The Truth About Nervous System Regulation- Ep. 306

In this conversation, Jade Teta discusses the concept of nervous system regulation and its place in the broader context of health and wellness. He argues that while nervous system regulation is important, it is not the root cause of health issues. Instead, he emphasizes the significance of identity and consciousness in shaping our experiences and health outcomes. The discussion explores the evolution of health trends, the impact of childhood experiences on identity, and the importance of integrating stories and beliefs to facilitate personal transformation. Teta also highlights the limitations of traditional therapeutic approaches and advocates for a more holistic understanding of health that incorporates both psychological and physiological aspects.

takeaways

• Nervous system regulation is a popular trend but not the root cause of health issues.
• Identity and consciousness play a crucial role in health and wellness.
• Childhood experiences significantly shape our identity and perceptions.
• The stories we tell ourselves influence our reality and health outcomes.
• Integration of identities and experiences is essential for personal growth.
• Understanding, believing, and knowing are different stages of personal transformation.
• Traumas are events, while dramas are our interpretations of those events.
• Books and logical explanations alone do not lead to lasting change.
• The subconscious mind plays a key role in shaping our identities and behaviors.
• A holistic approach to health must consider both psychological and physiological factors.

CHAPTERS:

0:00

Solo Setup & Bold Thesis

3:48

Career Roots & Functional Medicine Path

6:45

Diet Fads To Hormones To Nerves

10:31

Materialism vs Idealism Explained

13:30

PNEI System Reframed Through Identity

16:37

Identity Shapes Filters And Physiology

19:09

Justin Joins: Identity vs Psychology

22:30

Parts, Personality, And The Default Mode

26:00

Understanding, Believing, Knowing

29:29

Hidden Patterns And Subconscious Change

33:41

Dimmer Switch: What Regulation Means

36:30

Rewriting Stories And Boundaries

40:41

Rewrite, Rewire, Retrain Framework

44:45

Therapy, EMDR, And Practice Gaps

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Transcript

Solo Setup & Bold Thesis

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Okay, what's going on, everybody? Today I am actually going solo, and I'm going solo to talk a little bit about uh some of the content I've been putting out this week that a lot of people have been commenting on that has to do with the idea of nervous system regulation. One of the things I wanted to cover in depth is this idea of nervous system regulation, which is all the rage right now, and that it is not, in my opinion, um the root cause and where we really want to be focusing um all of our time. Now, of course, it's important in the same way that hormones are important, in the same way that the immune system is important, but I still think that we're getting this wrong, and so I'm gonna make that argument uh to you and for you so you can um follow along uh with that. So let's get into this. First of all, let's do a little bit of the um history of this just so you can understand where I am coming from. I've been in this field for 35 years. I'm 52 now. I started at the age of 15. Um, that is the first time I made money doing anything in my life as a personal trainer. And so uh from that perspective, I've been doing this work for a very long time. That got me into uh nutrition, performance nutrition. I ended up studying biochemistry in um undergrad. And then I was on my way to East Carolina University Medical School in North Carolina, and I happened to look at the curriculum at the time. They did not offer any education in exercise, any education in nutrition, and any education in psychology, which were all the areas that I was excited about and studying even back then. And to give you an idea when this was, this would have been uh I graduated from undergrad in 1997. I graduated from medical school uh back in 2004. Uh I chose to go to a medical school that was one of the first in the country to train functional medicine practitioners. Uh, it is a program that trained naturopathic doctors, not a great marketing strategy, if you ask me. However, uh, those that training was incredibly powerful for me. I spent six years at this school up in Seattle, Washington, Bastier University. Uh, everyone told me not to do this, that this was witchcraft medicine, that I'd ruin my career. I had no idea that this would become mainstream medicine, that functional medicine would take all these principles of naturopathic medicine, and now it's mainstream. But what I have seen is lots and lots of different trends. Of course, when I first started out, uh let's say in the 80s when I was 15 doing this work, it was all about calories and fat. Fat is bad, low fat, watch your calories. Then in the late 90s and 2000s, it became all about uh low carb, right? And that lasted for a while. Then it started to change a little bit and went back to sort of very high fat, so keto-based diets and things like that in the late 90s. I don't know if you remember, if you've been around a bit, probably the zone diets and diets like that, which were a little bit lower carb, and then it got extremely low carb with the Atkins and that kind of stuff. And I ended up writing a book uh back in 2008 that got published in 2010 called The Metabolic Effect Diet, which is one of the first books, if not the first book, on hormonal approaches to weight loss. And around that time that that book was uh being released, the low-carb Atkins craze was going on, and that sort of gave way to some of the functional medicine uh approaches, specifically gut-based stuff. So shortly after that book was released, it was all about gut, uh, gut function, gut restoration. This is still a big deal in the health and fitness space. Then it began to move into hormones almost a decade after I wrote my book. So 2020, let's say, and I would still say the hormone stuff is at its peak. You know, maybe now, maybe it's waning a little bit, and we're now moving into this idea of nervous system regulation. And the reason I want to go through this is because, from my perspective, this is the mistake. There's this constant idea of trends. These trends come and go, and then there's the latest fads that happen inside of medicine and inside of health and wellness. I began to opt out of this about a decade ago because I saw that this was not doing many people much good, and that I wasn't getting uh great results, and that other people were not getting great results, and it was just a bunch of noise. And so I started to dive deeper into personal development and what drives us as humans, how we make meaning, how we make a difference, the things that drive us internally. And when I went down deeper into my psychology background and philosophy, I started to uncover something really interesting. And that was this idea that maybe materialism is not the right model. And by materialism, what I mean is the idea that we are a complex, complex physiological, biochemical, biological organism, and that complexity created the human brain. And the human brain is so complex that poof, we got consciousness from it. The idea that I am aware, that I am aware, and that this is where consciousness comes from, and this is how the mind-body interaction happens. It's just a brain thing. That's what materialism is. And I started to see that materialism was limited in its explanatory capacity for what was happening with people as they went through life. And so I started looking at alternatives in philosophy, and I also started to see a lot of things that should not happen from a materialist perspective. People's mindsets and perceptions changing, and that then changing their physiology. Started to see things like people who couldn't lose weight with all the diet of the exercise stuff, but began to find purpose and meaning in a particular direction and end up losing weight without trying, or people who had illnesses who ended up doing work on their traumas and their dramas and ended up healing from those things. And this got me into a whole new way of looking at how health manifests, which then brings me to the latest craze, which is nervous system regulation and nervous system stuff. Well, I just told you, well, the nervous system, the brain is the most important part, right? So if the model that we fundamentally use to think about nervous system is wrong, then what does that mean for health and fitness? Or maybe not wrong is the wrong word, but maybe incomplete. And so, from my perspective, I started to see that there's something deeper going on here. So let me paint the picture for you. In my field of functional medicine, we have something that we call the PNEI system, the psychoneuroendocrine immune system. It basically is a way of saying that the psychology interacts with the nervous system, interacts with the hormone slash endocrine system, interacts with the immune system. So this PNEI model drives a lot of what goes on and what people talk about in functional medicine. Now, no doubt there are still many, many, many conventional physicians and conventional practitioners who do not practice this way. They they segment, they focus on one particular area, they're not functional in their approach, they don't see how these systems integrate. But for most people who are interested in health and wellness, they're whether they realize it or not, they're pretty well versed in this model of the PNEI, psychoneuroendocrine immune system. When you apply that psychoneuroendocrine immune system to the idea of materialism that the brain is just driving everything and consciousness comes from the brain, then of course you stop at the level of psychology, personality. Personality is just an outcome of brain function and the experiences the brain has had. However, if instead we start looking at the fact that perhaps the brain is not a producer of consciousness, but more like a filter of consciousness, more like a radio receiver, receiving consciousness. So that consciousness is all of this material out here, and the brain is made of consciousness, but is also filtering consciousness. This is the philosophy of idealism, which essentially says the brain is not the producer of consciousness, but is more the way that we interface with consciousness, which is all around us. And it reminds me of a parable, I think the first time I heard it was from my father, where these two fish are swimming in the water, two little fish on their way to work, and an older, wiser fish swims by them and says, Hey boys, how's the water? And the two fish as look at each other and go, What the hell is water? This is kind of what it's like to be in this position where we see consciousness as primary. We are essentially swimming inside of consciousness, but it's so prevalent, we're so used to it, that we don't realize what it is. Just like a fish who does not understand the concept of water because water is everything and all around them. Now, what would this have to do with nervous system regulation? Well, very clearly, if consciousness comes first and is primary, then consciousness would be driving things and be more the root cause of some of what we deal with than nervous system. Nervous system is just a way of interacting, not the producer, so it's not the root cause. So hopefully you're starting to see that this model of idealism versus materialism changes the way that we would perceive this psycho-neuroendocrine immune system. Something comes first, consciousness comes first. Well, what is consciousness? Some people might call consciousness a field of information. And what might come prior to consciousness then something, then our psychology, our nervous system, our endocrine system, and our immune system. This is what I want to talk about. I believe the thing that comes first is our identity inside of this consciousness bubble in which we live. In other words, our filters by which we perceive the world around us. That this filter, the stories we tell, the emotions that follow those stories around, the judgments we make, the beliefs we hold, ultimately determine our reality and the way we see the world, ultimately determine how we perceive consciousness. And the brain and the nervous system simply responds to that. It is a predictive machine based on how we perceive who it is that we think we are, identity, a person like me in a world like this. So, how might this now change the game if you are somebody who is constantly thinking about, oh, I have to regulate my nervous system, I have to regulate my nervous system? Well, what if the filters by which you perceive the world is a filter based on fear, or a filter based on the need to be accepted and belong, or a filter based on the idea that you might not have freedom? All of a sudden, you begin to live in a world and your nervous system begins to take on an approach that is fear-based or popularity-based or freedom-based. What's happening, my brother? So Justin is joining in and jumping in. So, Justin, I'm just getting him caught up on this model of Yeah, no, you're good, man. You're good. So let me just finish this riff and then you can jump in. So, this idea then is that identity uh comes first. And by the way, as Justin jumps in, this is one of the things that Justin, being a practitioner like me, me and him work on this uh, you know, idea with identity. So if identity comes first, then it creates the filter by which we see the world and we see ourselves. And that filter then adjusts the nervous system holding pattern, which then impacts the hormone system and the immune system. And so before I let Justin jump in here, what would this mean? What it would mean is that when you were a child, or when you were a teenager, or you as an adult, the things that you go through, right, determine how you see the world. The dramas and the traumas that you have been through in your life create certain stories about yourself and the world. And those stories then determine how you then go about in the world. Let me give you an example of this really quickly. Let's say a child is walking through a park, has just recently learned to walk, starts to take off running, falls, hits their knee, bangs their knee, cuts their knee open. There's pain. There is this sticky substance, there's red, blood on the leg, and the child for the first time is seeing this, and in all these split seconds is making judgments about what is happening. Now, obviously, pain is meant to make this child pay attention. Doesn't necessarily feel normal, but that child's probably gonna do what? It's gonna look to the parents and see what the parents are gonna do. And when the child looks and sees the shocked look on the parent's face, that means something to the child. If the parents then start arguing and yelling at each other, being like, oh my God, I can't believe you let him out of your sight, like what the hell's wrong with you? You're so stupid, whatever, that says something to the child. If the parents start yelling at the child, that says something to the child. If the parents pick the child up and hug it and protect it, that says something to the child. What does it say? It says something about who I am, whether I messed up or not, whether I'm good or bad, and how the world is, whether it's safe or not, and whether I'm okay or not. Now imagine fast-forwarding through life and all of these things happening where we're writing stories and writing judgments. We then form an identity. All those interactions when we're adolescents, being accepted at the party or not accepted at the party, all those early experiences with romance where we got rejected or did not get rejected, those experiences with finances, all of this stuff determines our personality, our psychology, which then interacts with our neurology, which then impacts our hormones, which then impacts our immune system. So what I am arguing here is that the psycho-neuroendocrine immune system is not the beginning of the story. It is the middle of the story. The beginning of the story is consciousness and identity, and then this stuff flows out. So, Justin, if you're still there, you can jump in and tell me how you see this uh concept and where you might see it differently, where you agree or disagree, or where you may have questions, and let's just, you know, um get into it and discuss.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Yeah, you and I have been talking about it recently. So they're all right. Um jumped in. Yeah. You know, one thing I agree with it actually um wholeheartedly. I think the one thing I have a question for you, though, is about um how do you distinguish the psycho um psychology from how do you differentiate that from the um identity in a sense, right? Because it is the are are is there a difference? Because, you know, if there's an identity that has stories and beliefs with it, um, and you're saying it affects the the psychology, is it kind of the same or is it different?

Parts, Personality, And The Default Mode

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Yeah, I see them as different. I see them as different. Um, and and here's why, right? So to me, identity is let's take that child, right? And let's say, let's just let's just create a scenario for this kid. So this kid, let's say, goes through life, and let's say his parents are actually the type of parents that go, you know what, no big deal, you fell down, things happen, and we love you, and you're strong, and you can get over it. And that he gets all these messages, or she gets all these messages about being courageous and strong, and how we all take falls and fears and failures are things that you confront and you handle that just great. And this child grows up now with stories around the fact that fear and failure are a normal part of life, that we all fall down, that getting up, right, is um part of the process. And so the stories turn into a set of stories about that turn into a set of beliefs, right? So now all of a sudden the child believes that fear is not bad, failure is not bad, it's just a normal part of life, and actually I can grow from it. Now those beliefs start forming into a personality and a set of psychologies, right? And then that begins to turn into a neurology. But the stories and the beliefs form the identity, right? And then the identities turn into the personality. For example, a lot of you don't know this about me, but Justin and I are close friends. So Justin knows that I'm not just, you know, I have a professor type identity and I have a goofball type identity, right? And I know Justin has sort of a meathead identity and a nerd identity and a goofball identity, right? So we have several different types of identities. Now, combine those identities together, I know Justin's personality, right? He can be very professorial, he's a very compassionate guy. He also has a little bit of the, you know, the fitness dude in him, right? So he's got a set of, he's got a personality. And when I know his set of identities, I know his personality and his psychology, that influences his neurology, which influences his hormones and influences the immune system. So that's how I see it. The stories and beliefs come together to form identity. Different identities, right? Because we don't, an identity is not all one thing. Different identities form a personality and a psychology, a way in which we interact with the world, which then influences the neurology, which then influences the endocrinology, hormones, which then for influences the immunology. Okay. So hope hopefully that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Yeah, yeah. I yeah. I not yeah, okay. So the identity could also be synonymous of like parts, right? Some like like subpersonalities, right? And then you're saying that there's the psychology comes out of that meaning, the different language and the way they speak about themselves and the world, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

100%. Like to me, a personality and a psychology of somebody, knowing someone's personality is knowing how they are in different situations. So knowing what parts of themselves, right? So I do see parts as um, you know, part of your identity, right? Like you have a little child, we all have a little kid inside of us that likes to play. We all have an adult self, we've got a scared self, right? So these are parts of our identity. Of course, when all of those come together, you know, that is to me the personality, the psychology. Now, that psychology then fits into the psychoneuroendocrine immune system. That's the way I see it. So when I am working with a client, what I want to know is I want to get down to the stories. And part of the way I get to the stories is by going past the personality into all these different identities, these identity structures. Those identity structures are made of beliefs and stories. Those stories, to me, are the place where the magic happens because if we can change the story about the world, like that child, if we can get everyone to think of fear and failures and write stories about fear and failures as good things, and I'm not bad, and the world is safe, and this is just a normal part of things, then we can change their identities and we can change their personalities and psychologies. And then the neurology sets different. And I do think this is what you and I do, Justin, when we're doing our work. I think this is what happens when psychedelics are adjusting the default mode network. The default mode network is what's holding all these self referential stories and beliefs and identity structures, right? And so I do think when we do our work, and when that is what is making the difference. Although I do think that, and this is what you and I talk about a lot, you cannot get to these story structures through logic-based coaching. It has to come from identity-based coaching, which does mean getting into the stories, getting into these personalities, getting into these parts.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah, what I find is that people, you know, when they get down, especially to the theta, alpha brainwave states and do this kind of rewriting, you know, it's like it's like the sky breaks open for some people where they have this huge revelation about how they've been stuck in a way and they don't need to anymore. You know, I'm sure you see that too, but it's like it's a weird, is I've had it personally myself where it's like, wow, you know, it's like a huge insight and it just makes sense all of a sudden.

unknown 24:12

Right?

Understanding, Believing, Knowing

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Yeah, you know, I yeah, I think that's exactly what happens. And I, and you know what, how I make this distinction? Because it's that because that's hard to explain, right? I'm sure there's some people right now. Yeah, yeah. Some people, they're like, what do you mean? I want that. Like, I want that effect. And and I do think that all of you listening, when I explain this, you'll you've had this happen to you before, but the way that I like to look at it is I go, there's there's a there's a um part three-part process here, right? There's an understanding, right? There's a believing, and there's a knowing. Right? And so when we when we you know, when we get information, we can understand. Like I can I can ask Justin to be like, hey, explain this this thing to me, and I can understand it logically and intellectually, but I might not believe it, right? So he might explain this whole thing to me about how biochemistry works and how that, because Justin teaches me a lot about uh immune systems and how the immune system can, you know, basically be turned on up or down to cause autoimmunity. That's Justin's work, right? So I he can explain that to me and I can understand it, but I may not believe it's true, right? But then once then I can start believing it's true, um, and I can go, okay, you know, I believe that's true for me now. So maybe I'll start changing my diet and doing the things that I know that I can do to adjust my uh immune system, right? But then there's something that happens with knowing, which is basically to be like, knowing is the deepest form. This is where it gets into the identity structures and the stories, when I know that my immune system is directly linked to my thoughts, my feelings, and my stories. And that knowing, you have had before, all of you have had before, where you're basically you're in the shower or something, you get this download, and you just go, oh my God, I feel that. I've heard it before, I've understood it before, maybe I even believed it before, but now I just know it to my core and my bones in a different way. When that download and that insight comes, it's really weird because when you try to explain it with language to somebody, it sounds like no duh, right? It's kind of like, but even though it's no duh, it's not no duh to you in knowing. So that's how I think that happens. What happens in our work is we go, we can they can read all the books, right? They can take courses from you and I, Justin, right? They can start to believe that it's true, but until they actually know it in their core, that's when it really seeps in. Think about it. Believing and knowing are not the same thing. If you believe something, right, there's still some doubt. You have to convince yourself. Knowing is like there's no doubt at all. This is the way it works. So that's how I see that.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Yeah, that's exactly it. I think the thing, the other thing I was gonna say too, is that um I think what's tough, because I get this all the time. Well, I healed my trauma, I dealt with the stuff that I'm aware of, you know, in the past when I was yelled at by my parents and the fear of failure and the perfect, you know, they can see their their identities and they can see where it came from, but they're it's a hard sell sometimes, I think, because they they think they've moved on and they're not, it's not affecting them anymore. And they're like, well, how do I know? And I just go, well, because your identity, your parts are still playing out. You have repeated patterns, as you say, recurrent obstacles, psych emotions, and things like this. And I just think sometimes people have a hard time noticing that, and that aware lack of awareness makes it hard for them to see why they need to change. Do you do you get my point there? Yeah.

Hidden Patterns And Subconscious Change

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And I think the reason why is like, you know, once again, when you it's subconscious, right? And it's because it's subconscious, people do this work and it feels matter-of-fact to them. So even if they go, let's say someone comes and they go through a process. I've seen this at my retreats. People come to my retreats, they're one way. Some of them have these major breakthroughs, and it's as if they're talking with the language they use is like they've always been that way. Because from their perspective, the knowing is they can't, it they can't go back and be like I used to be. They just know, and they often speak in present tense. And it often feels like if you say to them, you know, you went to this retreat and everything's different, if if they stop and think about it, they'll go, Oh my gosh, yeah, you're right. But from their perspective, because it's so pervasive in now in the nervous system and it's coming from, you know, the identity, they don't register it. It's subconscious. So it this is one of the hardest things about this. And also think about this coincidence, because our logical brains, our conscious minds, logical brains, will always make something make sense. And because of that, we will always make something a coincidence. Does that make sense to you and make sense to people? So you see this a lot with psychedelics, right? Like people go through this thing, and you know, even with manifestation work, they all of a sudden do some work around changing themselves and change themselves at the core. Their whole life shifts, but from their perspective, because of the way the intelligence works, the logical mind works, they just go, oh, that's because this happened, that happened, and this happened. And it had nothing to do with anything else, any of this work I did. It was just a coincidence. And for me, I always smile when I hear that because I'm like, a coincidence is a sure sign that something shifted in your subconscious. Whenever you think, whenever you're trying to make it a coincidence, like this thing just happened, what that means to me is you probably adjusted your identity structures, your stories, and the subconscious makes it feel like it's just always been that way or it makes complete logical sense. Otherwise, you wouldn't have to explain it.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

Yeah. It's so true, though.

Dimmer Switch: What Regulation Means

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Yeah. I mean, it makes it difficult being a practitioner, right? Like you if you and me, because if you're someone who has, if your ego as a practitioner needs to be, needs to be told, oh, you're the man and you make you helped me change, right? Like you don't always get that in this work because the change is so subconscious that not everyone will register. I mean, a lot of people will, but not everyone will. Some people won't even see, they'll just see the difference in their life. They won't equate it to any work they did. By the way, this is hard because we're always peeling the, I call it the infinite onion, right? We're always peeling the infinite onion layer. And so there's always more work to be done. And I really wish they would understand what they did was what made the difference because they'll need to keep doing that to continue to grow and evolve, because we're never done with the work. No, you're right. Yeah. So that's the sort of the way that I'm seeing um this work. And so let's just let's cover a final thing, just and then go through final questions and then we can end here. But like to me, I go, hopefully, people are now understanding that identity, which I know the terminology and vocabulary limits us. I wish I had a better word, right? Because I know that identity people would go, Well, you can't change identity. And my whole thing is, yes, you can, and you do actually all the time. Think about it. The the personality adjustments are you changing identities. You're not one identity, you're multiple identities. A personality is the complete identity structure that you maintain. I have a lot of different identities, as Jade, all of you listening, have a lot of different identities. Those identities change based on where you are. Think about it when you go into work, there's one identity that comes out, right? If you if you go, if if Justin and I are gonna invite you to go to a black tie party with us, you're gonna dress a certain way, talk a certain way, drink certain drinks. But if Justin and I invite you to go to a toga party with us, a whole other identity is gonna come out. This is what identities are all about. Then there's the obviously dominant identity, right? So we do have these dominant identities or dominant parts, you know, that might come out and be hanging around a lot. We oftentimes get triggered into certain identities. But the identity structure, to me, is what's driving the nervous system holding pattern. And the final thing I'll say here, because I know Justin probably has something to say on this, is that if we think of nervous system regulation as a dimmer switch on a light, right? Ultimately what we're doing is you don't want that light too bright, right? Like let's think about at night, we're sitting in your living room, you got this dimmer. You wouldn't want that light super bright burning your eyes, nor would you want it off because you'd be sitting in the dark, right? You want it regulated within a certain zone. Well, what happens when you've got certain traumas and dramas, and by the way, I say traumas and dramas because traumas are things that happen to you, dramas are your interpretations of what happened to you. Dramas are more important because Justin and I know lots of people who've been through Capital T traumas doing this work. Same traumas, same war, same rape, same sort of thing. Some of them are fine and some of them are not. And the difference is the drama, the story they're telling about it. So now you imagine these traumas and dramas creating the downstream trickle-down effect that goes into the psychology that then goes into the nervous system. Now, this nervous system gets stuck in either hyperfunctioning, bright light, or hypo functioning, dark light. And we see this in the research on ACEs and PTSD and all of this kind of stuff. So to me, nervous system regulation is not relaxing, nervous system regulation is teaching capacity, teaching people to go from that dark, low functioning to normal, teaching people at that high, bright functioning to come back to normal. And yes, we can use things like sleep and sauna therapies and you know, massage and meditation and all these things, but if we really want to change the set point, we got to go back to the dramas, the stories that are determining that set point. So I don't know if you want to just say something briefly on that, Justin.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

Well, I was thinking about the identities thing because um, you know, people really uh double down on their, well, I'm just um, you know, I'm a perfectionist, I'm a workaholic, and I'm a people pleaser, and they just you you can't change that, right? Like that's just who I am. So how do you what's your what's your stance on that? Because for me, I just go, yeah, you're right. We're not getting rid of those identities. It's more of like the Denver switch thing, like you said, about you can't be a 10 out of 10 in that identity all the time because you'll burn out and maybe get it down to like a five or six. Is that how you see it with people like that or any differently?

Rewriting Stories And Boundaries

SPEAKER_00 35:02

Yeah, I do see it like that. But I I love when I hear people use those I statements, and I teach my coaches that I certify to spot those. And so when we hear those I statements, we're like, oh, this is good because an I statement is a story, right? When someone goes, these are the ABCs of me, baby, that's a story. And so, and and that story has a set of patterns associated with it. And I teach my uh coaches to spot patterns, and then what happens is as you do the work, I'm not really worried about talking about that. I'm just looking for the I statements to change. And what you'll happen is I'm a people pleaser, right? You'll hear the language go, I used to be a people pleaser. Or, and and when you start to see that language change, you know now that you're making a clinical difference. And you know, you point it out as a coach, right? You go, you know, it's interesting. You used to talk about how you were a people pleaser, and you say, I am a people pleaser. I just heard you say, I used to be a people pleaser, or I remember when I would try to please people all the time. I don't do that anymore, right? And so from my perspective, that stuff changes all of the time. But to Justin's point, and this is a really important point, when we think about traumas and dramas, the idea of integration, you hear a lot about integration in this field of psychedelics and this kind of stuff. This field of it, this idea of integration is what Justin's talking about here. It's to take, I am a people pleaser and not be like, let me just cut that off and get rid of it, or I had this thing happen to me, let me just forget about it. No, integration means that thing that happened to you, that difficulty, that trauma and the drama, right? The trauma can't change, but the drama can. You change the story around it. What did I learn from it? How did it make me better? And then I use that to go forward in the world. So all of a sudden, a person who goes, I am a people pleaser, what we do is we go, that's a story. And what's really good about that story? Well, I'm compassionate. That's awesome. So you've learned compassion, right? Yeah, I have. Okay, but now we have to learn boundaries, right? And now you've got a because a people pleaser is someone who's maybe overly compassionate or overly needy, right? Overly needy of someone's compassion who doesn't have boundaries. So now we go, we reinforce the fact that, yeah, you've got compassion. You learn compassion. And you've also learned that compassion requires boundaries, right? And now all of a sudden, that's integration. It's not saying don't have compassion. This is what a lot of people do. We see this in in political discussions all the time, right? Are the differences of our compassion. It's not to be like, let me get rid of compassion so I'm no longer a people pleaser. It's that compassion is important, but now I've learned it requires boundaries. And now I've got a new story, a new belief structure, a new knowing, a new identity, a new psychology and personality, a new nervous system, a new hormone system, and a new immune system.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

Is there anything that in this example, is there anything that you think would be useful for people to um kind of be sold on the idea that they need to have boundaries, or is that something they they'll figure out through, you know, the rewriting and all that retraining work? Do you think it happens as a result of that, or do you or is it more intuitive, or is it easier to be like, yeah, obviously I need to have boundaries, but I just can't do it.

Rewrite, Rewire, Retrain Framework

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Yeah, no, you can't you can't tell some that this is this goes back to understanding, yeah, believing and knowing. You can't tell somebody you need to have boundaries. And I can explain it to you. You need to have boundaries, Justin. The boundaries work like this, do this and do that. That won't change until the underlying story of I need to be nice to people to feel worthy changes. Or if I'm nice to people, uh I'll be more safe. That has to change first. And so what Justin's referring to is this concept that Justin and I talk about of rewriting the underlying stories, rewiring the emotional holding patterns, and retraining the brain. And so what happens in nervous system regulation talk is everyone makes it about the brain. Well, the brain is the retrained part, it's only a third of the thing. You need the rewrite of the subconscious stories, which means you have to revisit them in the subconscious state, right? And then you need the emotions, which are not, people also get this wrong. They think emotions are nervous system things. To me, emotions are partly in the nervous system and partly in the story. I like to think of the subconscious stories as mud, and I like to think of the emotions as rebar, right? So we all know if you want to make a very strong building, you take the cemented mud, you mix it with the rebar, and the emotion of the story together form this solid structure of cement. Well, that's what we're doing when we're rewriting, we're rewriting the story. We're loosening the mud where the cement is being turned back into a more of a liquid. And then with the emotions, we're pulling the rebar out of the mud. So now this person isn't so cemented in an identity. And then the final work is the retrain. Yes, then they do have to know, but that's the easiest part, right? Like I can teach you and tell you all day, here's how to how to have boundaries. You could read that in a book. This is why books don't change people. You can understand boundaries in a book. But if your stories are counter to having boundaries, your subconscious stories, no amount of book on boundaries is going to change. This is the problem. This is the whole problem of the self-help and development industry. We just write books and say, well, if I give you the information, you should know better. And it's like, no, it doesn't work like that because yes, I can retrain, but I didn't rewrite and rewire.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Yeah, that's that's exactly the thing, right? It's easy to dysregulate your system and do the retraining part of it with like all the vegas nerve stuff, and that's fine, but it takes work to go inside and it's like a felt sense, right? It's a felt experience that people have to do over and over, right? To really um see that new story come out, right?

SPEAKER_00 41:09

Yeah, yeah. You know what it's like, Justin. I mean, like obviously you and I are fitness guys, been in, you know, I've been working out my whole life. You know, like right now, if I was like, you know, Justin, I want to lose some weight and get in shape and do a bodybuilding show or something like that, you and I both know that that that's going to be a process for me, cleaning up my diet, getting in the gym. I can't rush that. And there's gonna be a knowing that occurs through that process of what I'm capable of and what body parts are weak or not, et cetera. That process of three months to four months of going through that is going to adjust me internally. There's gonna be first an understanding I'm doing this, then a believing that I can do it, and then a knowing that I'm doing it. So this idea is that yes, people have got to do this work. It's like working out, but we the self-help and self-development world does not have many tools. We don't teach people how to go inward, right? We don't teach people how to get in these lucid dreaming states. We don't have a whole lot of tools here. And and I know that some of you listening are thinking, oh, well, what about EMDR and what about hypnosis and what about you know some of these other somatic memory reconsolidation techniques? Yes, all of those are great, but keep in mind they're just certain tools. So they they do like the rewire phase, some of them. Like EMDR can do some of the rewriting, some of the rewiring. It doesn't really do the retrain, right? The retrain, lots of people can tell you what to do, but they don't, they're not doing the rewrite and rewire. Oh, you go to you go to therapy. Okay, well, the therapy is not doing the rewrite, rewire, it's still doing retrain. So most of these things are doing the retrain, and then we have a few new tools that people are excited about that slightly touch on rewrite and rewire, but are not integrating the whole thing. And this is why people can do EMDR, and some people get amazing effects from it, and others don't. Um, partly because we're not aware of this three-step process.

Therapy, EMDR, And Practice Gaps

SPEAKER_01 43:09

I also think it's a rehearsal issue too, in a practice, because you know, I think with traditional therapy and EMDR sessions, if you if you do it like once every two weeks, once a you know, what happens in between? How are you practicing and rehearsing what you what you learned or whatever, right? And that's that I think it's a gap in this whole in the in the in the in the therapy world, don't you don't you think?

SPEAKER_00 43:35

Yeah, 100%. It's it's almost like coaches got retrained down pat, right? Uh and the therapists got a little bit of the rewrite and rewire, which coaches don't have, which is the whole reason I started my certification, honestly, because I saw this this thing. It's like therapists are not cut are trained in the retrain necessarily. They don't, you know, they're not really great at that. Um, they they spend a lot of time in logical coaching too, so they're doing some rewriting. Hopefully, it trickles in, but not really. They would be much better if they could get people into these subconscious states. And so we just have not put this together yet. And I would say that all the therapists that are doing EMDR, all the people like you and I, we're beginning the process. All of us together are beginning the process of figuring this out. Science is coming along. We got all these new studies on memory reconsolidation and different ways and how that works. We are now understanding how psychedelics rewire the default mode network, right? We so now we're we're we're putting it together, but we're just not there yet. And I have a lot of hope that perhaps we're finally gonna break through this information-based, retrain-only approach to personal transformation. And now we're gonna begin to move in a direction, which is obviously why, you know, um, I'm doing the work that I'm I'm doing. You know, it's powerful stuff. We're just not just not many people are putting it together in an integrated fashion, which also is why you and I are seeing therapists, like I have therapists joining to get certified in my uh human architect program. You also have therapists following your work and paying attention to what you're doing. You and I are not trained exactly like them, but they know that there's a weakness there. It's also why we're having coaches and clinicians coming from the other side going, look, I've been doing information based stuff my whole career, and very few people are getting results. Right. So now what we need is we need the the the coaches and clinicians to come in with the counselors and therapists, right? And then we need to add that final piece in of integrating it. And this is what you and I have always been more integrative physicians and clinicians. And we need more of those. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 45:45

Absolutely.

Integrating Coaches And Therapists

SPEAKER_00 45:46

Yeah. Cool. All right. Yeah. All right, brother. Well, thanks for jumping in and thank you for all of you for uh hanging out with us on the live. We do this every Sunday. Sometimes it's me and Justin, sometimes Danny, different, different of my brothers and colleagues come in. Uh, do me a favor though, Justin, stay on the line real quick, just as I shut down, just because I can make sure this uploads. Thanks everybody for hanging out. And if you want to us to answer any questions for you, uh just put them in the comments or wherever you are. Justin can be found. Um uh where tell them where to find you, Justin, on your sites.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

Uh, yeah, it's just my whole name. Justin Janaska, anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 46:27

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, at Justin Janowska. If you have trouble finding him, just go to my profile. I follow him on all the stuff, follow him on Substack. He does a lot on TikTok. I'm not on TikTok. Love his stuff there. Anyway, thanks so much, everybody, and we will talk to you next time.