Shadowing Practice: Your emotions are making you sick - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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So I literally just woke up.
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I'm on like the verge of a migraine
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because I only slept like four hours last night and I went out with my friends.
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So I have a little bit of a headache.
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So that's why I'm like lying in bed, just kind of like sleeping it off.
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But I wanted to talk about something that I talked about with my therapist the other day.
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It's kind of a hot take
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that I feel like could help a lot of people out there who are struggling with like chronic illness
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or any kind of sickness or any kind of like physical ailments.
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So he very lightly said, hey, so I'm going to tell you this, but take this with a grain of salt.
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Do you think you would have a chronic illness
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if we healed all of your trauma and
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or fixed all of your issues that you have around boundary setting and people pleasing?
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And I said, no, I think that 99% of my issues
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that I face with physical ailments would be completely solved if I knew how to stand up for myself.
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And it opened up a very enlightening conversation because obviously take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt, but every single person that I've talked to that has developed cancer, an autoimmune disorder, a chronic illness,
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anything of this nature, they have said
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that going to therapy was one of the best things they ever did for their physical symptoms.
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Because obviously things, especially when you're looking at like Chinese medicine, Eastern medicine, they value how much emotions affect the physical body.
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And here in Western medicine, we don't put as much emphasis on it, we more focus on the symptoms versus the emotional things that could be influencing the body.
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Because I was also talking about this with a friend, and he believes both sides of it, that there are genetic and environmental factors.
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And I do agree with that, that there are genetic and environmental factors in why we develop certain things.
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But also that our emotions are exaggerating our symptoms and are causing certain issues in the body as well.
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And I fully believe this because the times that I've gone through extreme traumas afterwards, that is when my symptoms got 10 times worse.
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Like I developed POTS after I went through severe trauma
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and I developed my Ehlers-Danlos symptoms got 10 times worse while I was healing from really, really bad trauma.
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And most of my chronic illness stuff started when I was a kid after I went through, let's hear it folks, extreme trauma.
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And so a lot of people
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that I've heard from also who have been through abusive relationships like narcissistic relationships their negative emotions
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and their psychological trauma and abuse will quite literally trigger different things in the body
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because the way that a lot of um chronic illnesses autoimmune disorders work is
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that the trigger for it lies dormant in the body
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and then it will get triggered by something sometimes people carry the genes for it
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but it never gets the genes never get turned on so sometimes people will carry the gene for something, but it will never get triggered.
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Like for example, I think my grandma has the gene for Alzheimer's, but she's 80 years old, never had any dementia in her life because she took very good care of herself.
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She went to therapy.
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She took care of her emotions.
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She's very emotionally in tune, very spiritually in tuned, and she's taking care of herself over the years.
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So it never got triggered.
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But a lot of people will have emotions trigger bad things in the body because of rising cortisol levels,
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other physiological factors, and it will cause these genes to quite literally turn on, which is also why some people will be completely fine their whole life
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and then all of a sudden they're like yeah in my
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20s 30s I just developed an autoimmune disorder casually on a Tuesday right
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so I was talking to my friend let me get back to this conversation
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because I'm all over the place I was talking with my friend about it
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and we were talking about how there's obviously um environmental factors genetic factors physiological factors um risk factors
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that play into why people develop this disease.
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I'm not saying that it's purely emotional.
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Do not take that as what I'm saying.
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Do not twist my words.
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There are factors that contribute it that people who haven't gone through trauma
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or anything can develop crazy diseases just because of the way their body functions and the way they were born.
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But a lot of people who develop chronic or autoimmune disorders is emotionally driven because he used to be a chemist.
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So he was like in the body, if you isolate it and take away emotion entirely from the body, a body functions very, very well.
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It transports the proteins, it digests the food, it transports the energy, it makes all of these different things in the body, you know, the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell,
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all the good science stuff that you learn.
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That functions on a very regular basis and that's very baseline.
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But the second you throw stress in the mix, the second you throw anxiety in the mix, the second you throw in hormones or hormonal fluctuations,
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which also gets affected, all of your hormones get affected by stress.
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All stress affects hormones and hormones affect the body differently.
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So the second you throw in emotion into the mix, that's when shit gets shaken up.
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So back to this, I got to sit up for this.
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Okay.
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Back to the conversation about my therapist.
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He was saying, I've been wanting to say this for a while, but I also don't want to like have this come off as harsh.
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But he's like, I think that like when you were a ballerina, you were under all of this stress.
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And the second that your body just couldn't take it anymore, it developed a chronic illness because you didn't know how to set boundaries within ballet and with the people around you.
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And you were forced to push yourself beyond your emotional and physical needs for years till your body was like, I'm going to develop this chronic illness because honestly,
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this is the only way this bitch is going to take care of me.
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Hi, editing Bailey here.
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That's my wooden duck.
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I love my wooden duck.
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To add on to the point the video Bailey was saying, when you don't do things that is helpful to the body,
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your body almost perceives your personality as a problem.
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Because if let's say you had a child and you're not taking care of that child and you are neglecting that child, that child will learn that you are not a safe person.
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And we need to get away from this person.
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We need to rebel against this person.
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We need to get away because this person is not taking care of us.
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Same way with the body.
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When the body recognizes that you are not standing up for it, you are not taking care of it, you are not doing what is necessary to make it healthy, it will start rebelling against you.
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And it's happened to me time and time again where
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when i push myself beyond my means i disrespect my boundaries
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i don't stand up to people i keep myself in negative
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situations i keep myself in abusive in abusive situations my body
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will start rebelling my body will start rebelling i will develop rapidly strange symptoms with no correlation to anything
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that immediately end when i resolve
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that stress my hair will start falling off my teeth will
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start rotting away despite brushing them every day i will feel really, really shit.
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I won't sleep.
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I'll get insomnia, night terrors, sleep paralysis.
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And then the second I'm out of that situation, all of it goes away.
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Funny to think about, right?
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And it was true.
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Like that's literally the story that my body tells itself is like, I have to make this girl sick in order for her to take care of me
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because she's not taking care of me.
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And it's very true because the only time I will ever take care of myself is when my body gets sick.
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That's the only time I'll slow down, the only time that I'll take a rest.
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And so I've been trying to take more and more rest recently.
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Like I've completely rejected the Goggins mindset.
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I've completely rejected stoicism.
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And I'm purely focused on like taking care of myself and making sure that I am okay.
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And I gotta tell you, I have felt the best I've felt in years.
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I am like my back pain is going away.
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My headaches are going away.
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Everything is subsiding.
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I still have like, I don't know if you can see this, but I still have like hypermobility.
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I'm still insanely flexible.
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I still have digestive issues.
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I still have other issues that are like embarrassing to talk about, but I have all of the other things that come with chronic illness
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that are just like in my genetics that I can't change.
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But a lot of my symptoms have been completely manageable by managing my stress and my emotional well-being.
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So this applies to everyone, not just those with chronic illness.
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Stress is the number one killer.
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We can notice this from the blue zones.
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if you look at the blue zones around the earth and
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if you don't know what a blue zone is it's basically
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these pockets of populations throughout the earth um there's a pocket
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in i believe it's sicily italy let me actually look this up
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so i'm not swaying you the wrong way there are five
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zones throughout the globe with the highest concentration of people living 100
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or older it is in okonoa japan sardinia italy um i
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believe it's nicoya peninsula in costa rica greece loma linda california
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These are the five zones throughout the earth where everyone lives over 100 years old.
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Like it's just, that's the casual that they just live over 100 years old.
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And what you'll notice with a lot of these populations, obviously they have very healthy diets.
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They sway more towards vegetarian diets and or if they do eat meat, it's sparse and they mostly eat fish and they eat very healthy, a lot of vegetables.
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But then also another thing that happens is they move
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and exercise with purpose they don't do it to like punish themselves they have very good gym routines
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but the main thing is
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that they have very very low stress they maintain their low
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stress lifestyles through what they do through what they choose to
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do every single day they nurture their emotional health they take care of themselves
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and their community and they just live very low stress lifestyles
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because stress is the number one killer it will cause your body to have panic attacks anxiety attacks,
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heart attacks, strokes, when people get in very high stress situations or high stress jobs, they will literally die because of that job because of the stress that's being put on their body.
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But also our emotions and our traumas, even if let's say you're not in the trauma anymore, that trauma lives on in your body.
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Like the body does fucking keep score.
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So that will live on in your body and cause you to develop negative, negative mindsets, negative patterns of thinking.
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It will cause you to continue the stress
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that you used to live in as a perpetuation because you believe
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that the trauma and the stress and the chaos
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that you used to live in is normalized so you continue it
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and my therapist was talking about this and he's like
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when you were in all that stress
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and chaos you didn't know how to set boundaries you didn't know you people pleased like crazy
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and you just did what everyone told you to do without actually taking into account is this good for me
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and the thing is is that I perpetuate that cycle with my lifestyle.
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I will stress myself out like crazy, I'll exercise myself into the ground, I'll push myself beyond my means, I will not eat healthy, I will not sleep enough,
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but then also I'll allow myself to get walked all over emotionally, I won't respect my own boundaries, I won't take care of myself emotionally.
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And that is a huge contribution to why I feel so shitty all the time.
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Because obviously I am sick, but there's also people who have the same condition as me, Ehlers-Danlos and Potts, who are literally Olympic athletes.
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So why is it that I'm bed bound, but those people can be Olympic athletes?
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And obviously chronic illness is a sliding scale, so you have to meet yourself where you are.
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But there's so much that's going on in my emotional body that is weighing down my physical body.
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And that's what I think we can learn from one, Eastern medicine, but two, just blue zones and also psychology,
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is that your emotions carry so much power over your physical body
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and you need to get that in fucking check
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and someone said on TikTok it was the best phrase I've
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ever heard they're like you need to be a bitch
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so you don't develop an autoimmune disorder because a lot of times
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when you stand up for yourself when you say I'm not going to do this
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or I'm going to take time for myself
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or I'm going to almost be selfish with my time
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because I know it's better for my emotions obviously like take
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care of yourself take care of the people around you be empathetic be kind
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but it comes to a point where it's like
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if I don't want to do this or
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if this is going to harm me
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or this is not good for me I need to put
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my foot down people will call you a bitch for
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that people will call you a bitch
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if you say no a lot of people will so
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when they say be a bitch
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so you don't develop an autoimmune disorder it means stand up for yourself
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so your body doesn't get triggered so badly that it turns on the genes for chronic illness and autoimmune disorders.
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I just thought this was a massive food for thought
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and a massive like thought experiment that we could all think about
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because think about the times you've gone through trauma
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and how your body functioned before during and after that trauma
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and most of you will say I developed some kind of illness after
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that trauma or I developed a negative pattern of thinking after
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that trauma or I had PTSD or I had CPTSD
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or I developed chronic illness or now I have nagging headaches
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that I can't seem to get rid of or whatever it might be
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or have this nagging back pain that won't go away
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because one those traumas live on the in the body
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but two you need to let that shit go
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and you need to learn to stand up for yourself
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or else your body will suffer as a result anyway that's my hot take for the day
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we're doing good wherever we are in the world I love you good morning good night good afternoon all the good stuff.
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Love you guys.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Your emotions are making you sick”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: stress, trauma, chronic, illness, emotion. This video has 191 sentences and 2615 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:53. The speaker talks fast, about 203 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| distress noun | /dɪˈstɹɛs/ | Physical or emotional discomfort, suffering, or alarm, particularly of a more acute nature. |
| trauma noun | /ˈtɹɔm.ə/ | Any injury to the body of a living thing. |
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| autoimmune adjective | /ˌɔːtəʊɪˈmjuːn/ | Of or pertaining to autoimmunity. |
| symptom noun | /ˈsɪm(p)təm/ | A perceived change in some function, sensation or appearance of a person that indicates a disease or disorder, such as fever, headache or rash; strictly, a… |
| boundary noun | /ˈbaʊndɹi/ | The dividing line or location between two areas. |
| hormone noun | /ˈhoɹmoʊn/ | Any substance produced by one tissue and conveyed by the bloodstream to another to effect physiological activity. |
| emotionally adverb | /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/ | In an emotional manner; displaying emotion. |
| rebel noun | /ˈɹɛb.əl/ | A person who resists an established authority, often violently. |
| abusive adjective | /əˈbju.sɪv/ | Prone to treat someone badly by coarse, insulting words or other maltreatment; vituperative; reproachful; scurrilous. |
| therapist noun | /ˈθɛɹəpɪst/ | Someone who provides therapy, usually professionally. |
| headache noun | /ˈhɛdeɪk/ | A pain or ache in the head. |
| ailment noun | /ˈeɪ̯lmənt/ | Something which ails one; a disease; sickness. |
| physiological adjective | /ˌfɪz.i.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/ | Of, or relating to physiology. |
| sway verb | /ˈsweɪ̯/ | To move or swing from side to side; or backward and forward; to rock. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| stand up for verb | To speak or act in support or defense of (a person, a cause, a belief, or the like). |
| go away verb | To depart or leave a place. |
| come off verb | To become detached. |
| fall off verb | To become detached or to drop from. |
| get away verb | To move away (from). |
| get back to verb | Return to (an activity) |
| open up verb | To open. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- I'm not saying that it's purely emotional.
- Do not take that as what I'm saying.
- I'll get insomnia, night terrors, sleep paralysis.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to be · used to live |
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been wanting · I've been trying |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've talked · have said · I've gone |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | were born · were forced · being put |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 62 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, I've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: therapist /ˈθɛɹəpɪst/, athlete /ˈæθ.liːt/, empathetic /ˌɛmpəˈθɛtɪk/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/, fluctuation /flʌkt͡ʃuːˈeɪʃən/, perpetuation /pə(ɹ)ˌpɛtjuˈeɪʃən/, casually /ˈkæʒuəli/
- Long words — get the stress right: emotionally /ɪˈməʊʃənəli/, physiological /ˌfɪz.i.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/, empathetic /ˌɛmpəˈθɛtɪk/, exaggerate /ɛɡˈzæd͡ʒ.ə.ɹeɪt/, fluctuation /flʌkt͡ʃuːˈeɪʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like distress, trauma, emotion.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.