The First US Female Fighter Pilot Did THIS To Overcome Her Fear And Trauma | Martha McSally

That trauma loop that you were just describing, it's creating a glitch. It's an error message. Post traumatic stress, all those kinds of things are glitches and error messages.

There are ways for you to be free, whether your life is being impacted with anxiety or with some physical elements that are a result of what has happened in your life negatively, like the trauma being kind of stored and coming out through auto autoimmune disease.

Your brain is just a giant computer, so you have recorded billions of bits of information through your lifetime, and that is recorded and stored in memory. Where the whole issue is coming in is from the explicit memory system that we have that only humans have.

Don and I have gotten to know each other. We're both members of Genius Network run by Joe Polish. And we've just really connected on this issue of helping people. Helping people be free from the negative things that have happened in their lives. Trauma and just being able to free. Free to thrive and live the life that they really desire and deserve. So looking forward to the conversation today, Don. Excited to. To have this and love to open up with some questions, but if you want to say something to start, that'd be great.

Well, same thing. I've been really excited to do this. I know we've been talking about trying to put this together for a little while. So I've been really looking forward. We have such great conversations. I think people are going to find this very interesting. From the two perspectives, all the work that you've been doing and then the work that I've been doing, I think we're going to offer some pretty good insight.

So, yes, for those who are tuning in, if you have been through anything negative in your life, I'm pretty sure the answer is going to be yes. You may immediately say, like, I've been through something traumatic or maybe, maybe you haven't. Dr. Gabor Mate is also a friend of ours, is a specialist in addiction and trauma. And he says we've all been through big T trauma or little T trauma. And so, you know, big T trauma is the obvious thing society calls trauma. Grew up suffering from abuse or, you know, parents with addiction or alcoholism are awful things that could have happened to you in your young life or adult life. But all of us have been through what he calls little T trauma, where our needs have not been met even with the best efforts of our parents. Emotional needs, other needs, things that have scarred us that maybe we're not even aware of, that's been running in our subconscious that is then impacting us emotionally. Spiritually, physically. And Don runs the Inspired Performance Institute. But you have not always been a doctor. You have not always been in this work. You're previously an entrepreneur running a number of businesses. So I'd love to hear first, for those who are listening again, if. If you have any negative experiences in your life or any sort of big tier literacy trauma, tune in, because there's going to be some great value here for you from Don as an expert. And I've got my own expertise in my path, but certainly not at the academic level and. And what you're doing to. To help people. So, Don, can you just share a little bit about your path into this work of. Of helping people in this way?

Yeah, no, I'd love to. And, you know, I know Gabor talks about, you know, small T trauma. I called those emotional concussions. So I wrote my second book, and I called them emotional concussions because they may not be what people will call a trauma. Because I have a lot of people come in and say, well, I haven't had anything like, you know, the Boston Marathon bombing, right? And when they see that kind of stuff on our site, and I say, yeah, you may have had some emotional concussions. That's the neglect or the abandonment. That may not even be intentional. So those can show up, you know, with the best of intentions, great parents, but they're stuffing with that. And that was really what happened with us. And that's how I got into this. I've always been an entrepreneur. I was in the financial services business, real estate, mortgages, insurance for a number of years, and that was up in Canada. Then when I moved to the United States, I got involved in a number of different businesses here as well. But it wasn't until my daughter showed up with Crohn's that I started to recognize some of the issues that she was dealing with. And there were no answers. And at that time, we really still didn't know a lot about it, about, because they told us there's no cure for Crohn's, and we don't even know what causes Crohn's. She's just going to have to manage this for the rest of her life. And she really suffered. She had four different operations. They cut out about 24 inches of her intestines over those operations, and she'd go down to 95 pounds and just really struggle. And so it's an autoimmune disorder. And a lot of people, if you have autoimmune, probably going to be linked back to your trauma. And I'M going to explain a lot about that when we're talking here today. And then it wasn't until she got her second autoimmune disorder called idiopathic pulmonary hemosiderosis, which is.

That's a mouthful, I know.

Which is basically where the lungs start to release the iron in the blood. It's an overload issue. And so she started coughing up blood. They put her in ICU for three and a half weeks and they did all these tests and came back with that diagnosis. Now, that was a potential death sentence because a lot of people could die within five years. And again, they came back with no cure. We don't even know what causes it. She should live close to a hospital because her lungs could fill up in 15 minutes. And that's when my wife said to me, she goes, because I was adopted, right? So Martha, she goes, this must be your fault. This must be a genetic thing. You need to figure this out or we're going to lose our daughter.

Oh, my gosh.

So I went back and got my PhD and started doing the research to try to figure it out.

Wow, that's extraordinary. And we're going to hear your daughter is thriving now, which is amazing. We want to hear. So people, if you listen to that story, you know, this is interesting work. And there are ways for you to be free, whether your life is being impacted with anxiety or with some physical elements that are results of what has happened in your life negatively, like the. The trauma being kind of stored and coming out through auto. Autoimmune disease. I would love, Don, for you to share kind of in layman's terms, what happens in the brain, like, you know, Neurology 101, when we get ourselves into a traumatic situation. I mean, everybody generally knows we get into fight or flight and, you know, the adrenaline gets released. And this is all in order to help us. To help us to be able to, you know, survive and fight and flee and do what we need to do in order to, you know, get away and get to safety. It's all about protection of us. And everyone has examples where they know this in their life. I most recently did when I was recently attacked while I was out running in the Iowa area there for a speaking engagement. I personally felt that fight or flight. And I decided to fight and fight the attacker off and chase him down and he's now in jail. So. But, you know, being a combat pilot as well, very aware of kind of what happens when we get into those moments of adrenaline and kind of hyper focus and then what happens in the body, that's in the moment of the trauma. But when the trauma gets stuck, people are basically sensing that they're not safe when they actually are. So there's other. You know, this is my. My layman's way. I describe it in my coaching and in my speeches. Your body's kind of looking around, your brain's looking around, your eyes are looking around to see if there's any threats to keep you safe. Right. And then when it senses something that maybe, you know, going back to the library of experiences is maybe attached to something you've been through in the past or something you saw or something maybe that's generational, it senses like there's a threat. And that same thing is happening when you're actually safe. People may have heard. It's called, like an amygdala hijack and the HPA axis. I don't want to get too much into the neurobiology, but so what is happening when people are actually safe? And it's often called a kind of a post traumatic stress loop. Right. And they're stuck in that PTS loop. What's happening in their mind and their body, and why is that happening? Can you kind of share that in layman's terms?

Yeah, no, I'd love to.

How did I do? Is that okay?

That was actually very good. Yeah. And your story of what just recently happened to you is amazing, like what you were able to do. So I know we've talked about it, but if anybody hasn't heard what you went through, you really need to look that up and how resilient and resourceful you were in that kind of a situation.

Well, and let me say, for those who are tuning in just for that, I've been through trauma in the past, which we'll get into, and I did not respond that way. It's been the growth and the work and the integration that I've done over time that brought me to the place where I was able to, in that moment, you know, respond that way instead of contracting and. And being stuck in the fear.

Yeah. Because, I mean, everybody knows about fight or flight, but there's also freeze, and that's another actually very forceful kind of thing to do. And. And freeze makes sense because if you had experienced childhood trauma. Yeah. You couldn't fight back and you couldn't run.

Right.

So freeze was a very good response in that kind of a situation. So those are the kinds of things that happen. But let me share with you what I understood about why, and this is what I was Trying to figure out for my daughter.

Yeah.

So why was she constantly in this. This state? And what I found is that unresolved trauma, that trauma loop that you were just describing, it's creating a glitch. It's an error message. Post traumatic stress, all those kinds of things are glitches and error messages. Your brain is just a giant computer. So you have recorded billions of bits of information throughout your lifetime, and that is recorded and stored in memory. Where the whole issue is coming in is from the explicit memory system that we have that only humans have. Animals don't store explicit memory. Humans do. So we store a tremendous amount of detail about events and experiences. So I usually. The way I ask it is. And you can answer this for the people. Now, do you remember what you ate for dinner last night?

Yes.

So what did you have?

Because we're doing a healthy life challenge.

I had tilapia, and I had avocado and brussels sprouts.

Very good. So when I asked you that, anybody watching this will notice that Martha looked up. Right. And you saw pictures. Right. Of what you ate. You probably saw the tilapia, what you cooked, the brussels sprouts, all of that. That's how you stored the images of what you ate last night. Now, last night wasn't threatening or disturbing. So it's stored as a fairly low resolution file. Had that been a threatening event. And all your senses are heightened. You're in a hypervigilant state. Fight or flight. Your senses, your sight, smell, hearing are all intensified.

Y.

So how's it going to record that? High def. Tremendous amounts of detail. So here's where the issue is coming in. Your subconscious mind is survival. The survival part of your brain.

Yes.

It operates in the present. It only understands now the same way animals are fully present in the moment. So Boomer's always present, right?

Yeah.

So he's in the moment. If a threat shows up, Boomer will respond to the threat.

But if there's no rescue. Golden retriever, everyone. He's over chewing on a peanut butter kong right now.

So animals don't respond to imagined threats because they can imagine, and they don't store the details about those kinds of threats.

Right.

But we do. So if your survival brain, your subconscious operates 95% of everything that's going on for you, and it recalls an event from 10 years ago because something that was in the present looked like, sounded like, smelled like it, even if you weren't consciously aware.

Right? Yes.

And all of a sudden, you don't know why your heart's pounding in your chest. It's because your mind is looking at old information in real time. And where I really learned a lot about this was a study. I don't know if you ever heard of him. Henry Malaison. He's the most studied brain in history.

Yeah. Okay.

And this is a fast. This is where I really made the connection between memory is, because that's what the path I was going down saying, memories creating this glitch. Well, Henry Malayson, when he was a young boy, fractured his skull in an accident.

Yeah, I've heard of this.

Yeah. And he started having seizures and blackouts. And so he struggled with that all the way up into his 20s until he found a renowned neurosurgeon called Dr. William Schofield who said, oh, we can fix this by drilling two holes into your head, and we're going to remove your hippocampus and part of your amygdala. Now, at the time, this is in the 50s, this is when they're doing lobotomies on people.

Oh, my gosh.

And so what he said is, we're going to drill those two holes, we'll remove the hippocampus, part of your amygdala. They did. Henry agreed because he was desperate. And so he went through the operation, and it looked like a success because his seizure stopped. Now, Martha, I saw something very different when I did this research because I was so focused on the memory. So Henry could never, for the rest of his life, store memory, because without the hippocampus.

Yeah, the HPA axis. Right. That's where it begins.

Yeah. And so you need the hippocampus to process memory. So everything that you're listening to here right now is going through the hippocampus from short term and being processed into long term memory. So without the hippocampus, he can't process it. It will go from short term memory and evaporate, and it's just gone. So he.

50 first dates.

50 first dates, exactly. So Groundhog Day, Right?

Yeah.

So he could watch the same TV show 15 minutes later as if he was watching it for the first time.

It's a beautiful way to live. But your. Your. Your family and friends would get very frustrated with you. Right?

Exactly. But that's how the animals live. They don't store. So if they get an attack, what happens? What do you see? That's where that term came. Shake it off.

They literally shake it off. I watched this with, like, Boomer. Actually watch this with a dog that we just rescued after being out for 22 days. As soon as he saw his family, he just shook his whole body and shook it off.

He reset his nervous system. That's what they do. And then they go back into the moment and they're not remembering the attack. They don't store information about it. Animals learn through association and repetition. So when that dog that you rescued. Right. Saw his family, he just recognized them through an association that they're safe and they're going to love me and take care of me. There's where. And when he reset, he's right back as if he had never been gone. Yeah, so that's a great system. We don't have that.

We don't have that. Right. We can't just shake it off.

We can't shake it. And people will tell you just let it go, just shake it off. But that's not how our brain works. So our brain is very different. We store all that detail. So for Henry, he went through the rest of his life never been able to store memory. And so that's what they basically came about was they said, okay. What we learned from this study is that his hippocampus was responsible for memory, which was true. What I saw though is Henry's seizure stopped. And so what I said is, why would his seizure stop? What would the hippocampus have to do with his seizures? Nothing. Yeah, he never had an accident. His accident never happened according to Henry's memory. So you can't have a seizure, never had an accident.

Yeah.

And that's what I saw. So that really helped me have a better understanding of how memory is at the root of all of this issue.

Great to know, but what are we going to do about it?

Okay, so I have a lot of questions. There's so many we could get into related to that. And I know it's going to help a lot of people as I think about my own journey, which we've talked about and I've shared publicly and the traumas I've experienced in my life. Probably a lot of little tea that still needs to be unpacked, but big tea starting when I was 12 years old and my dad very suddenly passed away. I mean, there one day, gone the next. And then my mom went back to school and back to work and just, you know, the two by four I got hit with related to that and just trudging through those adolescent and.

Years in high school looking for some additional parenting and a father figure just, you know, crying out for help. As I was trying to work through my grief and my suffering in The. In the tools that I had at the time, you know, which were not a lot, but some of them were running. And I want to talk about that, you know, being outside running. Other things that I didn't understand that were helping me neurologically. Having a dog and that connection with the human animal bond. I then, you know, looked up to this coach of mine who I previously had this coach who was this beautiful father figure and just had this wonderful influence on my life, and he moved on. And the next coach I transferred that trust to, and like happens to so many people, he violated that trust and abused that trust. You know, a man in authority over twice my age. And so many of the listeners can relate to this, or viewers, man or woman who, you know, were hurt by somebody when they were young and abused by somebody in authority, whether it was a family member or a neighbor, a trusted, you know, teacher, coach, you know, clergy, whatever that is. So many people have been through this. And so I had that experience and then went off to the Air Force Academy. So, you know, I just knew there was something in me. It was just like, this is not going to hold me down or hold me back, and I am not going to let him, you know, continue to hurt me. Part of my decision to go so far away, literally geographically, was to physically get away from it, from him. And then, you know, later experience similar dynamics, unfortunately, in sexual assault in the military. So I think about, like, the conscious loop you're talking about when you see something and it's a threat. This was more conscious to me when I would go back home for, like, Christmas vacation and I would see somebody, like, even from behind that had the same, you know, dark hair, you know, like, looked like my abuser, my coach, going out of a restaurant. And for a second I'd be like, that's him. And then so my body would get into that fight or flight thinking that was him when it wasn't him, just because it registered that it looked like him, if that makes sense. But people can maybe relate to a smell or a song or like something that might be. Again, that's more of a conscious remembrance. But oftentimes there's something subconsciously going on that we're not even aware of. I feel like I never really suffered from being in that PTS loop myself. My challenge was I decided to disconnect and suppress and just keep charging on, determined that these things were not going to hold me down and hold me back. And I later had to reintegrate and heal and go on that journey. I mean, I'm still on it. I feel like I'm, you know, a pretty long way along it. But I, you know, don't remember being like stuck in a loop. But there's, but there's things that are happening obviously inside me and inside others who have been through this. Whether you are in an open anxiety, like it's. You're living life in anxiety related to something you've been to, through or some other trauma. Can you just kind of walk through some of the dynamics that are happening with people who can relate to maybe they feel like, oh, I don't get into a PTS loop like that, but things are actually happening. It might be impacting your body, your choices, your relationships, withdrawing, contracting to stay safe. I don't know. Any wisdom you have for someone who may say that doesn't apply to me. I don't get into a PTS loop.

Yeah. It's. It shows up somehow in some way. And, and here's what I learned.

Yeah.

That when we have this unresolved trauma that's running on this loop, you again, may not be aware of it. There's some very high functioning people who, like you. Right. Who are, you know, you would never think there's anything going on, but what happens is unresolved trauma creates inflammation. That's the response to trauma. Whether it's physical trauma or emotional trauma. The inflammation then compromises the immune system and compromises your neurotransmitters.

Yeah.

So it's actually affecting the DNA the way. And not. Not the DNA changing, it's changing the way the genes express. So if your inflammation genes turn up now, you have more inflammation in the body. That's going to show up as an autoimmune disorder, which is what Crohn's was and my daughter's lung is. It also then compromises the immune system because the way the brain works is if we're under attack, we need more energy to run or fight.

Right.

So it turns down the genes that work on the immune system because we don't need to fix it.

It's all going to your heart and lungs, your muscles. Right. It's like fight the saber too, tiger. You know, get away. That's what's. Yeah. Okay.

Yep. We only have so much energy to run so many programs. So let's turn down the programs that aren't important right now. We'll deal with those later. And so it turns down the immune system, turns down the neurotransmitters, even the neuroplasticity. So people who have had trauma, they get stuck because the brain stops wanting to grow and learn. It's trying to escape. So all the energy is going to that fight or flight response. Now, here's the glitch that I talk about. Because the trauma keeps looping. It stays stuck in that system.

Yeah.

And so if you don't resolve the trauma, you'll be dealing with physical and emotional issues for the rest of your life, which is what my daughter was dealing with. Her Crohn's was really just inflammation, but they call it Crohn's. And so it's an autoimmune. So how do they treat it? Steroids. And then because she was on steroids, then she also. Now the neurotransmitters are compromised. So she starts getting anxious and depressed. Now they have her on anti anxiety. They had her on probably 250 pills a month.

No.

Yeah. It was insane. And so she's going from anxiety to depression to this constant feeling sick and nauseous, and then her inflammation. She can't eat.

Oh, my gosh.

So she's losing weight. And what they said is. And that's why the reason they kept going in and cutting out the intestines is because they were dying. Now, why so inflammation? There's nothing wrong with inflammation. People will say inflammation is at the root cause of everything. That's not true. It's chronic inflammation.

Yes, exactly.

When it stays on.

Yeah.

So the cells go into a cell danger response, and the cell danger response is they become hardened and inflamed to protect anything from penetrating the cell while it's under attack. So that's actually a good thing. So nothing can get into the cell, but nothing can get out of the cell. And where it showed up for my daughter was her intestinal area. And I think that's the genetic factor to it. So because the cells weren't circulating, they were dying. And then they had to cut out 24 inches once we got the trauma resolved. She's never had a Crohn's flare up again, never had a lung disorder again. Because the root problem was not the inflammation, that was the symptom.

Yep.

The root problem was the way trauma. And I want to explain a lot about how the brain and the trauma is working, but that was what the root problem is. So when people come into me and they say, I have anxiety, I have depression, I have post traumatic stress, I say, no, that's not the problem. That's the symptom of the problem.

It's just alert. Your body's alerting you. Your brain's Alerting you, like, there's a.

Problem, and we need to address it. So anytime you have an emotion, a feeling or a sensation, that's your mind calling for an action.

Mm.

So what happened for you, Martha, when your father passed away is your mind was not okay with it, and it wanted to fix it, but it couldn't fix it. So it looked for ways to feel better. And so you started looking for other resources to replace that. Right. The brain is brilliant. It was never trying to hurt you.

Like, this is not okay. Right. So we have to. Yeah.

Now, what it was really trying to do is get your father back, which was impossible. That's what it kept looping through, kept seeing him. Right. In real time, even though he wasn't there. And so it came up with another solution is find somebody else trusting and nurturing in a male role. And unfortunately, you met a creep that took advantage of a young girl's trust. Right. And that is the number one pandemic in this world. Number one. I see it constantly.

Yeah.

And that's going to affect all those issues, and it'll show up somewhere.

And I just want to say, Don, that there's been a lot over the last, you know, several years to bring awareness to this issue, specifically to mostly women, you know, whether you want the MeToo movement, all that. But so many men have been through this, and they don't have a voice as much right now. There's a lot of shame associated with being a survivor of sexual abuse or sexual assault at whatever age. And this is. I think it. It impedes a lot of men getting the relief and the healing that they need, and they find many other ways to try and bring relief, but they're not working. They're temporary. So I just want to acknowledge that oftentimes I share my story of being a survivor of sexual abuse and sexual assault, sexual abuse as a. As a child and sexual assault as an adult. And. And people right away say after my keynote speeches, like, you're going to help a lot of women. And I'm like, this is about people. And there's a lot of men who have been through this, but they don't want to say it to another human being. So the first step that I share is like, shining a light on what it is that you've been through without shame. All progress starts by telling the truth. Our friend Dan Sullivan says all the time. Right. And so not easy to do. But I just want to encourage everyone listening that this is happening to men, too. And there's many watching that this has happened to. There is a path for you to heal. So I want to encourage people. We're going to talk about solutions here. We've been talking about the problem for a while, but I just wanted to acknowledge that. And I'm sure you see that with people coming in to you for help, you'd be surprised.

People would be shocked at the numbers. And. And I never had anything happen to me, so I was really unaware. I know we talked about that. My awareness was really zero. Growing up, I didn't know that my friends were being sexually abused. We had two teachers at our school, two principals, a guy who ran our Little League for 35 years, and those were my male friends. Right. So how many of the females. Right.

Who have told you about it? Right. Yeah.

And so it's. It's everywhere. And they talk about, oh, one out of, you know, eight boys and I think one out of six girls. No, it's not. It's way higher than that entire. But they just don't want it because there's so much shame and guilt. Happened to my wife. She didn't. She admitted it to me when I first met her. Right. Because she wanted to be honest with me. But then she swore me to secrecy.

Yes.

I could never tell anybody and that I was like, why?

Right. But I know that's exactly what my journey was. You know, I, you know, at the time told one person related to the coach. I just didn't want anyone to know. We, like, weirdly, I mean, there was also fear because once I started really waking up to what was happening, it was, you know, it was threatening. There was fear associated with this. But still, like, as I, even after I.

Really integrated and healed from it, I still didn't want people to know. I, you know, I would maybe tell someone I was in close, intimate relationship. Relationship with. It took me decades to tell my family. And so it's understandable now. I mean, now I share it from, you know, I share it all the time because I'm at a place where I know this is part of my calling, is to be a light for others and to help, you know, shine a light for a path for healing for them, whether they went through something traumatic this morning or 40 years ago, that there is a path for healing. This. You may feel this perpetrator took so much of you. Don't let them take today is my message. Don't let them rob you of today. You already feel they robbed you of so much, but don't let them rob you of today. There is a path for healing. I want to ask you about. We're talking a lot about healing trauma from the past. And again, we'll get into the healing. We're talking right now about the trauma, so everybody stay tuned there. We do have the ability to make sure trauma doesn't get stuck in us if we experienced it today in the now. I just, again, I just went through this, A traumatic experience of being attacked. And I just announced to the world I'm committed to making sure this trauma doesn't get stuck in me. What tools do you have that you share for people to use just to, you know, not have it get stuck in you? You're seeing and helping people that have it stuck in them from the past. But if something happened to somebody today or this week, like, what can they do in order to allow their body and their brain to process it healthily so that they are able to, you know, shake it off in the way that humans can?

It's pretty much the same kind of a process. The key is. And this is where the glitch comes in.

Yeah.

And this is what. When we started doing brain mapping on people, we did a brain map prior to them going through our program and then after.

Okay.

And one of the things that we saw in the brain map is the occipital lobe at the back of the brain, which is a visual cortex.

Yeah.

That's what's processing information.

Yep.

People who are experiencing post traumatic stress, whether that came from a sexual assault or veterans. That occipital lobe is lit up. It's very active. So what does that mean? It means they're viewing something. So they're continuing to view the memory, and they're viewing it in real time. So once we get them through and we. So really the idea is I say we have to take that high definition memory that was stored about that traumatic event and get your mind to restore it into the same format as to what you ate for dinner last night. Take the intensity out of it. So we're not eliminating the memory. We're not doing. What Henry Molaison did was eliminate the memories.

Right, right.

What we're doing is taking. We're going from like the wizard of Oz was shot in black and white and then colorized. We're doing the opposite. We're going from the color version to the black and white version, and then it won't activate the nervous system.

Yeah, no. I get that from trauma from the past. But if it happened to someone this morning, are there tools that they can use? I mean, I think God Gave us tools for us to, to be able to normally process and heal so that it doesn't get stuck in us. Are there things people can do to ensure it's not suppressed and stuck or it's not destined to be stuck? Right. Like what are the best practices?

And that's what I'm saying. The earlier you can get to it, the better. But it's the same kind of process. The best thing to do in that kind of a situation is to work with somebody who's a professional. Because your mind will not want to process that traumatic memory. Yeah, it's still highly stressed. So if you just tried on your own to say, okay, I'm going to try to get this through my mind, I'm going to try to get through all of this, you're going to be in a very high beta brainwave state trying to do that. What I do in, in my process, which you, you know about is I get them into a very safe place, an alpha brainwave state. And if you can do that really fast, really right after the brain will, exactly what you just said will process the same way as it will the old trauma. It'll take that high definition memory and process it and take it out of high definition.

So I. So many questions or things I want to, I want. There's a lot of little angles I want to take here. But you know, for. Again, from my own experience, right after recently, right after I was assaulted by this man who stalked me for close to a mile, we now know, didn't realize it at the time, you know, passed me on a pedestrian bridge, turned around, put on a stocking cap, started following me from a distance until he went in and jumped me from behind. I mean, I was, despite all the growth and the tools that I have, I was in a heightened adrenaline state for 72 hours because I continued on my speaking engagements, which was not easy to do. But I decided I was speaking about, you know, living with bravery and not being, you know, held back by fear or traumatic events. I'm like, well, what am I going to do? Stay in my hotel and cry? I'm just going to come and serve and share with people. But I said to them, I'm in a heightened adrenaline state right now. I am going to have to process this and I will. And I'm committed to. And part of my accountability to do that was I ended up, you know, making a little video of myself a few hours after the assault happened when I was safe back in my hotel room. And I decided, you know what I'M going to post this on social media for two reasons. One is because a lot of people have been through awful things and I want to encourage them on their journey. And I just decided I'm going to share my journey, real time of processing and healing. The second was to hold myself accountable that I didn't contract and I didn't. When it got really uncomfortable, which it has, that I didn't have it get stuck in me, you know, in that. In that process. So that kind of, as we've gone through, you know, the very heightened state, I continued to travel and speak and then finally came home and collapsed and got sick. And it's been a bit of, you know, a journey since then to ensure that it's not gets gotten stuck in me. But one thing I want you. I definitely want you to explain the different brain waves really quick. But before I do that, before I forget, we have talked about sexual abuse and sexual assault and the things that so many people have come through. You've shared a beautiful. And you might not have it in front of you, but just the concept of he touched my body, but he didn't touch me. And I believe this is a spiritual element as well. Because the divine essence of who we are is not our bodies. This is just a physical vessel. But also our cells are regenerating over time. So if something happened in the distant past, like literally he didn't physically touch the same cells that are those body parts for you right now because they've regenerated. But can you just share? I just think this helps bring hope to people and a reminder to center themselves like that concept. Because I just really think it's a beautiful concept that they touched my body, but they didn't touch me. The divine essence of who I am.

Yeah. One of the things that I just wanted to mention about you as well. I think because you had so much knowledge, you were able to process that better than most. This is why this is so valuable. And what you can help people with is if you're aware that you can heal.

Yes.

Had you ever thought about that before? You knew everything. You know now you always would thought, I'm going to be a victim. I'm going to have to live with this for the rest of my life. And that's what I tell people. You don't have to live with this. This is an event that happened, that we can heal it. And the fact that you had that knowledge, I think was very powerful for you. You could still go out and talk because you knew I'm going to fix it.

I'm going to, I'm going to be healed. I'm not a victim. This is not going to stop me. Exactly. This is actually going to be for good in a, in a bizarre way. People may not understand that there's a, you know, in the Old Testament, the story of Joseph and he says what others intended for evil, God used for good. And I see it as, you know, I did a past year review recently and every single day I reviewed what happened on the calendar in my photos and I identified whether it was a peak positive, peak negative or neutral day. And I mean this just happened to me what about eight weeks ago. And I actually was debating, well, was that a peak negative day the day I got attacked? Because technically I've turned it into positive and I'm going to help a lot of people. And then I was like, all right Martha, like let's get back down to earth. That was a peak negative day. I put it, I put it as a negative. Even though I've turned it into a positive. I'm not going to be like that, you know, you know, power of, you know, positive thinking that I'm not going to say being attacked is a negative thing. Right. So anyway, yeah, talk about, you know, your just the. You touched my body, but he didn't.

And this, this is one of the things that I feel is very, very important. For examp, I'll give you a quick example to a lady who came in and the first thing she did when she sat down she gave me this laundry list of all the things that had happened to her. She wanted to get all this out. And when she had finished, she be about 15 minutes, she was just going on and on about these different stories. And so I said to her, I said is there anything else? And she sort of looked at me.

And she isn't that enough?

That's exactly what she said. Isn't that a lot? And I said it is a lot. I said, however, for the last 15 minutes I've learned a lot about what happened to you, but I haven't learned anything about you. So let's start talking about who you are. And that's the concept with this is we're not our experiences, we're not a body, we're energy. Right. We have this energy and our essence, our light is who we are. Yes, that's what we're born with. And so when I talk to people who had a sexual assault, I'll give you an example of a little 12 year old girl who had really had Tremendous. I mean, it was horrible. They had to take her out of the home. It was family abuse, really bad. And so when I sat her down, as I said, repeat after me. I have a hand, I have a foot, I have a leg, I have a body. She repeats this with me.

Yeah.

I said, however, I'm not a body. The body I was born with doesn't exist. The body they touched no longer exists. They never touched my essence in my light.

Yes.

That's who I am. Right. That's always protected.

Yes.

And so I said, say this. They touched my body. They never touched me. She. Martha, she jumped up, right? She goes, they never touched me. I said, no, they never touched you. She goes, they touched my body, but they didn't touch me. That was so healing. Her mom was sitting outside and heard her laughing, and she's thinking, like, how can she be laughing? Because she knew what she was coming to talk about. She comes out, and as soon as she walks out the door, she says, and this is her adopted mom, not the mom from the family. She walks out, she goes, mom, they never touched me. And so strong, with such conviction.

Yes.

Right. And that's what everybody needs to understand. Yeah.

People need to realize. I talk about this all the time. It is my conviction to share with the world. What we say after the words I am is a declaration of who we are, of our identity, of our energy. It's spiritual, it's energetic, it's emotional. And it impacts our decisions, it impacts our outcomes in our lives. And we often answer, you know, I'm a fighter pilot. I'm a father, I'm a mother. That. No, no, that's not who you are. And so you're not the roles that you're in, those are important roles. You're not your body, you're not your feelings. Sometimes people will say, I am, you know, afraid. I am. No, no, you feel afraid.

Yeah.

I am is a deeper, deeper essence. It's the. It's the spirit that you were before you took on a body and will remain, you know, when you shed this body. And I'm not trying to get into religious beliefs here, but it's true. We each have that divine essence. And for anyone who's been through something difficult, connecting with that divine essence of who you truly are, and then this beautiful truth that whatever you have been through, they didn't touch you. Oh, that's powerful.

It really. It really is. And you just see people when I take them through that, and that's why I always what I'll ask them Beforehand. Can you tell me about a time in your life that you were outdoors, you were somewhere in nature, and you just saw this magnificent event? Yeah, I have them describe it. And this is before I ever get into that.

Yeah.

So I say what was happening in that moment. So, you know, people say Grand Canyon. Oh, I was at the Grand Canyon. I saw the sunset.

And that's when you feel.

Yeah, that's who. That's when you recognized who you are.

Touch the divine.

That's your essence in your light. That's the energy in you. And as Albert Einstein said, energy can never be destroyed. Energy lives on forever. And so your energy will live on. Your body will die. It's designed to die. Right. But your energy never dies. And that's why whenever I think about my parents or anybody who's passed away, I never feel sad. I know their energy still exists. Right. And.

And I just want to say that whole. He touched my body, but he didn't touch me. That was impactful for me after this last assault because, I mean, he molested me all over my body as I fought him off and was able to get him off and stop something much worse from happening. But that is violating. And even though I have all the tools, cerebrally, spiritually, you know, emotionally to move forward, that was a part of my processing. Just to be, like, reminding myself and grounding myself. Like, he did not take anything from me. He didn't take anything. And so. Thank you. I think that's beautiful. And I know that's going to help a lot of people.

Yeah.

Can we talk about brain waves in layman's terms here so people can understand a little bit about alpha, beta, theta, and. And then we'll get into everybody's. Tune in. We'll get into, like. I want to talk about what's broken with the current mental health system and medical system. This will be controversial. And then get into, like, what can be done, like the. The hope for healing for people and freedom.

Perfect. So what we do is we do brain mapping with people. So we. You have basically four brainwave states. There's a fifth state that people will say gamma. But I'm going to talk about the four ones that are really operating on a consistent basis. You have beta, which is running about 15-30Hz or cycles per second. So think of it as if you're on a bike. You're riding pretty fast, you're processing a lot of data. And Beta, when you move into Alpha, you're between 7 and 14 Hertz or cycles per second. So that's where the mind is very relaxed but very focused. That's where you want to be living. You know, when you're in an alpha brainwave state, you're super relaxed and focused. They believe Albert Einstein lived in that state a lot. There's where. That's the flow state.

Okay.

Want to be in flow?

Yeah.

When you go into theta, theta is between 4 and 7 hertz. And when you go to sleep at night and you start to dream, you're in a dominant theta brainwave state.

Yep, Yep.

And when you go below 4 hertz, you move into delta and delta is dreamless sleep. And that's where the maintenance is getting done. Okay. So that's that deep sleep. If you're not now, if you've got a lot of trauma, here's where the issue comes in.

You're not going to get deep sleep.

The mind is still processing trauma from your childhood. It's not okay with it and it wants to fix it. It just doesn't understand it can't fix it. It's seeing it in real time. So if there was a real threat, doesn't it make sense that your system would get activated? It makes perfect sense. Memory is seen as real, so it keeps activating your nervous system and your mind's trying to fix it. So ever since you were 12, your mind had been trying to say, don't let dad die. Do something. We can see it. I had a young lady come in, 12 years of age. She had been Baker acted three times for suicide attempts. And they. So when we sat down, they said, we don't know what to do. The father had to get his work to allow him to stay home. They pulled her out of school. They couldn't leave her alone. And so when we went back over the her childhood, what happened is when she was five, her mother died. And then her father remarried a year later and had two more children. So she was one of three.

Okay.

And her, her mom was a great mom. She loved her mom. No problem with that. Yeah. But what had happened was, is she says, I remember when I was five, I didn't know why everybody was crying. I thought, my mom's coming back. Right? Why is everybody so sad? This is what a five year old's interpreting all of a sudden, probably when she was 11, 12, it hit her, mom's not coming back. The subconscious realized this isn't working. And so there's where I said, I don't believe you ever wanted to take your life. You wanted to stop the pain.

Yes.

Right. Your mind Couldn't fix it. It kept trying to fix it. And so if your mind's constantly calling you into an action, do something, do something. Don't let it happen. But you can't resolve it. Your brain's going to try to come up with a way to stop the pain. And because your subconscious operates in real time, it sees no consequences to actions. It can't see time.

Yeah.

So suicide was a resource.

Wow.

Stop the pain. And I said, that's not what you were trying to do. You were trying to stop the pain. Once we got to the root of what it was, then we were able to process that for her. And so she was able to go back to school. They didn't have to watch her, but that's why they. Baker acted her, because she was threatening suicide.

Wow. Wow. And that showed up on my lap here. And he's snoring out loud, so in.

Case we can hear him.

All right, good. Wow.

So those are the kinds of things that people. If you at the awareness, once we get to understand. Like, for example, when people come in and they say, I'm depressed. And I'll say, tell me what you're angry about. And they go, well, I'm not angry, I'm depressed. And I go, depression's anger.

Yeah. It's actually just protecting you from the.

Anger and trying to get you into an action.

Yeah.

Don't let something happen. Fix it. So if your mind keeps calling you into an action by using anger, but you never answer the call, how does your mind protect you? It shuts down. It goes into a depressed state. Depression is the absence of emotions.

So your mind came up with a way to protect you.

Yeah. Well. And so many people, they're using addictions to stop the pain. Right. We're. We're just. We're looking for ways to stop the pain, even if it's not consciously. And again, I think back to my own experiences. I was using. Running was a release for me. Exercise. And there are many positive attributes to that. But I also would sometimes, like, run, run, run, run, run. You know, like force Gump. Like, run. To basically, like, numb myself and, like, shut some of the volatility down. So things can be positive, but to an extreme, they actually can be. Exercise is like a socially acceptable addiction. Right. It's not. It's not the way people are, you know, would view drug abuse or alcoholism. But the reality is it's a pain problem, and people are trying to stop the suffering. They got the glitch going on, and they're just trying to soothe themselves, which is why they're going to these other substances. I'm simplifying it.

But 100. Right. What you were doing was chemically changing your brain, which is what they do with medication.

Yeah.

But you were doing it naturally. Everybody, I mean, thank God you, you went that route.

Yeah.

You were doing. What you weren't able to do yet is shut the pain off. So you came up with a resource, a brilliant resource to chemically change your brain. Just like a drug, it's going to help, but it's not going to last. Exactly.

So he's going to keep running. So I'm running marathons and I'm running Iron Man. Like just keep going again. It, it has benefits when brought into balance that if you're needing, you know, getting outside to de. Stress, to process, like with, again, within balance. You know, exercise can be something that's important for you, but to an extreme it was just helping me, helping me cope.

Well, what's amazing, I had a lady come in, seven years on heroin. She said to me, I told my therapist I was coming in to see you, and he told me, I have to be honest with you and let you know up front that I have self destructive behavior. So I just smiled at her and I said, really? What would make you think you're self destructive? And she looks at me, she goes, I'm sticking a needle in my arm with heroin. You don't think that's self destructive?

Oh my God.

I said, no, it's not. I says, I think you're trying to feel better. When you stuck the needle in your arm, you felt better. She goes, yeah. I said, that's what you're trying to do now. The substance is destructive. You're not destructive. Your mind wants a solution to the pain. And the heroine provided the solution to the pain. When does it want the pain to stop? Now.

Now? Yeah.

Does it see a consequence to that? No, it has no connection to time. So it solved the problem now? Right now?

Yeah.

That's why you get stuck. Addiction is a code. It's not a disease. So the more you repeat it. The second memory system that Boomer has and we have, is that associative repetitive memory?

Yeah.

The more you repeat it, you're building a code. And so then your brain says, what do we do when we feel this pain? Do we have a resource? Oh, yes, we do. It goes to the code and then you can't stop it. Yep.

And this is, you know, so many people. I mean, thank God, other than running, I've not had this challenge. But so many people struggle with addiction. They're like, today, I'm not going to do it. And then they just continue to do the behavior that they were willing, that they weren't going to do because they need relief from the suffering. Our good friend Joe Polish is very passionate about this and has the foundation, genius recovery and the intent to, you know, d. You know.

Destigmatize addiction in order to be able to help people because they're just trying to soothe their pain. So, again, that's what I say to them.

It's not about your morals, character, willpower, ethics. It's about pain. And pain is the greatest motivator to stop something. Our minds don't like to be in pain. And it will figure out whatever it can. That's how people can do sometimes what looks like a crazy thing you'd say, why are you going and doing that? Right. Well, it's not the logical part of the brain. If the logical part of the brain was in charge, there would never be an addictive person.

Of course. Yeah. That's just not survival. It's a survival part. Yeah.

Yeah.

So what do you. There's so many people out there who are in mental health counseling, therapy because they went that route because they really want to help people. They went through their own experiences maybe, and out of compassion. They wanted to be, you know, a vessel of healing and grateful for their intention. But the system is broken. From my view, our mental health system is broken. And.

You know, people feeling like if I. I want to give them hope. We've talked a lot about what's, you know, what's happening and what's glitching and, and, and what we do in order to stop our pain. But now let's move forward with hopeful, like, okay, what do I do about it? And I think of people at the beginning of the year, they're thinking about, like, I want change now. I'm tired of the life that I'm living. And then they think like, oh, what am I doing? Am I signing up for decades of, you know, therapy? And the cost, the. What it. You know, what that means. There's different modalities and, and, and, and paths that people can take. But the system right now, from my view, is. Keeps people stuck in their symptoms. The mental health system doesn't even address trauma as a. Any sort of diagnosis, which is crazy. You know, to. Most of the roots of these issues are trauma. But they keep trying to rearrange dexterity chairs on the, you know, sinking, you know, Titanic as opposed to getting to the root issue behind the manifestations, from my view, is. Keeps people stuck in their symptoms. The mental health system doesn't even address trauma as a. Any sort of diagnosis, which is crazy. You know, to. Most of the roots of these issues are trauma, but they keep trying to rearrange deck chairs on the, you know, sinking, you know, Titanic, as opposed to getting to the root issue behind the manifestations or putting people on medicine and just trying to shut them down so that they're on drugs. So can you just share, give people hope? What is it that you're doing to be able to help people? What does it look like, you know, how can they find healing and freedom?

It's. It's. I think the advantage for me is I came in as an entrepreneur to fix a problem for my daughter. So even though I had to go through all the education of it, I said, it's not working. Nobody had really helped my daughter.

Yeah.

Did they care about helping my daughter? Sure they did. They're caring people. They got into the profession because they want to help.

Their motives and intentions are good for the most part. I would say there are exceptions, probably, but.

Yeah, but if you're trained one way and the whole system is training you one way, you can't. Like, for example, with the doctor who. With my daughter, she had a cyst formed on her ovary. He comes in, he has to remove the cyst in the ovary that actually came because of the overuse of steroids, which I just started to find out of my research. But after he. He removed it, he said, comes in the room, and he goes, I don't understand this. Your chart says you have Crohn's. And she goes, yeah, I have Crohn's. He goes, there's no evidence you have Crohn's. She goes, no, I haven't had a flare up in a while. He goes, but you're not on medication for Crohn's. She goes, no, I don't take medication. He couldn't. He said, well, he said, I hate to tell you this. You've never had Crohn's. And she goes, no, I've had four resections done. And so he goes, well, Crohn's doesn't go away. So I explained to him that I.

Believe that according to his med school training.

Yeah. And he's a smart guy. Doesn't go through med school. Right. Because he's an idiot.

Right.

So he's. He's got a lot of really good training. Unfortunately, it's wrong. So nobody had ever shown him that the trauma creates the inflammation which then compromises the system. So once we get to. And but then the problem was, once I discovered that is, what are we going to do about the trauma now?

Yeah.

So the key is to be able to get the trauma out of that high definition into a format that you can recall it. So one of the most extreme examples, I worked with a US army sniper who said, you know, he shot and killed a 12 year old boy. He said, I can't live with myself for eight years. He'd be in the VA just medicated. And so. But I took him through the whole program and what he said was, how can I talk about this now and I'm not shaking and crying. He says, what did you do? And I said, I didn't do anything. It's your own system. Reset took the high definition memory into a format that you can now process without activating your nervous system. I said, for eight years your mind has been trying to get you not to pull the trigger because it thought you were shooting a 12 year old boy. So when he tried to talk about it, what is his mind looking at? I'm pulling the trigger and shooting this boy. And what does his mind say? Stop it.

Shut down.

Yeah, don't do it. Well, he can't not do it. He already did it eight years earlier. So there's where the glitch comes in that I talk about. Now here's where the issue comes in for traditional therapy. If you have a memory like that, a high definition memory, what brainwave state were you in? Beta.

Beta.

Yeah, high beta. Tremendous amounts of data coming into that memory. So you go in and sit down and talk to your therapist and you, they start wanting to talk to you about this.