Voices for Voices®

How Stress Can Cause Real Illness And How To Reverse It with Dr. David Clarke | Ep 390

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 390

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How Stress Can Cause Real Illness And How To Reverse It with Dr. David Clarke | Ep 390

What if your body’s pain isn’t a sign of damage, but a signal that your brain’s alarm system has been stuck on high? We sit down with Dr. David Clarke—president of the Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms—to unpack how stress, trauma, and learned danger can wire physical symptoms into the nervous system, and how those same circuits can be rewired for relief.

Dr. Clarke shares unforgettable cases that flip the script on chronic illness: a patient hospitalized 60 times for dizzy spells who recovered by spotting a pattern tied to an abusive parent; a teen whose debilitating diarrhea struck only on game days; and a lifelong gut pain sufferer who improved by processing an eight-year-old’s trauma at age 87. These aren’t “it’s all in your head” stories. They’re brain-body science in action, showing why migraines, IBS, fibromyalgia, pelvic pain, tinnitus, and many “mystery” complaints persist after normal tests—and how naming the true drivers opens the door to healing.

We walk through simple, powerful clues to identify neuroplastic symptoms: do flares map to stress, places, or people? Do you feel better in safe settings? Are multiple systems involved at once? Clarke explains how anxiety and depression often appear in the body before the mind notices, why subtle childhood invalidation can seed lifelong hypervigilance, and how to rebuild self-worth so your system stops scanning for danger. Expect concrete steps: express repressed feelings through words, set boundaries that lower toxic exposure, and schedule joy that serves no purpose but joy. You’ll also hear about training, tools, and a quick self-assessment at symptomatic.me, plus how clinicians are rediscovering the “why” in medicine by treating the nervous system, not just organs.

If your tests are normal but your symptoms are not, there’s real hope. Listen to learn how to recognize neuroplastic patterns, rewire your responses, and reclaim a life that isn’t ruled by fear signals. If this resonates, subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Chapter Markers

0:00 Welcome And Global Reach

1:06 Meet Dr. David Clarke And ATNS

2:22 What Are Neuroplastic Symptoms

5:15 How The Brain Generates Physical Illness

7:35 Prevalence And Why Training Matters

9:53 The Case That Changed His Career

14:09 Elevator Moment: Talk Therapy Cure

17:12 Years Of Practice And Results

19:05 Patient Cured By Seeing The Pattern

22:12 Books, Films, And Mission Growth

24:25 Host Shares Personal Mental Health Journey

26:48 Treating Long-Held Trauma At Any Age

29:49 How Anxiety And Depression Show Up In Bodies

33:20 Tuesdays And Thursdays: The Soccer Clue

36:22 Childhood Stress As The Hidden Driver

39:18 Rewriting Self-Worth And Identity

42:23 From Repression To Expression


#StressManagement #HealthAndWellness #MentalHealthMatters #ChronicIllness #DrDavidClarke #StressReliefTechniques #MindBodyConnection #HealingFromWithin #EmotionalWellness #StressAwareness #ReverseIllnessNaturally #HolisticHealthApproach #SelfCareStrategies #AnxietyReliefTips #PreventativeHealthcare #justiceforsurvivors #VoicesforVoices #VoicesforVoicesPodcast #JustinAlanHayes #JustinHayes #help3billion #TikTok #Instagram #truth #Jesusaire #VoiceForChange #HealingTogether #VoicesForVoices390

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Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Hey everyone, it's Justin with Voices for Voices. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the show. Thank you for watching and listening. Wherever you may be across the world. Uh we are reaching now, which is really incredible, uh over a hundred uh states, territories, provinces, countries, as well as a thousand cities across the world. It's uh it's humbling to uh see those stats. Uh but we love what we do, and especially uh with uh today's guest, so we have uh we have a treat for you. So I'm gonna get into uh announcing and uh uh explaining and introducing our guest to you uh from his uh his his bio on his press kit. Uh so today our guest is Dr. David Clarke. He is the president of the Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms, uh which the acronym is ATNS, and this is a 501c3 nonprofit that is dedicated to ending the chronic pain epidemic. Dr. Clarke holds an MD from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. He's also a board certified in internal medicine and gastroenterology. His organization's mission is to advance the awareness, the diagnosis, and the treatment of stress-related and brain-generated medical conditions. He's the host of The Story Behind the Symptoms, and Dr. Clarke delves into origins of patients' unexplained symptoms. And we can learn more at symptomatic.me. That's symptomatic.me. And we want to welcome Dr. Clarke. And I guess to get things uh kickstarted, uh, what are neuroplastic symptoms and how do they differ from those caused by injury or disease?

Dr. David Clarke:

Yeah, thanks, Justin. I appreciate your having me on and giving me the chance to share these ideas with your audience. Neuroplastic symptoms, uh, as the name implies, a neuro comes from the brain and nervous system. And plastic is actually quite hopeful because it refers to the uh capacity for change that the nervous system has. If we take a step back, um most people, healthcare professionals included, to be honest, uh believe that pain and illness only come from organ disease or structural damage. But it turns out there's this whole other very large category of very real pain and illness that can put you in the hospital or go on for years or decades that's generated by the brain, by the brain processing signals coming from the body, by the brain sending signals into the body, and it can cause symptoms from head to toe, uh. migraines, dizziness, uh ringing in the ears, visual disturbances, trouble swallowing, pain in the spine, fibromyalgia, uh, irritable bowel, many cases of long COVID and chronic fatigue, pain in the pelvis, the genitals, the joints, certain kinds of rashes. Uh the list just goes on and on. The only common denominator is that my patients tend to have more than one symptom at a time, often in completely unrelated, unconnected areas of the body. But the good news is because of the plastic part, these brain circuits can change back to a healthy pattern with treatment. And people who've been ill for a very long time, or very severely ill, uh, can get better sometimes very quickly. Um, and you know, sometimes it takes you know years of treatment, but many people have been better in in weeks or months. And what we look for is sources of stress in a person's life. It can happen to anybody. Stress, trauma, emotions, uh, the long-term effects of having been through adversity as a child, which can be fairly subtle sometimes. Not everybody uh immediately recognizes uh the adversity that they went through. But it has to do with almost anything that you would never want for a child of your own. But other challenges in life uh can do this as well. And it can happen to anybody. The people who get this tend to be, in my practice, uh, mentally stronger than average. You know, these are not people who just, you know, can't handle their stress. These are people that have a lot of stress. They're just not fully appreciating what they're dealing with. So it's kind of a long-term, uh long-winded definition, but it affects uh 25% of the adult population. Uh so it's twice as many people as have diabetes. Um, and it's 40% of everybody who goes to see a primary care doctor. So it's tens of millions of people in the United States alone. So we absolutely, and this is why my nonprofit exists, uh, need to address this, teach healthcare professionals how to diagnose and treat this, and we can just absolutely transform uh the outcomes in this condition.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Great. What made you want to either uh I guess look in into this? Was this uh there are these topics? Did they just come naturally through your your practice where you started to kind of think to yourself, okay, there's a little bit more to this. Maybe there are alternative methods or or ways of of looking at at this or these uh these symptoms and these uh health challenges.

Dr. David Clarke:

Yeah, I was very traditionally trained Western medical doctor. Uh I went through seven years of formal education, never heard a word about any of this. So I had to be dragged into it. It had to be proved to me that this was real, uh, that people actually could become severely ill or in pain because of brain-to-body connections. Uh, because nobody had taught me this. Um, but what happened was in my eighth year of formal training, I encountered a patient. I didn't know the first thing about diagnosing or treating, which, you know, when you get to year eight, you've kind of learned a lot by that point. The last thing I expected was to run into a patient where I was just like, what is wrong with this person? Because she had a severe gastrointestinal condition. I was training to be a specialist in those diseases. She was moving her bowels once a month on average for two years. She was taking four different laxatives at double the recommended doses every day, wasn't working. And she was sent to us from another university because they couldn't figure out what was wrong. We did some specialized testing. I was at UCLA at the time. And my department chair and I, we were convinced this special test was going to show the problem because, as far as we knew, you know, there was no other explanation possible. But that test was normal also, which we were at a loss. And it was left to me to do her exit interview and just say, look, I'm sorry, you're just gonna have to live with this. We got nothing else we can do. And my neuroplastic patients have heard that, you know, over and over again, sometimes you know, for many, many years. Uh but we kept talking for a while, and at some point she trusted me enough to share that she had been severely uh abused as a girl. And this had stopped happening 25 years in the past. Uh so as far as I was concerned, it was not likely that it would be contributing to this very severe condition that she'd had for two years. So she's 37, she's had it since she was 35. The child abuse stopped when she was 12, so it really didn't seem likely to be a connection. But I was, you know, it gave me a reason to send her off to see a psychiatrist that I knew, uh, Harriet Kaplan, who was uh certified in medicine as well and had an interest in these brain-to-body conditions. And I thought, you know, maybe Harriet can help this patient live with her condition a little better. So I forgot all about her until three months later I run into Harriet in an elevator. And this was the elevator ride that changed my career because by the time we got to the floor I was getting off at, uh, she told me she had cured this patient with, you know, 10 weekly counseling sessions. And that just blew my mind. The idea that you could alleviate a serious physical condition just by talking to somebody in the right way and knowing what to look for. Nobody had ever mentioned that uh was even possible. Um but I thought, okay, you know, Harriet did this, and I should, I should, if I want to be a complete doctor, I should learn a little bit about how to do this. It might come in handy once in a while. Uh well, I'm I'm again, I'm giving you a long-winded answer, but uh but what ended up happening was I learned the framework from her. I started using it whenever my patients uh did not have anything wrong on their diagnostic tests, and it turned into five or six patients a week uh for the next 25, 30 years. And over 7,000 people at this point. And I kept going with it because nobody else in Portland, Oregon, where I'm based, uh, was doing this work, and because people were getting better. People that, you know, the rest of the healthcare system had failed to help. And when I used this framework, which you know I learned more and more as I went on and got better and better at it, they got better. Um and some of these people were very severely ill. If I can share one more story. Please. The um there was a patient that really led me to believe I was onto something, truly onto something. And this was a woman who tried to kick me out of the room when I went to see her. She'd been uh hospitalized for an attack of severe dizziness and vomiting. And so I went to see her the next morning. I was consulted, and uh she said, you know, doctor, don't waste your time with me. You'd be better off seeing your other patients. And I said, What makes you say that? And it turned out she had good reason because she had been hospitalized for this same kind of attack 60 times over the previous 15 years at a prestigious university where they, you know, they really know what they were doing, but um she saw a dozen specialists there. They didn't know what was causing the attacks. And then they got so frustrated they had her see a psychiatrist. And he said, nope, she's mentally healthy, no problems there. Uh, keep looking for a physical cause. But um, again, I'll try to wind this down for you here. But uh it turned out all of her attacks were connected to uh direct or indirect uh interactions with her abusive mother, who had been verbally and emotionally abusing her since she was three years old. And as soon as she saw this connection, which was undeniable once we found it, I can still remember she looked up at the ceiling and said, Oh my God, I can't believe it. And in her case, she was cured on the spot. She was out of the hospital the next morning. Um she called me a year later that says she'd never she'd had no further attacks. Uh and you know, when I cured that patient uh on the spot, which you know, I don't always do it on the spot like that, it can take uh a while sometimes. But even the people who take a while, they're on a pathway of improvement. But this patient that you know Stanford's finest couldn't figure out, uh, I knew I was on to something. And I just carried on from there. And now I you know run the nonprofit, I give lectures all over North America and Europe. Uh I've uh co-produced three documentary films, I've written several books. Um my first book is called They Can't Find Anything Wrong. I should remember to mention that. Uh yeah. And uh it's uh it's just been incredibly rewarding work, I can say that.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Oh, that's fantastic because I I was just gonna ask uh what make made you get into the line of work that you're you're in, and it it sounds like it was a a progression, and then you you hit this point in time where looking at things a little bit non-traditionally and how stress affects all the all the parts of the body, but a lot of a lot of things that we wouldn't necessarily think that like, oh that that's because of this other thing. It's not because of stress or uh we we've had things I from myself personally uh going through uh the the psychiatric care the last uh eight years, uh I would I I found that I was holding in my mind, I think it was around 138 different things that I just never to your point earlier, I never talked to anybody about it. I just I just kept putting it back in my mind and thought I could just suppress it. And then there was a time where in 2017 I couldn't suppress it anymore. And if it wasn't for just that uh that that talk therapy and talking to professionals and not trying to figure out all the answers myself, like, oh I I can figure this out, I can just Google and and you know it'll it'll take me and then I'll take magnesium and all these things, all these rabbit holes I I want went down, and I'm very grateful because I think it it is because of uh people like you and the work that you you do that uh even though the uh we're in Ohio and you're in Oregon, that uh you know people talk and uh you've uh you know put together podcasts, you put together uh books, you put together a nonprofit, and uh that's just uh really almost like a miracle, like when you went into that patient's room and you were able to cure her on the spot and her 16 or or so or 60 visits to for the same same kind of symptoms and how how rewarding that that is. So I guess from like from an emotional standpoint, how does it make you feel when those types of um I say those types of actions, but like when you're helping somebody because you have to make a conscious decision, like okay, we do things for ourselves, we have to make money to pay the bills and from like a basic uh uh Mausel's hierarchy of needs, but when it when it gets down to it, having an emotional tie to what you're doing, I think, is is helpful. I've I've learned my myself and why voices for voices exist that I had to find something that I was emotionally tied to as well as paying the bills.

Dr. David Clarke:

Uh I know I just kind of threw a lot out there, but uh if you want to just jump in, uh Yeah, it is very rewarding work uh to have someone who has been looking for answers uh for years, even decades. Uh my personal record patient had uh unexplained abdominal pain for 79 years. And that patient was successfully treated as well. You know, she was a pediatric nurse, so she had lots of access to health care and to diagnostic tests, and uh she had given up, you know, she had had every test you can think of uh more than once and had just stopped going to doctors and just lived with it. But her son, her youngest son, was not giving up, and he brought her in to see me, and we started talking, and she had been through a trauma uh when she was eight years old, and she was still carrying the effects of that trauma at age 87. But we were able to bring that into conscious awareness and help her to uh cope with it, and her symptoms just started melting away after that. I mean, it it was tremendous uh personally. Uh, you know, that's why uh physicians go into this work is because we want to help people. And unfortunately, with 40% of primary care patients having neuroplastic conditions and most physicians not being taught what to do about it, uh, it ends up being really frustrating and frankly contributing to burnout for many doctors. But the doctors who have taken the training, on symptomatic.me, we have uh training courses for people, both medical and mental health, and the public can take those as well because we've kept the jargon uh out of them, so they're very straightforward to learn from. But you know, there are doctors who've come up to me, uh, one of them in particular, I remember at a conference and said, you know, I took your course, I started using it in my practice, uh, my colleagues in my in my uh group have been using it, and it's just transformed what we do. Uh and for me, she said it's put the joy back into my work. Because she was uh you know finding it frustrating uh to be in primary care um in you know the 21st century. But being able to uh help patients that had previously made her just beat her head against the wall, um, she loved it.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, that is I I can just imagine the the the the feeling in in your body and your mind when when those uh those positive outcomes come and whether it's a traditional or or not non-traditional way of thinking uh uh about things. Uh can you maybe go through you you talked a little bit about the the different traumas with some of the patients, but can you just talk a little bit about how anxiety and stress, uh some of the non-traditional ways it affects it it can affect the body where you can say, oh, I'm just having a cold or I'm having a stomach ache and it'll go away in a couple days, or uh how because that that was one thing I I thought myself was well this can't this isn't a product of stress or anxiety, it's allergies, or it's I came up with anything in the book.

Dr. David Clarke:

Yeah, it's um uh an approach that applies to people with chronic symptoms, which means you know going on for longer than two or three months. And it's also uh important to have a medical evaluation to make sure there's not an organ disease. Or structural damage that's responsible. But when you walk into a primary care doctor's office and you've got a new symptom, even before they do the test, you've got a 40% chance that it's neuroplastic. And then once they do all the diagnostic tests, it makes sure there's not disease or structural damage, then if they don't find anything, the chances of it being neuroplastic is going up above 90%. And that's when we advocate starting to look into the person's life for stresses past and present. So could there be something in your life right now that is going maybe up and down along with the symptoms? So the stress goes up and the symptoms goes up, go up. That's a strong clue that you've got a neuroplastic condition. Was there a significant difficulty in your life at the time the symptoms began? A trauma, for example. Colleague of mine in Tucson tells a story about a patient who'd been having all these symptoms, going from doctor to doctor for six months, and nobody found out until he did that right before her symptoms began, she had been a hostage during the robbery of a store, and for 40 minutes she had a handgun pointed at her neck, and she was having several post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms along with her physical symptoms. So there was no question about what was causing, what had caused her condition. So we look for that. Depression is another one. Many people who suffer from depression don't necessarily feel particularly depressed. It can manifest in their body rather than in a sense of, oh, I'm depressed. So I ask people, you know, do you feel depressed? Most doctors will. And many of my patients say, no, not really. I mean, I'm frustrated, I'm exasperated, I'm stressed out, I'm very anxious for you to find out uh what is causing my physical symptom, whatever it is. But no, I'm not depressed. But they're not sleeping well. Their energy level is down, their appetite is off, they are crying for no obvious reason, they have lost interest in doing things they used to love to do. Their the meaning in their life seems to have gone out. Those are all classic symptoms of depression. And many of my patients who are coming to me for a physical symptom, they have all of those things. And so I treat them for depression, and their physical symptoms uh will respond to that. Anxiety is another one. The um clue there that's most common is that the physical symptoms that they're coming to me about uh are more severe or more frequent when they are away from an environment that's safe for them. So let's say that home is safe for you. It isn't always for people, obviously, but let's say that your home is safe. Many of my patients they go away from home, that's when their symptoms start to kick in. And when you see something like that, um, it's a strong clue that you've got an anxiety disorder. Another patient of mine, 16-year-old girl, severe diarrhea, on her bad days, she was putting herself on uh Imodium tablets, which is an antidiar, up to a dozen by one o'clock in the afternoon, which is way more than you're supposed to take. She restricted her diet to water only on those bad days. Uh and none of the other doctors could figure out why she was having this. But I was the one who asked her, you know, to get the exact story of when this was happening, and it was happening only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On the weekends, she was fine. She could eat a regular diet. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, really not too much going on those days either. Uh, you know, your large intestine, where the diarrhea comes from, does not know what day of the week it is, right? I mean, it's dark in there. We we have to bring our own light to see what's going on. Only your brain knows what day of the week it is. So the brain had to be involved in her case. And what does she do that causes anxiety on Tuesdays and Thursdays as a 16-year-old high school student? Well, it turned out to be uh varsity soccer. Um, and she was very anxious about how she was going to perform in competition. The games always took place on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If there happens not to be a game that on one of those days, like say Thursday, it was just practice, she'd be fine. It was only the games. It was anxiety creating that symptom. So these are some of the things I look for. But the most common actually is the one I haven't mentioned yet, which is stress when you were a kid. Uh experiences you had that, like I said, you would never want for a child of your own. Imagine a child you love, they're in they're in the same environment you were in when you were a kid growing up, and you are just a butterfly on the wall having to watch that kid that you love try to cope with everything that was going on. Are you gonna see anything that is gonna make you sad or angry? And if you are, we need to get into a discussion about that. It can have long-term impacts that we can uh address, and maybe we can talk about what some of those are later. But that's a very important category. And it doesn't have to be uh abuse like my very first patient suffered. It can be much more subtle, it can be trying to have your kid repress their emotions. It can be being made to feel like a second rate person or a person who's not measuring up. Uh, and you can carry that with you uh as a basic assumption that, you know, I'm a human being who is not good enough. And people can carry that into their adult years, and that's highly stressful.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, and that that last point definitely for me, uh I I carry that with me with with my uh sibling, my sister, of feeling that she was perfect 4.0, four job offers right out of college. Um right out of college. Uh and here I am just kind of getting getting in by and nobody said I was second rate. Nobody my parents never said that, but I had it in my mind that I'm not I'm not measuring up to what my my sister is is doing, and and so whenever I would do something that I felt like was a good, I would always rush home and show my mom and dad, like look, look what I did. Because most of the time it was just average average work, average projects, and that is so true that I'm 44 and I I I'm still carrying a little bit of that, even though my sister never said it, my mom, my dad, nobody ever told me that. It was just this assumption that was in in my mind, and it's incredible that those types of things are still in in the mind, and we don't think about we just think of anything like you know, big things of like like you said, structural and and organ diseases and and things like that automatically like going, oh I have this disease, I have this, and and a lot of it is in my head. It's not people telling me, it's just how I how I feel, so I I I completely understand. Um I'm I'm grateful you brought that up because uh again, that was that's one of those things that definitely hits home, and I I've been working through with my counselor. That's not the only thing, but it's it's one thing that I guess I feel better that I'm not the only one, that it's it's something that it unfortunately uh that that happens to others, and that it it's okay, and we don't have to feel shame because of these activities that either actually happen or whether they're just perceived.

Dr. David Clarke:

Yeah, and when they're perceived at such a young age, when you're trying to figure out, you know, who am I, what am I good at, what am I not good at, it you can absorb those ideas as a basic assumption about who you are. And none of us has a parallel life to compare ourselves with, so when you put that assumption uh inside yourself, it just feels like it belongs there, and you can carry it with you for a very long period of time. Um but there are good ways to uh turn that around. Um, before I get into that, I should mention that any of your viewers who are curious about whether these ideas apply to their own physical symptoms, we've got a 12-question self-assessment quiz on symptomatic.me, takes less than three minutes, and we'll give people a lot of insight into whether these concepts uh are relevant for them. But in terms of turning around that assumption, you know, when people imagine a child that they love uh growing up in the same environment they did, it can give them a much more accurate perspective on the magnitude of the burden that they were dealing with. Many of my patients, the analogy I make is as if they were parachuted into a dangerous jungle as a toddler. And, you know, even though it wasn't a, you know, for you a difficult or traumatic kind of jungle, it was still a jungle for you to try to cope with that situation, especially as a young kid. And I try to have my patients give themselves some credit. You know, if you parachuted into a jungle as a toddler and you made your way out of that, you know, give yourself a big hug for having accomplished that. Certainly if if you had a kid that you love in that environment and you watched them for a week and they came out of the environment at the end of that week, you know, you'd give them a big hug, you'd tell them, hey, you know, great job, you dealt with that situation uh tremendously well, and I'm so proud of you. And that's after just a week, uh you'd be telling the kid this. And you know, most of my patients endured these situations in round numbers for a thousand weeks. Uh, so they deserve, you know, to give themselves uh even more credit. And if you can internalize that uh belief in yourself, if you can internalize the idea that, you know what, I did a really difficult thing. Uh I showed what frankly was a heroic level of perseverance by dealing with this situation uh as well as I did. And you can start to flip that uh self-image into a uh justifiably, legitimately positive uh view of yourself. I mean, nobody, you know, this and this happens all the time with my patients, nobody in the family was uh actively trying to make you feel bad about yourself. It was just the situation. Um but it and this took me a while to learn as a young practitioner, those situations, even when people are you know not trying to cause harm, uh, they can have a very similar long-term impact on people to others who were actively mistreated. The um uh level of impact uh can be quite similar. And the the treatment for it, um starting with this rebuilding of the self-esteem, um, works well for everybody. It's a great foundation for um um making changes in the rest of your world, um removing or at least putting boundaries around toxic relationships, for example, um being able to um uh get connected with some emotions that maybe have been repressed, which you know you mentioned at the beginning of the program, um being uh able as a person uh who feels good about themselves to say, you know what, these things that I've repressed, they don't deserve to be repressed. They I have the right as a um person who came through a difficult situation uh to put these things out there, to feel them, to write about them, to speak about them. And the more people do that, uh the more they are turning emotions uh into words, the less those emotions need to express themselves uh into the body in the form of symptoms.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Absolutely. How do you uh how do you separate your your work from personal life as far as I'm I'm just thinking about burnout. I not saying you have burnout, but just for let's say the average person that you know they they go to work Monday to Friday or whatever the dates and times are, and they sometimes bring relationships, conversations that happen in the in the workplace home. What what would be uh some of your guidance on those situations?

Dr. David Clarke:

Yeah, many of my patients who came from challenging home situations, uh, when they were kids, they don't have too many options for how to deal with that. And the reason I'm getting into this is that it has a direct impact on what happens in the workplace uh for adults. Because when kids are in these difficult environments, one of the ways they can react to it is to try to be the best little kids they can be. Um, they work really hard, they pay attention to details, they try to be perfect, they try to focus on the needs of everybody else in that home environment, they tend to neglect themselves, they're not really taking time that uh a kid should to just be a kid and play and have joy and those things. They're they're too focused on the problems uh in the household or too focused on proving themselves. And so as adults, uh they do the same thing. And they're great in the workplace. I mean, they're working hard, they're paying attention to details, they're empathetic towards uh everybody else uh in their environment, they're very good team players, um, and they just go and go and go, and then they when they get home, they do the same thing. They're trying to uh take care of the needs of everybody in their household or their neighbors or their social groups, uh, and they tend to leave themselves out. Um, they're not uh putting themselves on the list of people they're taking care of. And nobody can do that indefinitely. Sooner or later, your body is gonna protest. So what I try to uh to do to help people with this is, you know, again, number one, uh have some belief in yourself, have some respect for how much you overcame as a kid. Because if once you have that foundation of respect, then it means, you know what, you deserve to be on the list of people you take care of. You deserve to tell the rest of the world to say, you know what, I'm putting you guys on the shelf. I am going to do something for myself on a regular basis, ideally several hours a week, if you can swing it, um, where I'm gonna find activities, trial and error, whatever it takes to find activities that have no purpose but my own joy. And once people have that in their life, it's an essential human skill to have that in your life. And once they do, um, then that's a skill they will have for the rest of their lives. And it brings the stress level way, way down. Um, and whenever the stress level gets too high in the future, they've now got something that they can do. Um, myself, I used to play uh soccer on up to three teams at a time. I was a bit of a nut about it. But after being nice and kind and compassionate to my patients all week, it was great to get out there and kick something. Um, and that was my personal uh stress reduction. Um none of the people uh on the team would talk about their work, we'd just talk about everything else, and uh, we'd go out for a beer afterwards. You know, it was just a great experience and um really set me up to have a good um rest of the week. Wow.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Can you uh as we're closing down uh our our time uh before we get to the end and do all your all your plugs or how people uh because we always want to make sure that our guests are able to share all those. Uh can you can you share how it's you're never too old to accomplish or dream or to to do something because of that plasticity in in our brain?

Dr. David Clarke:

Yeah, there's no question. I mean, your podcast is a great example. Um, you know, I think a well-lived life is a journey uh where you are trying to find a good match between what you're good at, what you love, and what the world needs. And that journey and that search just keeps on going. Um and you know, I'm you can tell I'm getting on in years, but I'm still doing that. Um, and in fact, if anything, doing more. So it's um something that anybody can do, but they will do it better when they have a solid core understanding of their own value. And then it becomes a question of trial and error. That that whole process of finding an activity that provides your own joy, that's trial and error. Most of my patients, they weren't quite sure what they were going to do that was gonna give them joy when they first started out. And it took them months to learn how, but that's okay. It's uh it's a learning process.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Great. Well, we're getting uh towards the end, and would love to have you share all the all the ways people can learn about you, how they can get a hold of your your books and uh all all the all the things that you you've done that supports what uh what work you do. And uh it's just uh been an honor to to talk to you.

Dr. David Clarke:

Thank you so much. Uh yeah, symptomatic.me is the website for the ATNS. It's a lot easier to remember than the name of the nonprofit. And we've got you know the tons of resources there, the uh self-assessment quiz. People who support us uh by becoming uh dues-paying members, um, they are helping us teach medical professionals, mental health professionals, and the public so that everybody who uh can benefit from these concepts will get the quality of care that they deserve. We have an annual conference. Uh, we recommend uh a series of evidence based books and apps that can help people. We've got videos. We have my podcast, which is called The Story Behind the Symptoms, where I interview patients very much like I used to do in my practice. To uncover the reasons why they're ill and what it takes to get better. So oh, and we've got uh monthly uh QA's, a webinar where people can uh type in questions that they have about this. Um, and those are are for members, but every three months we do one that's open to everybody. The next one will probably be in February sometime. So uh lots of hope uh in this. Um even for people who've been ill and looking for answers uh for a very long time, um, we can help.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Wow. Thank you so much for your your time and for sharing so many of those uh those stories and experiences because I'm a visual, more visual uh individual and and just imagining those conversations and coming and and uh say curing, but help helping somebody that's uh been going through uh just not great times and and and having that oh wow, this is this is something a little bit new, but it is it's helping. And you're not just helping yourself, you're helping them, and then you're also helping your peers and and the the larger community. And just uh it's uh uh so happy that we were able to connect and and get our schedules aligned. We'd be missing out. The world will be missing out if we didn't have you on to share. Uh so we don't say again, big thank you uh to you and your team for for getting this set up, and we look forward to getting this out to our viewers and our listeners as soon as possible. So uh here with the with the holidays coming uh very rapidly, uh, may be able to help a few people, if not more, uh, as they start to unpack some some of those situations and potentially traumas that they've been holding on to for years. So the holidays aren't as stressful as they uh could could maybe have been for many, many years.

Dr. David Clarke:

Yeah, many people find the holidays stressful because they're uh spending time with people who create difficulties for them. And these are uh ideas that can help uh set boundaries around those people so that they're not uh quite so toxic. Absolutely.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

And I thank you, our viewers, our listeners, wherever you're at, uh whether you're in the United States, uh, Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, Antarctica, Greenland. It's it's truly a blessing to have an opportunity to have our show and our uh our guest today, Dr. David Clarke, uh, with us and uh being so generous with his time and his knowledge experiences and just wanting to help fellow human beings. Uh and so until we uh see you on our next show, we we uh hope that you are uh celebrating the voices of of yourself and others, and when you're able to, uh you can be a voice for you or somebody in need. Thank you so much, David, and thank you to our viewers and our listeners. And we'll see you on the next next show.

Dr. David Clarke:

Thank you.

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Justin Alan Hayes

Host