Live Inspired with Dr. Don Wood - Episode 2

Welcome to live inspired with Dr. Dawn Wood. I'm Karen Seltz. Today we are going to talk about depression and anxiety. What are some of the causes? What can we do to fix it? And neuroxp versus medications. Welcome, Dr. Wood.

Hey, Karen, how you doing?

I am great. I'm really excited. This is a really great topic that affects myself and a lot of other people.

So tell us, like, what is the root of depression and anxiety?

Well, one of the things that I've been really doing a lot of research into is, well, first of all, as you know, I'm a big believer that trauma creates a lot of the things that we're dealing with. But I also think that it's creating a bioelectrical dysfunction in the way the brain operates. So if you look at people who are in depression, if they put it that they do an EEG on the brain, they basically find that there's too much activity on the right side of the brain as opposed to the left side. And so there's a symmetry between the way the brain is working. So, you know, if you think about it in terms of an electrical circuit, if you have too much power on one side and not enough power on the other side, it's obviously going to have problems, you know, functioning. So if you have too much power, you're going to get a surge on one side, which is going to create an issue, and then you're going to have not enough energy on the other side. So, of course the brain is going to have problems functioning. So that's what we see a lot of times in depression. And what I'm saying that what I see really happening is that when we have this unresolved trauma, and I've seen this quite often. So I had a lady who had come in to see me and she had really, really severe, severe depression. And so anyway, what I said to her is when she sat down, but she was really suicidal. So I asked her when she came in to bring her husband with her because I didn't want her driving by herself. And so when we sat down to talk, I said to her, I said, what are you angry about? And she sort of looked at me and said, I'm not angry, I'm depressed. And I said, well, generally what I have seen happening is when people are in depression, it's that the mind has been trying to get something done or fixed, and it keeps calling for an action. Now, the action may not be possible because it's from a trauma from 10 years ago or 20 years ago that if you remember, the subconscious part of your mind is operating in real time, so it thinks something's still happening, but it can also be being caused by maybe your personality can't accomplish something because of some belief system or whatever. So what happened with her?

I said, the reason you're having depression is because the mind is calling for you to do something. You're not doing it. So I said, the purpose of an emotion like anger is for an action. It wants you to do something, wants you to attack a threat or attack something that it wants you to stop. Make something stop. If you don't do it and the mind keeps calling for the action, eventually what it does is it just shuts down because depression is the absence of emotion. It's been calling for the emotion. You're not doing what it's been asking you to do, not carrying out the action. So it basically just carries around the anger, just almost like it puts on thermal mitts and it's going to carry this white hot lava rock around, but so that you don't feel it, it's just going to cover it up. And so that's why people who are in depression are not having any emotions. It's basically the absence of emotions. Does that sort of make sense?

Yeah, that's absolutely fascinating. So how did you get someone who was in depression to get in touch with what they were angry about?

Well, it was really interesting because when I started talking to her and I said to her, I said, what are you angry about? And at first her reaction was, well, not angry. I'm, you know, I'm depressed. And I said, but your mind's been trying to get you to do something. So can you figure out where this anger is coming from or what your mind's been trying to get you to do? And she immediately looked at her husband and I was like, uh, oh, I just brought the problem into the room right now. He didn't pick up on it, but I did. And so I said to him, I said, would you mind if we just spent some time, you know, talking one on one and maybe go get a coffee or whatever? And so he said, sure. And he left. And she said to me, she says, oh, my God. She said, I never recognized it. She says. I said, so what are you angry with your husband about? She says, he's a good man. I'm not saying he's not, you know, doesn't hurt me. He's not physical or anything like that. She says, but he makes me feel guilty about everything. I don't have dinner on time. I don't have the house clean, right? I could be doing this better or that better. And so she said. And she was so nice that she would never say anything. So she would just take it and take it. But it was building. And what her mind was trying to get her to do was stand up for herself. Just say, like, knock it off, right? I'm doing my best. Or like, I'm working. You're working. I can't have everything done. But she wouldn't do that. She was just too nice. And so she says, I don't think, you know, he. He's trying to hurt me. And I said, I don't either. I said. I said, is he Catholic? And she sort of looked at me. And she goes, yeah, he is, but why would you say that? And I says, because as a child, he learned to use guilt to get what he wanted, right? So religion does that quite often. We can make somebody feel guilty. We can change their behaviors. So I said, that's probably a technique that he used or was used on him to get him to do something. So he's just learned that behavior, and he uses it with you so that he can get dinner faster, maybe get the house cleaner, maybe get you to be earlier instead of late. And she says, wow, I never thought about it. And she says, but that makes a lot of sense. She says, I really just feel like saying to him, like, just keep shut up. But she couldn't do it. So we brought him back in the room and we discussed it, and he was mortified that he was. He said, I never meant to hurt her. I wasn't. We don't think you were either, but that's just something that you had learned. And she wasn't able to say anything, so they were able to sort of resolve that. And she sent me an email in the morning, basically said that. She says, I woke up and I felt joy for the first time in a long time. And she says, I was afraid to move. So I just lied in bed, but thinking if I moved, the joy would go away. She says, and after about half an hour, I finally got up in a state. It was lifted because she did the action that the mind had been calling for. So I've seen that happen, and it can easily happen, right? It doesn't mean that it was deliberate on his part. Sometimes it could be delivered on their part, but that is sometimes a cause of depression. It could be bioelectrical, where there's just too much activity on the right side of the brain. So the idea is what we do in our program, as you knew, as you know, we get the mind to start trying to use. So it's too much activity here. We want to try to balance it. And if we can get the mind into an alpha brainwave state, it's more balanced. And so it's either too high in beta or it's too low in theta.

Could you explain the different brainwave states for people that are new to that concept, please?

Yeah, perfect. So we basically have four brainwave states. We really have a fifth one, but four is what we mostly are in. We have beta, alpha, theta and delta. And beta is basically normal waking state, very active. So the mind is cycling in about 15 to 30 hertz, which is an energy term. So that's like 15 to 30 cycles per second.

So that's going to be where your mind is a little more active, thinking about a whole bunch of things. Maybe in your normal waking state, sometimes you do that. However, we're not supposed to be in that state all the time. So the next state is alpha, and Alpha is between 7 and 14 hertz. And that's where the mind is very, very relaxed but super focused. And so they believe Albert Einstein lived in that state most of the time. So they put EEG on his head and whenever he would go out of alpha state in the beta, they would ask him, okay, what are you thinking about what is happening? And what he would be saying is that he had a problem that he realized he hasn't solved. So he would then start thinking a lot about what he needed to do. And then when he solved it, he would go back into alpha and then alpha, the information just flows. So I always say, do you ever remember, have you ever been somewhere, like maybe in a mall, and you run into somebody but you can't remember their name and you're with somebody else and you can't introduce them? So yeah, so what's basically happening is you're trying so hard to remember the person's name and then as soon as they walk away, you go, george, right? How could I not remember George's name? But it's that you put that pressure and your mind was cycling faster. It's not relaxed. So as soon as that, you go back into that alpha brainwave state, the information flows. So we got beta, Alpha, and then the next state is theta, and theta is between 4 and 7 hertz and that's where we dream. So we're asleep. And so the mind is processing everything that it experienced during the day, plus also trying to resolve anything that's unresolved. That's why a lot of people have had trauma in their life. They don't sleep well because the mind is still trying to fix something that happened five years ago, 10 years ago. And so the mind doesn't want to rest until it resolves it, but it can't resolve it because it's unresolvable. It's over. So a lot of people who have unresolved trauma have trouble sleeping. And then once you go below 4 hertz, you go into delta sleep and delta. Delta brainwave state. And that's basically where it's dreamless sleep and your mind is really doing maintenance. So it's starting to then fix anything that needs to be done. So if you have, like me, I heal really fast. I don't get sick, right? I've always just been that way all my life. And I believe that was because I got into maybe three or four times longer into that delta brainwave state when I was asleep. So I got three or four times the amount of healing that maybe other people were getting because they had a lot of stuff going on. And I didn't realize that, you know, a lot of my friends had dysfunctional homes. I don't know that, you know, that was sort of kept quiet. So they may have been dealing with, you know, an abusive pet or something going on in their house. And so that would stop them from healing as fast because they were in this. Maybe staying in that theta brainwave state long. So those are basically the four brainwave states. So when we have depression, we have too much theta brainwave activity on the right side of the brain. And when we have anxiety, we have the opposite. We have too much beta brainwave state. So the mind is racing, can't relax, can't settle down. So a lot of that is just I believe. And so what they'll say is, and I'm doing a lot more research on this because I want to be able to show that I think this is the right way of looking at it. I believe that they'll say all these people have chemical imbalances. They have too much serotonin, too little serotonin, dopamine, all these kinds of things that saying. I believe it's actually coming from not because of the chemical imbalance. I think it's a bioelectrical imbalance that is creating the chemical imbalance. But just like the same thing in trauma, when they say to somebody, oh, they've had a lot of trauma. Well, what are their symptoms? Well, they have anxiety. Well, let's treat the anxiety. No, we need to treat the trauma. Right. Not the symptom of the trauma. The same thing with sort of mental illness. If they're dealing with, you know, a particular issue, I believe it's coming from, we need to get the brainwave in symmetry so that it's operating, staying in a very relaxed state. And then that's going to change the chemical balance of the brain.

Wow, that's fascinating. So if somebody has depression or anxiety.

What'S the best thing they could possibly do?

Well, right now they're going to probably be told to be on medication. So they're going to take antidepressant medication, anti anxiety medication. And a lot of the time if it's trauma related, the trauma is creating inflammation. So the inflammation is, is creating a pause in the way the mind is processing. So it's basically in a fight or flight mode or it's in a hypoarousal state with depression. So if you've lived in hyper arousal most of your life because your mind is constantly going into that beta brainwave state, that starts to feel normal, right? Because I've always been in that state. This is just the way I am. But it's not supposed to be. So I believe what's happening is the neurons are firing faster in that state and that they're not supposed to be. So if you've had a lot of trauma and your neurons are constantly firing because you're in that hyper arousal state, that's where I think Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, all those things are coming from. Because it's not supposed to be operating at that level. Like putting your foot on the gas and the brake at the same time, trying to keep the car from going over 30 miles an hour, you're going to burn out the system, the electrical system, the transmission, the engine, everything's going to get affected. So what I believe is really trying to in a Neuroxp program work really well at this. But even without that, that's why if people do meditation, they exercise, they do things like that. At least that's a good way of trying to get the mind into a more relaxed state as opposed to constantly firing. So yoga, meditation, exercise are helping our program. If it's trauma related, we fix the trauma first and then teach the brain to be able to stay in that very relaxed alpha brainwave state.

I love that. That's amazing. So what else would you tell people about? If they or someone else they love is being affected by depression or anxiety, how can they hear about our program.

They can check out our website, which is the inspiredperformanceinstitute.com they can check out, like us on Facebook. That'll get them starting to, you know, get some information from us or just listen to these kinds of, you know, podcast that we're doing to sort of talk about some of these topics. Because so many times if you've been dealing with some of those things, if you. If you remember and you know this really well, Karen, is that our whole premise is we don't believe there's anything wrong with anybody's mind. Right. These are just symptoms of something that is happening in your life, what's interfering with your ability to stay present and in the moment. It's generally coming from these events and experiences that keep living. So if we fix that, then the mind is going to be able to stay more balanced. So checking out our website, we've got a lot of testimonials on YouTube, on our Facebook page. We're doing a lot of these different studies. Michelle, who was in addiction for 17 years, you can watch her story.

On Facebook and what she experienced. So she had 17 years of addiction. She had dealt with all those things. And she's now almost eight months and just in incredible shape. I mean, she's stopped smoking. She hasn't had any craving for any drugs. She's going back to college, she's taking courses, working full time, repaired her relationships with her family. In fact, it was really interesting. Her brother, who, you know, she'd always, you know, he'd be very hard on her, which is typical of what we do with people who are in addiction. We start blaming them. You know, you're a bad person. You have weakness, you have no character. Right. And her brother saw this transformation. And her brother is starting on the program because I think he's seeing how, like, if this could do that much for her and take her after 17 years of what she went through, know he's interested in seeing what it can do to help him.

Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. And we have so many of these stories. We could go on and on for hours.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. But the thinking is if you're dealing with depression, dealing with anxiety, we don't believe there's anything wrong with you. Right. What is creating that? That's a symptom. It's not the cause. You don't have depression. You have a symptom cause depression. You have a symptom called anxiety. What's creating it? Let's get to what's creating it and get it resolved. We're not going to teach you to manage and live and cope with it. We want to eliminate it.

That's so unique. I've done so many techniques, and this is the only one that talks about eliminating the source of all the issues. And so.

Thank you. Yeah, we had a lady come in last week, and she said, I'm really skeptical, but she said a number of people had recommended this to me. I came in anyway. So she came in and went through the program, and she definitely felt that she had a major breakthrough during the session. And then she texted me on Monday saying that she ran into an old boss, that she had gotten fired from her job, in fact, walked out of the building. So. So, I mean, it was a pretty traumatic experience to get fired and walked out. And she says, and I ran into her somewhere else, and she says, and she didn't see me, but I saw her. And she says, and I just walked up and I started talking to her. And she said, very pleasant and calm. And she says, I was asking her how the job's going and how work's going. And she says, and then her and her husband were there, and they got in the car, and all of a sudden she realized what had just happened. She says, whenever I thought about that place, whenever I thought about what had happened to me, she said, I was so angry and frustrated. And she says, none of that came up. And her husband even said, who was that lady? And when she told him, he goes, what?

He couldn't believe how she handled it so differently. Where before that would have been triggering all those memories of what she had dealt with and how she'd gotten fired. And her mind would have been, you know, going into distress.

Absolutely. Which is what most of us would consider to be a normal reaction. And what I've learned is that, no, it is not.

It's a glitch, an error message.

Yes.

And all we have to do is update it so it stops doing that.

That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for watching live inspired with Dr. Dawn Wood. Dr. Wood, it's always a pleasure. Always, always new information. That is so helpful. So thank you.

Thanks, Karen.