093 Retrain Your Brain with Annie Hopper.com

Yeah, we really want to be able to decrease the amount of time that people are suffering because if you can stop the suffering, then that's a whole lot of things that change. You stop the, stop the amount of money that's being spent. You save relationships. You save, you know, and I don't want to put this lightly, but really it is like saving lives. You are changing the trajectory You're changing the trajectory in someone's life.

That's— Welcome to the Mind Voice Network. We are chronic illness warriors, caretakers, and advocates who are overcoming illness in all of its many forms. We created this show to inspire, educate, and encourage you on your path to wellness. We're here to help you put the puzzle pieces of healing into place. Join us and our network of Lyme Warriors as we discuss how fighting is a mindset, healing consists of choices, and living is the outcome.

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Medical Bill Gurus Welcome, welcome, welcome to today's show. With me today is author, president, and founder of Dynamic Neural Retraining System, known as DNRS, Annie Hopper. And she is here to talk to us today about the brain, chronic illness, and limbic system rehabilitation. Welcome to Lyme Voice, Annie.

Thank you so much, Sarah. I'm really glad to be here. Thank you. Yeah.

So I read that you have a global mission to take the mystery out of mysterious illnesses.

That is absolutely true.

That's a big tall order.

Yeah. Well, I think, um, you know, I made a promise to myself when I was sick that, uh, if and when I found a way out of illness that I would share that with everyone. So, uh, that's what I'm doing. I'm sharing it with everyone. Not only people that are suffering, but speaking at medical conferences and getting research done. And yeah, just really trying to shake up the medical world because goodness knows there are so many people that go undiagnosed or not validated, and we need some answers. And, you know, I think that some of us have some answers, but getting that answer into the medical world is a different story altogether. So that's kind of where I'm at. I'm like, yeah, I have part of a, part of the piece, piece of the puzzle. And, um, I, I, that is my mission to take the mystery out of mysterious illnesses.

Mm-hmm.

Wow.

That's awesome. We say that a lot, like it's one piece of the puzzle and it's a thousand-piece puzzle in figuring out how to climb out of some of the chaos, find adequate treatment, and then not let the trauma of it all sink you afterwards.

Yeah. So true. You know, I, I heard, I heard, I heard a really interesting, um, term. When I was teaching a program lately, and in the beginning we go around the class and say, you know, what's your name? Where are you from? What illnesses have you been diagnosed with? And what are you here to recover from? And how many years have you been sick or whatever? And two things I want to say about that. In a group of 30 people, last time it was 728 years.

Whoa.

Yeah, it's a huge number. And the other thing that struck me is when somebody said what conditions they were there to recover from, they said medical PTSD. And I thought, wow. I thought, wow, isn't that interesting? And it's something that someone who has one of these groups of illnesses can really relate to. It's like, oh my goodness, how many doctors or specialists or alternative practitioners can you go and see? And every time you feel a little bit of hope, hopeful that this might be the right answer and then left feeling disappointed and disillusioned by the whole system. So it was interesting because I could see how everyone in the class could relate to that. And that's a really big issue. And I think that I also wanted to turn that around a little bit because I think the tides are turning. And what I said in that moment was I asked people in the class, I said, you know what, that is so true, and I get that that's your experience because I had that experience too. Totally feeling invalidated, like I've got this undiagnosis, this mystery illness that nobody can figure out or treat. But because I've been speaking at doctors' conferences and speaking at medical conferences and getting, you know, more word out there, more and more doctors are actually referring people to our program. So I asked who out of the class was actually there because their doctors had specifically referred them to DNRS? And I would say probably 70% of them put up their hand. And I said, wow, well, let's thank those doctors, right? Yeah, let's really give our thanks to those doctors who are opening their eyes, that are open to different forms of treatment and might be willing to think a little bit outside of the box. And maybe brain rehabilitation makes sense to them, so— and limbic system dysfunction. So Yeah, it's an interesting— it's a very, very interesting place to be in. Yeah, I totally get the whole, you know, taking the mystery out of mysterious illness for sure.

So tell us a little bit about your journey and how, again, how many years you spent fighting and trying to figure out what was wrong and what that personal cost was to you. You said something in one of your lectures that's on YouTube And you said your whole neural retraining process, DNRS, you said, I came to this by way of suffering.

Yes, that's true. And I would hazard to say that a lot of great inventions or personal experiences lead us to these things. And not that that will be everyone's experience, but certainly in my case it was. So yeah, I would have never been interested in the field of neuroplasticity, although I was a core belief counselor and I was working with people on belief systems and changing belief systems and stuff like that. But none of that information protected me from getting a brain injury, which basically is what I deduced that I had. So I'll tell you a little bit about my story. So I was a core belief counselor and a journalist, and I was a guest talk, a guest, on regular talk radio as an expert in emotional wellness. And I had a very fulfilling life. I was like at the top of my game, really successful, loving my life. And then I moved into an office space where I shared an office wall with the janitor supply room where they held all the cleaning chemicals for the building. And I was exposed to some pretty toxic cleaning chemicals over the course of about 5 months. And unbeknownst to me, the office that I moved into also did not have proper ventilation, and the building had mold in it. So I had a couple of big exposures there. And also about 6 months prior to that, I was in a car accident and had cervical whiplash that left me with a shake that looked like Parkinson's for a few months. So I kind of, you know, the doctors at that time said, you know, you have some kind of neurological tic that was activated by the car accident, which I didn't actually think was true. But anyway, and even prior to that, you know, if I look at what is the perfect storm to developing limbic system impairment, for me it was the mold in the office, definitely.

Every—

I went into that office and I painted it and I put all new furniture in it, so it was like all this off-gassing of new furniture, the car accident, and the cleaning chemicals. And even before that, if I look at, you know, early childhood adverse events that may have contributed to this limbic system threat response that goes rogue. I grew up in a family with an alcoholic father, so not the nice kind of alcoholic either. He was kind of raging. So you can imagine that the threat centers in my brain were probably firing a little bit more rapidly than the average person. Now, I don't think that that one event in itself led to limbic system impairment, but I think it could be priming the brain to actually, you know, go over the tipping point probably faster than someone else who grew up in a healthy home. But that's right. Having said that, it's not a general rule and not everybody has to have that in order to express it as these chronic and mysterious illnesses. But anyway, going back to the suffering. So I developed over a course of 5 months, I started to develop chemical sensitivities, fibromyalgia, and fibromyalgia. And then at the end of this, I started to develop electro— electric hypersensitivity syndrome, sorry. And the MCS was so bad that if someone was doing their laundry and I happened to be walking by the exhaust from the laundry, I would go into convulsions. If someone had laundered their clothing in Tide or Bounce, I couldn't be in the same room with them. I just couldn't breathe.

Oh my gosh.

Extreme aversion response. I'd be down for days. Yeah, so it became really, really hard to navigate my world, and that was just with the chemical exposure stuff. Then— and I didn't realize what was happening. You know, my favorite saying used to be, "That stinks," or, "Can't you smell that?" Like, it was just so odd that nobody else was smelling the same thing that I was. And perfumes no longer smelled like perfumes. They smelled like bug spray. It just literally felt like I was being poisoned by my environment all the time. And then I developed fibromyalgia, which was just a chronic pain syndrome that the doctor labeled me, labeled me with, that, you know, it didn't matter what kind of treatments I did, the pain just never went away. I was in chronic pain. Then I developed electric hypersensitivity syndrome. So it was already being a little bit science fiction, but this takes science fiction to a whole new level. I became sensitive to things like cell phones and wireless technology and just bizarre stuff. And if it didn't happen to me, I don't even know if I believe that it's true. But like a dog that can hear sounds that we can't hear, it's capable for the human body to detect frequencies that most people can't hear or feel. And also that those frequencies can actually start to induce pain in the body. And that was, yeah, that was just so wild. And that's the point that I became homeless. And when I say homeless, it's not because I didn't have money. It was because my body and brain were reacting to the smallest amounts of stimuli as if they were life-threatening. And the only place that I could manage to be comfortable was in nature.

Away from electricity and—

Yeah, away from everything. So I camped and then I ended up living on a broken-down houseboat. But, you know, it really made sense to me that even before this point though, I was researching the brain because I thought, you know, this just does not make sense. I'm doing every treatment that I'm supposed to do. I've detoxed to the moon and back 10,000 times. My system is as clean as a whistle. Logically, I should be getting better, not worse. And yet I was still getting worse. So I started to research what areas of the brain might be affected and the overlap that was taking place in many different illnesses. Because it's very rare that a person just has one illness, like, oh, I've got chronic fatigue syndrome. It's like, oh, I've got chronic fatigue syndrome, I have food sensitivities, I have depression, I have anxiety. And I'm like, okay, hang on a second. What's the overlap? Because there must be some kind of common denominator with all of this. And I started to look at brain research in— yeah, looking at brain— sorry, brain research from all of these different illnesses. And the common denominator was this overfiring of threat protective mechanisms, threat and protective mechanisms in the limbic system. And the limbic system is also the area for sense of smell. And that made sense to me because I'm like, I was like, hang on a second, you know what? I can totally tell that my sense of smell has morphed into some kind of wild drug-sniffing superhuman power that nobody else seems to have, or very few people do. And I knew that something was wrong with my sense of smell. So that guided me to look at, you know, this must be a brain impairment or brain injury somehow. So it made sense to me that my brain was distorting sensory information, and that if I could get to looking at the brain or figuring out what the brain was doing and change the brain, then maybe that would actually start to influence the symptoms. And that's exactly what happened. So I was, I was reading Dr. Norman Doidge's book, The Brain That Changes Itself, and there was a chapter in his book about Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz. And Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz works with patients who have obsessive-compulsive disorder. And although I didn't have obsessive-compulsive disorder, I could tell that my brain was in a loop of some sort. It was in a trauma loop. And what I mean by trauma loop is it just felt like I was in this chronic fight, flight, or freeze response. And my body was reacting as if it was under threat 24/7. And my sensory perception had been heightened because of that. So I was thinking, well, I wonder if that is just a piece of, a part of the brain, and that if you can change the way that that part of the brain works, would it help to decrease the symptoms? And that's exactly what happened. I started to get curious about if this is part of the brain that is at the root of this, if I go in and change the brain, will it change the symptoms? And I began to experiment on myself, and I was a guinea pig. In my own laboratory of one, of Annie Hopper living on a houseboat and actually experimenting and looking at my— I was looking at patterns because I was really good at looking at patterns before from core belief counseling, looking at thought patterns, emotional patterns, behavior patterns, and stuff like that. I was already used to looking for patterns, so I began to become the curious observer of myself, like what kind of patterns was I running? And I thought, you know, it became— it was really interesting. It was an interesting experiment because I had become someone that I didn't even know. I used to be a really joyful, bubbly, make-a-new-friend, really optimistic person, could go anywhere, do anything. And all of a sudden I turned into this very dark, remorse, skeptical, sick, helpless, hopeless version of myself. I'm like, Who is this person? So I started to track my thinking patterns. And it was really interesting to look at because I was thinking about past trauma or predicting future trauma. And part of that made sense because I was chronically ill. I was like just terrified of my future because I didn't know where it was going. But I also recognized that there wasn't room for joy anywhere. Like I was so consumed with just trying to stay alive and trying to get through the day that there was no room for anything else. I also looked at my emotional patterns and my emotional patterns were really about emotions related to survival. And when I looked at my behavioral patterns, I was just always trying to stay safe.

Interesting.

Yeah, I thought, well, that's pretty interesting. I wonder what's going on there. And even though it kind of made sense on a practical level because of the symptoms that I was having. You know, I could justify the feeling and I could justify the thought patterns and I could justify the behaviors, but I thought, what if there's a brain mechanism gone rogue that is at the center of all of this? And if I change that piece, maybe that's the center of the wheel and everything else will start to change because of that. So I experimented with changing my thought patterns, my emotional patterns, my behaviors, And lo and behold, my sensory perception started to change, albeit just for brief moments in the beginning. But my sense of smell went from being like super, super, super heightened to I could detect a chemical from a mile away, not only smell it but taste it, to actually being normal for moments. I thought, whoa, hang on a second, nothing else does that but the brain. There's no other explanation. Explanation. In all of the treatments that I'd had previous to that, there was nothing that really changed the way that my brain was perceiving sensory information. So I thought, this is a jackpot. So if I can keep practicing around that, then maybe that's the answer. So that's exactly what happened. And I had a lot of influences. And I think I was, you know, I didn't recreate the wheel. I put the wheel together in a different way so that it made sense to me and it made sense to other people. So in the end of that, I developed the Dynamic Neuroretraining System where I could really talk about the neuroscience of limbic system impairment, explain how that injury works, what you will feel like, think like, and behave like when you have a limbic system impairment, and really look at the steps to rehabilitating the limbic system. So anyway, that was probably more than what you asked for, but no, it's fantastic.

You know, it's, it's crazy. So I got, I got infected with Lyme disease the first time when I was 18. It took me until age 36 to get diagnosed. I was just slowly going downhill and went through treatment, changed all our lives, our careers to accommodate a healing environment and to, you know, adapt to what we were dealing with. Um, and then I got reinfected. I got another, I got bit by a tick, bullseye rash in 2018. And so, and I was going through treatment, trying to do it over the phone and different stuff, having to go back into the trauma of having recovered and then going back to face the darkness. Um, has absolutely changed the way I am perceiving things. And it was funny because I had been, I've been home for a few months now. But, you know, feeling very much like I can't articulate how I'm feeling. I've kind of lost my words or my voice, or I can't protect myself emotionally and talk about it at the same time. Um, and so it's interesting because last time I could use yoga and exercise and different things to kind of walk, walk my way out of it emotionally. And I can tell that this time I need something bigger and deeper. Um, and I've actually been looking at your program over the last few months, cuz I'm like, I know that I, I am not a negative pessimistic person, but that is what's coming out. And I told my husband the other day, I said, honestly, it's— I am living with sheer terror, like this underlying level of terror that I don't know how to work through in a new way. And I have two— my sister Stephanie was in a car accident and had a traumatic brain injury. And then I have a daughter that's adopted from Ethiopia and she is reactive attachment disorder. And so it is crazy to watch my story, her story of, of a traumatic brain injury, and my daughter's of this early childhood trauma. We all deal with the exact same stuff, like emotionally now.

Right. Well, if I can comment to that for a second, is that okay?

Yeah, go for it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, you know, if your brain is stuck in a flight, fight or freeze response, right, and to no fault of your own, And interesting, you had recovered, so you know the difference, right? And then you went back into this pattern.

Yes.

Your brain went back into the pattern. Well, first of all, the brain's response is a healthy response, right? So going into fight, flight, or freeze when you're under attack is a really good response. You know, you want to get— your brain is unconsciously trying to protect you from whatever is going on, whether it's a virus, a bacteria, a chemical exposure. Exposure, so the brain is actually doing what it should do. And also, I think all of these different forms of stressor have the potential to actually damage the brain, too. But anyway, let's talk about the fight, flight, or freeze response for a second. So if you're in the fight, flight, or freeze response, first of all, you will go into fight or flight, and if it doesn't work, if all your fight or flight tactics don't work, then you'll go into freeze response. So first, you'll utilize fight or flight until you can't fight or flight anymore, and then the body goes into a freeze response. So it's, and if you have a threat mechanism that has gone rogue, think about it, this area of the brain is responsible for your survival and reproduction and protecting you from danger. If this part of your brain is not working functionally because a threat mechanism mechanism has now gone rogue, you can imagine it's going to occupy a lot of your thoughts. It's going to occupy a lot of your emotional state. And I had a similar experience to you in terms of looking at my emotional responses. I would have an exposure and I'd be like a bawling mess. Right. Not because I was particularly upset. It was actually a physiological response to exposure. Or I would do all of the same techniques that I used to when I had a healthy brain, you know, like, okay, these are the emotional processes that I would do, or the psychological processes, or the psychotherapy, or whatever that I would do when I had a healthy brain that would really move me forward into understanding, putting that event in the past, being healthy emotionally, and being able to take that a different perspective. But when I had limbic system impairment, I would do all of those things and 10 minutes later it would be back again. Right. It was like this— that's what we call the limbic system trauma loop. So the idea of the DNRS program is to get out of that looping system because when you're in that looping system, it's actually causing inflammation. The inflammation could be there anyway, but we get into this whole kind of immune gut-brain inflammation cycle, right? Yeah. It's going to affect so many different areas of your life. I don't know that there's nothing that it doesn't touch, but for sure cognitive ability, the ability to speak, the ability to formulate words, the ability to understand. Yeah, all of that is related to limbic system impairment. So one of the first things that people start to say when they implement the program is, well, first of all, I think there are many different things that we need to understand if we're implementing DNRS. And one is that, you know, I made up an acronym called IMAGINE, which really kind of goes along the principles that you have to kind of keep in mind when you're diving into the Dynamic Neural Retraining System as a recovery tool for a lot of these chronic illnesses. And it's not that it's addressing the chronic illness. It's not addressing the Bartonella. It's not addressing the Babesia. It's not addressing the bacteria. It's addressing the brain. And when the brain is functioning properly, then you can set up an environment for the body to heal. So the body goes from this state of just surviving into a state of relaxation and growth and thriving and where it's able to do the things that it's able to do. Now that doesn't mean that you might not need some help along the way, right?

Right.

You know, maybe people need supplements or they need some treatments along the way, but the end goal is to get the brain back into this balanced state so the limbic system is working optimally. So let's go through IMAGINE, and these are some of the concepts to keep in mind. Now the I stands for intention. So we have to understand that the intention for limbic system rehabilitation is to not necessarily decrease the symptoms right away. Now, of course, that's our long-term goal, but our intention in the beginning is to recognize that the brain has been affected and that we really want to come back to, okay, the brain has been effective and affected, and I am going to focus on rewiring my brain rather than tracking 10,000 symptoms. So we're going to focus on rewiring the brain. M stands for motivation. So this is at least a 6-month process where people are going to have to practice for a minimum of an hour a day. And the motivation, you have to find out what's going to motivate you to keep you focused and really keep you going every day on this practice. And I often hear people, they go, "I don't know if I've got an hour a day. I just don't know if I have it." And my answer to that is always, "You know what? One hour a day is nothing compared to the amount of money, energy, and time that you put into just surviving and coping. So true, right? So true. You find the motivation because, you know, nobody wants to live their life on supplements for the rest of their life or having no energy or feeling sick. Like, that takes so much energy. So if you find the hour a day and motivate yourself to do the exercises that are involved— the awareness and associations, that's an interesting one because, you know, the brain works through patterns of association. And I always say we're smart as individuals, but our brains are not so smart. Our brains are pattern recognition organs. And if we can see them as that, then we can start to really, you know, change. We can actually change our thinking, feeling, and behaviors to act back on the brain to change brain function and structure, which is kind of unbelievable in some ways. But there's a really great story about that. Leonardo DiCaprio, when he was in his role— the— when he was studying for his role to play Howard Hughes in the movie The Aviator, he worked under Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, who was a guru of OCD. And Leonardo said, I want you to teach me exactly how somebody thinks, feels, and behaves. And he did such a great job at portraying Howard Hughes that he actually developed OCD.

And how— yeah, and then had to unlearn it.

And had to unlearn it. So it took him up to a year to actually reverse the changes that he did to his brain just through character acting.

Whoa, that blows my mind.

I know, isn't that crazy?

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Character acting. Whoa, that blows my mind. I know, isn't that crazy? So, you know, awareness and association. So you can imagine when we're suffering from limbic system impairment and this rogue threat mechanism in our brain is firing all the time and we're in this, you know, feeling of I'm in danger, I'm in danger, I'm unsafe somehow, or I'm in this terror, well, you can imagine what you're aware of, right? Yeah. When you're scanning your environment, you are scanning for threats unconsciously. It's not even something that you're consciously probably aware of. Your brain is unconsciously surveying your environment for potential threat because that threat mechanism is firing so much. So we need to start changing the awareness with things that we've created as potential threats. The other one is our associations. So changing associations that you have with anything that could be related to illness. So For me, one example of that was when I had severe MCS or EMF sensitivity. So let's take MCS, for example. So when I had MCS, my awareness was all about every chemical that was around me. My awareness was dictated by how the world smelled because I thought that was my warning sign of something going wrong, right?

Yeah.

So I was totally focused on anything around me that could be a potential threat, and I was aware of it because my nose was telling me about it. And that's what I thought was the— I thought that my senses were the conveyor of truth. I was trained to believe that every message that my body was sending me was the absolute truth and that I needed to pay attention to it. But what I didn't realize at that time was that my brain was also impaired and that the actual conveyor of messages was impaired. So I could no longer trust that every symptom that I was having was a conveyor of truth, and that was a whole 180 flip for me. Also, I couldn't believe everything that I think, because if the limbic system, if an impaired limbic system is controlling the way that I think, then wow, maybe I should start to question the thoughts that I'm having. Maybe I should start to question the emotions that I'm having. Anyway, so that's the awareness piece. Right? So you really start to become aware of how a limbic system impairment is affecting the way I think, the way that I feel, my behaviors, and physical reactions.

And yeah, and when you're in that, the associations part has been so huge for me because I did develop maladaptive ways of surviving. Like, for me, if I bent over to pick something up and I stood back up because I was having all this blood sugar, blood pressure issues. My entire system was a wreck. I trained myself to not bend over to pick up the toy in the hallway. Like, I consciously had to choose for years, because if I picked that up, I'd spend 10 minutes trying not to pass out. And even after going through treatment and that wasn't the case anymore, for years— I'm, I'm talking 3 or 4 years— I have to consciously tell myself No, no, no, it's okay. Because I hear that old, don't pick that up, don't take time to bend over, don't use that energy. And I have to tell myself repeatedly, no, that's the way I used to function, but now I'm perfectly capable. But I'm amazed at the amount of time that I have had to unlearn all the dysfunction of surviving for so many years.

Exactly, exactly. And that's what we call pathways of the past. And it's one of the pillars of recovery for the program. It's like recognizing What are those pathways of the past? And when they're coming up, you know, can we start to redirect the brain in a different way so that we go, hang on a second, hang on a second, maybe I don't have to live that way. Maybe there's a way that I can redirect these pathways in the brain so I can actually recover. So let's, that's a really great example, Sarah. So I'm just gonna, don't mean to interrupt, but I wanted to go through all the letters of imagine. So we're still on associations with awareness and associations. And you're right, it's kind of like these associations, but the associations that I made to chemicals and EMFs, I was like, "The whole world is going to hell in a handbasket and we are living in a toxic world and this is the end and I am a spokesperson for environmental awareness and that's my calling and people better wake up and this is an emergency and da-da-da-da-da." And you know what? That felt really valid and so true. Right?

Huh.

Yeah, there is a part of that that's true. And also I had to go, hang on a second, why is it somebody else can walk through the laundry detergent aisle of the grocery store and not go into convulsions? Right, right. There's a big mismatch there. There's something going on with the way that my brain is filtering information. So I had to learn how to change the associations that I had created to this big threat and survival reaction. And it's exactly like you said about picking the toy up. You know, it's like, hang on a second, I need to change my association. So also I'd become terrified of cell phones, wireless, electricity, everything. And then I was like, hang on a second, you know what, I want to live in the world. I want to be a productive and engaged part of my life. And in order to do that, I'm going to have to rewire the centers of my brain. But in order In order to do that, I'm also going to have to change some of the associations that I've created with the stimuli that my brain is now picking up as potentially life-threatening and go back to that, you know, I for intention. Hang on a second, this is a brain. It's not about the stimulus, this is about the brain. So going to G, so G stands for gratitude and gains, and this one's really important because, you know, we have a natural negativity bias, which means that we're going to notice notice what's going wrong before we notice what's going right, and that is just a caveman protective mechanism. Totally makes sense. We need to know where the threats are before we can feel safe. So you can imagine if you have limbic system impairment that negativity bias is magnified because the threat and protective mechanisms are gone rogue. It's no longer functioning brain. Your brain's not functioning normally. So we have to take extra effort to actually go to a place of gratitude. We have to take extra effort to say, hang on a second, what are the gains that I've made? Instead of looking at what's wrong, I want to look at what are the little small steps and improvements that I've been making along the way. Because by default, with limbic system impairment, our brain will go back to what's wrong, what's not going well, all the symptoms that I have, and what's still needs to happen. Hmm. Incremental training. Incremental training is a form of neural shaping that can involve some small forms of exposure therapy to really retrain the brain that that stimulus is no longer a life-threatening situation. And that's something that happens bit by bit and step by step and something that you learn when you take the program. N stands for neurological and emotional rehearsal. So that's a, it's a very specific form of visualization that we have that we take people through in the program. And what it does is it helps dampen the stress response in the brain or the threat response in the brain by really flooding your brain with really great neurochemicals that will help you do that. So first of all, we stop, we get, we We stop the brain from releasing all of the stress-related chemicals. So we stop releasing cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine, and we move to a really heightened emotional state, and we start releasing dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins for the prime reason— actually, there's a couple reasons, but one of them is to dampen that threat response. And you do that periodically through the day where you just flood the brain, flood the brain and body, and flood the brain and body again. And eventually what happens is it produces a context of safety in the brain.

So how do you do that? Could you give us an example?

Sure. Yeah. Like just a visualization.

Oh, is that how you do it through like a visualization? Like how do you make your body start giving you dopamine?

Yeah, you could start visualizing something really great. So let me think about something. I'm just trying to think of a memory that I could go to for you. Okay, so this is one that I usually go to a lot. You know, it's my 40th birthday and I'm walking on the beach, at Kits Beach in Vancouver, with my sister and my brother-in-law, my brother, and James, my partner, and I'm holding his hand and it's a beautiful sunny Vancouver day. As I walk towards the beach, I can see the mountains in the distance, and I feel that warm wind on my face, and the ice-capped mountains just look majestic in the distance. And it's a really calm day. The water is really calm. You can almost see the reflection of the mountains off the water. And what I can smell around me is the smell of summer. It smells like sunshine and volleyball and suntan lotion. And it smells amazing. And as I'm walking down the beach with James, all of a sudden my cell phone rings and I answer it and it's my mom. I'm like, hey mom, how are you? She said, oh, I'm fine. And she wishes me a happy birthday. And I'm like, oh, thank you. Yeah, I'm having a great day. Thank you. What's that, mom?

What?

I said, "What are you saying?" She says, "Turn around." So I turn around, and there she is, sitting on a log at the beach. She's there to surprise me. And I get up and I walk over to her and I give her the biggest embrace. And as I hug her, she feels like home. She is my home. And so I really get into that place of, "What do I see? What do I smell? What do I taste?" "Excuse me, what are the emotions that I'm feeling in this moment?" And I get myself to a really elevated emotional state of loving my mom, for how that makes me feel. But that's just one tiny aspect of our program. And so, you know, getting to an elevated emotional state, and there are all kinds of tips on the website when people buy the program, whether you go through the program live to our 5-day interactive training seminars, or if you go through the DVD, or you go through the online version, you can join the community forum. We have over, I don't know, 6,000 active members there, and there are— it's a gold mine of tips for training and how to access those positive emotions. But anyway, so that's neurological and emotional rehearsal. Okay, so that is So that's just part of it. You want to really get into an elevated emotional state. The E at the end of that is environmental awareness. Now, I don't want to go— it would really be a crime if I went through what I went through and didn't learn anything from it. I mean, of course, I've learned all about the brain, but I've also learned a lot about the environment. And while I can go anywhere and do anything, and I do, I also have common sense and I like to live environmentally aware. So that means I look at what I put on my body, I look at what I put in my body, I look at my environment in terms of the environment that I've created for my home and my office. So I'm still going to look at those things and make common sense decisions, but I'm not controlled by limbic system impairment. It is a conscious choice that I'm making to live in a way that is done with a high degree of environmental awareness. Hmm. Does that make sense? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So those— that's what IMAGINE stands for. So keeping the concepts of the program in mind.

Yeah, I like that. It's, it's just amazing how deep this stuff goes. The trauma, the trauma, the impact to your neurological system, the way your amygdala gets turned on and you have to figure out how to shut it in a sense, shut it off to live like you used to live. And so I, yeah, I really like that. Imagine that acronym and bringing things back into balance.

Yeah. And, uh, you know, what we've seen is that when people do this repetitively, again, you know, it's like a 6-month minimum, 6-month commitment that people recover, like not only just like feel a little bit better, they're thriving. Thriving, like 100%, like being in the world, of the world, having energy, not having symptoms, and living lives pre-illness. And sometimes even better than pre-illness because once you go through an experience like this, you're a changed person. There's no way that that can't change you. So I think that in some ways, you come out of it with a level of gratitude that most people don't have. And a sense of gratitude for very, very simple things.

Yeah.

And a sense of, also a sense of urgency. I can only speak for myself to say sense of urgency. And the urgency is about spreading awareness of this. Right. And trying to get the message out there to medical doctors and to as many people as we can so that they're referring their patients to the program so that people don't have to suffer. And my goal, the way that I look at the success of the program is when I'm at an in-person program and I'm teaching and I look at the number of years that people have been suffering before they heard about the program. I'm like, "If you've been suffering for less than 5 years, I want to—" And suffering at all, even for a day, is horrible. But all that to say, if you've been suffering for less than 5 years and you find us, I'm like, "Yay! You haven't been in that 20 to 30 year period." Because we really want to be able to decrease the amount of time that people are suffering, because if you can imagine, if you could stop the suffering, then that's a whole lot of things that change. You stop the amount of money that's being spent, you save relationships, you save— and I don't want to put this lightly, but really it is like saving lives. You are changing the trajectory. You're changing the trajectory of someone's life. And it's not just their life, it's their whole family. It's the people that they're in relationship. It's their children. It's your children. Like, you know, it's really, yeah, it's just unbelievable. There's so much work that needs to be done on so many different levels. And not just about creating awareness about treatments that work or that have the potential for working for a lot of people, but also about the validation of the illness, creating environmental awareness, like all of that. There's so many different arms of this. There's so much education that needs to be done, but I can certainly say from our standpoint and from my team, we're doing all that we can to make that happen. We're actively involved in a couple of research projects right now, and we're hoping that— one is an observational research study that was done by McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and the research is complete, but it still needs to be published. So I'm not sure when that will be published because it's not my area, but hopefully soon, and we're really hopeful that the results actually speak to what we're seeing in terms of recoveries. And then there's a second research project happening at the University of Calgary, and we'll be looking at specifically people with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and MCS, and hopefully having some form of brain imaging at baseline and at 6 months to really track what changes are happening in the brain as well as symptomology as people go through the program. That sounds awesome. Yeah, yeah, it's a really exciting place to be.

But yeah, yeah, stopping the suffering— that's on our very first podcast episode. Aaron said, why are we doing this? And I said, to stop the suffering. Like, that's what it comes down to. And I agree. And the people that I see coming out of stuff like this do have that sense of urgency, do have a higher sense of gratitude, because like you said, it changes every aspect of your life. The trajectory of your life has been forever changed, and it's wrestling with that to make it something that, that you want. That is— I don't know, I think where that like strength and stuff comes from. I have a couple of questions. One, I would love to have you talk about the 5 pillars of DNRS, um, because I thought that was really fantastic. But before that, what— can you explain to us the difference between DNRS and like meditation or mindfulness training? Because that's been huge for me in the last year. I've gotten into a lot of meditation to try to cope with some of what I'm feeling and the anxieties and all that stuff. But what is the difference? Because this feels different on a lot of levels than just mindfulness. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, let's, let's talk about that one, and then we'll go into the 5 Pillars of Recovery. So the difference between meditation and mindfulness— I mean, there are many different forms of meditation. And first of all, I have to say, I think that meditation is great. You know, you're learning how to really focus your attention, you can start to decrease some of the negative reactions that might be happening, right? So you are decreasing the emotional response and, you know, learning to manage stress and your thoughts in a different way, which is good, which is great. That's fantastic for anyone to do. And we know that the brain changes through meditation. We know that there are structural changes that happen, that, you know, your prefrontal cortex it gets larger and stuff like that. But what's different is, you know, with most forms of meditation, what you're doing is you're stepping into that curious observer, which is awesome. So you're creating some distance between you and the thought or you and the emotion or you and the behavior or whatever. So you're creating that distance, but you're passively kind of letting it roll by, right? Like not that you know, don't become attached to it, just let it go by. Don't become attached, just let it go by. Which is great, but the difference is with limbic system impairment and with our program, we're really recognizing thought pattern and emotional— thought patterns, emotional patterns, and behavioral patterns that are actually the result of limbic system impairment. They are a symptom of the impairment itself. So when we have those thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, you go, oh, "Look, there's another one. Time to redirect." So we're actively going in and redirecting the brain. And not, yeah, so it's very different in that aspect. You know, we do have a mindfulness component, but we're looking at, "Okay, hang on a second. If I am having fear about something and fear is keeping this threat mechanism going in my brain, then maybe I should start to really focus on something different. So we're really distracting the brain from any kind of thoughts, feelings, and emotions, or yeah, and behaviors that are associated with the impairment itself. So it's very different. You're actually going in and redirecting on a moment-to-moment basis throughout the day. So very, very different. Okay, interesting. And the Five Pillars of Recovery, I actually kind of— I interweave the Five Pillars of Recovery already in Imagine. So, okay, yeah, actually I see that. Yeah, they're there. So I'll go over the Five Pillars quickly though. So one is to recognize that symptoms are associated with limbic system impairment. So just like I said, if you're having thoughts, feelings, emotions, and behaviors that are associated with some kind of rogue fear mechanism or threat response, then is it really necessary to entertain them or are we going to just, you know, we need to distract the brain to take a different pattern. Remember, our brain, we are smart, our brain is not. It's looking for patterns that it already knows. So we need to start redirecting brain patterns right away. And it doesn't mean that the symptoms aren't real, the symptoms are real. Like, it's all real. It's just about rewiring the brain to get it to a place of balance where it's going to, as the master organ of the entire body, start to send messages to, different messages to the immune system, to the endocrine system, to all of these other systems. So number 2, identify and redirect all POPs. And again, that's, those are the POP pathways of the past. Number 3 is the third pillar of recovery is do full rounds of the limbic system retraining steps for 1 hour your day. And that's really that neurological and emotional rehearsal that we were talking about. Yeah. Incremental training, and that's where you may have— that's some form of neural training that can sometimes involve small exposure therapy. And number 5 is elevate your emotional state. And that's something that we do in the neurological and emotional rehearsal, but also you want to do that at many times throughout the day, as much as you can, to elevate your emotional state. And it seems kind of like, in the beginning it seems, what does it seem? It seems so just, I don't even know what the word is that I'm trying to describe. It seems counterintuitive. It seems counterintuitive to everything to go to a place of joy or to change your emotional state or to, to think about things differently or to feel differently or to behave differently, it seems like turning everything over on its head, but sometimes that's what we need to do in order to rewire those aspects of the brain. So even though it seems counterintuitive, like, wow, well, you know, I don't want to go to a happy memory because there's nothing to feel happy about. Well, yeah, you're right, you know, you might be having a hard day, maybe it's it's tough to go there and maybe it's going to take some work to get there and you can get your brain to go there. It's not about you are happy in this moment, it's about changing the brain.

And in doing so, I mean, you had said earlier that like with a lot of chronic illness, there's no room for joy and that's essentially what you're doing then is stopping the chaos and the panic and saying, no, I'm consciously choosing to operate right here and now for a couple minutes in a state of joy, or at least making room for it.

At least making room for it. And you know what? It doesn't even have to be genuine. I mean, you want to make it as genuine as possible, but truly it doesn't have to be genuine. This is about rewiring your brain. These are the tools to rewire your brain. It's not about, I'm going to glimpse, you know, because I think that it's not about, I'm going to feel grateful for this moment, or I'm going to elevate my emotional state right now just because I can, and I'm going to look at the world differently. It's about all of these things that have been wrapped up into a step-by-step process to actually rewire the brain. So it's not that any one of these things is new. Right. It's about application of it. Right? So it's— yeah, sorry, Sarah, go ahead.

No, no, no. And that application comes through that incremental training, right?

Yeah, it's all of it. The application is all of it. It's all about those 5 pillars. It's about that whole acronym called IMAGINE. It's all of it. So it's not one piece of this. It's all of it that has to be done on a daily basis and for at least 6 months to really rewire those neural circuits in the brain. Wow. Yeah, so it's work, but I don't know, somebody told me it's the best work you'll do in your life because if your recovery is on the other end of that, then it is worth every second, every ounce of energy, everything because it means that you could potentially have a fully functioning life, a fully functioning brain. And emotional system and immune system, endocrine system, everything. So it's a different world when you're on the other side, right? I know both worlds. Yeah. I can only tell you that this side is a really nice side to be on. It's worth every ounce of effort that you put into it. Yeah.

I love that. Worth every ounce of effort. It's funny because I contacted you. I had done an interview about a year and a half ago with someone, and I'd been in treatment the last year and hadn't touched base with him. And he said— I said, hey, how are you doing? And he goes, oh my gosh, I started to go downhill. I started to have symptoms again. And he's done everything— diet, changed his environment, everything, juicing, colonics, all this stuff. And he said, and then I realized— he said, and then I went through the DNRS training program. And he said, I realized that really a lot of the symptoms that I was dealing with were not because I was still dealing with symptoms. It's because emotionally I was just traumatized by the last X number of years. And so his story is actually what inspired me to get in contact with you and set up this interview, because I'm like, knowing that that's where I'm at too, I'm like, oh, okay, I've been down this road before. I get it. I've implemented everything I know to do, and yet my emotions and my brain and my body are not in alignment. And so I can have a great day and be functioning, functioning emotionally at a certain level, and then one little thing will happen and I can go downhill for an hour or 2 hours. And, you know, I recognize it because I've been at this a long time. But stopping that pattern of behavior, I'm like, okay, I— this is where I have to go now for that next level of healing. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, Sarah, I'm really super excited for you because, man, It sounds like you're pretty self-aware anyway, so in some ways this is, not that self-awareness is mandatory for this program to work, but certainly it's a lot easier. So if you can recognize your patterns and redirect in the moment and implement all of the pillars of recovery and keep all the, you know, the principles in mind around IMAGINE, and, you know, I'd also say, If you're feeling at all like you need some extra help, then book some coaching sessions with our certified coaches. They are extensively trained in limbic system rehabilitation, and every one of them has gone through a life-altering illness, whether you want to name it Lyme or chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia or food sensitivities or chemical sensitivities or depression, anxiety, you know, what have you. They've all been Extensively trained, and they have their own personal experience of what it's like to be patient, but also what it's like to recover. And they know how to help people every step along the way. So, you know, you're not alone. You are absolutely not alone. And also the 6,000 people on the community forum, you know, we're never— you know, we're not alone. We're not alone in this, and there are lots of people out here to help. To help you and to help people that are in your position. So my, my parting words to you, I guess, Sarah, is I love you, thank you for doing what you're doing, and I really wish you well with embracing the program 100%, 100%. Give it all you've got because, yeah, I just know what waits on the other side. So is there anything else that you would like to ask me? No. Are you—

know, I had one final closing question of just where are you are you currently getting your inspiration from?

Oh wow, that's a really good question. You know what I do? I read the community forum every night. Huh, that's awesome. Yeah, that's my little bedtime story. So I read the community forum and I look at all the people that are recovering and their victories, and I sit there in awe and I just go, wow, "Wow, this is so amazing," because it's easy, you know, I don't know if this makes sense or not, but I think it does because we talked about the urgency part. There's so many people that are sick and there's so many things that still need to be done that it's so easy to get wrapped up in the urgency of it, right? And we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do because there's still too many people suffering. So I don't sit on my laurels for long. I'm like, "Okay, I hear I think about the 100 that still need help, you know? So I'm always looking at what else can I do, what else can I do, what else can I do? So I even need to remind myself, hang on a second, you need to live a balanced life. Hmm, yeah. This is not— you cannot— I cannot live my life in a sense of urgency because otherwise I haven't changed a whole lot. Hmm. I've gone from the urgency of being ill to the urgency of getting the message out there, which is a great message, but within that, I still have to live a balanced life and take care of myself and really focus on the good parts. So how— what was the question? What's my motivation or how to—

Yeah, where are you getting your inspiration from?

So my inspiration comes from Yeah, just watching people recover and feeling touched by, by all of the stories. It's pretty amazing. I don't, I don't know of anybody else that I know beyond the people on my team that get to say, wow, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're actually helping to change people's lives. And it never gets dull, it never gets boring. And I'm just really happy that I can be a part of it. And I feel so blessed to be in the position that I'm in, and I'm just doing my best to do my part.

So thank you, thank you for turning your trauma into something transformative and letting us all be a part of it.

You're welcome. Thank you, Sarah, and thanks for having me on the show. It's been fun to talk to you. Yeah.

All right, thank you so much, Annie. You're welcome.

Okay, bye-bye. Hey, Lime Voice Warriors, just wanted to tell you about our friends over at Oval Dogs Coffee. They're a family-owned roastery right in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Oval Dogs Coffee uses some of the best coffee from around the world, grown by dedicated farmers. Oval Dogs Coffee cares about people and the amazing things that people can do when they're affirmed, nourished, and inspired. Learn more at ovaldogs.com. Go to OvalDogs.com to order your coffee and have it delivered right to your door. Oval Dogs Coffee, loyal to the cup.

Hi guys, I want to let you know about a book I wrote called Little Bite, Big Trouble, and I'm going to read a review that recently came in. This is from Carolyn, and she Thank you so much for writing your book. It has become the means by which I have explained Lyme to my 4-year-olds. They ask for it to be read as a bedtime story over and over again and love that the mama birdie does yoga and juicing like their mommy. I can't thank you enough for writing this book. It has helped my family so much. You can find it today at amazon.com, Little Bite, Big Trouble. Disease is contrary to life. Therefore, wherever disease exists, life must also fight to exist.

Good job fighting, Lyme fighters! Keep it up. We'll see you next time. LymeVoice contains general information about medical conditions and treatments. The information is not advice and should not be treated as such. 'Kay, Lincoln? 'Kay. The medical information on LionVoice is provided as is without any representations, warranties, expressed or implied. Okay? Okay. LionVoice makes no representations or warranties in relation to the medical information on this podcast. You must not rely on the information on this podcast as an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. If you have any specific questions about your medical matter, you should consult your doctor doctor or other professional healthcare provider. And for you, you consult your parents, okay? Okay. If you think you may be suffering from any medical condition, you should seek immediate medical attention. You should never delay seeking medical advice, disregard medical advice, or discontinue medical treatment because of information on this podcast.

Got it, Lincoln? Got it.