Guest: Bria Gadd — The Period Whisperer

Are you eating healthy, exercising regularly, and doing everything you've been told to do, yet STILL gaining weight, struggling with sleep, or feeling exhausted?

What if the problem isn't your hormones alone—or that you're not trying hard enough?

In this episode, JJ Flizanes welcomes Bria Gadd, The Period Whisperer, to explore the connection between perimenopause, cortisol, chronic stress, metabolism, and what Bria calls HEALTH DEBT.

Bria shares her personal journey from fitness professional to perimenopause expert after experiencing unexplained weight gain, anxiety, sleep disturbances, and hormonal changes—even while maintaining her healthy habits.

Together, JJ and Bria discuss why simply eating less and exercising more may not be the answer, and why understanding your body's energy demands, nervous system, and capacity for recovery is essential.

• What is Health Debt? Why your body's energy demands may exceed its available resources and how Bria uses this concept to explain frustrating midlife symptoms.
• Perimenopause vs. Chronic Stress: Why not every symptom should automatically be blamed on declining estrogen.
• Cortisol and Weight Gain: How chronic stress may influence sleep, metabolism, recovery, and body composition.
• Why Your Workouts Aren't Working: How pushing harder without adequate recovery can leave you feeling worse.
• The Nervous System Connection: Why moving out of fight-or-flight and making space for rest, pleasure, and joy matters.
• Hormones and Sexual Health: The relationship between stress, safety, arousal, libido, and overall well-being.
• How to Start Rebuilding Your Health: Simple foundations involving sleep, nutrition, movement, stress reduction, and recovery.

The takeaway: Your body may not need you to work HARDER. It may need you to understand what it's asking for and support it differently.

Take Bria's FREE Health Debt Quiz:

https://www.jjflizanes.com/healthdebt

Discover where you may be experiencing health debt and explore your next steps.

Connect with Bria Gadd — The Period Whisperer:

https://www.briatheperiodwhisperer.com

Listen to The Period Whisperer Podcast:

https://www.briatheperiodwhisperer.com/the-period-whisperer-podcast

Explore More with JJ Flizanes:

https://www.jjflizanes.com

Your health isn't just about what you eat or how much you exercise. It's also about how you manage stress, support your nervous system, and create the conditions for your body to recover.

Listen now and discover why your healthy habits may not be delivering the results you expect!

What if you’ve done years of personal growth, therapy, healing, and self-development—and you’re still getting triggered by the same things?

In this week’s episode, I’m doing something a little different. I’m handing the microphone over to my dear friend, Empowerment Strategist, and host of the Open Heart Healing Podcast, Vesta Hurlbutt, to interview ME about the work that has become such a huge part of my life: the Core Wound Map.

Vesta has been part of this journey almost from the beginning. She has experienced the Core Wound work herself, trained in the process, and watched it evolve over the years—so she was the perfect person to ask me the question:

Why now? Why is it finally time for this book?

The truth is, I thought I was writing a book. What I realized along the way was that I was actually creating a process—one that could help people identify the core wounds underneath their triggers, recognize the patterns those wounds created, and begin changing the way they respond.

Because identifying your wounds is only the beginning.

In this conversation, we talk about:

• How the Core Wound Map evolved from my own experience with Imago work into the process I use today
• Why understanding your patterns can change the way you look at your triggers, relationships, and past
• The difference between identifying a core wound and actually rewiring the pattern
• Why you can intellectually understand where your reactions come from and still continue having them
• Why our relationships can become powerful opportunities for healing old wounds
• The role of support, stretching, and practice in creating new responses
• Why this book has taken me years to complete—and why I finally know it’s ready
• Learning to trust your intuition even when other people don’t understand the timing
• Why I’m especially interested in helping people who have already done a LOT of work on themselves and are wondering, “Why am I still getting triggered?”

Your Core Wound Map: Why You’re Still Getting Triggered After All the Work You’ve Done—and What Will Finally Change It is officially in pre-launch.

And this isn’t simply about pre-ordering a book.

During the pre-launch, there are opportunities to go deeper, experience the Core Wound Map process, access special bonuses, and even help me test and refine some of the newest pieces of the work before the final book is published.

If you’ve been doing the work but know there’s another layer you haven’t uncovered yet, I created this for you.

Learn more and join the pre-launch here:

https://www.jjflizanes.com/map

Vesta is the host of the Open Heart Healing Podcast, where she explores emotional healing, nutrition, menopause, personal growth, and the everyday trigger moments that can become opportunities to understand and heal ourselves more deeply.

Search for Open Heart Healing Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

And remember:

Healing is when you are different in the same situation.

What if the discomfort you’re experiencing isn’t a sign that something has gone wrong—but an indication that something is ready to change?

Most of us want to get rid of discomfort as quickly as possible. We distract ourselves, numb it, push through it, treat the symptom, blame the circumstances, or retreat back into familiar patterns. But whether your discomfort is physical, emotional, relational, or simply a feeling that you’re stuck, frustrated, anxious, or disconnected, it may be trying to get your attention.

In this episode, JJ Flizanes explores why discomfort can become the catalyst for some of our greatest breakthroughs—and why we often don’t make meaningful changes until staying where we are becomes more uncomfortable than moving forward.

JJ shares examples from her own recent healing journey and relationships to illustrate how an uncomfortable experience can expose deeper beliefs, fears, core wounds, and patterns we may not have realized were running our lives.

Because when fear is making your decisions, fear has the power. But when you become willing to examine what’s underneath the fear, you have the opportunity to choose something different.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why physical and emotional discomfort can be valuable information
• How fear, resistance, and control can keep you repeating old patterns
• Why treating the symptom may not address what’s happening underneath it
• How your subconscious beliefs and core wounds influence what you allow yourself to receive
• Why vulnerability can require more strength than staying in control
• How discomfort can create the opening for new awareness and new neural pathways
• Why feeling stuck, frustrated, anxious, or “off” may actually mean you’re ready for change
• How leaning into discomfort instead of running from it can become the beginning of your breakthrough

JJ also connects this conversation to the Core Wound Map and the importance of identifying the beliefs underneath our habitual reactions. You can’t change a pattern you don’t know is there—and understanding the root gives you a place to begin.

Your discomfort doesn’t have to be something you fear or immediately try to escape.

It may be an invitation.

You may not be falling apart. You may be standing at the edge of your next breakthrough.

https://jjflizanes.com/restore