Dr. Cathleen King spent years cycling through chronic Lyme disease, mold toxicity, and exhaustion before landing on the framework that now defines her work: healing starts with the nervous system. Dr. Cathleen King joined Sean Kelly on the Digital Social Hour to walk through that connection between trauma and chronic illness.
The conversation traces her own recovery story into the broader approach she now teaches, covering everything from childhood trauma's effects on the body to specific tools like vagus nerve work and eye exercises that became part of her healing process.
About Dr. Cathleen King
Dr. Cathleen King is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and the CEO of Primal Trust, a company she built around her own recovery from chronic illness. Her physical therapy background gives her framework a clinical foundation, even as her personal story sits at its center.
After years of unresolved chronic Lyme disease, mold toxicity, and fatigue, she developed an approach centered on nervous system regulation, later founding Primal Trust Academy to teach it to others navigating similar chronic health struggles.
What Dr. Cathleen King and Sean Kelly Talked About
- Why Dr. Cathleen King sees the nervous system as central to healing from chronic illness
- Her own recovery story through chronic Lyme disease, mold toxicity, and severe fatigue
- How childhood trauma can show up later as physical illness, in her framework
- Her use of vagus nerve techniques and eye exercises as part of nervous-system healing
- Why she founded Primal Trust Academy to teach her nervous-system-first approach to others
- Her perspective on why root-cause, preventative care often gets overlooked in conventional medicine
- How she connects trauma's effects to areas like gut health and dental health, in her account
Why This Conversation Matters
For anyone who has cycled through conventional treatment without answers, Dr. Cathleen King's story offers a compassionate, lived-experience perspective on the mind-body connection — one worth hearing as a clinician's hard-won framework rather than a settled medical consensus.
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube
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About Sean Kelly & the Digital Social Hour
Sean Kelly is an entrepreneur and the host of the Digital Social Hour, one of the fastest-growing interview podcasts in the world, where he sits down with entrepreneurs, athletes, creators, and cultural voices for candid, long-form conversations. The show draws over 100 million views a month across platforms. Explore more guest features on SeanKelly.io.
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