What I Was Actually Saying All Along

A conversation with Me, Myself and I about intuition and deep listening, and how learning to deeply listen to myself over these past four years has changed my life and work.

Intro for "Since you put it that way" podcast.

Outro for "Since you put it that way" podcast

Transcript

Mary Louder: 0:24

Hello, welcome to this edition of Since You Put It That Way. I'm Dr. Mary Louder. And thanks for tuning in. Today we're actually going to talk about as funny sentence called or a funny statement called,"What was I actually saying to myself?" So I'm going to let you in on a way that I think, a way that I see how medicine can be transformed, because a way that medicine transformed my life in a way, learning some trauma care and trauma therapy helped me heal after going through a very difficult season of grief and loss. This is a vulnerable conversation that you're going to hear, I put it out there I'm showing up as who I am. Being and sharing my emotions and having really no control over the outcome other than I could probably erase the recording, right? But I'm not going to do that. I'm going to talk to you as the audience and and so you can understand some of the things I went through that actually transformed how I not only applied self-care, and healing, but I've used it to transform my practice, and to help many other patients for their healing in their life. So, I mentioned the season of grief, and that started about four years ago. And my entire world was turned upside down and inside out. And this happened based upon the death of both of my parents in quick succession, the pandemic coming in, getting sick during the pandemic, and then losing my practice because of the pandemic that having to be closed down because all practices went on lockdown. So I was in common humanity from that standpoint. None of this that I'm going to share comes from a point of feeling like a victim, or "woe is me." It really comes from a position of this is what I went through. This was hard. This is how I found solace and peace during this time. This is how I found meaning in my grief. Because I do believe that that's possible. It's one of the stages of grief that they talk about. Dave Kessler talks about that he worked with Elisabeth Kubler Ross. And those five different stages of grief, there's actually a sixth stage which is finding meaning. And one of the things I learned from David Kessler regarding grief was that Elisabeth Kubler Ross never meant any of those five stages to be done in a linear fashion. They typically all happen at once, or happen in combination or parts happen. But it's not going from, you know, denial to anger to bargaining, it just doesn't happen that way. So I'd like us to consider since I put it that way, about grief being a process that's messy. A process that often doesn't have any clarity through, often is life-changing, and always is life-changing. And it's something you don't go through and heal, or, meaning, you're done with. Your grief should be over now, it's been this amount of time. It's something that brings a new normal to your life. It's something that brings a new perspective, a change in perspective, and a person is forever changed by grief, whether they choose to look at it and process it at all or not. Grief still does its thing. It's kind of like gravity. It just happens. Yeah. So let's dig in today to "What was I actually saying to myself through all this time?", okay. It starts with giving you some background. I only ever wanted to be a doctor when I was growing up. Unless of course I wanted to be an Olympic athlete, or a chef or business owner or an inventor. But mainly, I wanted to be a physician. I love the white coat, the cold stethoscope, the smell of hospitals and medications and rubbing alcohol and the hospital green scrubs. I loved it all. I could see myself being a physician, I would even when I was doing dishes as a kid I wash my hands and fingers and wrists and forearms and up to my elbows like a surgeon and then I was, you know, washing the Tupperware at the same time and I get called out for playing in the water, but I was pretending I was a surgeon--world-famous, of course, but I was a surgeon. So everything about me when I was younger wanted to be a physician. And I loved thinking about how the human body could heal. My parents bought us the World Book Encyclopedia, different volumes would get delivered. And then reading in the childcraft encyclopedia that came along with it, the companion book, I learned about bones healing, that little boy fell out of a tree and broke his arm, got a cast put on, there was pictures of the X-rays and how the bone healed and I found that absolutely amazing that the body knew how to do that. I wanted in. I wanted to figure out all about that. In high school, though, my guidance counselor told me I wasn't smart enough to be a doctor. I should probably just consider community college instead. What I do recall about high school is many things of course, but I was an above average student, bright but not always well-engaged if the subject matter didn't interest me. In the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, I had a bike crash. And I was knocked out cold for about five minutes, and I broke my collarbone. And it's darn lucky, I didn't break my neck, the way I landed, and literally some guy dragged me out of the street and propped me against a telephone pole. And I just remember stating my name and who my parents were and what my phone number was. And they came, the ambulance came, and I had to be scooped up and taken to the And that fall, with that concussion, that subsequent hospital. school year, I had difficulty learning. And I struggled with my academics. We know now all things about the brain. We know things about closed head injuries and concussions. But we really didn't then, and nobody really picked up that I was struggling. I don't know that I picked up that I was struggling. A lot could be said about my high school career. I think I was possibly just a late bloomer. I did get into medical school. I applied to one medical school and got in. I remember when I applied at Michigan State and they said, "Well, if you don't get in, you know, what do you, what are your plans?" I said, "Well, I'll see you next year. I'll apply again, keep working at this", because I really had a strong desire to become an osteopath. So I did get into medical school. And I have had an amazing career over the past 30 years. So, I guess not all high school guidance counselors are correct. And I found in that process that it's best to trust yourself, it's best to see on the inside who and what you want to be. And then that's what I followed. I did excel at working, in sports and juggling a busy schedule in high school. And this helped me stay out of trouble. And it helped me stay away from some significant, some significant family dysfunction that was going on at the time. My parents were married, and unfortunately, they were living separately under one roof. And it was a tumultuous time for us as a family, and it was a challenging time. And you know, I explained about that, only in the sense that I know my parents did the best they could. And they did everything they could to try and sustain a marriage and after 31 years decided that that was no longer sustainable. And through all the various twists and turns at the end of both of my parents lives, they were able to reconcile one to the other. And for that I'm very grateful for. Well, I share this area about high school and how to explain at that age even I would find myself getting still and quiet. Feeling the air the smells of the air, the sights and the sounds around me. Because I needed to figure out and I needed to find comfort because it wasn't always comfortable times. And so I worked at a local orchard called Robinett's. Its in Grand Rapids, and I would go into the back of the apple house before work would start, before the business was open for the day, and I would go into the cold storage area. And that's where all the apples that were picked were brought in to be stored before we sold them. The smell, the sights, the sounds, the feeling of the air, everything I could just literally become one with and it was difficult to see where I stopped and where all of that apple freshness began. I could just find myself being one with that whole sense of that environment. And I took that outside. I did that in the orchard as well and walked amongst the trees and, and touched the leaves in the apples and the different fruits at different seasons because I worked there year round. And I did this until I could get a sense a loss of where I began or ended and where all of nature began around me and I became one with my surroundings. And I did this as a young child too, was in the back through our yard and the lilac bushes that was in the woods, just beyond our yard, there was an old Michigan basement back there an old foundation. And just beyond that was some lilac bushes. And I used to lay on the ground underneath the lilac bushes, and probably was 200 square foot of lilacs, and just the smell and to see the clouds, to feel the breeze on my face and my skin, and to hear the sounds of the leaves and the birds. And I could literally do the same thing. I just didn't know where I ended and where nature began. And that was very comforting to me throughout the years. And that was a tool that I used a lot. I didn't know what it was. We call that imagery, guided imagery. I didn't know that that's what I was doing, but that's what I was doing. And when I began this grief season or season of grief four years ago, that was one of the things that I frequently returned to doing because that was some of the things I only knew how to do. Because I was so overwhelmed with the feelings I was experiencing. At that time, four years ago, my father lived in Montana. He had lived there about 31 years. And I had spent several years of my life in Montana and graduated actually from the University of Montana in Missoula. So I was able to tap into the essence of Montana, the smells, the sights, the sounds, the rivers, we used to live by the Yellowstone River, in fact, my husband and I did, and just different things from what I experienced hiking and being out in nature. So I could, I could repeat that same imagery. And I would take time and to feel those very senses around me. And I could find comfort in soothing for my soul. When my dad got sick, and his time came, I was able to say goodbye to him about two days before he passed away. And we were able to find a peace and a reconciliation one with another. But not through our words, it was through imagery. And he was in his hospital bed. And we had been able to get him more comfortable with some medication and his wife had left and went to go do some things that she needed to do. And it was just my dad and I sitting there. And he actually was resting comfortably. And what appeared between us because I was in a chair a little bit closer to the window was like a river just went between us, you know, parallel to us. And as that river was there, I saw and watched as I threw different rocks in the river, not really kind of knowing what else to do. And then I saw that each of those rocks kind of had a meaning to it. Some of them were joys, and happy times I experienced with my dad. Sometimes the rocks represented areas of anger, frustration, disappointment, betrayal. And I noticed as I was tossing those rocks in there, I wasn't doing it out of anger. I was just tossing them in like, can I just offer this one up and I offer that went up. I noticed my dad began to do the same things. I couldn't see what his rocks were labeled, though. I didn't know. But I could see and sense that there became between us some sense of an understanding, some sense of a reconciliation and a peacefulness. And it was shortly later during that day was the last time that I saw him. And I knew that we had been able to make our peace. And that imagery had played a part of that. So if we stop for a second and think about that imagery, think about coming out of that story of it. What's her brain doing? How is that tool helpful for us, as a person, as a patient? As somebody facing something that's not comforting? Well, technically, what's happening is when we imagine things, there's pathways in areas of the brain that light up. If we think relaxing thoughts, those areas in the brain associated with relaxation engage. When these different areas of the brain light up and engage that can change our breathing, our hormone levels, our brainwaves, temperature, our autonomic response. And when we think of a relaxing event, then we relax. The brain doesn't know the difference between what is imagined and what actually happened. It is what we are telling our brain to thync that becomes the key. So this is also an important point to insert here, to know then technically, in a way, we are not our thoughts. Our thoughts just are. So it's good to do this imaging and imagining whenever possible. So in this first part of the things I'm sharing about high school and different aspects with my father, what was what was I facing? What were the things that I were thinking about and being confronted with time and time? The culture was saying to me, you're not smart enough, my guidance counselor said that, you should settle for just being good and not great. Who do you think you are? Thinking you can just go be a doctor, look at your grades. I had a physical trauma, right, a bike accident and concussion that changed the way my brain function and my ability to think and analyze. I had family origin dysfunction, right, my parents were struggling, my mom was facing some depression and depressive symptoms, and there was just, there was financial struggles, and we just, we were struggling as a family. I often felt rejected and alone, but I found my solace in my activities, and the dream that I held of growing up and becoming who and whatever I was meant to be and do whatever I was meant to do. So what I was saying to myself, and using the imagery and and the reinforced thoughts was, be who you think you are. Right? Think who you want to be and become that. Use that imagery to guide you. Connect to nature, and the greater that connection to nature, the greater I had the ability to connect to myself. And when I was able to connect to myself, I was able to connect to others. Didn't always have the answers, didn't have it figured out, but I was able to get that sense of connection. And I just kept holding on that the whole world is yet ahead of me. It's mine for the taking. I just needed to figure out what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. And who was I? When my mom suffered her vascular trauma that would have been March 2019, see my father passed in November 2018. It was anticipated my father would pass because he had a diagnosis of leukemia. We didn't anticipate my mom's passing at all. It came out of the blue. In March 2019, she had a vascular trauma where her aorta pulled apart that's called dissecting. And that dissected, they, that aorta pulled apart all the way from where it comes out of the heart, all the way through her chest, her abdomen, down her hips, into her legs, both legs. It's the worst pain a person can have. It's the worst vascular trauma there is because it's very difficult to repair. And it's And when that dissection occurred, it was late in the just something no one needs to have. It's just horrible and awful. My mom had always said she wanted to go out with a big one, and she was having a big one. evening, she herself called 911. She had been at a community basketball game and a high school basketball game with some friends and wasn't feeling quite right. And she had moved in the bleachers to sit with her back against the wall because it didn't quite feel right. And then she went home and she continued to feel worse. And then the dissection occurred, and that was just obviously very traumatic. But she had the presence of mind and being able to call 911. And by the time she got to the hospital, that's when the emergency room contacted my siblings, and they obviously went directly to the ER and then from there, I was called because I was living in Colorado. And by the time my siblings got there, they were told that mom was going to surgery. And it was just confusing to all of us because my mom had always said she didn't want to have surgery if something major happened, she just wanted to go out with a big one. She wanted to be kept comfortable and be able to pass but yet here it appeared as if she changed her mind and there was so much trauma and we were all in such shock that, you know, and we decided not to question her choices because she obviously must have changed her mind. So as her course continued and she had the surgery, it was about a 12 hour surgery, she survived the surgery only to learn, and we then learned that she really didn't know why she was having this surgery and what her diagnosis was and mom clearly taught--thought two

things going into the surgery: 20:30

that that surgery would help her get out of pain, and that the surgery would most likely help her die painfree. Mom didn't expect to survive the surgery. We as her children didn't expect her to survive the surgery. The surgeon didn't expect her to survive the surgery. Mom survived the surgery. So this part as I get into--as if this isn't hard enough now, this next part is even harder to share, because this is the next few days of her life that also coincided with the most difficult days of my life. And my mom awoke about 34 hours after her surgery, she was lucid. She knew where she was, who we were. She wanted to know what happened. That the first thing she said to me, "What happened?". And I asked her, I said, "Well, what did--" you know? Because I didn't talk with her in the emergency room. Right? I didn't get to her until after she was out of surgery. I asked her I said, "Well, what did they tell you was going on?" She goes, "Well, I was having a heart attack." "No, you weren't, you didn't have a heart attack." She goes "I didn't?" I said,"No." She got a sense that she moved a little bit--she couldn't she really couldn't move much at all, that she was hooked up to so many things. She had three chest tubes. And then she says,"What's all this?" I said,"Well, you have chest tubes. Three of them. And your aorta pulled apart from where it comes out of your heart down into your legs." She goes "Oh, I never would have signed up for this." Immediately upon that statement, mental status exams ensued. Evaluations and so, is she in her right mind, is, does she know what she's saying? What is going on here? And the mental status checks showed her to be completely oriented to person, place, and time, which is the gold standard. Essentially, she knew what was what. Within 10 minutes of her being extubated, meaning the tube comes out, she's able to breathe on her own, and she's lucid, she's awake, she knows where she's at. She told me straight up that she couldn't survive this surgery. She couldn't survive the trauma that she had and she wanted to die. More mental status tests ensued. We examined her again, checked her pupils, checked[uncertain], everything. She was lucid, and there is no evidence of a stroke. This was mom stating her core values and her desires. The challenge then became, how do we grant mom's wishes? By then I shifted from just being a daughter, just being Mary, into the doctor-daughter mode. My training took over, and my thoughts and questions shifted and became clinical and professional and direct and straightforward. And I you know, came up front with things I pushed the physicians, I asked questions, I requested things of staff--basically I took over in doctor mode. And I rea--because I remember the look in my mom's eyes when she said "Honey, I want to go be with Jesus. I want to go. I can't do this." She had a piercing green hazel gaze that was fixed and firm. Her mind was made up. So as we approach this issue with a medical team another circumstance arose: that of informed consent and approval, not just for her hospital admission, but also her surgery. And it appeared that her consent for surgery was possibly under--obtained under some somewhat dubious circumstances. And when we as a family confronted that possibility, all hell broke loose. Hours and hours of conversations took place evaluation, family meeting, ethics meetings. And as siblings, we were on the same page as to what our mom wanted and getting her wishes granted, but it was difficult to negotiate through the system. The hospital wanted to divide us to lay blame upon my mom for her choices and to lay blame upon us kids and even me primarily because I kept pushing the point that we needed to uphold mom's core values and beliefs. Now the ethics surrounding this situation, this part of the story are going to be held for another time, when I can be in conversation with an ethics expert, around informed consent, informed refusal, and patient choice. So we'll hold that. But we'll carry on with how this unfolds. And we were able to get Mom placed in hospice care and moved to the facility of her choice, she was able to pass away, and it was about 23 hours after she entered hospice care. And it was through hospice care that were able to finally get her pain managed that she had initially, even before the surgery. So if I stop in this period, and take off the story part and begin to analyze what I was feeling, what I was experiencing, what the culture was telling me, what trauma I experienced, what was I saying, it went something like this, that the culture was saying, "You didn't listen to the doctor, you questioned authority," and it's a very paternalistic culture, and I can just feel the big finger wagging at me. And "Who do you think you are? You're just a family doctor questioning this." And, "Who do you think you are? You're just a daughtor, what do you know? And how can you just come in from Colorado, and you just say your mom wants to die and all these things we're doing, but then you're questioning why we did it." It just went on and on and on the culture was just really screaming at me. The trauma was, of course, my mom's trauma that she had, and how traumatizing that was to us to watch her go through this. And the trauma of the disregard for my mom's wishes, and how we had to fight for what her beliefs were, what her choices were, and what choices she had recorded in documents to have done. And then fighting the whole system, a system that I had believed in, the system that was my culture, a system that was my identity, and a system that I fully believed in and gave my life to. And this wasn't even about me. I mean, I don't feel in sharing that, that this was about me, this was about my experience with my mom as a patient. But I am a doctor. And so it is very difficult to tease those things apart. And, physically, my sacrum went out of alignment. And it was like that for like about four years and hurt like a banshee. And I couldn't ever get the thing adjusted to stay put. What was I saying on the inside? What was I wanting to see different. I saw that I didn't fit in a culture that was paternalistic. I didn't fit in a culture that ignored someone's core belief. I chose humanity over profits, I chose someone's choice, and held that as sacred in the doctor patient relationship over procedures and things that could be done. And I was in shock. I'll say that one again, and I was in shock, and acute grief. As the days and weeks went by, after my mom passed, I didn't do well. We returned back to Colorado and my work and my practice, and it was tough going. There my relationship went with my mom. Throughout my life, was complicated. Yet I was the one she often came to when she wanted to talk. And she made it complicated by her trauma story. I knew that she had lived and done the very best she could, however, and I had settled that long ago. And I knew that when she experienced rejection, I experienced rejection. What we really wanted though both was attachment and acceptance. I know that she struggled with ever feeling good enough or being enough. Same thing I struggled with, same thing that I felt when I was around her. And also she, you know, often said, you guys don't offer enough help to me as your mother and I know she said I would fall over dead if it were ever said what can I do to help you mother? Well, in some ways in the end of her life, that was true because 24 It was 24/7 one week, we sat vigil at her bedside until she passed and did everything that we could do as humans and everything literally, humanly possible to support her process of her choice. Now, people don't survive the type of trauma she had very often. Very often they don't, this wasn't something that all of a sudden, you know, little something-something happens. She just goes well I just want to check out. No, because when this occurred and her artery dissected, and the various arteries in her body dissected, that meant no blood flow. So her legs were pulseless, cold and blue, hands were the same thing. She didn't have a stroke, which most people had. And most people, you know, have is a complication, but she never had that she was there in mind, body and soul, but knew she couldn't overcome the physical aspects. And, and, and so it was just very clear that she needed to be able to allow, to be able to be allowed to pass and to be at peace. And that's what happened. What I was saying loud and clear is I was grieving the loss of my mom and nothing made sense and nothing mattered. That went on for about a year. Each day was a struggle. Each day, I continued to feel grief-stricken and sad. I couldn't find the word until about three years later, literally. Brene Brown wrote a book called The Atlas of the Heart, and it talks about different emotions. And one of the chapters is about the word anguish. And it means to take out at the knees, a grief and sadness so profound, that one's bones are crushed, and their legs come out from underneath them. Yep, that felt right. Anguish was the word. And I was frequently inconsolable. It was the hardest thing I've ever been through. And I read and sorted and analyzed my mom's medical records. I don't recommend this, because it's not for the faint of heart. I don't know if that contributed to my ongoing grief, or if that helped me clear and process my grief, but I know that's what I chose to do. And it was a part of my process. And I had to read and sort and record what had happened, I had to understand that which seems so incongruent to my mom's core values and her wishes, because her process just did not make sense. And then on the heels of that, just a year later, after my mom passed, that's when the COVID came, right? End of February, beginning of March. And I had a patient who came back from Italy from an extended vacation, she had the weirdest bronchitis I'd ever seen. And she was not responding to typical treatments. And being the physician that I am, I typically evaluate people repeatedly to make sure they're in, there recovering, and make sure, you know, there aren't more complications, because this, this patient was really sick. And so I use breathing treatments, I did IVs--'course we didn't know anything about masking or anything then or isolation. And so I got exposed, right. And then I went up to Vail to give a lecture. 9200 feet of altitude. I struggled to breathe at 9200 feet. And I just didn't feel right, I was able to give the lecture, we decided to go home early. We thought getting from 9200 feet down to 5000 feet would be great closer to sea level, but still, I wasn't any better. So we went to the emergency room, and my oxygen level was 76, as in trombones, but it should be in the 90s. So--and I remember the doctor looked at me and said, "Well, were you aware of this?" I'm like, Well, if I would have been aware of that I would have led with that coming in, rather than just saying I'm having some difficulty breathing. So no, I wasn't aware that my oxygen level was 76. So, but with two liters of oxygen, I was able to get up to just at 90, which was good. And then I was able to spend a couple of days in the hospital in isolation because we didn't know what this was it was before--they'd just began talking about what was coming out of China, they'd just began talking about locked down and things happening. And I was in the hospital fielding all of this stuff. And I thought, oh my gosh, I gotta get out of here because this doesn't sound safe. So after a few days in the hospital, I was able to go home and continue my recovery, which took a number of weeks because I had the ground glass appearance in the lungs, the low oxygen levels, so I really had had a full case of that. And so when that healing occurred, and when I was still processing some of the things from my mom's, I, and my dad for that matter, because it still didn't, you know, quite feel right without both of my parents around. I was then faced with the closing of my office for four months because of lockdown which really then just took the business out because as a sole provider, you just, you lose that income. And so it's you can't--I couldn't, I imagined someone could but I couldn't, recover from four months of lost income. And the way through using PPP loans wasn't available to me because I didn't have enough employees. Yet, I could take out another loan that I could, you know, have mandatory payback on. So I'm like, I'm not sure it's a good idea to go in more debt to have more debt. So, it was a very difficult decision, but we decided to, I decided to close the office. And during that time, I went into deep inquiry of the things, what do I know to be true? These things felt, there were days then I felt kind of like a victim. I certainly didn't bring these circumstances on myself, but they happened. But I asked questions and knew to stay out of the victim mode by inquiry and deep inquiry. So I asked questions, and then I followed that with a question, or I looked at my thoughts and followed that with questions about, do I know this to be true? Is this statement true? Is this thought true? Can I absolutely know this thought is true? How do I feel or react when I believe this thought? And who would I be if I didn't have this thought? And so I began using little notepads and scribbling things down whenever thoughts came up that were or felt intrusive. I didn't formally journal, I just processed them, and I kind of threw them out because I was just processing. And this--this work was based upon Byron Katie's information that she calls The Inquiry or The Work. And again, it's four questions. And it's a form of self-directed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. So you ask yourself that question about the thought you have. Is that true? Then the second thing you asked? Can you absolutely know it's true? Of course, the answer for that one's always going to be no, because you can't absolutely know anything, even though I just absolutely said that, right? And then the third thing is, how can you, or how do you react when you believe that thought? And then the fourth thing is, who would you be without that thought? So as I inquire of myself, I found my way through the grief. And I found that getting some training and trauma healing in an identifying and becoming a trauma-informed physician, would be a value and would be a benefit. So I began to receive the trauma therapy for my grief. And I began to receive the training in trauma therapy as a physician to help others. And it's fair to say that trauma care saved both my life and my soul. And I use a process called advanced integrative therapy, AIT. That's a system of care and treatment developed by Dr. Asha Clinton, I had an opportunity to receive basic and advanced training in her work. And I worked with an AIT therapist personally. And then I added AIT work to my medical practice. Mind you, I had done years of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Somatic Therapy, and I had an established spiritual practices and individual. I am a seeker and I believe in transformation. So that's how I lived my life anyway. I was always I've always been curious, I remain curious. I'm always learning. And I'm always kind of requesting or requiring patients to be the same and to do the same because I think part of our medical journey and our health journey is learning. You know, what is our what are our circumstances or symptoms telling us? What is our disease mean? What are what are we meant to learn through this process? How can we grow and become a better person as a result of this? But the key in this and what was transformative was the trauma work. And that was a game changer. Having a systematic approach to understanding the effects of trauma in the body and a way for the nervous system to begin to manage it. And I took the care, the questioning, the listening, and the understanding that came through and then I used for patients and I found this to be astounding. We were able to connect the mind and body while incorporating chronic medical conditions. And patients symptoms that seem persistent in nature and their lives were getting transformed. Their symptoms. were less, their diagnoses, some of them were eliminated, some of them were stabilized. Some of them were prevented. Some of them we had secondary prevention, meaning something you had been diagnosed with, didn't come back again or didn't get worse. And sometimes, in a situation where I worked with a patient who had a terminal diagnosis, even though they passed away, they were at peace and they were more in connection with themselves, their core beliefs, their loved ones, and their spiritual practice or their spiritual life. So I would consider that all healing and a part of a person's journey. So how does this happen? What was it that occurred? Here's what happens, the body has the inherent capacity to heal. It does. We don't need to stare at a cut to heal, or a fracture to heal. We use known principles to align the body's healing capacity, and then the body takes over. Trauma has an impact upon our nervous system and accesses our body through the autonomic nervous nervous system. And we say that the issues are in the tissues, that they're literally housed in the soma or the body. Now, we don't know--we don't know if there's actually a physical thing, or we see because there's aspects of the body that are considered energetic, that's in the quantum physics field, that has an influence upon the tissues and upon the autonomic nervous system. So that's really where we think that these trauma components sit, or these trauma events. And then when those trauma events occur, there's an influence upon our neural pathways. Most of these pathways go up to the brain and swirl around in the midbrain. So, you know, find your ears go the top of your ears cut straight through your head, that's the midbrain area. Okay. So more pathways go up and come down. We feel then we think. Rarely do we think then we feel. So we're feeling beings first. The higher centers, which are the thinking part of the brain, that prefrontal cortex, the executive functions, the smart parts in the front, they get overcome and then are squelched, quieted, blocked, whatever, because all of this input coming up from the trauma from the triggers, and the triggers are there, ripe to be triggered, because they're positioned correctly. They're in the forefront and you just get triggered. All trauma, then, by definition causes us to disconnect from ourselves. All trauma causes us to disconnect, all traumas, everyone. The key with healing is the reconnection. So let me say that again, we get traumatized, we disconnect. Why? Because it's too painful to stay connected. So we dissociate. If we dissociate enough and far enough away, we develop habits that keep us over there. We call those addictions. Okay, so let me say it again, the key to the healing of trauma is the reconnection. The body knows how to heal. Emotions are a part of the body and the nervous system. We heal the emotions through the nervous system by connecting or reconnecting into the nervous system. And then the nervous system says, "Thank you very much. I can heal this. I know what to do." Simple, right? Well, not so fast. Because there's literally hours of explanation in science and physiology, and neuro anatomy, explanation of all these pathways to what I just blew through right there, right? Neurotransmitters, there's areas in the body, how to explain how all of this goes down. But let's

say it like this: 44:40

it's kind of like a refrigerator. So we want the results right, we want to be able to open the door the light goes on, we put the food in gets cold, we don't really think about the wiring, the freon, the construction of the unit, right? We just want the results. So the simplicity of cold storage really is a good representation of the wiring and everything that goes into what we know our nervous system can do and how our body can heal. But with this tool of trauma therapy, and with this true tool of healing, I was able then to begin an inquiry to my various trauma patterns and stories. Into what had happened to me not only the last four years, but in years before. And I found the results and the healing that I had been seeking. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was great, I was able to understand, you know, thoughts that weren't correct, things that weren't true, I was able to reframe things. But then you would just only go so far, and things would just get triggered. Here's where the work to help the triggering really began and really took root. So then I was also able to adapt this process to the way that I interviewed patients, and how I had interviewed patients for about the past 30 years. As a physician, I had developed deep listening skills and very good questions, I was able to get to answers really quickly with patients. I was I was known and I am known to get the clarity very quickly, clarity of diagnosis, clarity of what the patient's really seeking, and clarity of treatment options. Right? And those are the things I've seen always can also be or always be, or sometimes be at least, elusive, right? But by applying those listening and questioning skills, I took these trauma treatment principles, and I made an adaptation to what I have learned. And I call that Self Care and Connection. So based upon my understanding of EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization, TFT, which is thought field, EFT, which is emotional freedom technique, and AIT, which is advanced integrative technique, by Dr. Clinton, all of which reside under the umbrella of energetic psychology, I was able to clarify my process with my work with patients. And as a physician, I was able to experience healing myself, and then help others heal. So this is the work that I've left the day to day clinical medicine schedule for. I no longer run room to room. While that was exhilarating, at times, fulfilling at times, often exhausting at times, I wanted to change how I did medicine. And the clinic I had in Colorado, before the lockdown, was really a step that was very close to it. But I also had a lot of things because it was a brick and mortar office, I had to pay overhead for right? And I found as I began to do more and more of this work, of the Self Care in Connection, patients said "Hey, can I just call you from home? Hey, can I just do a computer visit? Hey, can I just do a video call? Hey, can I just do telemedicine?" And so as we decided during the pandemic to move back to our home state, and we landed well, we were able to sell our home quickly and move and find land and a builder and build during a pandemic. While not always advisable, that worked out well for us. So we bounced really well that way, and we're very grateful for that. But I'm able now to work from home, a decision that I've made so I can have greater access to patients and patients can have greater access to me. So I'll continue to provide the holistic osteopathic medicine that I've done for decades, Family Medicine, things that can be done by telemedicine where you don't need to be in person, but a lot of it's looking at difficult cases, second opinions, what are treatment options? What are the best things to move forward with lifestyle? How do you holistically evaluate something, all that's really important, and then the trauma piece using Self Care and Connection. Because the So this is a great breakthrough for patients. This is a great thing for people to have and it's something with a deep more we're connected to ourself, the more we can be connected to inquiry, the imagery, the questions about Is this true? Is this absolutely true? Identifying traumas, learning a Self Care and Connection protocol. This is something others, right? So I was curious for years, seeking that patients can learn to do for self-care. So it's a tool that not only I use to treat patients when I work with them, but teach them so they can continue self-care. And they can continue connection in the patient as to where the mind-body keystone or to maintain and encourage and continue their growth in mental health and well being as it's connected not only to any the linchpin might be positioned, and I think by diagnosis they have, but really true prevention. So there's a course on my website, it's a masterclass called My Anxiety Code. And I encourage everybody to watch this. It's about a 40 understanding our emotions, and trauma, I think that's where minute webinar masterclass, that explains this process in more detail, and my approach in more detail. So I invite all of you it's at. I don't think that I would have found this work had I who might be interested in this inquiry in this understanding how the brain and emotions and anxiety are connected to take advantage of that masterclass, because it's at a great price: not gone through the four years of extensive grief and loss. I doesn't cost you anything but your time. And if there's areas in your life that you see or are curious about, you want to see don't know that, I say that, I don't know that that's true. I look different. Let's work together. Let's get clarity. Let's you know, seek answers. Let's get curious as to how good your life can be. I think that's really pretty fun. And so I don't I feel that that's true. I don't know that that's thank you for listening to this podcast today, Since You Put It That Way. Thank you for letting me share some vulnerable things absolutely true. Right. But I'm not sure that would have been as that occurred, knowing how that has changed the nature and course of my work as a physician. And the way that I want to continue to communicate with people more in a broader curious about trauma had I not nearly been leveled by it sense without barriers to access and care. So I appreciate this time and I appreciate you listening and we'll see you next time for our next episode of Since You Put It That Way. multiple times over.