Rosa F. Brissos

Rosa F. Brissos Multipassionate Researcher and Coach.

I used to pretend I was a rock.Not stoic. Not strong. A rock — as in, nothing lands, nothing marks, nothing gets through...
04/09/2026

I used to pretend I was a rock.

Not stoic. Not strong. A rock — as in, nothing lands, nothing marks, nothing gets through, but the passage of time, and there is nothing here to reach.

It was a very effective strategy. It worked for years.

People stop asking how you are because you have made the question redundant, and then eventually they stop noticing when you stop answering.

Here is what I didn’t understand about it until recent years.

A rock doesn’t feel the sting. That was the whole point.

But a rock also doesn’t heal one.
Nothing gets metabolised.
It just sits in the tissue with no name on it, and then arrives eighteen months later at an inconvenient moment, and you decide the problem is that you are too sensitive now — when in fact you are simply, finally, receiving the post.

My shoulder and my hip start speaking when I am uncertain about the future and afraid the past is about to repeat itself.

For years I filed that under stress, which is a word that does almost no work.

The more accurate sentence is this: my body is not reporting an injury. It is making a forecast. It holds a prediction about what tends to happen next — built from things that genuinely did happen — and it braces in advance.

That is not weakness and it is not imagination. It is the machine doing precisely what it was built to do, using the data it was given.

The work is not becoming a rock again.

It is giving the machine newer data.

What does your body forecast before you consciously do?

Tell me in the comments — I’ll read all of them ❤︎

03/09/2026

Your scan is clean.

Your pain is real.

Those two facts do not contradict each other.

Pain has three major mechanistic descriptors:

Nociceptive — linked to actual or threatened tissue damage.

Neuropathic — caused by disease or lesion of the somatosensory nervous system.

Nociplastic — altered nociception, without clear evidence that tissue damage or nerve disease adequately explains the pain.

Real pain.

Sometimes without a satisfying picture to point at.

Clinical criteria for nociplastic pain arrived in 2021.

Then, in 2024, 36 experts across 13 countries published recommendations for distinguishing these mechanisms in low-back pain— and also said: we still need more evidence before using them routinely in clinical practice.

Both things matter.

The science has a better map.

The map is still unfinished.

So if you spent years hearing “your scan looks fine” and quietly translated that into “maybe I’m exaggerating” — stop.

Absence of visible damage is not evidence of imaginary pain.

Sometimes we were looking with the wrong instrument.

If you know someone who was told their scan was clean and then quietly decided they’d been exaggerating — send it to them ❤︎

Your scan is clean.Your pain is real.Those two facts do not contradict each other.Pain has three major mechanistic descr...
02/09/2026

Your scan is clean.

Your pain is real.

Those two facts do not contradict each other.

Pain has three major mechanistic descriptors:

Nociceptive — linked to actual or threatened tissue damage.

Neuropathic — caused by disease or lesion of the somatosensory nervous system.

Nociplastic — altered nociception, without clear evidence that tissue damage or nerve disease adequately explains the pain.

Real pain.

Sometimes without a satisfying picture to point at.

Clinical criteria for nociplastic pain arrived in 2021.

Then, in 2024, 36 experts across 13 countries published recommendations for distinguishing these mechanisms in low-back pain — and also said:
we still need more evidence before using them routinely in clinical practice.

Both things matter.

The science has a better map.

The map is still unfinished.

So if you spent years hearing “your scan looks fine” and quietly translated that into "maybe I’m exaggerating” — stop.

Absence of visible damage is not evidence of imaginary pain.

Sometimes we were looking with the wrong instrument.

Save this one — it's the slide you'll want in front of you at the next appointment.

And if you want help working out which one you're in: The First Hour, €35 while I'm certifying in Compassionate Inquiry, rising when I qualify. Link in bio.❤︎

01/09/2026

There is a third word for pain.

Most people were only taught two.

Nociceptive: tissue-related pain.
Neuropathic: nerve-related pain.
Nociplastic: pain linked to altered nociception, without clear tissue damage or nerve disease fully explaining it.

Real pain.

Sometimes with very little to point at on a scan.

And that matters.

Because if your tests came back “normal” and you quietly concluded:

Maybe I’m exaggerating.

You may have been handed an incomplete map — and then blamed yourself for getting lost.

The science is still evolving. These mechanisms can overlap, and a clean scan does not diagnose nociplastic pain.

But this part is clear: Pain does not need visible damage to be real.

If pain has left you bracing, mistrusting your body, or organising your life around it, that is something we can explore.

The First Hour · 60 min · €35

Link in bio ❤︎

I was being stung — and I could not feel it.It was a dream.The mechanism was not.Pain is not a damage meter.It is an exp...
31/08/2026

I was being stung — and I could not feel it.

It was a dream.

The mechanism was not.

Pain is not a damage meter.

It is an experience your nervous system constructs from far more than what is happening in the tissue:

Threat.
Context.
Attention.
Expectation.
What your body believes it needs to do next.

Melzack and Wall cracked that door open in 1965.

Sixty years later, the language is more sophisticated, but the principle survived:
nociception is not pain.

And under acute threat, something stranger can happen.

The nervous system can turn the volume down.

Because sometimes the most useful thing is not:

Feel everything.

It is:

Stay still.
Keep breathing.
Get through this first.

There are endogenous pain-inhibiting systems designed for exactly that.

Which means the absence of pain in the moment does not necessarily mean:
Nothing happened.

Sometimes it means:

Feeling it was not the priority yet.

I have done this awake.

In meetings.

In relationships.

Across whole stretches of my life.

Function beautifully.

Stay useful.

Keep moving.

Then, when the situation is over and the body no longer has to prioritise getting through it — something arrives.

Fatigue.

Pain.

Anger.

Grief.

And the bewildering question:
Why is this hitting me now? I was fine when it happened.

Maybe you were not fine.

Maybe you were functional.

Those are not the same thing.

And that distinction has changed the way I understand an enormous amount of my own history.

The full essay is on Substack today — including the number I think far more people should know, and the third word for pain almost nobody has been taught.

Tell me in the comments:
What did you only feel once it was safe enough to feel it? ❤︎

30/08/2026

I’m taking five people to Colombia at the end of January.

And I want to give you the version without the incense around it.

This is not a retreat you simply buy.

And I am not going to promise you transformation.

I have watched too many people be sold an outcome before anyone has even met their nervous system.

What I am offering is quieter—and considerably more serious:

Preparation.
Accompaniment.
Integration.

Three calls before we leave.

Eight days together in Colombia.

Two calls after we return—for the part psychedelic culture is still strangely good at forgetting:

coming home.

I will be a guest on someone else’s land, working alongside my mentor and his family and in a tradition that is not mine.

I am not the authority there.

I will not cosplay one.

My role is different.

To prepare you properly.

To pay attention.

To help hold the relational and therapeutic container around the experience.

And to still be there when the extraordinary part is over and Tuesday morning comes back.

Why only five?

Because I want to know who I am taking.

I want enough capacity to notice when someone goes quiet.

To recognise when “I’m fine” does not quite match the body saying it.

To stay close enough that nobody becomes anonymous inside the group.

Five allows that.

Fifteen would be a different offering.

There is an application.

Then there is a conversation.

And yes, some people will hear no.

That is not exclusivity theatre.

That is what screening is supposed to do.

You should be more suspicious of a psychedelic container that accepts everyone than one willing to lose the sale.

30 January – 7 February 2027.

Five places.

Applications close 15 September 2026.

It is an application, not a checkout.

Nobody takes a place without speaking with me first.

And if something in you leaned forward while reading this — don’t turn that immediately into a sign from the universe.

Get curious.

Then read the details.

Link in bio ❤︎

29/08/2026

Nobody tells you how ordinary the first hour looks.

So people arrive braced.

For excavation.
For catharsis.
For someone to make them relive the worst thing that ever happened to them.

That is not what happens.

You will not be asked to force a memory.

You will not be asked to lie on the floor and breathe until something dramatic appears.

And I will not give you a diagnosis.

I am not qualified to do that, and I have no interest in borrowing authority I have not earned.

What actually happens is much less cinematic.

You tell me about the thing you keep circling.

And while you talk, I pay attention.

To the sentence you rush through.

The joke that arrives exactly when something gets close.

The breath you stop taking.

The place your body tightens while your mouth says:

“It’s fine.”

That is where we get curious.

Not:

What is wrong with you?

But:

What is your system protecting you from having to feel, know, ask for, or admit?

The surprising part is how normal the room still looks.

Two people talking.

No performance.

No breakthrough music swelling in the background.

And then, sometimes, something someone has organised their life around for years gets said plainly for the first time.

Not dragged out.

Not manufactured.

Just finally noticed.

That is usually the moment people were not prepared for.

The First Hour

60 minutes · one-to-one · €35 while I complete my Compassionate Inquiry certification pathway.

The rate changes when I certify.

Comment SESSION or book through the link in my bio. ❤︎

28/08/2026

On Monday I told you what science forgot to measure in women.

Today, the opposite:

One variable they actually checked.

Four times.

The claim is simple:

Oestradiol and progesterone change → CYP3A4 changes → drugs hit differently across your cycle.

Plausible.

Except when researchers measured women, large phase-related changes kept not showing up.

1997: no significant difference.
1998: no phase variation.
1999: no significant difference.
2021: 26 hormone-confirmed cycles. Still no significant phase effect.

Here’s the part wellness tends to skip:
A mechanism can be real and still not matter at the dose your body actually produces.

Oestradiol and progesterone can influence CYP3A4 in liver cells.

But the stronger effects appear at concentrations closer to pregnancy than an ordinary menstrual cycle.

That gap matters.

A receptor is not an outcome.
A cell is not a woman.
Plausibility is not pharmacokinetics.

And the twist?

Researchers have found more consistent CYP3A4 differences between women and men than between different weeks of the female cycle.

So we got sold the fluctuation — and barely discussed the s*x difference.

Small studies. Subtle effects may still exist.

But large, clinically obvious cycle swings in CYP3A4 have been looked for repeatedly and have not shown up consistently.

Less s*xy.

Better science.

Comment SESSION for The First Hour. 60 minutes · one-to-one · €35 ❤︎

For most of my life, I treated my inconsistency as a character flaw.Some weeks I could hold nine things, train hard, sol...
27/08/2026

For most of my life, I treated my inconsistency as a character flaw.

Some weeks I could hold nine things, train hard, solve a problem and have the difficult conversation.

Other weeks I could hold a mug.

Same brain.
Same work.
Same woman.

Allegedly.

So naturally, I developed a very sophisticated theory about what was wrong with me.

The theory was:
Try harder.
Be more disciplined.
Stop being like this.

Which is particularly funny when you remember I have a PhD in medicinal chemistry.

Because it took me an embarrassingly long time to notice something fairly obvious:
I was not observing a personality defect.

I was observing a biological system that changes on a rhythm.

Oestradiol and progesterone are not mood weather.

They are signalling molecules.

They have receptors.

They alter physiology.

And their concentrations do not politely remain constant because you scheduled the same workload every Monday.

My body was running a cyclical endocrine experiment —and I was giving it performance reviews.

That sentence has rearranged something in me.

Because perhaps consistency was never supposed to mean:
produce the same output under different internal conditions.

Perhaps consistency is knowing the system well enough to work with what is actually there.

And no — this does not mean every difficult Tuesday is your hormones.

Sleep matters.
Stress matters.
Nutrition matters.
Illness matters.
Life matters.

That is precisely the point.

Good instrumentation asks what changed before it calls the system defective.

I spent years calling this variation a discipline problem.

Now I get curious about the variable.

Much better science.

Much kinder life.

Tell me: What have you been calling a discipline problem that might actually be data? ❤︎

25/08/2026

We have been giving psychedelics to cycling bodies —and treating the cycle like background noise.

A new review in Molecular Psychiatry just put the problem in one place.

Oestradiol and progesterone can influence:

5-HT2A receptor availability.
Gastric transit and absorption.
Body-water distribution.
CYP enzymes involved in psychedelic metabolism.
And brain networks psychedelics themselves disrupt and reorganise.

In other words:

There are multiple biological reasons to suspect hormonal state matters.

And then comes the sentence that should make everyone in this field slightly uncomfortable:
“Direct human data for psychedelics remain absent.”

Not contradictory.
Not inconclusive.
Absent.

We can describe the mechanism beautifully.

We still cannot tell you, with good human evidence, exactly how a psilocybin experience changes on day 3 versus day 21 of your cycle.

And that distinction matters.

Because this is exactly where wellness loves to commit a small intellectual crime:
plausible mechanism → confident prescription.

So no, I am not going to sell you your “optimal psychedelic week.”

I don’t know it.
Neither does the literature.

What we do know is enough to start asking better questions.

Where are you in your cycle?

Are you using hormonal contraception?

What medications are you taking?

Are you postpartum, perimenopausal, menopausal?

Does your mood, pain, sleep or nervous system reliably change across those states?

That is not feminine fluff around pharmacology.

That is pharmacology.

And until the trials catch up, good practice means refusing to pretend the missing variable does not exist.

The science is not telling us the answer yet.

It is telling us what we forgot to measure.

I take that level of detail seriously in the room.

The First Hour
60 minutes · one-to-one · €35 while I complete my Compassionate Inquiry certification pathway.

Comment SESSION or book through the link in my bio ❤︎

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