E 237 The iPhone 16 Mind Trapped In iPhone 4 Programming

 In this episode of Teen Anxiety Maze, I welcome the extraordinary Dr. Tara Perry, a Clinical Hypnotherapist and Doctor of Chinese Medicine whose approach to anxiety has transformed celebrities, Olympians, and thousands of everyday people struggling with invisible burdens.

Have you ever wondered why your teen's anxiety persists despite their best efforts? Dr. Perry reveals the profound truth: we're often operating on outdated internal programming installed between ages 2-10, carrying invisible 100-pound backpacks of emotional weight we don't even realize we're bearing.

This conversation unveils the magnificent power of your subconscious mind - processing an astounding 40 MILLION bits of information per second compared to just 40 bits consciously. Dr. Perry shares breathtaking stories of transformation, including her 89-year-old mother healing a shattered kneecap through subconscious work, and a military veteran finding peace after years of maximum-level PTSD.

What touched me deeply was realizing how we unknowingly pass anxiety through generations, modeling for our children what we learned from our parents. But here's the beautiful truth - this cycle can be broken, often more quickly than you'd imagine.

Dr. Perry offers practical wisdom for immediate implementation:

The "puppy dog" approach to retraining your nervous system
Why celebrating small wins rewires your brain for success
How diet, breath work, and connection create the foundation for lasting change

This episode isn't just information—it's an invitation to transformation for both you and your teen. As Dr. Perry says, "I feel like I get paid to let people out of prison, and that thrills me."

Connect with Dr. Tara
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Free meditation gift: Go to the bottom of Dr. Tara Perry's website Home Page

#TeenAnxiety #SubconsciousHealing #ParentingSupport #MentalWellness #AnxietyRelief 

 Struggling with anxiety in your family? If anxiety is causing tension, fights, or disconnect in your home, you don’t have to face it alone. I help parents bring more peace, confidence, and connection to their families. Let’s talk—schedule a free consultation today or email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com

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Transcript

Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining me for the teen anxiety maze. And today I have a guest with us, Dr. Tara Perry, and she is a clinical hypnotherapist and a doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine, which is something else I want to ask, ask her about because I am fascinated by that too. She specializes in core trauma transformation, helping people get to the root of their biggest block, connect to their authentic selves and thrive in deep, confident peace.

For 25 years, Dr. Perry has successfully treated celebrities, Olympians, first responders, world record holders, doctors, scientists, teachers, parents, and children. So Dr. Perry, thank you for being with us. 

Dr. Tara Perry: Such a pleasure, Cynthia. Thanks for having me. 

Cynthia: Yes. Well, tell us, you know, those bios. I send my bio out for people to read about it too, but [00:01:00] I'm kind of interested in the celebrity part.

So you were in California for a while. Tell me about that. 

Dr. Tara Perry: Well, before I got into holistic medicine, I actually worked at the number one talent agency in Hollywood. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And people would actually give their left arm to, to work there. We had lawyers and MBAs from Harvard and Stanford working in the mailroom for minimum wage.

The competition was fierce. And after two years of being there and having, like, two of the top guys want me to work for them, I mean, that would be, like, a dream for anybody that wanted to be in that world. But I was discovering that I didn't want to be in that world. And it just felt very it, it, not soul satisfying.

And I didn't feel like well, when I discovered holistic medicine, I, I, I called up my homeopath that day and I said, what would I do if I want to do what you do, because he was really helping people. And so I ended up giving notice and going to China for a year to study at one of the top five traditional Chinese medical hospitals.

And it was a different world then. It was two years after Tiananmen [00:02:00] Square and it was, it was an amazing experience kind of going to the well and finding out how originally this stuff evolved. Actually my teacher's teacher's teacher was a fellow who escaped mainland China during the cultural revolution and ended up being famous for treating 150 Taiwanese soldiers per day.

Cynthia: Oh, wow. 

Dr. Tara Perry: And he did it with very few needles and none of them local points. So if you had back pains, he didn't stick them in your back. He put them other places. But he was able to run energy in such a way that profound healing could happen in a short amount of time. 

Cynthia: That is so fascinating. I'm just starting to kind of get into all this like energy work and the things that can happen.

And I'm very excited about what I'm seeing and what it can do for anxiety. So I wanted to tell you or ask you We talk a lot about anxious thoughts in my practice and actually just recently I'm, I'm starting to try to help more with the body part, because even though I do think that reframing thoughts and, and figuring out different ways [00:03:00] to think does help us, but it's really our body.

So, but what do you think about where anxious thoughts are coming from? 

Dr. Tara Perry: Great question. So I find typically even when I'm working with a military veteran who scored 100 on his PTSD scores, which is the maximum and had done all the military stuff and was still having panic attacks, you know, after a couple of sessions, he says, I, you know, it can't be this easy.

And I'm like, yeah, it actually can't be. So it doesn't matter what happens to us. It's, it's our interpretation of ourself, the world and other people. That's the thing that ends up getting us. So it's Donald Hebb's law neurons that

And again, I find they usually get wired in there somewhere between the ages of 2 and 10 when we're sponges. You know, we just don't, we don't have critical thinking. We just, Absorb what's going on around us. And if you've got chaos, if you've got judgment, if you've got stuff that you have to make sense of, a lot of times that gets interpreted in the brain as I'm not good enough.

I'm not worthy. I'm shameful. Relief is available to other people, but it's not available to me. [00:04:00] Whatever the story is, it's different for different people, but there's so many similarities. So we end up with all this baggage that occurs early in life. Okay. So it's like carrying around a hundred pound backpack that we're not even aware that we're carrying around.

So, you know fear is is appropriate. If there's something in your environment here and now to be fearful of, but the human brain tends to hang on to it. And so those neurons that fired together and wired together in childhood often just keep repeating until something comes along and interrupts it.

It's very much like a computer program. You not only have to delete the old prog program, but you've got to write over it. 

Cynthia: Yes. Okay. I love that. So part of your work, I mean, you do a lot of different things with the acupuncture as a word, the hypnotherapy, that's a whole, those are two different things.

But when people come to you for anxiety, what what kind of things do you do for that? 

Dr. Tara Perry: So I will actually I've got a clarity questionnaire on my website, consultterra. com, so [00:05:00] people can get really clear on what it is they want to shift and change, how they've struggled with it, what it's costing them and, and what kind of outcome they want to have.

So typically I'll ask somebody when we're on a call what are three feelings that you'd give anything to not feel anymore? Because the subconscious speaks in emotions and pictures. It does not speak in linear sentences. So in order to get that to shift, and it will shift when it sees that it's holding onto a hot poker that no longer serves it anymore, then it'll be willing to let it go and make that transition from where you are to where you want to go.

I like to say that people are on iPhone 16 operating on iPhone 4 technology. 

Cynthia: Yeah. 

Dr. Tara Perry: And when you change the programming, and it will change, it's just like I work with people that have an 8, need to change and an 10 commitment to change, because it's much like learning a language, learning a new sport, or going to the gym when your muscles are a little out of shape.

It just takes the commitment and your brain will make those new neural pathways as long as it has the right, the a clear road to go. 

Cynthia: [00:06:00] Well, I love that you're talking about that because in a book that I'm reading right now, Anxiety Rx, one of the things he says to change is you need discipline, which means you need to practice the things and you're talking about, like, There is this time where you have to do some stuff that probably feels uncomfortable or annoying or boring or

I don't know. All the things, all the reasons why we don't do something and we do need to do that practice. And I find with my teen clients that some of them do practice somewhat, but others. just say, well, this doesn't work. And then we and then I talked to them about how much have you been trying these things?

Well, I, they don't work, so I'm not doing them, but they're not giving it enough time. So how do you get people to practice that? I guess the need of eight, nine or 10. 

Dr. Tara Perry: Well, no, that's a great question. And I don't like to waste people's time and I don't like to have people spending a lot of time and effort on something that isn't working.

So the results tend to come very quickly and one of the keys to that is once you change your thoughts, you change your [00:07:00] behaviors, you change your outcomes. It's very important to recognize those things and celebrate those things so that the nervous system can go. Oh, that's what they want. They want more of this.

And then then it'll be a reinforcing mechanism. And then it then itself perpetuates itself, because nobody wants to spend their time and energy. Our brains are designed to save energy. And if you're putting a lot of energy into something that's not giving you any results, I mean, I get so many people that have been in therapy for 10, years, and you know, they get better, faster, deeper results just By going into the subconscious mind, bypassing that conscious mind, your conscious mind is processing about 40 bits of information per second.

Your subconscious mind is processing 40 million bits of information per second. So there's no comparison. If your conscious mind is trying to accomplish one thing, but your subconscious mind is trying to accomplish something else, the subconscious mind is going to win that every time. 

Cynthia: Is it easy to get in everyone's subconscious, though?

I would guess some people have some pretty big barriers. 

Dr. Tara Perry: Great question. Really awesome question. So I, I think. You know, when people say I can't be [00:08:00] hypnotized, I say, well, the bad news is, you're already hypnotized. The good news is, is it can be reprogrammed. And some people are easier to drop in than others.

Some people just are like, you know, clay waiting to be molded. And other people have more of a defense system. It, it, It doesn't really matter because we're all programmable. It's, it's ridiculous to think we're not. We, we you know, the reticular activator system in your brain is taking massive amounts of information and focusing it down.

It's like we're going through the world with binoculars. And so what you choose to put those binoculars on makes a whole difference in your experience of life. I love the computer scientist, Alan Kay, who said a change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. And I'm all about results. I want to know that somebody's behavior is different.

Their, their outcomes in life are different. You know, sometimes people have health issues that have been destroying them. You know, they haven't slept for seven years. They've been through regular sleep therapy. And, you know, after three sessions, they're going, I don't know [00:09:00] how you did this. You didn't even mention sleep in the therapy.

I didn't have to, I just had to remove the emotion that was preventing them from sleeping in the first place. And another great outcome is once you dump that backpack that you don't know you've been carrying around that, you know, shows up in the form of anger or exhaustion or anxiousness you just have so much more energy.

So we all know about fight or flight, you know, there's fight flight and then there's also freeze and there's fawn. It's the four F's. So the people pleasers out there are also suffering from this hyper vigilance, you know, their way of getting stress relief is to make sure everybody else around them is happy.

Cynthia: Mhm. That's me. Except it doesn't work. Oh, I know. I'm working on it so hard. 

Dr. Tara Perry: It's like putting the oxygen masks on everybody else while you die of you know, hypoxia. So yeah, so yeah, you're, you're serving other people your family, the community so much better if you put the oxygen mask on yourself first, you make sure your needs are met because people who love you [00:10:00] don't want you depleting yourself at, at, you know, their expense your expense.

Cynthia: Yeah, I find I almost though and people pleasing with people who don't care about my. Health, you know, like that's another 

Dr. Tara Perry: outcome that comes from this work is people end up having better boundaries. Like if people are in a relationship, that's a primary relationship and they're not healthy and you get healthy, then that relationship is going to have to change.

So I've, I've worked with couples who have gotten healthy and realized, oh. This relationship actually isn't for me and they move on. I've also worked with couples that get healthy and then the next thing you know, the partner's calling me going, when can you fit me in? Yes. And that's beautiful because to see two healthy people, two people become healthier you know, children don't do what we say we do.

They do what we model for them. Yes. So this is really important for children and teens because, I mean, I, warms my heart to see parents get healthy, you know, [00:11:00] stop the stress, stop the squabbling, stop fighting and have healthy boundaries, have healthy habits, have healthy ways of being because then the kids just automatically assimilate that.

I mean, I can't tell you how many people they're like, Oh, everybody's anxious. And my family and my mother was anxious. My grandmother was anxious and now my kids are anxious. And well, that actually can be broken. 

Cynthia: Yes. Yeah. And just labeling people as anxious is part of the problem is because, and then you just feel like, oh, well, there's nothing I can do because, oh, I'm anxious.

Well, I was going to ask you a little bit about what parents can do. And you answered that a little bit with like role modeling and making sure that, that kids have. They're being taught how to handle and manage anxiety and not just yelling and or stuffing it down and pretending like it's not there.

All the things that I think we were all taught as we were growing up, unfortunately. So how other things about that? 

Dr. Tara Perry: Yeah, I really think the parents getting healthy is probably priority number one, because if you're working with a kid and home is not [00:12:00] healthy, they have to be unhealthy in order to just get through that.

And I work with so many people who have, you know, physical trauma, sexual trauma, all kinds of issues that have happened to them. And, you know, in order to survive that, they had to shut down. They had to disappear. They had to, people please, they, you know, had to do all these things in order to just get through.

But once they become the I 16, the functional adult who's still carrying all that stress, you know, the brain will change, but it needs that time. signal, Oh, Oh, Oh, I'm not an iPhone four. I'm an iPhone 16. And it's hurting me to be this old thing. This is painful. This is costing me. Ouch. That's a hot poker.

Then I'll drop it. And then it needs that clear pathway to where, so when I work with somebody, I do typically. I work with people for 90 days. It's a two hour session, three sessions, you know, 30 days apart because there's the incubation time. So when you make those changes, I give people high performance planner to track their progress.

It's very, very important to [00:13:00] notice your progress because I can't tell you how many people I worked with back before I was doing it this way, who I do a session on them and then their lifelong thing that had been bothering them my whole life, like social anxiety or stress or whatever, all of a sudden it's gone.

But they didn't even notice it was gone because their brain is now on to the next thing. 

Cynthia: Oh, that's such a good idea. 

Dr. Tara Perry: So I often say that the brain, the nervous system is like a puppy dog. And if you have a puppy dog and you beat it with newspaper all the time, what's it going to do? It's going to sit in the corner.

It's going to whimper. It's going to cry. It's going to wet itself. And it's not, you know, it's going to be neurotic. But if you reward that dog, you know, you can give it guidance and instruction and no, no, no, don't, don't chew on the furniture and, but most of the time you're rewarding it and petting it and telling it how great it is and it's going to be wagging its tail and go, okay, what else do you want me to do?

And it literally will jump through burning buildings for you at that point. 

Cynthia: Right. Oh my gosh. Well, there was something you were going to help us to rewire. Yeah. Rewire anxious thought patterns. How, how can we do [00:14:00] that? Yeah. 

Dr. Tara Perry: Well, the quickest and easiest way is to work with somebody who can help you rewire it because the subconscious, it's below the level of your consciousness.

So I do a half hour consultation with people who are interested. Short of that, I think meditation is really magical. Diet is important. If your blood sugar is going up and down all over the place, it's really hard to feel calm. So getting your blood sugar under control is really important. Especially these days, the food supply has a lot of.

You know, things in it that aren't so desirable. And so clean, organic food that came from healthy soil is really, really important. Social interaction, super important. So being around people that do care about you and aren't going to abuse you that lift you up that are inspiring you know, those social connections.

Loneliness is a huge risk factor. They estimate that it's as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being obese. I mean, it's crazy. Having a pet is, is a great way to, you know, promote longevity and, and feeling [00:15:00] good. Cold therapy is wonderful. Wim Hof is the one that popularized that because he was deeply depressed when his wife committed suicide and there was nothing he could do.

So he turned to cold therapy and there's a lot of benefits that come from that. There's a lot of people teaching it. There's a lot of apps. Breath work is incredibly important. I have a fellow that I interviewed named Leland Holgate. He was a quadriplegic once and a paraplegic once. We've done a number of webinars together, but he healed himself both times with breath work.

Cynthia: Oh my gosh. That's amazing. I do feel like if we could figure out, or if we learn how to tap into what our brain can do, we could heal ourselves from a lot of things. I want to say everything, but then that sounds like too crazy, but I 

Dr. Tara Perry: do feel like a lot. I, I'm always very open minded because I've had the craziest things heal.

Actually my mother was walking down the street. She's very healthy at age 89. She's now 91. We just celebrated her birthday. She's, but anyway, at age 89, she's walking down the street. She hits a bike rack and it drops her to her [00:16:00] knees. She smashes her kneecap into 13 pieces. That can be a life ending injury for an older person.

So she got out of surgery. I said, mom, I know you. Look and feel terrible, but take a picture of yourself because you're going to be the fastest healing case on record. And I made her one audio tape to, again, speaking to the subconscious, to speed heal that kneecap. And I made her another one to convince the muscles they were working out, even though they were immobilized.

Because again, that, for an older person, having a joint immobilized and the muscle atrophy is Potentially deadly. So she was walking up and down stairs in three months and up and down ladders in six months at age 89. I kid you not. Oh 

Cynthia: my gosh, that's wonderful. I do think there's so much to that. So, do you think then, and this is not about anxiety or anything, but like, do you think the reason we're not really focused on that in the medical field is because there's so much money to be made doing it the way they're doing it?

Yes. Cha ching! Okay, I just 

Dr. Tara Perry: [00:17:00] hate to be cynical. Okay, so I always point to the work of Dr. David Perlmutter. He's a physician that teaches all over the world. He wrote Grain, Brain, and Drop acid. He says it takes 18 years for good information to get into mainstream medicine, and that's pretty tragic. I believe they've acknowledged publicly that healthy people are not a good business model.

Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, I looked at your what is what is a good model. Business model is sick Children. I hate to say it, but then they're dependent on the medical establishment. My goal is to make you not need me anymore. I want to give people their freedom back. I feel like I get paid to let people out of prison and that thrills me.

Cynthia: Yeah, that's wonderful. I love, I love the idea of that. Well, I looked at your website earlier and you have a list of recommended books and I had read a lot of them, but I saw that drop acid and the green brain and I didn't really know anything about it. So on my way to the gym today, I started listening to drop acid and I'm like, Oh my gosh, I'm already, like, I came home afterwards and I'm telling my husband, [00:18:00] did you know, and I'm like saying all these things and he's like, I don't know, he's, he's usually behind me and like, I get excited about these new things and he's like, I'll wait and see, I'll see.

You know what happens, but I feel like this might be the thing. 

Dr. Tara Perry: Well, what's even, I mean, all that's great and totally valid. If you get the subconscious mind and the brain working on your behalf, then everything gets better faster. And I love the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza. I've done nine of his live events.

He's got a movie called out out now called Source. If you watch carefully, I'm actually in it. 

Cynthia: Oh my gosh. 

Dr. Tara Perry: They're, they're panning through a bunch of people meditating in the front row, and I'm, I'm in that with a chevron lime green colored dress. But he is proving that people are medically doing the impossible.

The scientists that are working with him are just gobstruck. They, they're like, there are no drugs that do this. This is like three times more powerful than any drugs with no side effects, except good ones. 

Cynthia: So, 

Dr. Tara Perry: And I, again, I've had other things that are just crazy. You know, one gal was attacked by a [00:19:00] Rottweiler.

She Had to go through six jaw surgeries, was living in pain and fear of losing more teeth, she developed a choking disorder, every time she ate she was at risk of going to the hospital, three beautiful young children, this was a huge drain on the family, and after, you know, in the first session she cried, she knew this was the answer for her, and after two sessions she didn't, no more surgeries, no more, No more runs to the emergency room.

So, you know, the subconscious mind is just crazy powerful and you want it working on your behalf, whatever your thing is. I mean, I had one gal that saw her husband catch on fire. He's fine, but she developed Babesia, mold Lyme's disease, mass cell inflammation. These are all monstrous things to try to solve with holistic medicine or Western medicine.

She was doing acupuncture twice a week, neurofeedback, biofeedback, and didn't even want to come and see me because this was weird and scary to her. So she, she finally came her husband said, look, I either have to take you to a mental institution or you have to see Tara. And in her first [00:20:00] session, she was able to experience more peace than she had experienced in her entire lifetime.

And again, that's the sympathetic nervous system turning off and going into parasympathetic, where your immune system is working, your digestive system is working, your hormonal system is working. And in that place, you have much greater access to healing. So after three sessions, she was able to cut back on all those.

I just got a card from them. They're having their first baby now, and I'm thrilled for them. 

Cynthia: Oh, my gosh. That is amazing. When you also have a podcast called Next Level Healing. And so if the listeners are like, I want to know more about what is going on with all this and you have guests as well as probably solo episodes where you teach or talk about this kind of healing.

Dr. Tara Perry: I actually haven't done a lot of solo episodes. Most of them have been interviews with other people. Some of them are interviews. I have a playlist on there of. People that I've worked directly with who had an issue, it could be fear, PTSD you know, whatever the issue was, and insomnia back pain.

I had one guy who had a motorcycle accident 40 years [00:21:00] ago broke his spine and had 40 years of back pain. He was all excited when he found out I was an acupuncturist. I said, you know, you've done acupuncture, you've done chiropractic, why don't we just go to command central and find out what's getting in the way of healing?

He was an advanced meditator. He said, great. Sign me up. And in two sessions, he didn't have the pain anymore. So he's also on my, my podcast on the playlist. 

Cynthia: Now if somebody didn't know a lot about meditation or how to do it, you could still figure out pretty quickly what's going on with them and getting their subconscious, even if they hadn't really been practicing any of that.

Dr. Tara Perry: I, I, Oh yeah, definitely. So. With the people I work with, I highly encourage them to do the Dr. Joe Advanced Progressive Bundle because that's the prerequisite for doing a live event with him. It really well explains how your brain works and, you know, starts you on that path. The thing with that path is it typically takes a lot longer.

I've worked with a lot of advanced Dr. Joe people, you know, who had an issue that they hadn't resolved with. They, they got great benefit from the meditation, but there was [00:22:00] something, you know, either blocking them in business, blocking them physically, and so we just you know, go down, go really quickly into the subconscious mind and find out what that unique thing is for them and then rewire it.

So I highly, highly recommend, I mean, to me, I think meditation is just, it's like exercise. It's like nutrition. It's, it's, you know, it's just an essential. 

Cynthia: Yeah. I think that's great. I read one of his books and was really getting into the meditation, but it was taking, I mean, that particular book talked about, I think it was like almost an hour and a half.

And I don't know, there was probably different versions, like you could do shorter or longer or whatever, but I was like, Oh, an hour and a half. I don't know. So that's kind of where I ended it, but I really want to get back into doing that. I think It's a great and you have a free meditation for the listeners by going to your website and they are able to get it there.

Dr. Tara Perry: Yes. If they go to my website and just shoot me a note and [00:23:00] let them know they were on the teen anxiety podcast with Cynthia. I will send them a free, it's a very short one. It's just a way to drop into I have one called unzip where you just kind of unzip yourself from. Yeah. The experience that you're having of life, your identity of yourself and just go into nothing and experience that peace.

I have another one called the healing river. You can specify which one you like or you can get surprised either way is fine, but it's just a very short meditation to help you experience relaxation either before you go to sleep or in the morning or in the middle of your day. 

Cynthia: Okay. I love that.

Well, do you have anything else that you want to share with us before you go today? 

Dr. Tara Perry: Gosh, it's been great being here with you. I am very excited about sharing the massively powerful subconscious mind with people and how it helps shift them on a mind body spirit level. Yeah, I, I think we covered a lot of ground today.

I'm so grateful you had me here. 

Cynthia: Yes, me too. Well, thank you for being with us today. 

Dr. Tara Perry: My pleasure. Good luck on the rest of your shows and I hope you reach a whole lot of teens and moms and help them move out [00:24:00] of stress and anxiety. 

Cynthia: Oh, thank you. Me too.