Teaching People To Beat Chronic Fatigue With Miguel Bautista

Many high achievers with Type A personalities often push themselves too hard that they get stuck in chronic fatigue and constantly experience brain fog. Being in such an unhealthy state of mind will never bring you success, and you have to deal with it as soon as possible to avoid hitting rock bottom. George Wright III is joined by Miguel Bautista, who has developed the CFS Recovery System that has helped over a thousand people go from bedridden to thriving. He shares how his personal struggles with undiagnosed symptoms as a former athlete opened his eyes to the concept of a hypersensitive nervous system and harness the power of brain retraining. Discover how to get rid of burnout, reclaim your best self, and achieve peak performance by regulating stress and alleviating chronic fatigue through science-based approaches.

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01:58 Looking Back To Miguel’s Inspiring Personal Journey

09:17 Understanding What A Hypersensitive Nervous System Feels

13:53 How Miguel’s CFS Recovery System Works

20:05 Importance Of Taking A Break From The Grind

21:47 Get In Touch With Miguel

22:38 Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

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About Miguel Bautista

Miguel Bautista, author of Thriver, Not Survivor: How to Beat Chronic Fatigue, has helped thousands overcome fatigue, brain fog, and chronic pain, using the CFS Recovery System—a proven program he developed that has guided over 1,000 people from being bedridden to thriving. A former athlete, Bautista personally overcame years of mysterious, undiagnosed symptoms by discovering the power of brain retraining and neuroplasticity, and now leads a global coaching team composed of former clients who have fully recovered and guide others through the same transformative process.

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Guest Resources

Website: cfsrecovery.co/apply

Book: Thriver, Not Survivor: How to Beat Chronic Fatigue

YouTube: CFS Recovery Channel

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Teaching People To Beat Chronic Fatigue With Miguel Bautista

I’m joined in the studio with an amazing guest, Miguel Bautista. How are you doing?

I’m doing excellent. I’m excited to be here.

Sometimes, it’s tough to coordinate, but I’m excited for you to be here because we’re talking about the topic of overcoming fatigue, brain fog, and chronic pain. Let me give a quick introduction, so our audience knows you. You’ve done a lot of things. You’ve written a book. You are the author of Thriver, Not Survivor: How to Beat Chronic Fatigue. You’ve helped, more importantly, thousands of people to overcome fatigue, brain fog, and chronic pain.

You developed this CFS Recovery System, which is a program that has helped over 1,000 people go from bedridden to thriving. Being a former athlete and someone who has gone through everything from coaching and discipline, your topic is going to be helpful for a lot of people. I appreciate you taking some time. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

It’s going to help a lot of people, especially with chronic fatigue syndrome. It’s so much more than fatigue. There are so many of these weird symptoms going on. There are lots of burnout that leads to this. A lot of entrepreneurs are type A personalities, high achievers. Those are the people with a perfect recipe to get something like this. Usually, by the time they’re finding us, they’re in the severe stages of it. Hopefully, this helps people.

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Looking Back To Miguel’s Inspiring Personal Journey

For those of you tuning in, we’re going to be getting into details that you might associate with burnout, stress, and chronic fatigue, or you might have something more specific. We’ll get into all that as well. Miguel, one thing that might help everyone is to give a little bit of your background in your personal journey. You had this story of your own, going from being bedridden to hiking in Hawaii. It is pretty inspiring. It also lays a foundation for why you are qualified to talk about this subject. Could you share that with us, your story, and what led you up to everything you’re doing right now that we can dig into?

We have to look back even before I had all these symptoms start coming up. What was life like leading up to it? I was a regular kid. I love playing outside. I grew up in Vancouver, B.C., simple family. Growing up, I realized I couldn’t sit still. I was always very driven, almost too driven for my own good. I had this extreme personality. I remember in elementary school, the first time I ever got a C-plus, I felt like a complete failure. I was used to getting those straight A’s. I was that perfectionist.

I put a lot of pressure on myself growing up to always ‘succeed.’ Fast forward several years. This drive inside led to very fruitful things early on in my life, like wrestling team captain, high school football team captain, and a straight-A honor student. After I graduated, I ended up being one of the top-selling personal trainers in a company with over 300 trainers. I was 22 years old at the time. I had a nice car and was making decent money.

On the outside, everything seemed like it was on track. Things were moving in the right direction on the surface. It got to the point where my body could not keep up with the demand I was placing on it. I work in 12, 14, and 16-hour days, constantly reading books about personal development, not sleeping right, and not eating right. Most importantly, there was the inner voice of “You’ve got to do more. Be more productive. You’ve got to keep going. Push harder.”

I equated success with pain, discipline, blood, sweat, and tears. That’s what I told myself in my mind. Eventually, my health started slipping. I fell into a hole that was so deep. I never thought I would get out of it. After a handful of years, with my health slipping, it started with brain fog, insomnia, some anxiety, and random panic attacks. I didn’t even know what anxiety was that whole time. I saw anxiety as a weakness. You’re a sissy. Just push through until you end up in the hospital over and over again, week after week, because you can’t breathe. You feel like your heart’s going to explode. You can’t sleep.

Things took a downhill turn. After about four years of dealing with that, I was 23 years old. This was when I was at rock bottom. I was lying in that hospital bed all alone, unable to even sit up. I couldn’t feed myself. People beside me were being told they have four months to live, getting out of surgery. I thought to myself, “How did I end up here? Everything was on track. My life was good. I felt like I did all the right things. I’m in so deep a hole. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to get out.” I’d also been to doctors, specialists, and alternative health specialists over the years.

About 35 to 40 different specialists and doctors, dozens of emergency room visits, and all of them couldn’t find anything wrong with me. On paper, I was perfectly healthy, but I was feeling all these symptoms. They got my worst. I was completely bedridden, getting spoon-fed for eight months straight. Imagine going from team captain, football team, a top performing personal trainer, and very active. I had a bunch of other side business projects going on. To go from that to not even being able to shower, my grandma had to wipe me down for six months. The other two months I was in the hospital, I had to learn how to use a wheelchair, use a walker, and get back on my own two feet.

You say something that is an extreme case. A lot of people have had this happen. It’s important to note that you said a couple of things I wanted to point out. That is most people who are success-driven, like entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, and things like that, the stuff that got them where they want to be is the hard work, the grind, the hustle, and things like that. Although you have to get to a point where some people get to, it is an extreme case.

Many people are suffering from a lot of those symptoms. It’s hard for them to recognize it because what has gotten them the success, or at least the recognition in their life to this point, is the source of the problem. They don’t see that because they see that as what they’ve needed to be successful. The last thing they want to do is change that.

It’s exactly what you said. In fact, those personality traits double down on that. When they feel these symptoms, they feel more tired and run down. They almost see that as a challenge of “This is my time to shine. This is where champions are made. I got to push through.”

As you said, it is a form of weakness, and they don’t want to accept it. They see that as, “I’m going to push even harder, or I’m not going to acknowledge it.”

These kinds of people, type A personalities, are the last people to reach out for help or show weakness until they have absolutely no choice.

High achievers with Type A personalities are the last people who reach out for help or show weaknesses until they have absolutely no choice.

That’s what I was going to say. You actually got the symptoms. You had no choice. We’re going to talk later about how people can catch this early on. Finish your story. What did you do? How did you get some success out of that?

I feel like I won the lottery when I got paired up with my doctor in the hospital. It’s a wild story. The first month I was in the ICU, they were running every test on me, but all my tests were coming back normal. Clearly, something is wrong. I can’t stop shaking. I have to wear earplugs, construction earmuffs, and blindfolds because I couldn’t even tolerate light. They had to blend my food a lot of times. I had to drink it because my digestive system wasn’t working.

After they ruled out the fact that my organs were functioning fine, they were like, “This is probably a problem with the way your brain is communicating with your body because on paper, your heart is fine. Your lungs are fine. Everything else is fine, but you say you’re dealing with this stuff. You feel it.” I’m like, “Yes, I’m not making this up.” They were like, “You have an option here. We can either send you home, and you can come back every day to work with these other doctors.” I’m like, “I can’t even sit up, so I can’t do that.”

The other option was, they said, “We have a bunch of extra rooms in the psych ward. If you want to stay there, that way you can work with a doctor every day.” I was like, “Is this their trick to tell me I’m crazy? Am I going to be locked up in there? Do they think it’s in my head?” They were like, “No, you’d be a volunteer. You get a special wristband. You could go home anytime you want. It’s safe. Don’t worry.” I ended up spending the next month living at a psych ward where I got to work with a psychiatrist every day.

He’s the one who essentially unlocked what was going on. He was like, “You’re not going to die. You’re feeling all these symptoms, though. You can’t even feed yourself.” This is when I was in a wheelchair. They rolled me into his office. They were like, “Miguel, you pushed your body so freaking hard. Your nervous system has a limit. You clearly exceeded that limit. What you’re dealing with is a hypersensitive nervous system. This is why everything is sensitive.”

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Understanding What A Hypersensitive Nervous System Feels

I read that when I was looking at some information that you had, and learning more about you. So many people suffer from these unexplained symptoms that traditional medicine may or may not be able to define. When you talked about a hypersensitive nervous system or this whole idea behind burnout and chronic stress-related issues, can you explain what you mean when you say hypersensitive nervous system for the audience?

What it feels like, you feel on edge. You feel a little bit overwhelmed. You feel like your tolerance for stress is much lower than it used to be. Your threshold is much lower. Essentially, what it is, we all have this limit in our nervous system of how much stress we can handle. When I say nervous system, I’m talking about the brain, your survival brain. When you stack up all these stressors, even the pressure you put on yourself, finances, maybe business, relationships, or career, eventually, for a lot of people, it starts to hit the ceiling. At first, you’ll get early warning signs. You’ll start getting anxiety, palpitations, or insomnia.

Type A personality people will see that as a challenge. I need to double down. They push harder and harder. The further you go above that capacity, your limit, the more symptoms you’re going to feel until your body, your brain, slams on the brake. It says, “We don’t trust you anymore. You’re clearly going to run your body into the ground. We’re going to start forcing you to slow down because we’ve tried to warn you. Now we’re going to force you. Do you want to go work out? We’re going to give you crazy palpitations and shortness of breath when you try that. Do you want to work more on the computer? We’ll give you a ton of brain fog.” These are all signs from the body. People like us interpret them as challenges. It’s common. So many entrepreneurs get this.

Does it stack up, too? I’m curious. A lot of times, people go throughout their lives. As they get older and they move along, from what I’m reading, it’s not just situational-based. I’ve been in this situation before. Can it build up over time so that similar situations you could have handled before are more difficult for you to handle now because it has built up?

Absolutely.

That’s why people say, “I usually can handle this. Now, I can’t.” It’s because it’s built up, correct?

Yes, absolutely. When your threshold is maxed out, there’s only so much you can handle on your plate before it starts overflowing. It’s like a bucket. Once it slowly starts to reach that point of overflow, that’s when your brain starts to signal your body to stop. It’ll stop you from even thinking. It’ll give you brain fog. I’ve seen it stop people from even being able to look at screens because everything is blurry. They have visual snow, visual issues, hearing issues, memory issues, anxiety, and things like that. Usually, there are 40 or 50 symptoms.

There is only so much you can handle before your plate starts overflowing. When you reach that point, your brain starts to signal your body to take a break.

Is the starting point for this retraining your brain, rewiring your brain? It’s not a medical per se condition that you would jump into. Does it begin with the brain? Where does somebody start as they’re seeing these types of symptoms and things? It is your specialty.

Number one, definitely rule out all other health issues. Go see your doctor. Go get everything checked out. Get the blood work done. Usually, when that’s all completely fine, you’re left there wondering what is going on. People start to develop this health anxiety, almost like hypochondria. You feel like you have some mysterious illness, and you’re going to drop dead. You start to not even trust your own body. You feel your heart rate increase. You start to think, “Am I having a heart attack?” I would start with educating yourself first on what’s even going on. You get out of that downward spiral because it’s like a loop. You feel physical symptoms.

You’ll get anxious about them because the doctors aren’t telling you what’s going on. The more anxious you are, the more on edge you are, which equals more symptoms. The easiest analogy I can describe this is when we think of a computer, for example. You have the hardware, and then you have the software. We initially think it’s a hardware problem. Maybe it’s the lungs. Maybe it’s my muscles, my legs, or my adrenals. Once you get all of that checked out, once the hardware is okay, now we have to look at it as a software issue. The good news is you can always update the software, but it takes the individual to manually go in there and update that software from a very hypersensitive survival-based brain to a thrival-based brain, a more calm, more regulated brain.

How Miguel’s CFS Recovery System Works

A lot of people feel like there aren’t a lot of ways to change that, but that’s why I love that concept of neuroplasticity. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been, how old you are, or what your experience is. You can retrain your brain through conscious frequency, repetition, and that whole concept of neuroplasticity. Also, you’ve developed the CFS Recovery System. Maybe you could walk us through a little bit of what you’ve done because, through the thousands of people you’ve helped and worked with, your own personal story, you’ve created a real system for dealing with and creating recovery. Maybe you could take a minute and walk us through that as well, or some of the phases and pillars of what you do with your clients.

There is a duplicatable system to go from as severe as bedridden to fully functioning, like running, exercising, traveling, getting your life back, and actually being better than you were prior to getting sick. It starts with education. It’s teaching people what exactly is happening in their bodies. Why are they feeling these symptoms? Why is it not going away? We do that through very short, condensed video modules, coaching calls, and even a nervous system health assessment where we’ll analyze someone’s specific symptoms, how long they’ve been sick, and what stage they are at in terms of severity.

We’ll match that to a certain approach because the different stages of severity have different approaches. Number one is education. Number two, it’s getting them in the community as well. Once they realize that there are other people dealing with this, it helps them feel a lot better. They sleep better at night because most people we see or who come to us haven’t heard about anybody else who has this. In fact, the doctors don’t even know what chronic fatigue syndrome is.

Having uncertainty is the worst feeling, whether it’s physical, mental, or emotional, or even in business. That’s got to be a huge help. I see that.

The community is great. Lastly, it’s the hands-on help where we tell them, “For your specific situation, here are the activities to stay away from. Here are the activities to focus on.” If someone’s a little more severe, if they’re semi-functional, we look at what those triggers are for your nervous system. Some people are still working when they come to us, but they’re deteriorating. They’re not getting better. We need to figure out where those energy leaks are. What are those stressors? The biggest thing is what we talked about earlier.

There are certain personality traits that people have that amplify these types of issues. Type A personality, perfectionist, over-thinker, over-analyzer, high-achiever. We ought to teach them. We need to teach you to control these things. It’s a double-edged sword. It’s a superpower, but if you don’t learn how to control it, it will control you. You’re not even in the driver’s seat of your own life. This is why you burned out. It’s teaching them to turn the dial down on those certain personality traits, which is very difficult for a lot of people.

I like what you said there because we’re not necessarily suggesting that the stuff that’s gotten you where you want to be, you give up or you change. You have to learn how to regulate because you don’t want to take your biggest strength that has gotten you to where you want to be and turn it off. That’s what we fear as entrepreneurs, business owners, or whatever, but you can learn to regulate it.

I like how you said education, but then being aware of it, and then being able to dial it in and turn it out. By default, let’s be honest, most people who have personalities are A-type. I’m one of them. You, almost at a subconscious level, operate that way. You don’t consciously try to, so you do exacerbate any average situation for a lot of people. You've got to learn to recognize that and deal with it.

If we think about it like a car driving, the cruise control speed is redlining the engine. That’s their baseline cruise control, and something is going to go loose. They don’t meditate, or they don’t take a day off. Even if they take a physical day off, they’re still thinking about work, even if they’re with family. That’s a big one. I had to learn how to disengage from work, even temporarily. It’s teaching them to use those superpowers to their advantage and not against them.

Learn how to use your superpowers for your advantage and not against yourself.

What would you say is some of the uniqueness of what you guys do as opposed to traditional treatment models and things like that? What makes your approach to recovery different or unique?

For a lot of people out there with CFS, long COVID, or fibromyalgia, which are essentially the same thing, the same family of issues, a lot of the resources out there are very education-based. It’s like, “Here’s what’s going on. In general, here’s what you should do. Go apply it.” It’s more general information, whereas with us, we like to get right down there in the trenches with them. We’re there every day, five days a week, messaging them back and forth and making sure things are on track.

It’s very much like we’ll do it with you versus you doing it yourself. It can get confusing. There’s a lot of information you could follow, but how do you actually implement that? If you go to a gym, it’s like reading all these gym books, but how do you build a program for yourself? How do you know when to do more? What if you get a tiny injury? How much do you pull back? With us, we’re focusing on, especially for the more severe cases, how many times you can go walk downstairs to make your own food each week. How many times can you shower in a week?

Once we get there, when is it safe to leave the house or start working again? What does that even look like? How do you balance that out with all these other things without crashing? That’s another thing. The people who have this are very sensitive. It doesn’t take much for them to trigger a flare-up. A flare-up means you're out for a few days, a few weeks sometimes even, where you are wiped out. How do we mitigate that while reintegrating into life?

I’ve seen this over the last 20 to 30 years of working with a lot of businesses, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders. It used to be about the information. Nowadays, you can get the information, education, and what you need to do so easily and quickly. I’ve seen it gravitate towards results that happen from the application of that information. I can see why a lot of times, you can’t see the forest through the trees yourself. It does help having someone to help you do that.

Importance Of Taking A Break From The Grind

There’s probably a broad spectrum of people who deal with these types of issues and chronic issues. It also extends to plain burnout and long-term fatigue for business owners. Do you have any practical advice or steps that you would give someone? Let’s say they’re back where you were. They’re saying, “Man, I’m noticing these things. Not as big a deal, but they are affecting my life.” What advice, strategies, or even tips would you give them to grab the reins on this type of problem they’re dealing with?

The biggest advice I could give, and I don’t regret anything, but if I could go back in time, I would tell myself this advice. “Take half a day off every single week. Take half a day off, not just physically. When you're doing the thing, mentally be there. You need some distance from the work or something your mind is so obsessed with. You need that space for it to breathe. Take your foot off the gas pedal 5% of the time, and you’ll be okay.” It’s harder to do that than it is to give the advice. That’s what I would say.

It’s interesting. I’ve mentioned this a couple of times. We look at ourselves sometimes as corporate athletes. There are professional athletes. They run, drive, grind, and stress their muscles, but they put a lot of effort into recovery. They put time and energy into cold baths, massage, and things like this. It’s in the recovery that we grow. If you’re tuning in to this episode and you’re out there grinding, experiencing some of these things, and haven't learned to prioritize, you’ve got to understand the benefits of recovery because recovery is when the growth happens. I agree with your advice.

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Get In Touch With Miguel

Even if you were to just block into your schedule, some of the most important things take some time. You can see a lot of benefits there. If somebody wanted to start educating themselves, getting some more information, and connecting with you, what’s the best way? Where can they go and connect with you, get some thoughts on this, and start to educate themselves, because there may be things they’re not even recognizing? Where do they start to do that?

The best place to do that is going to be on YouTube. Our channel is @CFSRecovery. Pretty much any symptom, I have a video about it. Any issues people come up with, with CFS or long COVID, we have. We have over 1,800 videos on the YouTube channel. Go to the channel, type it in there, and you could learn about it, everything from physical symptoms to even the emotional aspect of this stuff. We also have an Instagram. If you want to DM me, it is @CFSRecovery. We give out all the information for free.

Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

I love it. You’ve got some great content. I was binging it the other day. I definitely would recommend people check this out because I recognize the importance and the effect that not just chronic fatigue and burnout have on your business, but on your personal life, relationships, mental, and personal growth, even. I appreciate you joining us to share this thought. I want to ask you one more time. Is there anything that you feel is important, a message you want to put out there, or anything related to what you’re trying to do with your business and with this whole topic? Any last few thoughts that you have to leave our audience with?

If you are somebody who is dealing with a bunch of strange, mysterious symptoms that the doctors can’t figure out, know that there is hope. There are millions of people who deal with this as well. Recovery is absolutely possible. As long as you’ve had your tests and scans ruled out, you can definitely get your life back and start thriving again. If you need help with that, check us out on YouTube. If you know somebody with something like this, fibromyalgia, or a big one nowadays, long COVID, and there are a lot of people getting this, send it to our channel. We’ve helped, at this point, over 1,500 people come through our programs. That’s not even including all the people who were covered with the free content.

Share this episode, guys. Do yourself and others a favor. You don’t know what people are going through. Don’t just think about it from the standpoint of somebody you might think is struggling. Most of the struggle is on the inside. Share this episode for sure. We appreciate you spending time here, tuning in to Miguel and me. I’d add one more thing. I always tell people it’s never too late to start living the life you’re meant to live. You do have to take steps.

It takes work. It takes making the moves. If you’re suffering from burnout, fatigue, chronic stress, anxiety, or even more serious symptoms, you know that. Take the steps. Your life and everything you’re doing right now will improve and get better, but you’ve got to take action. I appreciate you being with us. Miguel, I appreciate you being here. This is a great topic. Thank you so much for being here.

I appreciate it. That was fun.

Everybody, have an amazing day. I’ll look forward to talking with you soon.

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Important Links

• Miguel Bautista on LinkedIn
• Thriver, Not Survivor: How to Beat Chronic Fatigue
• CFS Recovery System
• CFS Recovery on YouTube
• CFS Recovery on Instagram

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