Your Brain and Addiction with Jamie Hess [Ep #16]

Welcome to my podcast, you Must Be out of youf Mind. My name is Dr. Don Wood. I use my knowledge of neuroscience to create what I call a memory reset. This reduces and eliminates the impact of trauma. I can't wait to share with you how the impossible is possible and why you Must Be out of youf Mind. So welcome to another episode of youf Must Be out of youf Mind. And as you know, we always bring on great guests. It provides some amazing insights. And I have another great guest today. We all fell in love with her when we met her here a few weeks ago. It's Jamie Hess. And Jamie, welcome to you Must Be out of youf Mind.

Well, thanks for having me. And the feeling was very mutual. I'm like, actually jealous. I'm seeing you sitting there. I'm like, bring me back soon enough. Soon enough.

Soon enough. Yep. Yep. So I'm just here in sunny Florida and Jamie had come down and to experience the program that we do at the Aspire Performance Institute. And then we are going to be doing a retreat together. So doing what you do as well, adding that in with what our program is, which I think is going to be an amazing experience for people. So can you share a little bit about what you do and the message that you are helping people with?

Yeah. Thanks so much for asking. It's a really. It's my favorite topic. It's my favorite thing to talk about, but it kind of like I have to go back to go forward. So I'm going to start a little bit at the beginning, which is the fact that, that I truly didn't know that it was my calling to help people change their behavior until I was called to change my own. And I've shared with you some of my struggles with darkness and addiction. It's been ever present throughout my life, but it's something that I know I'm constantly a work in progress. And the first time that I really put a pin in what was going On, I was 23 years old. I was living in New York City. I had the life I had always dreamed of. I had the fancy job and public relations. I was like this it girl. And I was hopelessly addicted to drugs. Like, I could not hardly get out of my apartment, let alone show up for work properly. So I had this whole life that was pretty much my dream. And I had this white light moment of clarity, which I had, by the way, several times again in the years since. I think we're constantly these just circular versions of ourselves where I just said, if Nothing changes. Nothing changes, Right? We have to take these honest assessments maybe every couple of years. At that time, I knew this is too much for me to handle alone. I reached out for help. I called the one person I knew who had gotten sober. I mean, he brought me to my first 12 step meeting. And for me, 12 step recovery in the beginning really worked. It really helped a lot. And I got sober and life was really good for several years. And then I had babies and my life that had gotten so big kind of just rolled on and recovery took a back seat and life took the, you know, the driver's seat and I had what we would call slip. It's funny, in 12 step recovery they call slip, Sobriety loses its priority. And that's exactly what it was, right?

Yeah.

And the slip wasn't with drugs, though, it was with food. And so for the first time, I realized I was using something again addictively.

But it wasn't substances, it was food. I was self medicating with food. Now what I realized in that moment was this crazy double standard that we have as a society. I had really no problem raising my hand and saying, I'm a drug addict, because it's pretty common. I mean, at least in the year, you know, we're here, here we are in 2022. You're an alcoholic, you're a drug addict, you just, you go to your boss, you say, I need to go to rehab, I need some time off. The family medical Leave act will cover you. It's against the law to fire you. It shouldn't be so shameful. But imagine going to that same boss and saying, I cannot put down the fork. I can't close the refrigerator door.

Right.

We giggle when we even say it because it seems so silly, but it's so not. And so I realized the parallel lines between addiction and addiction. Addiction is addiction.

Yeah.

Once I got kind of essentially sober for my issues with food, which were not small, it wasn't like I was having a couple extra, you know, nibbles of candy here and there. I was suffering with binge eating disorder, bulimia. They're pretty big issues. And once I reach out my hand for help and I kind of started going through a recovery process, I realized recovery is recovery, it's all the same thing.

Yep.

That's what led me to, at that point, I was already a fitness and wellness influencer online known as NYC Fit Fam. And I realized I had to stop just espousing what essentially was toxic positivity. You know, that's what we do on Instagram. I'm fit. You can be too. Look at me. This is what I do. And it's like bullshit. Behind it all, I was crumbling, right? So I realized what I really had to do was start standing up in my truth and telling people. Look, I really struggled and I'm still figuring it out. But I've really put some methodologies around this and it's very akin to the way I got sober the first time, because I believe we change mindsets in very kind of similar ways. And I created a coaching program called the Big Ask. And what it essentially is, Don, is hyper local accountability. Same as you would have a sponsor and a peer to peer support system in say aa, you have, you have to reach out to somebody in your network, in a loved one, someone in your community. Because essentially when we're in the grips of something like that, we can't do it alone. So when women come to me, by and large, they come to me with these really casual problems. I don't know, I just have a sweet tooth. I don't know, I just want to lose five pounds. And then I dig in and I say, well, Susan, how long, how long have you felt like this? Well, it's really been since I was about 14. Meanwhile, Susan's 58, you know what I mean? And it's just been this monkey on my back and I haven't stopped thinking about it. And I go through bouts with binge eating and I've never told anyone that. And there's so much shame and a lot of it comes from trauma and all of this stuff. And it's like we trivialize the issue with food and we tell people that they should just be able to fix it on their own or use a little app or take a little walk. This is like deep emotional work. And it really does take, you know, a peer to peer network or a support system and accountability. Because if you could have done it on your own, Susan, my dear, you would have done it sometime between the age of 14 and 58. But if nothing changes, nothing changes. So my community, the Big Ask community, is really based around accountability and helping people recover from not just food shame, but all sorts of kind of isms, I call them, right? We have, we all have our isms.

Well, what's, what's amazing is if somebody looks at you right now, they're going to say, there's no way this lady had a problem with any of that. You don't look like that, right? And so what I think is so great is that you're able to share that because of all that shame and guilt that gets around it. I could see how. How easily people will want to stay in that image and don't let anybody, you know, know anything about my faults or know the things that I struggled with. It's amazing that you're able to do that, because I think it gives so many people hope that they can also, you know, get through it and without help. Right. It is. It's almost impossible. Like I always talk about, I use sports as, you know, I'm a big sports guy.

Yeah.

Why does Tiger woods have a coach?

Right, Right.

He's the best golfer of all time. But there's the little things that he needs somebody to point out to him that he can't see that he's doing wrong. And if you don't have somebody there to help point those things out and, you know, nobody's going to tell Tiger anything or get mad at him, but at the same time, they can say, hey, Tiger, here's what I noticed. And if Tiger is smart, which he is, he takes interested that and says, yeah, I want to improve. So it's the same thing.

I mean, if Tiger's smart, he hopes that somebody will yell at him and tell him what he's really doing wrong because. So I'm also a horseback rider. And there was nothing that used to annoy me more because I was a professional for several years than when somebody would be helping me. You know, we call. We call it help from the ground. You know, when someone's helping you, training you from the ground, someone helping me on the ground. And they would just say, oh, you're doing great. Doing great, doing great. Because they don't want to give you because you're a professional. They. They feel. They feel weird. Don't placate me. That's not helping me. That's not helping me get better. And that's the same way I am with my women in my community. You know, if you want someone to pat you on the back and tell you it's totally okay that you. It is okay that we have slips, fine. Of course, you're a human being. But if you want me to tell you that you can keep doing the things you've always done and. And somehow get different results, that's not the message that I'm delivering. So I really think that the reason, Dom, that I've been successful also, is because I total align. I'm this nice little gray area between, put on your big girl panties and let's like, suit up and show up and then also give yourself grace. Right. Because you're a human being, and it's okay. And, like, it really is okay. So stop beating yourself up. You're not a bad person trying to get good. You're a sick person trying to get well. Right. Because I used to really think, you know, I would tell my stories about, you know, having a terrible cocaine binge in my 20s. Like, I would laugh it off. But if you wanted me to actually get honest, that a box of Girl Scout cookies brought me down in the middle of the night in my own pantry, I was mortified. We got to, like, change that. I'm here to disrupt that, because that's actually garbage, and it's keeping people really sick in the shadows.

And it's all coming from the same thing. It's coming from pain. Yeah, they've had pain somewhere that they're trying to ease. And that pain could be coming from trauma. It could be coming from a number of different areas. But I always talk to people who, you know, are into drugs or alcohol or whatever it is. If it's eating, I'll just say this says nothing about your character, morals, willpower, ethics. It's about pain. The brain will do whatever it can do to get out of pain. And because your subconscious mind doesn't see consequences, because it only operates in the present, when does it want pain to stop? Now. And if it has a Girl Scout cookie and you feel better, mission accomplished. Right. And if you take another one and another one, it doesn't see that. Oh, well, hold on. The logical, reasonable part of your mind can say, this isn't good. Right. This is going to put weight on me. But the logical part of your mind is overridden by pain. The survival brain will always take the command. So it overrides the system and will keep you on that path to stop you feeling bad. Simple as that.

And that's why I use accountability, which is a really good framework to have in place to try to. Because you can't override your own system right in the immediate. So having another person there to help you at least, you know, put a little bit of a kibosh on the bad behavior is very helpful. But.

The big but what if I could go one click up and actually address the subconscious mind? And that's why when I met you, I was like, oh, my gosh, if we worked together, if we found a way to do some work with some people together, the magic that we could have. Because what you do and what you did for me and let Me also. Share this with your listeners.

We had talked about doing a retreat together, and I was super keen to do it because I did see the value of potentially bringing our people together and our programs together. But I said, I have to go through the work first. I have to understand what you do, and I have to do your program. So I did come down to you, of course, in Orlando, Florida, and I went through the brain mapping and the trauma clearing and all of the exercises, and it was truly transformative. It was. I completely understand now what you mean when you say resetting the code, like resetting the code in our brain. I have so many women who have been trying for such a long time really to take my advice. But despite themselves, they keep going back to the old behaviors. They'll ask for the help with accountability. Then they'll figure out how to wiggle their way out of it, which, by the way, like, we all do. I used to do it with drugs and alcohol. I would throw away the drugs and ask somebody to not let me call the dealer. And then I would sneak into the other room behind that person's back and quietly dial the phone. That's like the lizard brain taking over, right? My brain's like, I want it, I want it now. Fix it. But what you do is so. I mean, the way that you described it, the systematic way you described it, when you're like, your brain's just kind of short circuiting, you're pressing like the M key on the keyboard and it's typing a B, like, we just need to fix it. It's a code. And I was like, yeah. So if I could take some of these women down that I've been trying to help, and they've been making their best effort with my program. But some of these women are deeply wounded and they really need a next level of support. And the opportunity that's in front of me that I can bring some of these women who I cherish and I've been working with for a long time, that they're going to come down with me to see you and do some of this deep trauma clearing work and then leave with a game plan and marching orders from me. It fills my heart with so much joy to think of what their lives will be as as early as February of next year. Like, I can hardly wait for them.

And it's so true. Because if you don't get to the root cause, what you're doing is painting over rust. And it's great paint, right? But the rust will bubble up through the paint. So what we're going to do when we do this retreat together, this is the kind of work that I think is so great, because what you're doing is so valuable. The only issue they're having is they can't override it. And they can't override it because of the way our brains work. It's a system overload. So what we're going to do is sand it down, prime it, and then put your paint on it, and then it will stick.

So much. Yeah, I love that so much. You know, and it's so, it's so interesting. And, you know, from speaking to people every day, I speak to women who really believe the things that they're saying. They'll say to me, here's the plan. I'm going to get up every day next week at 5:00am and I'm going to do Barry's Boot Camp at 5:30, and then I'm going to do Soul Cycle at 6:30, and then I'm going to eat broccoli all day. And like, week after week after week, they believe it. Like, they believe that they're going to do it. And then they're let down time and time again, and they just can't break the cycle. Even if they ask somebody for help, they just, in those moments where it's just me, myself and I, they cannot change their behavior. And at a certain point, as a coach, as a wellness coach, what I can do is hold their feet to the fire. I can stay in their, you know, their text message, their DMs, their inbox. My program is very high touch coaching, so I am literally texting with them for accountability all day, every day, and on the phone with them. But imagine, imagine they were able to hold themselves to the things that they wanted to do because they weren't overtaken by their own brain leading them astray. That is what I want for these women, and I am so excited for this. We could maybe talk a little bit about when and what it is, because I think it's really so cool what we're doing.

It's, it's, it's gonna, I think it's gonna be a transformative event. I love what you're doing. What we're doing together is going to be very powerful. I had a pastor tell me one time, which is same kind of thing he said to me. He goes, for the first time now I understand I'm pastoring people. And they're looking at me going, yes, pastor, yes. That's who I want to be. Yes, that's what I'm going to do. And then they go right back to their old behavior. And I go, I didn't get my message through. No, your message got through. It got overridden. Right. By the more powerful survival brain that thinks we're going to die if we don't keep up this behavior because it becomes safe with it, even though it's not right. But you can't override that logically. No matter. I don't care who you are. You have to get to the root. And if you get to the root, then what you're teaching them is going to be very powerful.

You got to pull out the weed. One of the analogies I always use is, you know, if you were trying to fill up a barrel with clean water, clean, fresh drinking water, would you just pour in that water over the dirty mud water at the bottom, or would you dump the mud water out first and then fill the barrel with clean, fresh water? You. You dump out the mud water. That's what you do. And so I love that. And so I'm very excited. You know, this retreat, of course, is going to be February 2nd through 5th. I'm also very excited just to bring people down to your center and your community. I was so impressed with the area that you're in, the area of Lake Nona. I think an entire area dedicated to health and health research and wellness is so forward thinking. And the stuff that I experienced just right there where your offices are, I don't know that I've ever seen anything like it. The. What was the thing that I went in the theta. What was that?

Theta unit.

Yeah, that was the trick. Can I tell you, that was the trippiest thing I ever experienced. Maybe you could tell people what that is.

Yeah, basically it's you. You lie in it and closes you inside it. But you have headphones on, you have goggles, and so you're going to be listening to music. And at the same time, we've got lights. And the lights are basically getting your mind to process. And you spin and you didn't feel it spinning, right? Because you don't really feel it spinning.

And I mean, look, Dr. Don, as somebody who's taken plenty of psychedelics in my life, okay, in a former yesteryear, I literally, I went home, I told my husband it was trippier than anything I ever experienced on drugs, but, like, in a calm way, obviously not in any sort of a bad way or where there's residuals. But for those 15, 20 minutes, I. It was like almost an out of body experience in the most relaxing way. It was hypnotic, I guess, is how I would say.

Yeah, because it puts you into a theta brainwave state. And theta is about 4-7 Hz or cycles per second. It's basically where you're just about in sleep state and so. But your mind is very, very calm and relaxed and it's processing. So we put you in the theta unit after you did the four hour session to get your mind to continue speeding up the process of all the information that we went through during your session. And that's the purpose of it. And it's very relaxing. It calms you down, but it also processes a lot of information. And you don't even know it's spinning. It doesn't even feel like it puts you into. Did it feel like 30 minutes?

No, no.

A lot of people come out and say that couldn't have been 30 minutes. I wasn't in there for more than five minutes. Because it suspends time when you're in that state. You know, when you're sleeping, you have no idea how long you've been asleep. It's the same thing. You're in theta when you're sleeping.

It's so wild. And the fact that we're bringing people to your home base is very exciting to me because usually when I'm bringing people on a retreat, it's kind of ad hoc. You know, we're, we're at the mercy of the resort. If they have yoga, great, then we do yoga. If they have Pilates, okay, then we do pilates. But we are specifically bringing people to where you reside, where you are doing your clinical work. And the fact that they're going to get to come there. That to me is very exciting. So I really like the mix that we're bringing people of. Kind of like fun in the sun, like a luxe resort. And it's going to be really lovely. But then also you're going to literally walk away a completely different human being. That's a pretty big promise.

Yeah. And you definitely can. A lot of people will tell you that, you know, I'm broken, I'm defeated. You know, I've done everything, nothing's ever worked for me. But this is a cutting edge neuroscience approach to it. We're going to reset the way your mind is being working because until you reset it, it's going to continue to operate with the codes that you built. And those codes are being set by traumatic events and experiences as well as habits and behaviors. And the habits and behaviors get set by the trauma. And so what the person is trying to do when they've had a traumatic event is trying to stop the pain. They're reliving it all the time. So people who get into, like you were talking about with, you know, any kind of drugs or alcohol or anything like that is not about character, it's about a pain issue. The mind wants to be out of pain now and it will do whatever it has to do to stop pain now. And so once we reset that and there's no more pain now your mind can stay present. And if you read all the self help books, they'll say be present, be in the moment. But our minds don't naturally work like that. You have to go through a process to get it to it and that's what you're going to learn. And then when you give them your expertise and your guidance, it can stick.

It can stick. And so I'll tell you what I do with, with people. And it's, it's relatively simple, although it's a simple program for complicated people. And what I do, because I take women on in two ways. I do an eight week group boot camp where we meet once a week on Zoom and then we have an accountability group throughout the week and I'm coaching them live kind of seven days a week. But we have this one session where we go through a curriculum of eight different sessions. Then I have my one on one coaching and that's 12 weeks. And it's extremely head touch. Like I said, both ways. We're essentially building new healthy habits. Like I unpack their why to the best of my ability. We're kind of going through triggers. You don't like that word, but that's a word that I use. Activation activators. Yes, the things that are activating their mind to want more. Right, sure. So activators and understanding what type of. And of course those are not just particular foods. Right. It's an emotion. It's a geographical place. It's your favorite armchair where you always eat your crackers and cheese. Right. It's jeopardy. Where you always have your glass of wine, whatever, you know what I mean? Like those habits we have throughout the day, I figure it out. We figure out what's, what is going to, you know, trip them up and we start to unveil or, you know, change their behavior. We build the new healthy habits. They have accountability to me first. So we have seven days a week of mindful movement. And that's a mix of some, you know, sweaty cardio and other things. And Then we have a nutrition plan. They stick to that with me for the first half of the program, and then I do the hard work of starting the process of making their ask. Now, it sounds pretty simple, like, how do you make an ask of someone in your life? You just. You just go and ask them. Right?

Right.

I think if it were that easy, I mean, we would all just do it, but we probably all have tried to do it at some point. I mean, you can imagine any wife going to her husband, you know, Gary, will you help me? Just, I need. I need to lose 10 pounds or I just need to stop eating, you know, Tostitos. Or I just. Will you help me just get back to the gym next month? That's incredibly vague. Gary doesn't know what the hell you're talking about. Gary does not want side eye and he does not want to be the cookie police. Like, you didn't make an ask. You didn't ask a question. That's a vague request based on a moment of not feeling good about yourself that you kind of threw in his direction. And then somehow it's going to be his fault because so often delegation becomes abdication. Right? Well, I asked him. He didn't help me because you didn't ask him for anything specific. So I go through a process with women where we map out what is it that you need help with, what are those activators, what is the problem? And then we actually do a script. We write a script. So you are prepared to make that ask. We role play it in the big ask. Because you might lose your nerve. Gary might look at you funny because he's like, not really sure where this is going or you might feel judged. You have to learn just like you would do in media training. You got to get up there with your confidence and be ready because this is a very important moment. I also have my women lead to their vulnerability story. The same story I just told you about the drugs.

Had I called my friend Rex, that was the guy who was sober and just said, hey, Rex, I've been. I'm having some issues. And I'd kind of downplayed it because I was embarrassed. I don't know, it's kind of like I'm kind of having some issues. Do you think I, you know, maybe I try that, like, recovery thing? He'd probably be like, oh, yeah, sure. I'd be happy to talk to you about it sometime. I'm actually on my way to work, though. Can we talk next week? But when I called him and I was like, I'm like on death's door. I've been up all night. I don't think I can, you know, go an hour without using these drugs. And I'm sick and suffering. Can you help me? He was like, I will be there in an hour.

Beautiful.

The level of vulnerability that you have to have if you want to make a serious ask, it's pretty high. So I coach women to actually get ready to share their story. And when it comes to food.

We tend to giggle. We get really embarrassed. It's really hard to tell Gary that. That my. Our hypothetical husband. That when it's 9pm and it's just you and your freezer and there's a pint of Ben and Jerry's or two, that's a battle royale that you're on the losing end of every time. And they'll giggle through it like, oh, it's Ben and Jerry's. It's so silly. It's not silly. It's. It's ruling your life. And it's been doing it for too long. And it's time. It's time to say enough is enough. So that conversation, as difficult as it is and can be, I really help them, like, prime the pump. Because if they don't go in there guns blazing, Gary really doesn't know what he's being asked, and he really doesn't know how much you need help. So we go in with a really targeted ask. And our women leaving our retreat after our weekend, they will have a clear call to action. So they can then leverage their newly cleared brain. Right. Their reset brain, their cleared trauma, and their ability to think clearly and operate more holistically. And then they'll actually have a plan of action to carry it out.

Yeah. And that's the key, right. Is you've got to have an act. I love what you're saying is make it very specific because you're right. It's very easy to go to somebody and say, can you help? You know, and then they say, sure. And then you say, okay, good. And then, you know, then Gary turns around and says, you know, I can help you stop eating Ben and Jerry's, but that doesn't mean I have to stop eating Ben and Jerry doesn't. Right. So you have to be really clear on the plan, otherwise.

And by the way, he doesn't have to stop eating the Ben and Jerry's, but he might need to stop eating it in front of you. Like there's, you know, because you're not asking anybody else to change their life. That's their journey to take, unless they want to. That's great. But they don't have to. But there might be a concession that he has to make so you're a little more comfortable. And if that means, like, in my house, the Ben and Jerry specifically is one of those concessions. I have two little kids. They like ice cream. That's okay. But we decided to get a second fridge freezer out in our garage. And did you know that on Amazon, you can buy a lock for your freezer? It's like 10 bucks. And I asked my husband, I said, you know, ice cream was my binge food back when I was bulimic. You're traveling a lot for work. I don't feel totally comfortable having ice cream in our freezer because even though it's been a really long time since I did that, I don't want to have to do mental gymnastics when you're traveling. Should I? Shouldn't I? Should I? Shouldn't. I could get away with it. That's what my brain does to me after all this time. I haven't acted out in that way in many years. After all this time, he leaves the door, the garage door shuts, and I'm like, what can I get away with? My brain is just wired that way, you know? And so in order to help me take that one off my plate so I don't have to do those mental gymnastics or jump through those hoops, you know what he does when he leaves? He locks up the darn ice cream in a stupid outside freezer and puts the key somewhere, and I don't have to worry about it. So those are simple things. But you know what? Most people would be too embarrassed to say, could you lock the ice cream in the freezer? Because it doesn't feel like you should need to. But somehow it would be okay if we would say, hey, I don't feel comfortable when you keep beer in the fridge, if you're trying to not drink alcohol. But you should have the same type of grace with food, because it's just that hard, if not harder, because we actually have to eat. We can't abstain from food. So we're still triggered all the time.

Yeah. And again, people look at it as a weakness, but it's not a weakness. It's the way our brain works. Our brain is going to create actions through emotions, through feelings, through sensations. That's just the way it operates. And if it has pain, it wants to stop the pain. And so what did you use before that worked? And that's what your mind is going to find. So you traded, you know, the drugs for food, right? But it was the same thing. That could have been shopping, you know, that could have been a thousand different things. There's a guy, a very famous guy, Dr. Gabor, mate, I don't know if you ever heard of him.

I've heard of him, yes.

Yeah. He had a shopping addiction for classic music.

And he talked about it was so compulsive that he could be in the middle of an operation. He was a doctor and he would excuse himself to go to a record store to get that special record.

Oh, my God.

Yeah. Now this is a guy who's highly functioning. He's a doctor, he's doing an operation, right? It's not some guy that's falling down on the street, you know, with, you know, looking for a needle, right. This is somebody who, you know, people can be very high functioning and strong and come from great backgrounds, have great families, have all, all those misconceptions have to get thrown out. We have to start throwing away that belief that there's something, you know, wrong with this person or their upbringing or. No, I mean, they can get into that very easily.

Well, it's so funny. A girlfriend of mine had heard my TED Talk. I just did a TedX recently and she had stumbled across it on the Internet.

Oh, it was great, by the way. It was really good. I enjoyed it so much. Yeah, I love it. You, you, you told the story so well that people could so relate, you know, if they have any of those kinds of issues. You were so real. That's what I loved about it. It was genuine.

I really appreciate that. This gal I had actually grown up with and she had brought me to my first rave, which was my, you know, I'm a child of the 90s. So that was where I started, where it all started. We had the rave scene and it wasn't like it is now, right? Their big concerts. I mean, it was underground and it was dank and dirty and just fabulous, right? Just very, very, like, you know, naughty.

She brought me to my first rave. She texted me after hearing my TEDx and she said, you know, secretly I, I thought she said, I saw your TedX. It was so fabulous and someone's at the side door. Doorbell. Sorry, my Google just made a noise. But she said, I've always secretly wondered if you blamed me for taking you to that first party. And I said, christy, you have to understand, like, I was wired to be an addict. I, it would have happened that day or the next. Day or the day after that, like, I was. My dog is barking.

Like, I came out.

That's how real you are, right? So that. That's a perfect metaphor for your TED Talk, Right. You were so real that you're still being real. You got dogs barking and doorbells ringing. So that's cool.

Dogs barking, crying, something going on. But I. I came out of the womb needing a drink. You know, it's just how I describe it. I was just one of those people that was just looking to escape. And one of the things I really like that you had brought up, because when I was first talking to you, I said, I don't really have any trauma. Like, I wasn't abused. I had good parents. Like, I really kind of downplayed it. I think we all have our things, right? And so however you interpret the world, you explained it to me as there's big T trauma and little T trauma, and we all have our baggage, right?

Yep. And we justify it, too. So a lot of times people say, well, I didn't really have any major trauma. I had one gentleman. This is a good example. This is pretty extreme. His father was very abusive. Beat him all the time, right? And he said he saw his father one time. He was at a gas station, and his dad told him to put the, you know, the fuel up the car. So he's fueling up the car, and as he took the hose out, I guess it splashed on the car next to him. And the. The guy in the other car turned around and slapped, you know, him. Well, his dad gets out, right? And literally almost killed him. Beat him. Beat the guy to such a pulp.

Oh, my God.

And so anyway, I said, well, you know, this is not normal childhood, right. To be growing up in. But you know what he said to me? He said, I understand that. He says, but, you know, I really think the beatings toughened me up. I think they made me who I am today. So I. I don't think it was bad, you know, spare the rod, spoil the child kind of thing. I said, that's not the same thing. You know, beating a man to a pulp in front of his child. Right. And beating you. Right. Is not the right thing to be doing. My dad never laid a hand on me ever once. I never laid a hand on any of my children. And that didn't mean I wasn't disciplined.

Right.

I was totally disciplined. Right. Because he. He got what he wanted from me in a totally different way, by respect. I respected him so much that I didn't want to disappoint him.

Yeah.

So if I. The worst thing for me is to look at my dad and have him go.

Really? He did that? That was like, you know, a stab in the heart. I didn't want to disappoint him. Same with my mom.

Absolutely. I do think it's interesting what we kind of put up with and permit. And when I look back, I really, I really believed that when I said that to you, I was like, I don't have any trauma. I mean, I certainly. Not only do I certainly have some trauma from my childhood, nothing that my parents did to me, but we all. There's stuff that happened, but, like, I was a rampant drug addict and put myself in some pretty questionable, terrible situations. But again, I feel like I did it to myself. I kind of deserved it. I was out there living that life. But it doesn't mean that you need to just live with it and carry it around like a bag of rocks for the rest of your life. Right. Like you could still just fix it and walk away from that kind of web of, of shame in the way that it kind of has a hold over you.

Yeah. And if you don't, then that's going to continue to shift, show up in different parts of your life. It shows up either emotionally. It can also show up physically. You know, people end up with a lot of health issues because their adrenals get burnt out. They're in a constant state of fight or flight. And so there's so many things going on like that that if you don't address them, they will show up. And, you know, I, you know, with the COVID stuff that we've had, you know, all these people who've gotten sick and then even have died from COVID If you go back, I'll guarantee you you'll find a lot of health issues that were created by trauma.

So it started with the trauma. Then their immune system gets so weakened that by the time they catch COVID they're already beaten down. So it's like an energy source. You know, if you have a hundred percent of your. So you power up your phone at night. Right. You wake up in the morning and you've got full power. But as soon as you turn that phone on, 30 programs open up. Right, Right. It's going to drain it really fast. And then if you get a virus coming in, you know, at about 10 o' clock at night, before you start powering up again, that virus is going to overtake the system.

Absolutely.

You don't have enough power.

It's so fascinating. I think one of the things that you left me with and your team. Team as well, is just the awareness of just energy and the way that energy works in the body. And I think it's a really fascinating thing. You know, I'd had some. Some experience earlier this year with like, muscle testing and a couple different things that I was like, well, this can't be true. This can't be actually a thing. Like, I just didn't believe, you know, And I think we have that. I don't know, it's a symptom of being a human that, like, if I can't see it, it doesn't exist or I don't believe it. Right. So it's really. Sometimes you have to suspend disbelief. But also in mapping my brain before and after the work that you and I did, it's actually undeniable on how. On how it was changed.

Yeah. The brain mapping is something that we're going to do at the retreat as well. So when they come down, we'll do a brain map. And the brain map is just really designed to show what's going on in the brain, the electrical connections and the way the brain is working. If one area is more active than another, that's going to show up in some way, either anxiety, depression, whatever it is. So the idea is to try to figure out what areas of the brain are operating efficiently, what areas are not operating efficiently, and we can reset it. Just going through our program, we've been showing anywhere from a 40 to a 45% change of brain plasticity and normalization. That's massive.

That's crazy. I don't even completely know what that means. I'm shaking my head, like, I totally know what that means, but it sounds really impressive. What does that mean exactly?

Well, brain plasticity is the ability of the brain to adapt and change. So if you're stuck in a pattern, right. And you like, addiction can be a pattern and you can't get out of it, it's because there isn't enough plasticity. The brain can't actually figure out how to get out of it. So it's almost like room to grow. Right. So you've got a size 12 foot and a size 10 shoe. Right. But if we can get the plasticity of that shoe to go to a 14 now the foot can move around and can make some changes, so you're not stuck. Right. So plasticity is the ability of the brain to grow and make changes. New neural pathways, new habits, behaviors. And then normalization is if one or two areas of the brain are underperforming or overperforming, it can go back into performing at the right levels. It can normalize. One of the reasons it doesn't is because, for example, if we see a lot of people with.

Say, post traumatic stress, they're going to have the temporal lobes and the occipital lobes that will be very active. You don't want them overactive. You want them to operating just normally. So once we normalize that, then it stops. We stop that loop of trauma running that goes back into a normal state.

So. Fascinating. It's really fascinating because basically we're just walking around with the supercomputer up there, and it's just. It blows my mind. Right.

The thing I wanted to mention to you, when you said earlier, you know, how you would take a drug in order to get that high, but when you went in that theta unit, you said that was like such a great experience.

Yeah.

If the pharmaceutical industry could get a hold of that chemical lab that's within you. Right. They would be in heaven because they're trying to artificially create something that you're already capable of. You have the ability within you. Right. To get the greatest high, the greatest experiences. Naturally, your brain is designed to do that, your body's designed to do that. And then what happens is, is because we get into a pattern of trauma, we can't access that. And so what do we have to do? We have to artificially produce it, and then we get stuck in artificially producing it and think that's the only way to get it. You get out of addiction, and then you start using your true talents and what your body and brain are capable of. You would never want to go back to drugs.

Right? Fascinating. Well, but it does take a practitioner like you to unlock it. So I'm grateful that, you know, I'm grateful that we met, to be perfectly honest.

Me too. I'm. I'm so excited to work with you and the work that you're doing and, and helping people. It's a perfect combination.

I completely agree. And my women, when I was on my way down to see you in Florida and I told people what you do, I told my community on Instagram, @nycfitfam, the amount of DMS that I got, people saying, oh, my God, this, this might be my chance. This. This is what I've been looking for, the amount of outreach I got saying that, it was pretty remarkable. So I'm really excited to see the community that shows up to take advantage of this rich, rich experience and the.

Great part about it, what we do with the trauma. A lot of people think of trauma work as painful. We didn't as you know, you can explain to them. We didn't analyze anything. We didn't have to look in detail. I don't even need to know what the trauma is.

Yes.

We can heal all of that all naturally without any knowledge. You know, I work with women who have had major traumas.

Yeah.

And it's very hard for them to sit down and talk about. And I say I don't need to know. I'll take you through a technique that will get your mind to reset that information without you sharing one word with me.

So the fascinating, the most fascinating part. And also like I've done talk therapy before and I'm not trying to poo poo talk therapy. That's great if it works for you. It never really worked for me. And that's actually why I like 12 step recovery. Because you know, for me going to therapy was always like me, me, me, me, me and a side of me and 12 Step Recovery, they're like, turn around and help someone else. You know, stop being so selfish. Get out of your head by helping another person. That resonated with me. I like that. Having a service minded hurt. I was like, okay, I can get down with that. That makes sense. I stopped thinking about myself over only I start thinking about other people. Maybe I'm a little too busy to worry about what I'm doing all the time or what drugs I am or I'm not taking or whatever. That worked. Now you know that that works for so long. As long as you stay in that community and you stay in the peer to peer support. But I've always just kind of had my own issues with talk there. I don't have a problem with talk therapy as a practice, but for me it never quite worked. So I was really curious. I was like, what is this kind of trauma clearing therapy going to be? And, and it was nothing like talk therapy. It was utilitarian, it was logical, it was functional. We were doing actual exercises that were reprocessing the way that my mind held a memory. And that was fascinating.

Yeah. It all comes down to memory work. That's where the issue is. The memory continues to be seen in real time activating your nervous system. And what I say to everybody is it can't do it any other way. There's nothing wrong with you. Right. The reason your mind is going into an activation is his calling for an action. But the problem is it's an action that isn't possible. Like, so I got beat up by a bully when I was seven years old. My mind's not okay with that. So my mind's going back to that seven year old saying, fight back. What's not possible? But your mind doesn't know that because it keeps thinking that bully is bullying you now. Right. Because your subconscious has no connection to time. Everything is now. So it doesn't know if you're 7 or 27 or 57. Everything is now and your mind wants it to stop. Don't let that happen. Fight back. You know, I worked with so many different people, you know, who have had, say a car accident. And they'll say every time. Now I get into a car. Right. We had a lady who's actually a phenomenal testimonial on our site of a lady who was having. She had a car accident for one year. She couldn't drive. She was having panic attacks, anxiety attacks if she got behind the wheel. She came in to do the program and she was actually coming in to do one of our group ones like we're going to do at the retreat. And she had her husband driving her and she was videotaping herself and you could see her eyes darting. She was petrified, even in a car. And she came and went through the program and when she left, she got home, she videotaped herself driving around the block and laughing, going, I can't believe I'm driving a car. Right. Like I'm not having the fear of driving the car. Like, how could they do this in four, four hours?

That is so wild. And. Four hours.

Four hours. And what was happening is that every time she got behind the wheel of a car after that accident, what would her mind think about the accident?

Sure.

So when was the accident happening? Right.

It was happening right now. Yeah.

So it says, get out of the car.

Right? Right.

Don't get behind this wheel. We know what's going to happen. We're going to get into an accident. That's what it kept looping through. So you could see why her mind wouldn't want to let her to get her into a car.

Yeah.

And it would try to get her out of the car. Trying to hurt her? No, trying to protect her. There's nothing wrong with your mind.

See, that's the other piece I love. And I think this is what's going to be the most special, is that we both really believe in giving people grace because they really, they didn't do anything wrong. Right. This is just, this is simple stuff. This is actual like neuroscience.

Yeah.

And it's just what it is and it just needs to be fixed. But the biggest problem is when people just sit in there, you know what, and just think something's gonna magically change. But if nothing changes, nothing changes.

Yeah, you have to step up, you have to do something, you have to get active, you got to come to the retreat, you got to do something. Right. You have to take some action. And if you don't take any action, nothing's going to change because you get stuck in the loop. But the good news is, is there are answers out there and you don't have to get stuck. And so we're excited about the, the event. Yeah, I mean, I think we'll be doing, we'll be doing more of these because I think it's going to be so successful.

I completely agree. And it's really fun when you know the answers to these, you know, life's really hard questions also come with like three days at a fabulous hotel with like meals at Michelin rated restaurants and fabulous wellness activities. Like there's so much here, you know, and in addition to the clinical work and the life coaching and all of that, it's also, you know, fun and community building and, and it's just going to be a really good time. So you know, if anybody is interested in learning more about the retreat or signing up, certainly, obviously, of course you can reach out to Dr. Don. You can also reach out to me. I always share my email address. It's, it's, I'm an open book. It's Jamie J A M I E at N Y C FIT fam I'm, I'm the question answerer, so I'm always happy to take people's questions and help people get signed up. I'm pretty sure this is going to fill up pretty fast. So if it's something that you have in mind, think about. This would be a great Christmas gift to give a loved one, don't you think? Think about that. This would be a great Christmas gift for like a husband to give a wife or a couple to give each other. Like this is not just for women. This is for everybody. So like if I think if couples want to come together, that could be really, really powerful.

Yeah. And we're trying to make it so it's, we're not having a massive amount of people. It's going to be fairly, fairly intimate. So you'll get a lot more, you know, hands on and get to talk to us a little bit more. So I'm excited about it. I know you are, too. And our whole team here are excited to put people through, get you into the Theta chamber, spin you around a little bit.

Totally trip you out.

That's right.

Amazing.

Well, Jamie, thank you so much for doing this. This has been great. Like I said, we fell in love with you the minute we met you, and we're looking forward to not only the retreat, but just working together in the future. And. And for coming on on the podcast. So, so much.

I can't wait.

Yeah. So, again, thank you, everybody, for listening to the you must be out of your mind podcast. And. And there it is.