dealt with, many things that you were dealing with

health-wise, and your family history?

Is it that we totally disregard that, or that you've taken that as information or

knowledge to use it for good in the way that you show up in your personal life?

Dr. Tabatha Barber: Yeah.

Our genes don't change.

We pass them down, we pass them down.

They're getting expressed in our generation because of

what we're doing, you know?

Mark Hyman says, "Our genes are the gun, the environment pulls the

trigger," and he's absolutely correct.

So, you know, I have a lot of the same genes that my great-great-grandparents

had, but they didn't have Hashimoto's.

They didn't have the diseases that my family has because those

genes didn't get expressed.

DNA, there's an incredible book called Language of God- May … It

was written by the guy who found the genetic code, the DNA genome.

And he was like, "Okay, now I believe in God." Before that he was an atheist.

But he was like, "This is all just information that can be

transcribed and expressed or not."

So just because you have the BRCA gene doesn't mean your

cells are in there creating the information for that expression.

It's a potential.

It's in there.

It does … It's not active.

It's not happening.

That is why my mom didn't get a Hashimoto's diagnosis until she was in

her 60s, where I got it at 17, because my life was more toxic and more stressful.

She lived a clean, amazing, beautiful life, and it wasn't until she went

into menopause, got fear-based guidance into having a full hysterectomy

and all these other things, and got into a car accident, and that

triggered her Hashimoto's expression.

So- Well- … please don't remove all your organs- It, it, it goes-

because of this potential inside of the DNA structure of

information inside of your body.

Use that information to say, "Okay, I probably need to lead a cleaner

life than my buddy who doesn't have this mutation." But we're not

supposed to cut out our organs.

And I apologize to all the womens whose organs I removed

unnecessarily if that happened.

It breaks my heart.

We just remove the gallbladders.

We remove the appendixes and the tonsils.

Like, those are in there for a reason.

I understand there is a time and a place for surgery, but we way over-surgerize

people in this country, and it, it just … It's heartbreaking to me.

So there is way more to your story than your genetic code.

I have all kinds of gene mutations- Right … SNPs, like MTHFR.

I have two of them.

I have a COMT mutation.

I don't make vitamin D from the sun- Vitamin D … very well.

Like, I have all the inflammatory marker mutations.

The list goes on and on.

But I continue to get healthier and healthier as the years go on because

of how I live and how I renew my mind.

So I'll just leave you with that.

You have way more control than the doctors are telling you.

Cannot agree more.

I think it is, like you mentioned, the state of mind plays such a

large role in lo- longevity and the vitality and essentially how

you live your life, you know?

And you see it.

The people that you can pretty often correlate the people that struggle,

you know, with the negative thoughts and trauma history, I mean, right?

And how much that can take over someone's life versus someone that looks at it

a different way in terms of, "This is my past. It's not who I am," you

know, and has kind of grown from it.

It's completely different.

So one thing that we always like to say at, or ask our, you know, interviewees

at the end of each podcast is if you had one thing that you could tell the

entire world to listen, they were all listening, what would that one thing be?

Dr. Tabatha Barber: Whether or not you believe in Jesus,

that's, that's n- not my issue.

I know that you were created by a creator, and I would invite you- And

even if you- … to ask that creator who you are, what they say about you, and

what they say about your body and your health status, and you'd be surprised

as, as to what you start to hear.

And you gotta be still.

You have to be still.

That's why I love fasting.

It gets rid of your fleshly distractions.

Um, but I would start to have a conversation, and it might take a few

conversations to really start to hear.

It might take a month, but I would keep at it until you start to hear

your creator tell you about you.

I love that.

Thank you so much for joining us again today.

And for all of you listening, links will be in the show notes to

get connected with her and check out the programs that she has.

If you do like this episode, please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and

share the show, as that is how we grow.

I didn't mean to rhyme, but I rhymed.