63. Dr. Don Wood - Inspired Performance Institute

What's up, everybody? And welcome back to another episode of the Professional Athlete podcast. I have the pleasure this week of introducing you to Dr. Don Wood. Dr. Wood is the CEO of the Inspired Performance Institute. He's also the creator of the TIP method, the TIPP method, and that was created after Dr. Wood spending years researching how atmospheric conditions affect our minds and impact our lives. And what he does specifically is he helps individuals who are dealing with trauma kind of reboot their mind. It's really interesting. He's taking a neurological approach to helping people work through these past events that are causing stress, anxiety, depression, and even really interestingly, some of these autoimmune diseases can be attributed to this. So, you know, if you're someone who's suffering from any of these things, it's certainly going to be an interesting conversation. He also works with world class athletes and, and helps them take their game to the next level by dealing with what he's coined emotional concussions. And I think what you'll hear today is we don't do a great job of necessarily attributing events as traumatic and maybe appropriately giving them their due in terms of the impact it's having on our lives kind of in perpetuity. So, really fascinating conversation. It really made me take a step back and think and even had some really tough conversations with loved ones. But again, all in the name of progress. All in the name of living a. A happier, you know, more productive life, I guess. On that note, you may have noticed we took the month of June off. The show is certainly not going anywhere. Part of that break was planned, a little vacation, another part, I got sick. Then we had a personal tragedy, lost a really close friend, and then, God, we had another health scare. So June kind of knocked us sideways. And quite honestly, I just need to put my head down and get through it. But really excited about everything that we have on deck for the rest of the summer. And what you'll likely see over the next few months is we're going to.

Be growing the show.

So nothing but good news, looking forward, but I've done a lot of talking. So without further ado, let me step out of the way here and let's bring Dr. Don Wood to the show. Here we go.

I gotta get up. I got too much to do. Yeah, I gotta go get going.

I got to talk to you.

It's time to start the show.

Dr. Wood, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I enjoyed the. I'm enjoying going to enjoy this, the whole thing. So I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, I, I am as well. And we, we were catching up beforehand. You know, I, I have a high level understanding of what you and your team do. Um, but what I was telling you before we started is that this is a topic that really resonates for me personally. And I. And I've discussed it on some of the past shows and, you know, just. I don't, I don't even know how it comes up. I never intend to talk about it really. But this, this idea of dealing with trauma and anxiety and stress, and I think I fall in the camp of folks who did not recognize that some of the things I'd gone through in my life were traumatic.

Yep.

But I did recognize that, like, man, I am stressed. Like, you know, like, I'm trying to work my ass off, but I constantly am just like, you know, a little uptight. And so, you know, understanding, you know, what you focus on with the folks you work with. I can't wait to have this conversation.

Well, yeah, and that's why I love, you know, you talking about it from an athletic standpoint as well. You know, what I have always said is that when you have unresolved trauma, it affects performance. So that's why we call this a performance program, not trauma therapy. Because I start from the base that there's nothing wrong with anybody. Everybody's mind works perfectly fine. However, these events and experiences you've had in your life are having an effect on your ability to stay present and in the moment. And that's coming down to, you know, like, we talked a little bit about mental health. There's a stigma around mental health.

Oh, yeah.

You know, and what I talk about is, you know, I had one lady come in and she sat down and for the first 15 minutes starts giving. Giving me a lot of information about all these things that happened to her, all these traumatic events. And I said to her, I said, well, is there anything else? And she looks at me and she goes, well, that was a lot, don't you think? And I says, oh, yeah, it was a lot. I says, however, in the last 15 minutes, I heard a lot about what happened to you, but I haven't learned anything about you.

Because she was identifying with all of that. What I said, as all those things that they've given you in terms of your diagnosis, to me are just symptoms. That's not what's causing it. That's just what you have. So people talk about, oh, I have anxiety, I have anger issues, I have whatever it is. I'm just saying, well, that's Just describing what you're experiencing. So let's get to the root of it and let's fix it. Yeah. Well, typically what they want to do is talk about managing, living and coping with it.

Absolutely.

I think most people can probably relate to searching, like the five best ways to handle stress. There's like a Buzzfeed article written every other week about that.

Yeah.

So, you know, maybe. Maybe it even makes sense. Then. Can we start by how you define trauma?

Yeah. And I have two different kind of definitions of trauma. You've got the big T trauma, which is really obvious stuff. You know, sexual assaults, you know, you know, things like that that are violent. Those are obvious things that we'd call those traumas. Right. But I also coined, and I wrote my second book that I called Emotional Concussions. And emotional concussions are. As an athlete, this makes sense. Right.

Those are the bumps that you get.

You keep playing because you're fine. Right. But they accumulate. You get enough of these little emotional concussions, and that could be coming from a home where you've got a parent who's maybe suffering mental health, but you're getting bumped constantly. And so they're not maybe the big T traumas because.

They'Re trying to function, but at the same time they're building an accumulative effect on the way your mind is operating, and then it's going to show up somewhere in your life.

Yeah. And I think, well, let me ask you this. I mean, how common is it that folks you work with don't actually identify what they went through as trauma? Because I think to your point, my mind immediately is like, yeah, the obvious traumas.

Right.

The assaults, the abuse. That seems really clear cut. And I'm like, yeah, that must have been, you know, a traumatic experience. Some of these other things. What you're referring to is like an emotional concussion. I have to, again, in that camp of folks like, oh, I wouldn't have recognized that as like a traumatic experience.

Yeah. Because what happens is when you're growing up in it, it feels normal. You think everybody's living in this world. You know, I had the opposite. I lived in a home that was very loving and nurturing and caring. So I was. My NERV system was constantly regulated as a child, so I didn't have that kind of experience. But I thought everybody was living my life. I assumed all my friends had my parents because if I went to their house, I never saw the dysfunction. Everybody's on their best behavior. My friends aren't going to talk about those kinds of Things, because that was always that shame and guilt about talking about what's going on in your own family. When I met my wife, we were 18 when I met her. I discovered very quickly that she did not live in the house that I lived in because we got very close quickly. So I was around the family a lot and it didn't take long for me to go, something's wrong in this house. They're covering something up. I could feel it. And then they just couldn't hide it. And then it started showing up. But most people aren't going to see that unless you get inside deeper the way I did. Right. And so that's why it felt normal. And I thought that my wife's life was the anomaly. And I realized my life was the anomaly. Yeah. Not many people were living this very, very quiet, beautiful childhood. Most people were living in, you know, those kinds of traumatic households.

Yeah, well, and I think too, I think we were catching up about this before. You know, I have three young kids and one of the things that's always at the forefront of my mind is I want to create that safe environment. My wife is just as passionate about doing that as well. And I think one of the concerns is, man, I don't want any baggage that maybe I'm carrying around from some of my emotional concussions, self inflicted or otherwise. I don't want to project that on them. You want to create that nurturing environment. But like I said, it feels you start to realize how difficult that is to do if you're not addressing what's going on with yourself.

Exactly. And so with the best of intentions, we can create these things for our children. And so my wife and I are actually writing this will be on my third book. The book is really going to be talking about just that because even though I lived in this nurturing environment and my wife's a great mom, great wife, we didn't get it all right either. And then after we developed the program, I was like, boy, I wish I knew all this, because if I'd have known all this, we could have been even better because I think we're still good parents, you know, but you still create some of those things even in your own kids, you know. Now our kids again, you know, they believe that they lived in this great childhood, and I think they did overall. But just some of the things like when I look down and I really dissect it and go into even deeper, it's some of the little words you use, the actions you say, the things that you do that have an effect on them. Words are very powerful to a child because they don't have enough life experience to understand what you mean. Yeah. And a great example of this is my wife. Like, I learned so much from my wife because of this when she was six years old. Now she's living in this traumatic household with all kinds of dysfunction going on. And some of the mothers in the neighborhood have a tea party for the little girls. So my, my wife, you know, she's a six year old child, she's all excited. Her grandmother dresses her all up real pretty and she shows up there and all the mothers are sitting there. And one of the mothers, as she walks in, looks at my wife and says, oh, look at this one. She's gonna be a real heartbreaker when she grows up. And all the other mothers go, oh, yeah, that's a real heartbreaker there. Now they're trying to say something nice, right? My wife hurt. She's sobbing when she tells me this story. What my wife thought she heard was that they saw something bad in her. She was going to hurt people because she's living in that pain. So she's assuming that they see something in her, right. As bad. She said her stomach got sick, she wanted to go home because that's how big an impact it had. Now this is an adult woman telling me this story, crying because a child doesn't know what they meant by that. What she hears is, you're going to break hearts, you're going to hurt people. Because she's being hurt constantly. Right.

You know.

It'S funny. So my daughter's now in kindergarten and.

One of the things that we're kind of dealing with, this wasn't supposed to be like my, by the way, but this is so relevant. There's a couple instances of kids in her class or on her bus or having like real behavioral issues. And it's kind of gotten to the point where it's like, okay, we need to, we need to like let someone know because it, you know, it's starting to seem like there's something bigger going on.

And you know, just hearing that story, it just kind of makes me take another second to think like, you know, there's, there's something going on there that is causing this action that's showing up at school.

Yep, yep, absolutely. And it comes up a lot of times. And those are those emotional concussions that I'm talking about. Yeah. And even though my wife was experiencing trauma, she was also getting these kinds of emotional concussions. And there's no way any of those women were intentionally trying to hurt her. But they don't understand that a child may not understand that. So, you know, I had one lady who said to me, same kind of thing, I never had any trauma in my life. I lived this beautiful childhood, you know, very loving. And I said, well, can you think of any kind of an event that was disturbing or, you know, or that when you think about, brings about an emotion? Yeah. And so she, she thought about it. She says, yeah, she's, I remember, and about same age, she's about 6 years old. And as she starts to describe what's going on, I see her eyes filling up, right. And then before you know it, she's sobbing as she's telling me that she was in church and, you know, she's a six year old child and she started talking and her grandmother took the hairbrush and hit her on the head with it and said, stop talking, you're in church. And then the waterwork started and she said to me, she says, I just realized I lost my voice that day. I never speak up for myself. She says that was the connection. So those kinds of events. Now you're thinking, is the grandmother trying to hurt her? No. Right. It was probably, you know, that's what you do, just, hey, stop, knock it off. Right. But to her, as a six year old, what she heard was, they don't want to hear me. Hmm. Now, without a lot of life experience, you could see how a child could interpret that kind of an event that way. And she said, as an adult now, she goes, it makes so much sense. I never knew why I never stood up for myself. I'd always let people push me around. Huh.

Yeah. It's funny, I have to remind myself that too, you know, when you're dealing with these little people, I mean, our three year old, he's sweetest little boy walking the planet. But he's naughty. Yeah, he's just, he's wild and he's naughty and he's still cute while he's doing it. But sometimes you have to reprimand him and then you're like, ah, you know what? Like, I don't know if we've ever addressed that. He can't do that before. Like, we know that he's not supposed to do that, but like in his, you know, the year and a half that he's been formulating memories, like, I don't know if we ever addressed that with him. And so, yeah, it's interesting to think about it from that perspective.

So, yeah, just all those little kinds of things that sort of mount up. So you really have to give a lot of thought to how you're handling things and how you're saying things and the words you're choosing because they really do have an impact. And this isn't meant to say that, you know, children are like china dolls. You can't do anything. But if you realize that maybe you didn't handle it the best way, address it right away. Okay. And there's nothing wrong with going up and saying, you know, daddy probably didn't say that the right way. Let me explain what I meant. Right. And then, you know, as opposed to, well, you know, I'm just going to let it go. Right. It doesn't hurt to even say, you know, you know, daddy didn't probably handle that really well. Right. Can I talk to you about what I really wanted you to hear? Right. Those are the kinds of things are very powerful because they'll remember that. Trust me, they'll remember that.

Yeah. And I think every parent is concerned, like, oh, I just hope I don't screw these kids up. I hope I haven't done too much damage already, that they can't be a functioning person in society. So. So is that, is that really it? Because we're all going to make mistakes.

Sure. Right.

Well, intentioned or not, is it really just about addressing the mistake?

Yeah. And then also, you know, trying to choose your words really carefully. And that's what I really learned with my wife is she really taught me the program because.

Because she had experienced so much trauma. What I would do is if I said something like, no, I don't like that, she could tear up and then almost start to cry and say, why are you getting upset with me? And I'd say, honey, I'm not upset at all. What makes you think I'm upset? And she'd say, well, you sound like you're getting upset. And I said, no, I wasn't getting upset at all. She goes, yes, you were. And I go, well, now I'm getting upset because you're telling me I was getting upset and I couldn't hear it. What I didn't understand at the time is that as a child she had learned to listen very, very carefully to the way her father spoke so that she could recognize when the danger was coming, when he was starting to get aggravated or frustrated. So when I said, no, I don't like that, you could have paid me and given me two recordings of me totally unfrustrated and that voice I would never have been able to hear. The difference. So maybe I had something a little frustrating from work that day or on the drive home. So there's that little bit of tension in my voice when I say it. She could hear it like I yelled at her. And because she. What way I found is that people who have been traumatized, particularly as children, are highly sensitive to sound. So what she would hear was, no, I don't like that. And I didn't say it that way, but that's how she heard it. So she wasn't wrong and I wasn't wrong. But we couldn't understand, right? She couldn't understand why I said it that way. I couldn't understand how she could hear it that way, but we were both right.

So, you know, maybe it's even worth diving back into the concept of emotional concussions. Can you explain that a little bit further? And one of the reasons that I really want to dive into that is, I think, like I said at the beginning, the obvious trauma is so clear cut, right? You know, very easy to identify. But I think, you know, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but the amount of the percentage of the population is stressed or has anxiety, I mean, you know, in your estimation, I mean, what. What percentage of the population is walking around with issues around those, you know, those. I don't know.

Almost. All right. To some degree. Also, the big thing that I talk about, and this is, to me, the true pandemic in this country is sexual abuse. I would say a minimum, and I think I'm being even conservative at this number, that 80% of the people that I know have had sexual abuse as children.

Frightening. All you do is just watch all the, you know, it happened to my daughter, and we were like hawks when she was six years old. And it happened because a girl, an older girl, is like a big sister, right? So we were thinking, okay, we don't have to watch. You know, my wife was very hawkish about everything, and yet we found out when my daughter was 16, she disclosed to us that she had been assaulted by this girl when she was 6. That we had no idea. And then my daughter develops Crohn's. And I believe that it was caused by this trauma as a child.

Because it affected her nervous system. And so, so many of the people, so many people who come in who have autoimmune issues have had trauma as. As children. And in particular, sexual trauma is very, very common.

Really?

Yeah, it's frightening.

Can.

Can maybe. Can you dive a little bit deeper? What. What is the link between trauma and, and what's happening with the central nervous system.

So if the nervous system is constantly dysregulated, and this is really how the program really developed. Because what I discovered is that if you have this unresolved trauma, what I mean by unresolved is the mind, your subconscious mind is operating about 95% of everything for you. It's controlling everything physiologically, you know, it's our survival brain. So it's taking care of, you know, your digestion, heart rate, all that kind of stuff below your conscious awareness. So humans have two very unique features that no other animal has. And this is what's causing what I call these glitches and error messages. 95% of our mind works just like the animal mind. Fully present in the moment. Right? Subconscious. Yeah. We have conscious awareness, which is our 5% intellectual part of our brain, which we can use reason and logic and figure stuff out. If an animal doesn't know how to do something, they can't figure out how to do it. They just can do it or they can't. You can show an animal how to do things and they can learn it through association and repetition, just like we learned sports. But they're not going to figure out how to do something on their own. So that part of our brain has created the world we live in. Automobiles, airplanes, computers. Right. It's brilliant, but it's only in charge of the reasonable, logical part of our day to day lives. The second feature we have is the ability to store billions of bits of information. So everything you've ever seen, heard, touched or smelt in your lifetime has been stored and recorded in memory. And so that's unique. Animals learn through association and repetition, but they don't store the details about events. So that's why you can feed your dog the same thing every day, because they don't remember eating that yesterday.

I worry about that.

It's a new meal. Right. So this is exciting because I'm being fed. Feel better already. Right. And so what they've done is they've learned to associate you with food and survival. Right. But they haven't stored the information about it. They just know what they know, but they don't know why they know it.

It's like the, the Pavlovian response.

Exactly, yeah. Now we also have that memory. That's how we learn how to play sports. You're an athlete, that's how you learn how to play football. Right. You repeated something over and over. You drilled those, you know, practices into your brain and then it became a code so you just knew how to do it. That part of our memory is the same as the animal memory, but we also store explicit details about those events. And when we have a traumatic event, all our senses are heightened. Sight, smell, hearing. So how's it going to record it? High definition, very bright and very intense. So here's where the glitch comes in. If your survival brain is fully present in the moment and something reminds it about an event that happened 10 years ago, and your mind starts looking at the information from memory about something that happened 10 years ago, when does it actually think that memory is happening? Right now. So it creates a physiological response to get you to do something about something that's not happening.

Then that makes sense.

That does. And, you know, I'm just reflecting now, you know, some, what I would consider to be some traumatic memories, like, are very vivid. And, you know, there's. I mean, I don't know, entire years of college that I don't remember. But like these, some of these things from my childhood, I mean, crystal clear, but I've never thought about it in that way.

And so that's what that. That's what we fix. So if I asked you what you ate for dinner last night, can you tell me what you ate for dinner?

Yeah.

What'd you have?

I had some.

I had chipotle. I had a burrito bowl.

So when I asked you that, you saw pictures, right? Of what you ate? Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe where you were, the store, Chipotle, the restaurant. Right?

Absolutely.

Yep. That's how you stored the information. When I asked you that, you looked to your left. That's how you access memory. So when you looked to your left, you saw the pictures. Right. That's how you stored the information about dinner last night? Right. No other animal can do that. Only humans. And so because last night wasn't threatening or disturbing, it's stored as a fairly routine file. Not a lot of data, just enough data to record it. However, if that was a traumatic event, it stores a lot of detail, tremendous amounts of detail in a very high beta brainwave state. So what happens is that when your mind accesses that information in that very intense state, sees a lot of information and data, it's responding to it in real time. So when I used to say to my wife, no, I don't like that, I used to think that she was responding to what I said. In actual fact, what she was responding to, and she didn't know it, and I didn't either. Is that what her mind would do, is say what do we know, as I was saying that, what do we know about men who start to get upset? And a flood of data about her father would come in. That's where the tears were coming from. I thought it was what I said. And so I'm beating myself up saying, how can I make this woman I love cry so easily? Right, Right. Because I've never done anything to want to hurt her. Right. But in her mind, she's feeling the fear, but not because of me, but because of the old data flooding in. Yeah.

And something you said is. Is so interesting. It's. It's like when you re. Experience that memory.

Your body doesn't, I guess, and stop me if I'm getting any of this incorrect. It doesn't differentiate that it's actually happening in the present or that it happened in the past. It's just kind of reliving that emotional.

Experience it only sees in real time. So Hollywood has made trillions of dollars from this because we can go to a movie and cry, and we can go to a movie and get scared. Because your mind has no idea that what's on that screen isn't real. It looks real. And so, you know, your subconscious part of your mind, Right. And your conscious part of your mind, consciously, you're saying, oh, that's Leonardo DiCaprio playing in a movie called the Titanic. And your subconscious mind says, this guy Jack is drowning in the ocean and no one's going to save him. Right, Right. That's how that.

In high definition.

High definition. So then it's getting into all of that. Right. In real time, thinking something's happening. Memory is exactly the same. So your mind, anytime you feel an emotion, your mind is calling for an action. The only purpose to an emotion, the purpose of fear, is to escape a threat. The purpose of anger is to attack and extinguish a threat. So if you're dealing with fear or anger issues, your mind is calling for you to do something about something that doesn't exist anymore. So you can imagine if that's continually going on. So for my daughter, her mind was constantly trying to protect her from those events. With this girl, she couldn't do anything about it. So that stress showed up as Crohn's for her. So that's where all the stress went for her and her intestinal area. Right. And then the cells become inflamed because it's a cell danger response. And that cell danger response is a protection system to protect you until the danger passes. So the cells become inflamed and the purpose of that is to protect anything from penetrating the cell. So nothing's getting in and nothing's getting out. But when the danger is over, right, it's going to go back. Right. And then the inflammation will come down, the immune system will come in and clean up and everything goes back to normal. Why didn't it clear up for my daughter? Because the trauma never stopped. The danger didn't stop. It kept looping. And that's what people have been dealing with. And all we're doing is teaching them to live and manage and cope with it. And what I said is, let's fix it. Yeah.

So I mean, you know, of course, my next question then is like, how do people even begin to try and resolve some of these deep seated traumatic issues?

It's really quite amazing. The mind and body are designed to heal. You've been an athlete, I've been an athlete all my life. Right. Our bodies heal. We just need to make sure that we give it the proper tools to heal. So what I do in our program is basically take you through a four hour process to get your mind to take that high definition data that's being stored, activating your nervous system. And I get it to reprocess two or three events into the same format as to what you ate for dinner last night. And so then it stops calling for the action on those three events. And then as your mind gets his process down, it then continues the process throughout all those events and it clears up pretty much everything.

So, so what's actually happening when, when you're going through that, that exercise, is it, you are kind of, I don't know, I want to say, like taking the sting out of some of that event emotionally. And you're, you're making, what's happening there.

What we're doing is getting the mind, it's basically going, we're doing the opposite of the wizard of Oz, taking it from black and white to color. We're going from color to black and white. Your mind will not create an emotion unless it feels a threat.

Okay.

So when it now sees less intensity. So for example, I worked with Rebecca Gregory from the Boston Marathon, right? She was three feet from the first bomb that went off. She lost her left leg. Her son was sitting at her feet. She was just a spectator. So when she came to see me, she was suffering from post traumatic stress for five years. And so when we first sat down and she started to talk, she started to tear up and cry and shake. And I said to her, I says, rebecca, do you know why you're shaking and crying right now? And she says, well, because I'm talking about what happened to me. And I says, right, but your mind thinks there's a bomb about to go off, because as you're telling me, your mind is looking at the information to describe it. So as you're describing it, your mind is viewing the data and when does it think the bomb's going off? Right now there's. With the emotion. So by the time we were finished, she could completely describe that event without shaking and crying.

How long does it take for someone to be able to kind of, I don't know, rewire, reprogram these traumatic experiences?

It's amazing how fast it does it. So like I said, it's a total of a four hour program, but we only spend maybe 20 to 30 minutes on the actual traumas. The first part of it is to give you the education and science about what I learned. Because once you understand that this is not the problem that you thought that you have to live with it for the rest of your life. You know, I've had all this trauma, I just have to learn how to manage it. I give you what I describe as the science behind what I learned. It's a glitch, it's an error message. All we need is to get it recoded, re updated, right? And then it stops calling for the action. So I've worked with the Vegas shooting victims, Boston Marathon veterans, you know, some of the, you know, most traumatic things you could imagine, Right. And they're all dealing with the same thing. We all are. And because I didn't have that kind of trauma and my nervous system was regulated very quickly and easily as a child, I was able to handle things a lot easier, you know, but I got little bumps along the way. Nothing like my wife had experienced. And so once we get that updated and just like you talked about, you know, what Rebecca went through was the obvious trauma. But what she also discovered, and you'll see in her testimonial, she talked about it, she says, I didn't realize that all the other things that had happened earlier in my life were also affecting that one. Yeah, it was an accumulative kind of an effect, so it made it even more intense. So we cleared just not only the Boston Marathon event, we cleared a couple of other events earlier in her life. And then it just does a complete. So she went, she came to see me five years after the Boston Marathon. She went back on the sixth anniversary and said, I'm going to stand right Where I was when the bomb went off at the exact same time the bells go off at that time. She sent me a picture from there saying this wouldn't be possible to stand here without going through the program. No emotion anymore, just absolute joy. Wow, that's incredible that she was okay.

So here's something we, we talked about a little bit in the beginning too is, you know, a lot of high achievers are also dealing with trauma, stress, anxiety. But from the outside looking in, right, looks like everything's great. Looks like they're actually excelling in ways other people aren't.

So, so why is it such, you know, why is it so detrimental to be carrying around unresolved trauma? Like, why is it so critical to like make sure that your nervous system is having a chance to reboot? You're not living in this constant fight.

Or flight because it's draining focus and energy.

So.

And this is why I love working with athletes, because we see a change in the athlete. Everybody has another gear. So what's interfering with you getting to that next gear? And so I worked with, I speak at the Spartan leadership conferences, you know, Spartan races.

Yeah, yeah.

So I was asked to come and speak at the world championships in Lake Tahoe in 2019. And so they asked if I would work with a guy called Rob Killian, who's a special forces green beret, great athlete. And they said, you know, there's three guys favored to win it. We want to see after going through your program how good he can compete against them, how close he can get to their times. And so I worked with Rob on Friday. I took him through the program and he talked very openly about one of his traumas was he was running in one of the races. He picked up one of those big sand 50 pound sandbags that they carry over their shoulder. He didn't know that there was a hole in it. So as he ran, the sand was coming out. Well, one of the other competitors went online and called him a cheater, that he deliberately picked up one with a hole or he cut a hole in it or whatever. Now these guys, integrity is everything to these special forces guys.

Oh yeah.

So that was one of the things that would really bother him. He got very emotional even talking about it. So I said, if you feel an emotion when you talk about an event, it's still active. It's in an active state of trying to fix it and do something that's going to drain energy, it's going to drain your ability. The actual ATP in the cell gets affected. So after he goes. So I take him through the program on Friday. He runs in the World Championships on Sunday and is now the world champion. He beat the other three guys. The next closest guy was a minute behind him, which at that, in those races, is big. Yeah. And so why I didn't make Rob a better athlete? He was already a great athlete. He just had another gear, and that trauma was interfering with him reaching that next gear, that little extra, little extra power. Marco Cicero, he's a double amputee marathon runner. He lost both his legs, and so he started running on with blades.

So when he came to see me, basically they said that they really thought he had a chance at being an Olympic athlete, but he just plateaued. He didn't seem to be getting any better no matter what they did, training wise. So I took him through the program, and then nine days later, he ran in his first race and took 15 seconds per mile off his time, and he didn't do anything different. And so then the next race he ran in, which was the 2019 Boston Marathon, he broke the world record for amputees. He's now the world record holder. And then a couple months later, broke his own world record in the Chicago Marathon by another five minutes and got signed by Nike.

Oh, that's amazing.

Yeah. And so, again, I didn't make Marco a better athlete. He already had it within him. It's just that ability to stay present and stay focused. He described it very well. The way he described it is he said, when I used to run, he Knew at mile 20 was sort of his peak, is when his performance would start to drop.

Yeah.

So when he would run, he'd be thinking, okay, I've got 10 miles to go. I got five miles to go. He says now what he found himself doing is he says, I'm at the 10 mile marker. I'm at the 15 mile marker. He stopped thinking about what was happening and stayed in the present. And that allowed his focus and his energy to stay, because that was draining energy. If he's thinking about the 20 mile marker that's pulling from his power. Yeah.

You know, one of the things that has kind of come from doing this podcast and, you know, we're 60.

I don't know.

Some odd episodes in. Is realizing just through different conversations and oftentimes in a lot of different topics, that that stress is cumulative, and it's interpreted the same within the body, whether you're weightlifting or whether you're angry about something at work or, you know, dealing with carrying around some sort of traumatic experience. And yeah, it's just. It makes a lot of sense because it's like, if you're feeling that way and you're carrying that around like it is draining emotionally, physically. I mean, what are some of the other, like, physical ramifications of stress that maybe the average person isn't properly attributing to the stress that they're carrying around?

It's gonna show up in health issues. So it's gonna show up. Specifically, autoimmune is very, very common. So people end up with ibs, Crohn's, like my daughter Crohn's colitis, things like that. My wife ended up with Hashimoto's, which is a thyroid issue. Autoimmune, where her thyroid was burning out because she was constantly producing cortisol. So it's gonna show up somewhere. People will put on belly fat. People won't be able to lose weight, you know, because they'll become insulin resistant. It'll. It'll always show up somewhere in the body and just depends. It can also affect the neurotransmitters. So people then will have an issue with, you know, serotonin is produced basically in the gut area, most of that serotonin. So if your gut is out of balance, the gut's the second brain, the vagus nerve travels. 80% of the messaging on the vagus nerve comes from the. The gut. And so if it's stressed, it's going to be sending stress messages, and then you're going to go into a sympathetic nervous response. When your vagus nerve is basically designed to keep you in a parasympathetic system. So it's the rest and digest kind of response.

Yeah. And for people listening, would you mind just clarifying the role of the two states in the nervous system so that people can kind of understand, like, why that is so critical that you don't want to live in the sympathetic all the time.

Yeah. So your sympathetic system is basically your fight or flight response. Now, it's an emergency management system. This is the way I describe it. It's designed to turn on when there's a threat and turn off when there's no threat. So when I talked to Marco, this is one of the things. It's just sort of a funny story. When I said to Marco, I said, a zebra cannot feel fear of a lion unless there's a lion present. And so I said, the zebra is living in the moment. If a lion shows up, the zebra's autonomic nervous system will engage to protect the zebra. Its sympathetic nervous System will respond to get it to run. It's not going to fight a lion, but it would at least the amygdala will go off. Right. That fight or flight. So the system now goes into an active hyper state to get more power to the muscle groups to run. That's the system. But when the lion is not there, that system is not on. The problem that we have for humans is we store information about lions, and so we have all this information so it's constantly being activated. Your sympathetic nervous system is like putting the foot on the gas all the way to the floor and using the brakes to keep you only going. 30. Yeah. You're going to burn out the transmission, the engine, the brakes, everything's going to start breaking down because it's not designed for that. Right. And so your parasympathetic nervous system is what keeps us calm. And so that purpose of that is that's that rest digest system. So if you're feeling calm and there's no threats going on, your sympathetic nervous system is deactivated. Your parasympathetic turns on. And that's basically just keeping everything calm. We start doing all the maintenance issues, digesting. Right. All those things that we need to survive. Yeah. But when you go into sympathetic, there's the maintenance stops. You're doing very little maintenance when you're being chased by a lion.

Right.

And so if. And that's why I always said I've been healthy all my life. And I believe the reason was because I got a lot of maintenance done. I played hockey. I had a chance to play professional hockey when I was 18.

Oh, amazing.

I didn't know that. Yeah. So I lived in Canada, and that's why my wife and I got married at 19. And so I play. I had six concussions, 60 stitches in my head, and I never missed a hockey game. Now, today, they probably wouldn't have let me play.

Right, right.

But back then it was like, you know, they'd hold up five fingers. Say how many fingers? And I'd say three. And they'd go, that's close. So keep playing, you're fine. But at the time, what happened was, is because I was getting so much maintenance, because I get into a very nice, deep, restful sleep. My bot. If I'm getting two or three times the restful sleep that my teammates are because they're having trauma at home or things going on in their house, they would take two or three weeks to heal from an injury. I'd heal from an injury in two or three days. And so of course I wasn't missing games, I was healing fast. And I've always been like that. I've lived in Florida now for 30 years. Never been to the doctor, never been to the hospital. Hmm. And so why? Because my nervous system is regulated and so I can get maintenance done on a fairly continual basis. If you're constantly into a stress mode, you've got less energy available for that maintenance.

Yeah. Oh man, that makes so much sense. Well, and you know, and I'm thinking too, I mean, there's a lot of reasons, you know, people's best, best attempts at, you know, improving their well being don't always work out. But it's like, let's say you do make positive changes to your diet. But if you're living in this sympathetic state where, you know, you're not tapping into the maintenance mode the way you normally would, right. You're probably not, you know, absorbing the nutrients.

You would, because you're not in parasympathetic. Parasympathetic is the rest digest stage where you're absorbing the nutrients. The nutrients are getting into the bloodstream, it's going into the cells. All that kind of stuff is happening because it's designed to do that. But if you're being chased by a lion constantly, which is what was happening to my wife then she's not getting the maintenance done. She's constantly producing cortisol. Right. And so that's gonna. And so as you get older, if you're in that constant state and you're producing cortisol, you can't lose weight, you're putting on fat and you just can't understand it. But I'm dieting, you know, I'm down to 1500 calories, a thousand calories a day. How come I'm not losing weight? Right? Because you're not getting maintenance. And then you're having all kinds of insulin issues, right? So the body goes into a freeze mode. It's crazy what happens.

You know, the thing that's scary too is it's almost like there's so many people living in this state, it's you kind of just like. I guess that's just the way it is to be like a working adult. I'm tired, I'm stressed, I'm not sleeping, so I'm over caffeinated. And I guess that's just how it goes.

Yep.

Right.

And we have day to day stress, so that's something we can avoid. Right. You've got jobs, we've got kids, we got all kinds of stuff going on that we can somewhat deal with as long as the system's operating pretty efficiently. Where the problem comes in, where it gets exasperated, is if you have a whole bunch of unresolved stuff that is also piling on, exasperating the current stress. So then it's like you're really revving up the engine and that's where the problem comes in. Because like I said, I've gotten bumped along the way. I'd been an entrepreneur, did all kinds of things, but at the same time I could then cut back into my rest digest parasympathetic system very quickly and easily. And so the times that it would turn on, I could turn it off automatically. But if I couldn't have turned it off, because as soon as I get out of the stressful current situation, my mind is still being activated by the old stress that's keeping it in that active state. Yeah, that's going to break down the system.

Yeah, that makes sense. So, you know, understanding, like you were saying, a lot of times we're just treating the symptoms. Right.

How does your approach differ from, you know, other, other forms of therapy that people might be more familiar with?

Well, current traditional therapy, excellent at dealing with the day to day stresses. You know, you've got a relationship issue, you got a problem at work, you know, with a boss or staff or whatever it is, it's really good to have somebody to talk that over, come up with some coping. Because that's stuff you can cope with, right. Or learn different strategies. So that's what therapy is really good at. What it's not good at is dealing with the trauma and old stuff because if anything it makes it worse because you're constantly talking about it, which is constantly activating your system. So you come in to talk about, you know, when I was a child, this happened and that happened and they keep like, I worked with a U.S. army sniper who had to shoot and kill a 12 year old boy. He'd been at the VA for eight years. And he said to me when I came to see him, he said, I can't talk about this anymore. He says, I got arrested at the VA last week because I started throwing tables and chairs. They keep asking me to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it anymore. So every time he talks about it, what's he doing? He's living it. So he's now putting his body into a sympathetic response over and over and over. And they're just trying to say, okay, well let's breathe now, let's meditate now let's do that kind of stuff. And that's going to. Or we're going to medicate him. He was just on all kinds of medications. Yeah, but that wasn't the answer. The answer was to get it so that it stopped looping. And so it's just information.

So that's always been my question is, you know, okay, I talk about it, right? Did it, did I process it? Is that all I needed to do to. And that, that's always, I think, kind of been the gap for me, just thinking through, like, hey, look, I'm, you know, I'm a pretty self aware person and I'm motivated to improve. And I mean, I run it, for God's sakes. I run a podcast about self improvement and performance, you know, but it's like, let's say I do encounter something traumatic. I've always kind of been like, all right, when I deal with these difficult emotions, what is it that I'm supposed to be doing? Right? Because just reflecting on and talking about, I'm like, I don't think that's getting it done. And I feel like this is bridging the gap a little bit.

Yeah, this is definitely what you needed to hear. Because, for example, the US army sniper, whenever, when he started to talk about it, he was just sobbing. And I said, the reason you're feeling that emotion right now is because you're reliving it. So if you think about some, this is the best way for your audience to hear this. If you think about something that happened to you five years ago, one year ago, 20 years ago, and you feel an emotion, either anger, fear, you start to cry, it's active, your mind wants a resolution, it wants to fix it. Because when does your mind want to stop pain? Now. Because it's in pain now and it only understands now. Why did people jump out of the buildings at 9 11? Not to die. They didn't try to die, but they would die right now if they didn't jump. The fire was going to consume them.

To move away from the.

So when there was an exit to get away from that pain of being consumed by the fire, they took it. Now, the logical part of your brain would say, this doesn't make any sense. We're jumping out of a building, right? We're going to die. But your brain, your subconscious brain, is survival based in the moment, so what does it think about? Consequences? No, there's no such thing as a consequence to your survival. Brain. Yeah, it's just stopping pain now, right? Yeah. And it's amazing what the brain will do to avoid pain. And that's why when I say that, people say to me, oh, I sabotage myself. What I say is, that's impossible. The brain cannot sabotage itself. It's survival based. So they'll say, well, how do you explain then, you know, I've got all this great stuff going for me and then I go and I do something stupid and I go over in this direction and then my whole life starts to fall apart. I say, because your mind thought there was pain coming and it's going to try to stop the pain at any cost. So if it takes you in another direction, it's not trying to create a problem for you, it's trying to solve a problem that it thinks you're running into pain. So as an example, somebody had a very successful father, but the father was very abusive, alcoholic. But he, you know, by every means, everybody thinks this guy's done really great, but you know, he hasn't. And so now all of a sudden you're following those same paths. It looks like you're going to be very successful or your mind's going to say, well, what does that mean? That means we're going to end up in a lot of pain.

Yeah.

And it will try to then avoid the pain.

Oh, interesting. So I got a couple questions. Are you doing okay on time?

Yeah, no problem, no problem.

One of the things I'd be interested to hear a little bit about too is folks that you work with and they go through this process and they address it, and I hope I'm not using the wrong term, but they kind of rewire it or I guess they, they. What would be the right word?

Yeah, reprocess it.

Reprocess.

Okay. Update it, reboot it, refresh it.

Yeah. And I know that you said at the beginning, like, hey, the human body is designed to heal. I mean, what, what does recovery look like for these people? I mean, is it, is it really dramatic in terms of emotional and physical well being? Does it take time?

I mean, no, in that, in that four hours we can address, you know, we generally look at two or three events. We don't have to do every event.

Yeah.

So because once your mind gets that process, like if you came in with a broken leg and we reset it, we don't have to think about, I hope it heals right. It's going to heal. It's the same thing as once we take you through a couple of processes. When you go to sleep at night, you go into a theta brainwave state and Theta is where we dream, and when we're dreaming, our mind is processing. So whatever we went through that day to process those three events, your mind continues. Because people who've had a lot of trauma don't sleep very well because their mind's still trying to process trauma from years ago. Once it gets into that theta state processing, and it just got this technique, it then starts addressing these other events.

And I imagine when they were in that sympathetic state.

Right.

Then they also weren't getting into deep sleep just because they're living in this heightened.

Yeah. The brain doesn't want to go to sleep because there's lions everywhere. Right. And the lions aren't real. They're just lions from 20 years ago.

I mean, one of the strangest things that started happening and why I was like, okay, I need to be more open about some of the stuff I was experiencing. And for people who maybe haven't listened, like, my. My father had mental illness. Right. He. He was bipolar, and he was more on the manic scale. And he's the most amazing person I've ever met. I love, love him dearly. But it was very painful to watch someone that you love go through that, especially at a young age.

And I. Like I was telling you before, I don't think I appreciated how much it impacted me until I had other people that I had to take care of.

Yes.

Because I could operate at a very high level, Keeping a lot of that just, I don't know. Pushed down is kind of how I'd often describe it. But once other people depended on me, it was like, whoa, the cracks are kind of starting to show here. And, I mean, I. I would have this crazy experience that I felt like I didn't have when I was younger. Like, I would wake up stressed.

Yep. Yep. And.

And I would just be like, whoa, like, what is going on here? Like, this, like I said, is not sustainable. And I don't want to wake up feeling that way. So it's like, man, what. What have I not dealt with? You know, what's kind of lurking below that that needs to be addressed?

And that when you're going to sleep at night, your mind wants to process what it learned during the day. Plus, it also wants to process anything that's still outstanding. So if all of those events are still running in real time, it's trying to close all those programs out. Yeah. And it can't close them out because they're not happening. So it continues to do it. So when people come to me and they'll say, I Have depression. One of the questions I ask them is, what do you think you may be angry about? And the usual answer is, well, I'm not angry, I'm depressed. Now say depression is anger. Your mind has been trying to get you angry, to make something change. Because the purpose of anger is to stop something, right? To extinguish it. So if your mind is continually been trying to get you to do something about dad or the bully or whatever it is, and it's been asking over and over for the action, the action's not possible, but your mind keeps calling for it. So what ends up happening is in order to stop the pain, your mind shuts down. Depression is the absence of emotions. So it stops calling for the anger and shuts down.

Interesting.

And then until you resolve that anger issue. So it could be angry that, why didn't I do? Why didn't I do something? Why should. Why didn't I stop them? Why did I just let it happen? A lot of times, people, so you've got your fight, flight, or freeze responses, right? And freeze is basically where the body sort of shuts down. The mind shuts down to get just through it. I believe we're coming up to a tsunami of mental health issues with COVID I think most people are in freeze mode right now. They're just like, just get through it. Don't think about it. You know, put the mask on, don't rock the boat. Just get through this and eventually everything will go back to normal. There's going to be a lot of issues coming when people then start to come out of that and realize, wow, the world has changed. I lost income, I lost this, I lost relationships, I lost time. You're going to see a lot of issues coming from it because freeze mode is just a protection mode.

And people don't understand freeze. I don't know if you remember, it was a few years ago, I think a lady was on a plane and she was sleeping, and then she woke up to find the guy had. Was sexually assaulting her and she did nothing. And then afterwards, then she said, this happened to me on the plane, right? And then people were coming out saying, well, why wouldn't you just yell or scream? You know, the plane's full of passengers, she froze, she couldn't move. And the way her mind was trying to protect her was to say, just get through it, right? It'll be over soon, and then we survive. So if she was a child and something had happened to her, she can't stand up to the person hurting her as when she was a child. So sometimes what children do is go into freeze. Yeah, just get through it.

Ah, man.

How.

How do you get through the day dealing with all this?

I'll tell you what, if that's what you say, you know, a lot of people say therapists, you know, have all kinds of, you know, trauma because they're dealing with all this trauma. The great part about this is I don't deal much with trauma. I fix it. So the great part about it is it's very rewarding. I'm not having to sit and listen and teach you how to manage it and cope with it and then take it home with me saying, gosh, you know, I feel really bad. Poor Ken, you know, dealing with this every day. And I can't imagine, you know, how tough that life. That would be. Awful.

Right.

But when people come to see me and you can see people like, you know, Rebecca, her life change because she's not dealing with post traumatic stress. You know, the veteran who, as we take him through the program now, he can talk about what happened to him. We're not going to get him happy about shooting a 12 year old boy. What we're trying to do is stop the dysregulation. So after we finished, he could describe everything that happened that day. And he said to me, he goes, how the bleep did you do this? He says, why am I not shaking and crying right now? And I says, for eight years your mind's been trying to get you not to pull the trigger.

It just got the good news that you're not shooting a 12 year old boy right now. It's information. We're not happy about it, you know, makes sense to not feel happiness. But the dysregulation of your nervous system stopped.

Man, I can almost like put myself just hearing that story. Just. Yeah, don't pull the trigger.

Oh, yep. And so many people are dealing with that. It's happening all over, so. And again, same thing was happening with my wife. She could hear danger everywhere. We'd come out of a store and she'd say, can you believe how rude that that clerk was? And I'd go, she was, she'd go, yeah. Didn't you hear the way she answered that question when I asked her that? And she could hear those slight little inflection changes. Right. I couldn't hear it. I was just like, I didn't think she was rude at all. She goes, oh, and the way she stuffed the clothes in the bag, I go, what? I didn't see any of that is.

It, is it that she was actually just like, I don't know, she kind of so perceptive of that frequency. Or was it, or was it like projecting?

No, hyper vigilance. She could see things I could never see. I would never. That's why women are so much better, so much more intuitive. Because the world that women grow up in is not the world Ken you and I grew up in. You and I can still walk out to our car in a dark parking lot in the middle of the night. We're not thinking about, are there other cars in the parking lot? Is there anybody in those cars or anybody hanging around those cars. We just walk out to our car. Now, it doesn't mean we're any safer, right? But chances are we're not going to get jumped, right? They have to watch. Ever since they've been little girls, they've been constantly living with threats. So they've become very good. So when women tell you they have a gut feeling, I really trust it. My mother was amazing at it. She was very, very. I look at it in the fact that I never got sexually assaulted. I never had anything. Yet two principals in the schools that I went to were arrested for molesting children. Two of the teachers, the guy who ran our Little League for 35 years, all my friends got molested and I didn't. And I remember my mom, one time I came home was one of the, in elementary school, one of the teachers wanted to take all some of these boys, some of my friends and me and, you know, come over to his place for a week, for just a Saturday and hang out. And my mom said no. And I said, but everybody's going to be there, you know, it's going to be really safe. Couldn't be a problem. She goes, nope. Why does a 45 year old man want to hang out with kids that aren't his? No, I don't get it. Not doing it. And so I was thinking, ah, that's not fair. You know, nothing's going to happen to me. He molested all my friends.

Oh my God.

Yep. They're, they're predators and they know how to do it. Right. And so they're really, really good at it. And so that's why having good communication with your children, letting them know that you'll believe them. Right. If they come to you and tell you a story, because that's what they're told, nobody will believe you. You're going to be in trouble. Right. I'm going to tell what you did. Right. And then the Kids are afraid to come forward and talk about it or the shame and the guilt. You know, even my wife living in a home like she was living in when I first met her, she swore me to secrecy. I don't want anybody to ever know about my childhood. I want anybody ever to know that because they'll judge me. And I used to go, but I'm not judging you. Like, I don't see how people would judge you. Oh, no, no, they would judge me. Now after she's gone through the program, she'll sit down, talk to you all day about got rid of all that shame and guilt.

Yeah, that's so incredible. Like, you know, I remember growing up and I think you said at the beginning too, you know, there's so much stigma around, like mental illness. And I mean, man, you know, what, 25 years ago when I was a kid, I mean, it, it really felt like you couldn't tell anybody.

Sure.

And a lot of that was because, like, man, I want to protect my dad.

I don't want to take your dad and protect your image and you know, like, oh, everything's going good. Because like you said, your dad was a good guy.

Oh, yeah, Amazing, brilliant, hard working, just a good dad. Like a lot of the trauma that I know, you know, other people dealt with that wasn't at home, loving, caring, right. But you know, having the rug pulled out from underneath you every year too, and you know, that that sort of stuff was tough.

But yeah, you didn't want anyone to.

Know because he, he was going to come back to basketball practice when all that died down and you didn't want people talking and judging and that, that's, that's that shame.

And that's why my wife never wanted anybody to know because that's what she, you know, so you get why it happens and why she was trying to avoid it. But at the same time, she was always, what if in her life, what if, right? Because something would happen. She had a very difficult time appreciating and enjoying life because just as you said, she was waiting for the shoe to drop because things would be going along really good with her father. Like, he just got a business deal, he made some money, everything's great, right? And then something would go wrong and then the wheels would come flying off and then danger was everywhere and people are getting hurt and so she just, I couldn't understand. I'd be saying, we got a beautiful home, right? We got three beautiful children, you got a husband that loves you, everything's going great. What is wrong and in her mind, it would be like she couldn't really articulate it because she didn't know what it was. But at the same time, she was like, in essence, when's it going to stop? When's it going to end? Because it's going to stop at some point because it doesn't go on forever. That's what she was anticipating, man.

It's funny, I, like, pause because I'm like, oh, boy, I totally get that.

Yeah.

I should have been like a risk manager at a bank or something, because I'm constantly like, well, there's a. Where's the downside?

Yep.

You know, like, okay, it's great now, but, like, don't get too excited because something's coming.

Exactly.

You know, and so I guess, one, I hope, too. I mean, one of the big things for me is I was like, man, I gotta start talking about this because, one, I don't want to feel that way. Two, I hate the thought of other people also, you know, walking around feeling like they're. They're the only one feeling that way. Because I. The more people I talk to, it's so common.

Oh, so common. You have no idea.

Like, that's why, like I said before you came onto it, I was like, man, I'm so excited to have this conversation because. And one of the questions I had for you, too, and I think I kind of answer it myself, but, you know, do you work with your athletes in a different way that you work with, you know, the bombing victim? Or is it that we're.

We're all.

Yeah, that's the same.

Because trauma is relative. So, you know, somebody will say, well, I never had any of that, you know, big T kind of trauma. Right. But if you haven't experienced that, it's still having an effect on you. Right. And so that's why we ended up. That's why I wrote the book Emotional Concussions. Because people, we actually. When we put our website out, we realized we actually weren't helping ourselves. Because this looks so great. Because you're seeing someone from the Boston Marathon talking about how their life changed. You know, somebody from Las Vegas is going. Totally changed my life. You're going, isn't that great? And then people look at it and go, oh, gosh, I never had anything like that. I don't think this program is for me.

Right.

But it is, because those emotional concussions can still have the same kind of an effect as a Boston Marathon bombing. It's all relative.

It's all relative. Yeah. You know, it's just funny. I just had a conversation with a really elite strength and conditioning coach, and one of the things he said from a strength training perspective is like, you need to know when to back it off in the gym. Because all the other stressors in your life, your body interprets exactly the same, you know, and it's like. Yeah, like the Boston. I can't even imagine. But physiologically, right. It's like every time you're tapping into that sympathetic. You know, it's like it's a process your body's going through.

Yeah. It's processing. A lion is a lion. Whether it's a lion, you know, like the Boston Marathon, or it's a teacher that was, you know, really abusive to you. Still a lion, Especially to a child.

Oh, yeah. Hey, let me ask you a question. Maybe we can end on this and you can tell me, like, I'm not interested in that, but I. I am. I've always been fascinated by this, and. And I don't know, maybe you can point me in the right direction. One of the interesting things that I've been reading about is folks who've experienced ptsd, who have a lot of success with maybe psychedelic isn't even the right word, but like psilocybin and treatments of that nature, you know, what's going on there is. Is that related at all in any way to what you're doing? And what I mean by that is like, the ability to, like, at a neurological level, start to, like, address, like, what's happening there, and why are some folks having success with that?

I. My personal feeling is you don't need to do that. That's really trying to disassociate. That's actually. Disassociation is also a mental health issue. So some people do disassociate, and that's the way they protect themselves. So I believe that the greatest chemistry lab in the world is within you. We don't need to be adding in these things because you could do it all on your own. All you have to do is reset the system. The system could do it all on its own. So by adding all these different things in so many times, I'll have people say, I've got a chemical imbalance. And I'll go, yeah. Why?

You don't have a chemical imbalance. You have something causing the chemical imbalance. Well, I'm really low on serotonin. Okay. Why? What's causing that? Probably coming from a gut issue. So I had a lady, she came in, and she said I'd be really researching And I believe that my daughter has low serotonin. And so she says, can you test that? Right. Oh, yeah, she's studying that. And. And so anyway, so she. She comes in and so we do a test to sort of check. And I said, you're absolutely right. She has low serotonin. She goes, that's what I thought. She has all those symptoms. And I said, yeah, but it's not the problem. The low serotonin is actually a symptom of the issue. Her gut is completely out of balance. She has got all kinds of bacteria and parasites and everything. She's eating terrible. She's just eating tons of sugar. She hasn't got a very good diet. So if your gut's out of balance, your serotonin production is going to be out of balance. Right. And so.

Anyway, I says, now, if you went normally and you said, oh, I need to do something. I said, even if they went on a supplemental, they're going to give you something called 5hp. 5hp HTP. And I said, that's to try to balance the serotonin. And so anyway, she goes, oh, they put me on that. And I says, it didn't help, right? She goes, no, it didn't help. And I said, because it wasn't the problem. Right. So you supplement it, but you're not fixing the problem. The idea was to say, let's go to where the root of the problem is. Fix that, and then the body will heal itself. Yeah. And that's what we're doing, even with our trauma stuff. Let's go to the root of what created the problem. I had this conversation with my daughter. This is a few months ago. We came in the house and we looked, and I saw the pool was low. Right. So we needed to put water in. And I said, well, if we're pool therapists, right, what we would do is stick the hose in the pool and fill it up.

I love this.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I says, but the way I look at it is, why is it low? Is there a leak? Let's go find out if there's a leak, because otherwise we're going to fill up the pool every week. Right. And if there's a leak, we're not fixing the problem. The leak is going to get worse, and then eventually it's going to be going down in two days instead of a week. So let's go to the root problem.

Oh, I love that example. That actually might be the perfect place to wrap it up. So for people who are listening and they want to find out more about what you're doing. You know, where's the best place for them to find you?

Just go to. We have a website called Get Tip, which is our program TIPP. So get tip.com and then I think are we adding a slash with your information from the show as well or do you know?

Yeah, that'd be amazing. No, yeah, we'll get, we'll get that done and I'll make sure to link to it.

And so, yeah, so then we could just add that. So whether it's pro athlete podcast or it's Ken or whatever, be slash that. But if you at least go to gettip.com you'll be able to get the information. You can check out our website and see all the testimonials, like I said, from the widest variety of people you can imagine, from high trauma victims all the way down to CEOs, executives who tell you how it changed their life.

Yeah, amazing. Oh, well, sincerely, this has been a really, really interesting conversation and sincerely something that I hope it a message that got to the folks who need it. Right. Because it just, it kills me to think about how many people are walking around dealing with these sorts of things. And I think the more that we can raise awareness and then hopefully point people, you know, to your program and get help, it's awesome.

And that's why I say the first thing I say when anybody comes in, sits down, whether they're an addiction, active addiction. As Michelle came in, 17 years of addiction on every kind of drug you could imagine. The first thing I sit down with her, I say, michelle, there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with your mind. You've experienced trauma and that trauma is affecting the way your mind is working. And the reason you're taking drugs is you're trying to stop the pain. That says nothing about your character, willpower, morals or ethics. Right. That's a human instinct to stop pain. Yeah. And that the drugs stop the pain. So like I said, I had a lady come in who had been on heroin, right. And she said, you know, I told my therapist, I've been seeing a therapist for seven years. I told him I was coming to see you. And he told me that I need to be honest and up front and let you know I have self destructive behavior. And I just smiled at her. I said, really? What would make you think you're self destructive? And she goes, well, I'm sticking a needle in my arm with heroin. Don't you think that's self destructive? I said, no, I Don't. I think you're trying to feel better. I bet you when you stuck the needle in your arm, you felt better. She goes, well, yeah. And I said, now you're not destructive. The substance is destructive. I said, what you're trying to do is feel better. I get why you try to feel better. You've had a lot of trauma, right? She goes, yeah, you have no idea how much. I said, I'm pretty sure I do. I said, so if you've gone to heroin, Right. The pain had to be pretty severe, so you looked for a solution to it? I says, but that doesn't say that you're broken and defeated. I said, you can absolutely get your life back. All we have to do is get to the root of what caused the pain. Let's stop the pain first, and then we'll work on the addiction. Right. I don't believe addiction is a disease. I believe it's a code that your mind built to protect you from pain.

Oh, interesting. Well, we'll have to have you back, and we'll dive into that next time.

Yeah, it's very interesting what we're doing. We get a lot of people out of addiction by taking that approach again. It takes all that shame and guilt away from it. Of course you did. I said, if. I said, I've never touched a drug in my life, never once had a drug, never smoked a cigarette, never drank a drop of alcohol my entire life. That's not because. Right. I have better character than anybody. I never experienced pain, so I never needed to find a solution to temporarily stop that pain or numb that pain. Yeah. And so I'm not saying that happens in every case. So sometimes it can become a, you know, a social thing where somebody starts drinking and then, you know, they get stuck in that pattern. But also, too, what I found in most situations is coming from people are just feeling bad, and they want to feel better, and they take a drink or take a drug, they feel better. Oh, yeah. And so my friends, when I was growing up, I mean, I played hockey, so you can imagine having to get through all that with people going, come on, you have a beer. Oh, the hockey.

The hockey guys know how to have a good time.

And so. But I remember this one guy says to me, he says, just have a beer. You'll relax. And I said, listen, if I got any more relaxed, that'd be a pool of water. So I said, you don't need me any more relaxed. I'm already pretty chilled. Right. So I'm fine.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. We'll have to have you back on.

To talk about that more.

Yeah, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. And, yeah, we'll link to the show, we'll link to the book. And, yeah, this has been great. Thank you.

Yeah, I enjoyed it.