Hi friends,

I lived with chronic symptoms for several years before I had any language for what was happening. Fatigue that didn’t make sense. Pain that moved but lingered. Dizziness that arose at the strangest times. Anxiety that never seemed to quiet down. A body that didn’t feel like it used to. I tried to push through it, manage it, make sense of it—but underneath it all was a quiet ache: Why is this happening? And what do I do with it?

A few years after the storm began, I walked into a local meditation center and was introduced to Buddhism. Not as a healing protocol, but as a refuge. The teachings didn’t try to fix me. They didn’t offer quick answers or spiritual bypasses. What they offered was something softer—permission to stop fighting. A recognition that pain and uncertainty are part of life. That we can suffer less when we stop clinging and start meeting our experience with presence and compassion.

Years later, when I began exploring brain retraining and neuroplasticity-based healing, those old teachings came rushing back with new relevance. What I had once understood philosophically—about fear, grasping, and letting go—suddenly became deeply embodied. I wasn’t just reading about suffering and freedom. I was living it, rewiring it, moment by moment.

If you’re navigating chronic symptoms—whether that’s pain, fatigue, dizziness, digestive issues, anxiety, panic, or anything else your nervous system has been looping through—I hope these Four Noble Truths might resonate with something deep within. They aren’t abstract or distant. And they aren’t just for Buddhists (I think this philosophy can be a great complement to many spiritual paths). They’re a map. One that’s walked not through striving, but through softening. Not through fixing, but through meeting yourself with radical kindness.

Let’s take a look together.

1. The First Noble Truth — Dukkha

“There is suffering.”

(Yep. Even when you’re doing everything “right.”)

The first noble truth doesn’t sugarcoat it: life includes suffering. Not constant misery, not endless despair—but the unavoidable discomfort of being alive. The stress of change, the sting of loss, the friction of unmet expectations, the restlessness of wanting things to be different than they are. It shows up in our bodies as pain or fatigue, in our minds as anxiety or intrusive thoughts, and in our hearts as longing, grief, or loneliness.

Even in the best moments, there can be a quiet tension beneath the surface—a grasping for more, or a fear of it ending. This truth doesn’t come to discourage us, but to validate our experience. To say: You’re not alone in this. This is part of what it means to be human.

For those with neuroplastic pain or chronic symptoms, this truth can feel painfully obvious. There’s the physical discomfort, yes. But also:

The fear
The confusion
The frustration
The loneliness
The self-blame
The “why me?”
The “why this?”
The exhaustion of feeling like your body and brain are speaking different languages

And if you live with anxiety or OCD, you know the suffering isn’t always visible. Sometimes it’s a storm inside your mind that no one else can see.

The First Noble Truth meets you right here—without judgment.
It says: Of course this hurts. Of course this is hard. And you’re doing the best you can.

You’re not failing. You’re not weak. You’re not imagining it.
You’re human. And you deserve compassion for the weight you’ve been carrying.

2. The Second Noble Truth — Samudaya

“Suffering arises from clinging, craving, and resistance.”

(Even the well-intentioned kind.)

“Clinging” doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. It means you’re trying—often with everything you have—to feel safe. And that’s completely understandable. When the nervous system has been dysregulated by fear, pain, trauma, or prolonged stress, it becomes hypersensitive, always scanning for threat, always bracing for the next wave. In that state, it makes perfect sense that we’d cling: to routines, to answers, to reassurance, to the hope of fixing it all. We cling not out of failure, but as a survival strategy. Our brains are doing exactly what they were designed to do—trying to protect us.

The problem is, the very strategies that feel like control often reinforce the sense of danger. Clinging is the body’s way of saying, “I don’t feel safe yet.” And the invitation here isn’t to stop clinging through force, but to begin offering ourselves the conditions where loosening becomes possible—through curiosity, compassion, and small moments of trust.

In healing, clinging might look like:

Constantly monitoring symptoms
Needing certainty before you can relax
Trying to force your body into calm
Googling (oh, the Googling…)
Obsessing over timelines
Checking for reassurance
Trying to “think your way” out of sensations
Gripping tightly to an identity like “sick,” “fragile,” or “broken”

Even the desire to heal can turn into clinging:
“If I can just do enough, practice enough, meditate enough, fix enough… THEN I’ll be okay.”

But every time we grip tighter, our nervous system gets the message:
Danger. Urgency. Something is wrong.
Which only keeps the fear cycle going.

Samudaya invites us into a softer approach:
What if I don’t have to wrestle my symptoms to the ground? What if letting go—even just a millimeter—is part of the healing itself?

Letting go isn’t giving up.
It’s loosening the tension around the moment you’re in.

3. The Third Noble Truth — Nirodha

“The end of suffering is possible.”

(Freedom isn’t somewhere far away. It’s right here in how we relate to this moment.)

At first, this truth might feel hard to believe. When you’ve been living in a body that feels unpredictable, in a mind that loops with fear, or in a nervous system that never seems to settle, the idea that suffering can end might feel like a cruel joke.

But the Third Noble Truth isn’t promising a life without discomfort. It’s not suggesting that we’ll never feel pain again, or that fear will magically disappear. What it is offering is something quieter—and much more powerful: the possibility of freedom from the layer of suffering we add on top of our pain.

You know that moment when a familiar symptom arises—maybe it’s a wave of fatigue, a tightness in the chest, a scary thought—and your whole system tenses? The mind races, the body braces, and suddenly you’re caught in a spiral of fear, urgency, or hopelessness.

Nirodha invites us to interrupt that pattern. To say: What if this moment doesn’t have to mean disaster? What if I can be with this without collapsing into it?

Freedom becomes possible not by erasing symptoms, but by changing how we respond to them.

It looks like:

The ability to feel sensations without panic
The ability to notice thoughts without obeying them
The ability to let discomfort move through you, instead of getting stuck
The ability to trust your body again—even when it’s uncomfortable
The ability to live fully, even if some rewiring is still in progress

This is what happens when fear pathways quiet and safety pathways strengthen.
This is neuroplasticity.
This is recovery.

Freedom isn’t the absence of all difficulty.
Freedom is the absence of fear-driven suffering.

And that is available to you. Even now.

4. The Fourth Noble Truth — Magga

“There is a path to the end of suffering.”

(And you are already on it—even if you wobble.)

The fourth noble truth is where hope becomes real. It reminds us that freedom from suffering isn’t just a comforting idea—it’s a lived experience, one that unfolds through daily practice, imperfect choices, and a thousand small moments of returning.

This path (which I go into in detail HERE) isn’t about transcending your humanity. It’s not reserved for monks in robes or people who wake up at 4 a.m. to meditate on mountaintops. You don’t have to have all the answers, or perfect discipline, or even a consistent morning routine (no matter what the latest TikTok trend says).

The path is available to you right now—whether you’re in bed with a heating pad, trying not to spiral after a symptom spike, or simply reading this and wondering if healing is really possible.

Magga tells us that it is. And it doesn’t require you to be extraordinary. It just asks for your willingness.

Healing happens not through one grand gesture, but through small, repeatable shifts:

Noticing a symptom and softening rather than bracing
Letting a fear thought exist without trying to argue with it
Taking a breath instead of checking your pulse for the fifteenth time
Letting discomfort be there without immediately needing it to go away
Doing something enjoyable—not as a “tool” to fix yourself, but because pleasure matters
Moving your body gently, even when fear says "don't"
Making space for uncertainty without filling it with panic
Smiling (even a small, tired smile) at the wild, messy, beautifully human process of it all

This path won’t always feel clear. Sometimes you’ll wonder if you’ve fallen off it entirely. But that’s the beauty of it—it’s always here, waiting. You don’t need to “find” it again. You return by noticing. By choosing. By trying again, gently.

Every time you respond to your inner world with even 1% more compassion, you’re reinforcing a pathway of safety.
Every time you pause instead of spiraling, you’re planting the seeds of freedom.
Every time you choose connection over control, curiosity over fear—you are walking the path.

Even if you wobble.
Even if you fall.
Even if your symptoms are still lingering in the background.

You’re not behind.
You’re not doing it wrong.

Right now, in this very moment—you’re already on the path.
Reading. Breathing. Being here.
And that’s enough.

A Closing Wish (and a Soft Place to Land)

If the suffering feels like too much sometimes—if the symptoms, the spirals, the fear, or the fatigue start to feel louder than your capacity to meet them—please remember this:

You are not broken.
You are not doing it wrong.
You are not behind.

You are a human being in the middle of something incredibly brave:
Learning how to meet your experience with kindness instead of fear.
Learning how to soften where you used to brace.
Learning how to stay, even when part of you wants to run.

The Four Noble Truths aren’t a test to pass or a checklist to master. They’re a mirror—reflecting your experience back to you with honesty and compassion.

Dukkha — Yes, there is suffering.
Samudaya — It often comes from the grasping and fear that arise when we don’t feel safe.
Nirodha — There is relief, there is hope, and there is real freedom in learning to let go.
Magga — There is a path. And you're already on it.

And maybe the most beautiful part?

You don’t have to walk it perfectly.
You just have to walk it.

So may you meet yourself with tenderness, even when it’s hard.
May your body remember what it feels like to feel safe.
May your mind grow steadier, quieter, and kinder.
And may your healing continue to unfold—not through force, but through softness and ease.

Wishing you a weekend of soft bellies and deep breaths.

I’m here if you need a hand.

The Four Noble Truths for Brain Retrainers