Episode #67 - What's Actually Blocking Your Abundance

Most people think of abundance as money. You either have enough or you do not. But what Brandi Garden and Dr. Desiree Caruso, ND, explore in Episode 67 of The Eversio Experience is much more specific than that: abundance is a nervous system state. And most people are not living in it, not because they lack the motivation to change, but because their body has not been given the conditions to feel safe enough to try.

This episode is one of the most personal conversations Brandi and Desiree have had on the show. It covers real stories of staying stuck too long, the physiology behind why we stay, and what it actually takes to shift.

Scarcity and Abundance Are Not About Your Bank Account

The felt sense of scarcity, that there is not enough time, love, safety, or opportunity, does not originate in your bank account. It originates in your nervous system. And your nervous system does not distinguish between a real physical threat and the perceived threat of financial pressure, an uncomfortable relationship, or a career that is making you sick.

Both get filed under danger. Both trigger the same cascading stress response.

In that state, your body contracts. Breathing gets shallow. Digestion slows. Blood moves toward your muscles so you are ready to fight or run. And you stop being capable of making good long-term decisions, because your physiology is only asking you to survive the next five minutes.

This is why so many people stay stuck in situations they know are not right for them. It is not a character flaw. It is a nervous system response.

The Fourth Stress Response Nobody Talks About

Most people know fight, flight, and freeze. Dr. Desiree brings up a fourth: fawn.

Fawn is the over-accommodating response. It is being so busy managing everyone else's needs that you never check in on your own. It shows up as chronic people-pleasing, automatic yes-saying, and a deep reflex to minimize your own symptoms so no one around you feels burdened.

A significant portion of the women Dr. Desiree sees in her naturopathic practice are living almost entirely in fawn mode. From the outside, it looks like generosity. It does not feel like it on the inside.

Brandi describes spending years there. Teaching in a classroom she loved while her body was managing an autoimmune condition with a pharmaceutical stack whose side effects kept multiplying. Sitting in the parking lot some mornings, trying to find the energy to walk in. Calling it all normal, calling it all fine, staying because it was the safe, predictable thing to do.

Two Stories That Run on the Same Thread

Brandi and Desiree tell their full stories in this episode, and what strikes you is how similar the thread is even though the circumstances look completely different.

Brandi spent over twenty years teaching before the side effects from her autoimmune medication became unsustainable. She describes the moment when staying finally felt scarier than changing: when she stopped saying "at least this is safe" and started saying "there has to be something better than this." She and her husband Craig launched Eversio Wellness in 2020 with no guaranteed customer base, ten orders on launch day, and a deep conviction that functional mushrooms had done something real for their bodies.

Desiree's story runs alongside it. She was living in a home with mold she did not fully recognize yet, managing symptoms she kept attributing to stress, and at the same time doing the internal work to call in her now-husband. She describes writing out exactly what she wanted in a partner, journaling about what her weekends and weekdays would look like in that relationship, and becoming the version of herself who already had it. She bought a nightstand for a partner who had not arrived yet. She moved into a space that had room for two. And then he showed up.

Both stayed in situations that quietly cost them longer than they needed to. And both say the real risk was staying, not leaving.

Why Receiving Is Harder Than Giving

Brandi and Desiree have a community full of givers. People who show up consistently for others, deflect compliments before they have landed, and immediately redirect praise toward someone else the moment it arrives.

Dr. Desiree names this as a form of scarcity operating at the level of self-worth. If you have not yet decided that you are worth the investment, receiving will feel uncomfortable every time. You will hand it back before it has had a chance to mean anything.

The practice of receiving is not passive. It starts small. When someone compliments you, say thank you. Do not add a "but." When something good happens, let yourself feel good about it for longer than three seconds before you find a reason to worry it will be taken away.

There is also a distinction worth sitting with between genuine giving and overgiving from fear. Genuine giving feels warm and does not leave you depleted. Overgiving from fear feels urgent, almost anxious, like something bad will happen if you do not do it right now. Most people who identify as givers have done both, sometimes in the same hour. Checking in with your body before you say yes is how you start to tell the difference.

Abundance Has Seasons (And Some of Them Look Like Winter)

One of the most useful reframes in this episode is the seasons conversation.

A lot of people go through a hard stretch and decide it means abundance isn't working for them. But abundance is not supposed to feel like summer all year. There are periods of dormancy, of quiet building, of things growing underground before anything shows up above the surface. Fighting those seasons does not speed them up. It just exhausts you.

Brandi talks about the early days of building Eversio Wellness, when sales were slow, and every decision felt like a question mark. The scarcity version of her would have called that failure. The abundance lens let her call it a season of root growth.

Dr. Desiree adds the clinical perspective: the body that never gets a winter eventually forces one on you. That is burnout. That is illness. People who refuse to slow down voluntarily end up slowed down involuntarily.

Honoring the season you are actually in is part of the practice.

Devotion-Based Effort vs. Fear-Based Effort

Both can look identical from the outside. Two people working long hours, putting in consistent effort, showing up every day. But they feel completely different inside the body, and they lead to completely different outcomes over time.

Fear-based effort is desperate. You are grinding because you are terrified of what happens if you stop.

Devotion-based effort is sustained by the meaning in the work. You are working hard because you love what you are building. It replenishes you even when it is hard.

Brandi describes the early Eversio days as sometimes running until 2 a.m. and feeling like she could have kept going, because something was filling her up that had not been there in the classroom. The hours were longer, but the exhaustion was different. That difference is physiological. It is not just mindset.

The question worth asking yourself regularly: is this effort coming from devotion, or from fear? The answer tells you a lot about how long you can sustain it.

Where Mushrooms Come In

The mindset work and the physical work are not separate.

Dr. Desiree explains it this way: when a nervous system has been stuck in a contracted threat state for long enough, that becomes the baseline. It stops being a reaction and starts being an operating system. The body is spending so much energy managing a perceived threat, all day, every day, that there is no bandwidth left for new patterns, considered decisions, or recognizing opportunity when it arrives.

Physiologically supporting your nervous system isn't optional if you want the mindset work to hold.

Reishi is one of the functional mushrooms Dr. Desiree reaches for in this context. It has traditionally been used to support the body's stress response and sleep. And sleep is foundational: you cannot think from a place of abundance on four hours of broken sleep. Your body will default to threat mode every time.

Lion's Mane was Brandi's first mushroom, and she connects it directly to the clarity piece. Brain fog means you cannot hold a thought long enough to make a considered decision. You default to old patterns because new patterns require mental bandwidth you do not have. Supporting cognitive function is not about vanity. It is about giving yourself the actual capacity to choose differently.

You cannot affirm your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. But you can give your body the support it needs to come out of that state, and then do the work.

The Exercise Worth Trying Today

Dr. Desiree uses this with patients. Finish this sentence honestly:

"I cannot do this because..."

Write down the first thing that comes up. Then ask: Is that actually true? Or is it a story I have been telling myself to avoid the risk of trying?

You cannot change a story you have not identified. Once you identify it, you get to choose again. The old story may have protected you at some point. You can thank it for that and decide you don't need to keep living inside it.

What to Take With You

Abundance is a practice. It is built in small decisions, repeated over time, inside a body that's supported rather than depleted.

It often looks like discomfort before it looks like relief. Leaving the classroom felt like loss before it felt like freedom. Moving out of a mold-filled apartment felt disruptive before it felt like the best decision Desiree had ever made. Restructuring a work week felt risky before it felt sustainable.

If you are sitting in a version of "fine" that is quietly costing you something, the discomfort you feel about changing might not be a signal that you are doing something wrong. It might be the first sign that you are finally doing something right.