What 200 High Achievers Taught Me About Healing Trauma and Rewiring the Nervous

Today I'm going to break down what I learned helping over 200 high achievers rewire their nervous system and heal some of the deepest layers of trauma you can imagine. So when we're looking at trauma, trauma is really frozen emotion or stuck emotion, and we all have certain levels of it, whether it's big T or little t trauma. It shows up and it wreaks havoc on our world. Just look at the needless wars. Look at the needless divorces. The child abuse, the pain that people are carrying every year, every day, that they don't need to carry if they had processed out the pain and their nervous system had gone back to a sense of safety. So before I go down into how I've seen this work really shift and impact so many high achievers, including over 45 medical doctors that I've worked with as of today, probably counting even higher after, by the time you see this video, One of the things I've seen is we've got to get to the deeper levels of motion. And let me tell you a story that will help illustrate how trauma actually shows up in our body and where the blockage is. So in 1984, National Geographic was doing a study on polar bears. They would chase polar bears down with a helicopter gun— I mean, a helicopter in Alaska and shoot them with a tranquilizer gun. They carry the polar bears back to their research base, check their vitals, check their, you know, tag their ears, all that. But a strange thing was happening every time. About 2 hours, 3 hours later, as the tranquilizer wears off, the polar bears would start making this frantic and weird movement, but then it would subside. One day, after many years, researchers didn't know what the heck was happening. One day, a researcher had a brilliant idea: why don't I play the video of the polar bear in the cage in slow motion and see what I might see? Sure enough, what they saw is that its legs were still running. And then you would see its legs slow down and you'd see his chest go ah-ah-ah-ha—

ha!

And basically calm down. What was it doing? It was naturally discharging the stuck energy because last time I was conscious was being chased by giant loud metal bird that's running for its life at top of the food chain.

Its king of the castle.

But now it's the prey for the first time. Is being hunted. And that's really scary and really intense for a polar bear or for anyone.

Right.

But what does it do naturally that we don't do as humans unless we have someone come alongside us? The polar bear discharges. It naturally releases. It was looking around its cage and saying, oh, I'm not being hunted anymore. I'm okay. What do we do as a little boy, a little girl? If our— if we're really upset and we're scared and we're hurt and we're sad and angry or whatever, and our parents do not come and soothe us and help us process and get into our body. Like before the age of 7, our prefrontal cortex isn't really developed. So our self-soothing capacity is really reliant on the caregiver's nervous system. So if the caregiver is dysregulated, if the caregiver hasn't soothed themself, if the caregiver has a history of inherited trauma, pain, abuse, whatever, or they're in a high stress season, they're in conflict with their spouse or whatever it may be, then that caregiver, if they are not downregulated and regulated enough to help regulate another human being, now they are extending dysregulation. Or if they also have an innate lack of capacity for emotions where they might say, quit your whining, which is one of the things I often heard, quit your whining, and discounted emotion, right? And, and that's just, you know, we also have to look at how much our understanding of trauma and the nervous system has grown leaps and bounds in the last 30, 40, 50 years, especially the last 10 to 20. We didn't understand a lot of this stuff. We didn't even have a designation for PTSD until 1984 because so many Vietnam veterans were in shell shock and they called it war shock or war fatigue, right? Well, dude, if you're having nightmares and flashbacks all the time, from a crazy, horrific war, then, then there's something else going on, right? They've been war fatigued, right? And now, because of how our advancement has, has taken leaps and bounds, we know we can reset many different things, especially with the use of psychedelics, somatic therapy, neurofeedback, even ibogaine, which is a form of psychedelics, can help, help heal in a different way. Psilocybin, MDMA, all that jazz. Which is why I do the work that I do, because of the transformation it's created in my life and countless clients. And there's always work to do. But at the end of the day, how do we get there and how do we create this new nervous system blueprint? Well, it's all about reclaiming safety. It's about that polar bear going from hyper-aroused, which is sympathetic arousal state, because the polar bear is a mammal. So their brain structure, their nervous system structure is like ours as a human being. Not exactly the same, obviously, but like ours, and it goes from distress to relaxed and calm. At the end of the day, that's what we want to do. And then we need to have our nervous system update and look around. I'm not under attack anymore. I'm scanning the environment. I'm okay. Versus if you went through crazy horrific things in childhood, this is why CPTSD or complex PTSD is even harder. 'cause it's repetitively happening at a young, young child when your core blueprints are being laid, when you're most open and you're most flexible, that 0 to 7 window, right? And obviously older was repetitive. You can get CPTSD as an adult too, of course. But when you're in those core blueprints, that's when, that's when most of the work or damage is happening. And we can still change that. I see miracles happen with people with CPTSD all the time where I would consider, and they would consider it, deeply healing, where they are essentially on the other end, though it takes positive reinforcement and continue to optimize and continue to fine-tune and continue to regulate. So I want to break down some of the things that can help you. A, obviously working with psychedelics in safe, safe therapeutic containers. Obviously legality is a concern, check your state. I'm not recommending illegal use, but I'm recommending or giving advice on what works and what the clinical research overwhelmingly says. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the top trauma experts in the world, might argue he's the top, wrote "Body Keeps the Score." He would say MDMA, if it was a Phase 3 clinical trial for PTSD, if it was a conventional drug, would've been labeled the biggest breakthrough in mental health in human history. But because it's psychedelic and it's not patentable because MDMA is, the patent has expired, and it also includes therapeutic support, which is arguably necessary for optimal effectiveness.

It's, you know, it has its complications. Big Pharma doesn't want that, right?

But additionally, this work does take time. We can take big leaps. I tell my clients, we're gonna take a big leap ahead with every session. Every session we're taking a big leap. It doesn't mean we're gonna go from 0 to 100 in one session. Okay, or -50 to 100 in one session. But we can take a big giant leap ahead and make forward momentum. The second layer, or the third layer, is shifting the core identity. So we've got the reality that creating this transformation and the reality of creating trauma healing, it's going to take time. It's going to take some big— there are big leaps that are possible, which is the second thing. And then the third thing is it's going to take lots of identity work where you have to update your software. Your language patterns also have to reflect what I— I was in a couple session yesterday, for example, and the couple, the husband kept describing things about the past, about how his wife would show up as if it was happening right then. And I kept on helping him add this little distinct phrase, in the past. But we— I am learning, or we are learning. So that little phrase in the past, and then fill in the blank, and then I am learning. Because our words are silent— or not silent, they're an embedded command. I'm speaking it into existence. It's like throwing out a boomerang. I'm gonna throw that out and it's gonna come back to me if I throw it right. Well, what I'm speaking into existence is coming to me tomorrow. My, my reality today is a reflection of my words, my emotions, my thoughts, my patterns, my beliefs, my energies, and my habits from yesterday. So if I don't like the results I'm getting, then I need to update that, right? So our words are a piece of it because inherent, we are reinforcing our reality or dictating and directing reality to match again the cognitive inherent bias for consistency. Check out Cialdini's work of the 6 cognitive biases in his book Influence. All right, we've also got to shift our core default. Our default— look at David Hawkins' Maps of Consciousness. We want to go from the bottom, the bottom of Maps of Consciousness, whether it's in shame or fear or anxiety or grief or resentment or whatever it may be. Well, we got to move all— we want to move all the way up to love and peace and joy. Well, it takes us moving through each scale, each element. I can't get to love and joy and peace if I'm holding on to unforgiveness. I've got to move through forgiveness. I've got to move through the grief, which means I got to allow it to be fully felt, but then also update it that it doesn't have to stay there anymore.

Okay.

Next piece, what I've also seen is if we don't future pace when helping high performers heal and rewire their nervous system, we got to future pace. We got to give an alternate route. Let's say you're going down the highway, the exit ramp is there, and the exit ramp represents anxiety. It's what you've done for the last 35 or 55 years, okay? You know how to step in an anxiety blueprint. Well, I've got to help you create an— a new blueprint, a new exit off the exit ramp called peace, called joy, called presence, called playfulness, whatever it may be. So while we're in this neuroplastic state with the help of psychedelics, meditation, breathwork, etc., now I'm going to help you step into and feel into what it might be like to be playful, happy, joyful, and to let that part of you flourish. And then this is where we do some parts work or alter ego work. We can name and claim those different parts. Check out some of my other videos on alter ego. Where we name and claim some of those parts and then we get those parts in the driver's seat. And then let's say I have a part of me that's lived with most, a lot of shame. His name's Weak Ass Willie.

When he lives with shame, and that he was really present in 2018, 2019, 2020. If he's in the driver's seat, guess what? I can't show up in Magic Mike. I can't show up in the part of me that creates magic in my life and the lives of those that I serve. Right? So I have to create a new empowering reality which involves some of this future pacing. Okay. Next one, we have to positively reinforce, positively reinforce what I want, meaning my reward system, my behaviors, my decisions, my incentives all have to match my desired reality, the desired result, the desired way of showing up. Okay. Sometimes we have mismatched positive rewards, right? If we are, for example, you know, food is an easy one. I sometimes will use food as like, I like chocolate and ice cream. Well, give myself positive reward after I accomplish a bigger thing, after I do the hard thing first, not right at the beginning all the time. Okay. But I also have one positive reinforcement in my life We are social creatures. So our clients, if they're rewarding us, our spouses or children rewarding us for how we're showing up with love, attention, affection, then we're more likely to give them more of what they want, more of that desired behavior. So positive reinforcement is a big thing. Next is on the internal state. We got to feed what we want to live and starve what we want to die. Die.

Feed what you want to live.

Starve what you want to die. So it's just having this clear conscious, being in deeper absolute integrity of feeding where I'm really going, being anchored to who I am, what I'm rooted in, and saying no to this so I can say yes to that. No to this, this lower thing, this thing that doesn't reflect my ultimate desired reality, so I can absolutely say yes to this higher reality, right? Lastly, with all those high achievers, if I don't work on all 4 layers of, let's call it your blueprint, your psychological, your emotional, your somatic, and your spiritual, then it's not going to be complete. And I see— and you can also include ancestral pieces as part of that, but that's in the spiritual, somatic, your body's holding on to all those things.

I gotta update all 4 of those layers.

That's why if you just do regular therapy, regular coaching, but doesn't get into the muscle memory it's not going to be complete. Your emotions might still remember the stuff that happened, right? Hope that all makes sense. Like and subscribe, add some comments if you like this, and share it with a friend. Much love, guys.