The cure for chronic pain and anxiety ft Nicole Sachs LCSW

In this deeply personal episode, Emma sits down with psychotherapist and mind-body expert Nicole Sachs to explore the unexpected connection between our emotional world and physical symptoms.

For the first time publicly, Emma shares her own journey through debilitating postpartum health issues - eczema, joint pain, vertigo, and the crushing fear that something was seriously wrong. What she discovered changed everything: her body wasn't broken. It was speaking.

Nicole, author of Mind Your Body and creator of the Journal Speak method, explains how chronic pain, anxiety, and mystery symptoms are often our nervous system's way of protecting us from overwhelming emotions we haven't processed.

Through stories, science, and radical self-compassion, this conversation reveals why the cure you're seeking might not be in a prescription — it might be in your own pen.

Inside this episode:

• Why your chronic pain or anxiety might be your body's alarm system, not the actual problem, and what that means for healing

• The Type T personality: how perfectionism, people-pleasing, and high achievement can literally show up as physical symptoms in your body
• Journal Speak explained: Nicole's specific 30-minute daily practice (20 minutes of raw, unfiltered writing + 10 minutes of meditation) that helps release the emotional reservoir fuelling your symptoms
• Emma's vulnerable story of postpartum chronic illness, medical despair, and the moment everything clicked when she discovered Nicole's work
• The neuroscience of why your nervous system creates pain as protection. And how self-compassion is the missing piece most of us never learned
• How anxiety, insomnia, and obsessive thought loops are interchangeable with physical pain, and why healing one often heals the other

If you're in your 30s and your body feels like it's betraying you (or if anxiety has become your constant companion), this episode is for you.

Maybe you've been told there's nothing wrong, or that you'll just have to "manage" your symptoms forever. Maybe you're exhausted from trying everything and getting nowhere.

You're not broken. You're not making it up. And you're definitely not alone.

What if the pain, the panic, the sleepless nights aren't life sentences, but invitations? Invitations to finally listen to the parts of yourself you've been too busy, too scared, or too conditioned to silence.

This work isn't about perfection. It's about presence. It's about pausing long enough to ask: What is my body trying to tell me?

You deserve to feel at home in your own skin. And that journey? It can start today.

📲 Connect with Emma (Turning 30) on Instagram at @turning30coach

Nicole Sachs, LCSW is a psychotherapist, bestselling author, and internationally recognized leader in mind-body medicine. She's the creator of JournalSpeak®, a transformative practice that has helped thousands heal from chronic pain and anxiety. Nicole is the author of Mind Your Body and host of the podcast The Cure for Chronic Pain. She serves on faculty at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies and is based in Los Angeles and New York. Learn more at nicolesachs.com.

• Instagram: @nicolesachslcsw
• Book: Mind Your Body (available in audio and print)
• Podcast: The Cure for Chronic Pain