What if your body isn't broken — it's trying to tell you something?
In this episode of Grief 2 Growth, Brian sits down with Dr. Karyn Shanks, a physician who spent over 40 years learning what medical school never taught her — including from her own chronic illness journey. Together, they explore why grief and trauma get physically stored in the body, why our medical system struggles to treat chronic illness, and why feeling truly seen may matter more to healing than any prescription.
About Dr. Karyn Shanks:
Karyn Shanks, MD is a physician-healer-teacher-writer based in Iowa City, board-certified in Internal Medicine and Functional Medicine. After her own decades-long journey through Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and Lyme encephalitis, she founded the Unbroken Academy and developed a framework built on epigenetics, neuroplasticity, systems-based functional medicine, and transformational psychology. She's trained in Dr. Gabor Maté's Compassionate Inquiry, and is the author of UnBroken: Reclaim Your Wholeness and HEAL: A Nine-Stage Roadmap to Recover Energy.
🔗 Website: karynshanksmd.com (https://karynshanksmd.com)
Key topics covered:
• Why grief is a "huge part of the human experience" that shows up physically in the body
• Karyn's own health journey — from unexplained fatigue to an Ehlers-Danlos diagnosis to recovering from Lyme encephalitis
• Why Western medicine excels at acute, catastrophic care but struggles with chronic illness
• Epigenetics and neuroplasticity — why your biology isn't fixed
• The placebo effect as proof of the mind's power to heal the body
• What Compassionate Inquiry (Gabor Maté's framework) taught Karyn about trauma and self-compassion
• Why grief gets "stored in the body" and has to be worked through, not medicated away
• Why we're ashamed of grief, and how "get back to work" culture cuts healing short
• Reframing illness as wisdom and communication, not failure or fault
💬 What resonated with you? Head over to grief2growth.substack.com (https://grief2growth.substack.com) to share your thoughts and continue the conversation.
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Want to go deeper? My Substack is where I share solo essays on grief, consciousness, and continuing bonds — thoughts that don't always make it into the podcast. It's also home to a community of listeners who get it, because they're living it too. Free to subscribe. Find it at substack.com/grief2growth. (https://grief2growth.com/substack)
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