Improving Depression and Anxiety with Dr. Mcayla Sarno

Hi, I'm Natalie Jill, fat loss expert turned lifestyle and high performance coach. Welcome to Listen up the podcast. On this podcast, I do what I do best. Taking complicated information that is relevant to us now and breaking it down simply with actionable steps you can implement to level up your life. I also regularly interview some of the most inspiring and courageous men and women on the planet who at their worst, learned how to achieve success greater than anything they ever, ever dreamed possible. Creating everything from nothing. If you are new here, I encourage you to go back and listen from episode one when this podcast was previously called Leveling up for the Full Transformative Experience. Depression, anxiety, even self harm has been a growing issue the last few years. The world Wide web and the easy access to social media has quickly escalated this and over the last 18 months, those experiencing these things has risen to a huge number. In fact, so many people are suffering with these things that there are not enough therapists to meet the demand. More than us being affected as adults, it's actually affecting our teens at alarming rates. Today on Listen Up, I'm bringing on expert Dr. Michaela Sarno. She's a licensed psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, brain training and mindset expert, and certified EMDR specialist. Most importantly, she is also a mom and someone who is extremely passionate about what she does. She's here to help. Today I've got one of my favorite doctors on Dr. Michaela Sarno. And she is special because she's not only a psychotherapist, a psychoanalyst, a brain training and mindset expert, and certified EMDR specialist, but she was actually my therapist. Me and my husband Brooks both did the intensive EMDR sessions with her, which was life changing, not only for us personally, but for our marriage. So she holds a special place in our hearts. And she was, she's my go to for some of the questions that I've been having recently. And the most fascinating thing about her is she's also a mom. She's also a mom of teens. And so when I've had questions as of late, she's the person I've gone to. And I thought instead of just asking them to you privately, let me bring you on here because I know a lot of people have the same questions. So thanks for being here today.

Of course. Thank you for having me.

So I want to first talk about the obvious thing in the room that everyone has pretty much dealt with over the last 18 months. I don't think anyone has completely not dealt with it. It's just been very present. Is this Just alarming rate of anxiety and depression even with adults, just in general. I mean, do you see that in your practice? I would love some help on sort of what's going on there and how we can even start to help navigate this with people.

Well, it is. It's actually spiked incredibly from in the last two years and even more so the last year, but it spiked. And it's something that a lot of parents, like you said, are wondering what is going on and what has changed. And so it's really looking at not only what we do about it, but understanding what's different in the last year or two that would have prompted or caused the rates of anxiety and depression and suicide ideation to spike so much.

Yeah. So before the pandemic, before everything that's happened in our world, were you seeing an increase in this just due to social media, or is this, was it a night and day when the pandemic hit? Sort of. This started happening.

Oh, it was before the. It was about a year before the pandemic started happening.

So I'm interested in what you saw there and what, what you think has created this change.

Well, I think, you know, you have to look at what's going on in the world, how it's affecting the parents, the adults in the world. It's not what you tell children, it's what they experience. If you look at what's been going on in the world, what have been the changes in the last couple of years have been pretty extreme. Parents have been more anxious, parents have been more worried, parents have been more diligent, and kids will feed off of that. That's how I make sense of it in terms of before COVID and the things that were happening. If you think about how politics has really been such so intense in the last couple of years, it's kind of nature versus nurturing. You look at what's going on in the environment. And then once the. Around the time the pandemic hit, if you look at the kids had anxiety, they had depression, they had these problems in the past, but the rates weren't so high. If you look at, from a standpoint of, we have predispositions to, you know, whether it's to alcohol or addictive behaviors, we can be predisposed to anxiety or to depression. And then it's the, you know, like I said, nature versus nurture and what's been going on in the environment because kids were surviving before. But it's, it's how politics, so to speak, how that's influenced social media and how it's in our environment, aside from social media, how it's impacted the environment in our household. And so that's what's changed. It's already having a predisposition to something and that's what brings it out in kids is their environment, what's been going on. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So when I was growing up in high school, I can remember knowing one person that would mention depression. I mean literally in all high school I knew one other teen that would talk about depression and we thought it was, we thought it was strange, we just, we didn't know. It seems like now it's almost the trendy thing to be anxious, to be have depression, to be confused. And when I, and I'm certainly not a therapist or a psychologist, but when I try to wrap my mind around it, it's almost because of the world of social media and the quickness of that, that where you only before had your neighborhood and your high school friends to kind of pull from, now you've got the whole world. So if you as a teen are feeling something, it seems a lot to find like minded people in that same situation. And to me it's sort of validating that is that accurate and that's absolutely what's going on.

So in the lab. And it is a huge part is the social media which is kids already had, you know, the needing to fit in, needing to, you know, the two highest negative beliefs with suicide is I'm different and I don't belong. And because that was already there, this change in our world and the changes that have occurred on social media has been highly influential because that has changed. I mean even the other day, I think Facebook is having to defend themselves because they had done a year long study to see if the trends and the things on Facebook were influencing teenagers, teenage girls specifically in a negative way. And they accordingly to this report, Facebook was aware of that and continued to allow that to happen. So it is the cool thing. Kids have found one place that will help them to fit in and that is the dread and the doom and this and that and body image, things like that. And so now it's you're not cool if you don't have a psychiatrist. If you haven't attempted suicide, you're not cool. And you'll see this because when you look at the statistics in different schools, you've heard of OSHA Performing art School and 80% of the students there have either attempted suicide, have anxiety, have depression and are also have just in that school embraced a certain gender.

Wow.

Statistically, if we look at the schools and the CL and we also notice there's a clutter in groups of teens that all of them have the same. So there is a lot of influence to belong. And that's just a place that they've found and they are, they are bonding over it. And they're also. It's interesting, they'll. If you go on Reddit and you look at some of these discussions, it's almost who can out depress the other person. But on another level, a kid that's really depressed might be trying to motivate the other one. Hope you're going to be okay, hope everything's all right. And so they're connecting in this very negative way.

So much of this is being hidden from parents. I would love to. It's interesting because I'm very close with my daughter and I get to know her friends and I. So I really see this going on with teens. It's like I've noticed it and I've really been observant of it. And when I talk to other parents about it, it's interesting how a lot of them are not aware of it at first. But when you talk to teens, it's so relevant. What should parents be looking for? Because I know in my audience here, a lot of people have teenage kids and they don't even know. They just think their kid has a messy room all of a sudden, or they're wanting to isolate more, but they're not understanding that this is going on any specifically look for. And how do we even start to have this talk with our teenagers?

So science to look for when they're isolating, when there are. You want to go on their computers and scroll through their browsers to see what happened in the history. What have they been looking at? What are they, you know, what's influencing them there? Major behavioral changes. I think a lot of those symptoms are. We should be, especially with teenage girls prior to all this. Age of 14 for teenage girls is typically when they will either feel anxiety, depression or feel suicidal. It's just, it's that age, but even more so now what you want to look for is look at their arms, look at their legs and see if they're cutting, because teenage girls especially will cut. And that's become a major trend.

Yeah, talk to me about that because that is definitely becoming a trend. And I'd never even heard of that growing up. I had never seen that. I'm assuming it was pretty rare and now it's become this trendy thing. Why do they do it? What is it? What does it mean? And what do we do about it?

Well, you know, I've seen videos on even TikTok where they are being or you can go on Reddit or discord and they will, a child will learn or teen will learn how to. There's how to videos, how to cut, how to keep this a secret from your parents. How to. There's so many how to videos. So what was your question?

Like how do we, how do. Why has this become so relevant? Is it because they just see this information out there and they learn to do it? So like my question is, are they learning to do it like this is something cool to do, so let me do it or were they already experiencing it and now they're finding validation that.

It'S normal, it's the new trend. Because before this doom and gloom, it was anorexia, you remember, that was the trend. And so it's just you see these trends and you know, I don't want to minimize. There are some cases that are going to be truly, you know, valid or depression or who knows what's going on in the home or in their lives. But for the most part in terms of the trend and the rates going back up, it's a place to belong.

So just like when I was in high school, we would see that especially girls with eating disorders was, was a huge thing, they would just stop eating or bulimia. Now you're saying it's just another way of replacing it. They're doing the self harm, right?

Because you're getting, you know, friend, you're getting positive reinforcement from it, you know, on social media and with their friends. And it'll be another trend after this.

How are parents contributing to all of this? Or is it completely separate? Like is it, is it a parent's fault if their child is depressed or anxious or even self harming? Is it always connected or is it really fully separate?

I mean it depends on the circumstance, of course. And there's going to be, like I said, whatever's going on in their environment. But you know, if we can have great relationships with our kids, let's say we've got, you know, the kind of kid where we were always close, that we always told each other everything during these times. We can't be their best friend. We can't just assume because for a lot of parents this was the kid. This was my very trustworthy kid. We always had a good bond. We have to do our due diligence. We need to be looking and being Much more aware with what they're looking at online, whether it's Tumblr, Reddit, Discord, TikTok, which they love, YouTube. We can't just assume that our children are gonna do the things we tell them to do. They're teenagers. Right. And they're gonna find a way. But we have to be more diligent, be the parent. And it has to be okay that our, our teen is angry with us. We have to be okay with that and kind of step up to doing so.

We've got to address our people. Pleasing the need to make be okay and have the neutral and then not have them mad at us.

Exactly. We have to be okay with that.

It's interesting you said that. I clearly in my household for inst. What social media has done. So we've got some pretty strict rules around that. But there's a lot of things that are not off limits that I'm still seeing this trend in. Like music, for instance. Music has changed too. And I noticed some of the popular singers with Gen Z, with that younger group, they are singing depressing things. They're talking about depression, anxiety, self harm, all of those things.

Yeah. So it's all that influence and you know, if you look, you know, Chuck Cost, chalk, chalk, Children's hospital, the psychiatric unit, and you will see there are clusters of friends in there.

Oh, wow.

You know, during, during same periods of time. So it's a trend and it's a belonging too.

Wow, that's as well. This is depressing in itself. What do we as parents do? Like what, what do we do? How do we help kids? I mean, I'm going to start with. I mean, I know they can all go together, but some of them can be separate, like just anxiety in general. I think everybody's been anxious over the last 18 months, just some level of anxiety. With so much division, so much polarization, what do you advise patients or parents to do about anxiety? I mean, just even starting with that, how do people even know that they have anxiety?

A lot of people don't. I mean, kids do, teens do, especially now. But you know, it's staying connected to your kid and having ongoing. Having ongoing dialogue because we can get so caught up in our busy lives that we can tend to miss it. But we also have to assume teens, especially teen girls, they're not always going to tell us everything. But if we start to notice signs in our kids that we might want to put them in therapy for, you know, it doesn't have to be a lifetime, but we might want to Set them up with a therapist to see if they'll talk to somebody else. If we're starting to see signs with that and, and start getting outside support for what they're going through.

What about depression? Is there some level that is to be expected now and considered normal? And when is it dangerous? Because if they're not telling us, I don't assume most teenagers are not telling you that they're thinking about suicide or that their friends are thinking about it. How do you know when this is an intervention? This is a problem. They need a lot more help than I can give them. Is there. How do we know that?

Well, I mean, there's, there's the more obvious, you know, when they start lying more, when they start isolating, when their behavior changes, then we can tell. We can notice. That was the other part of your question.

Like, just what we can. How we know and what do we do? Because, like, like, if I were to, and I'm not saying I just think of my daughter's friends, if they're wearing their big hoodie in there and they're dark, like, how do I know that's just the trend? Or they're actually depressed. Is there ways to know? You said so, isolation, obviously, and, and changing in personalities. But is there. What questions could we ask them? Or how do we show up to actually know that we need to get them support?

Well, it's the things you just mentioned. Look for those things when they stop. Teens that are depressed, they might eat more or they might start restricting more. When you're depressed, you don't have an appetite. So it's kind of assessing, is this real depression or is this part of a. Part of the trend? But it's, you know, having those conversations if we don't see signs of it. If, if you want to investigate, you go to your kid's browser, go into their history and start looking at the things that they're looking at. And that'll tell you a lot, too.

I've done that. We've been a full FBI agency over here, and it's pretty interesting. It's not, it's not fun, but it is very interesting to do that.

Right? And, you know, and that's a huge part, you know, going back to social media, which is, you know, even if as a kid, you've always been able to trust and you tell them, okay, I need to know all the sites that you're on or that you belong to, they're likely going to have other sites, other, you know, another Instagram page. And if you'll if you notice that a lot of Instagram pages and these teens, they're not using their real name, they're using fictionist names.

Right.

Like a character name. So they have their ways of talking to each other that aren't regular. And if we find an account that say we go through and we find all their accounts and let's say we see a couple or we see one that isn't so bad, they're not supposed to have it. Rather than delete it, keep it there, monitoring it, because that's the only source of information you're going to have. So don't be so quick to delete it because you want to know what's going on in their lives.

Yeah, I want to talk about that a little bit because that is, I think, a reaction of a lot of parents to delete and then all of a sudden take away and say, you can't have this. And that's interesting that you just brought that up. So by doing that, then you have no source. And I would imagine they're just going to get sneakier and find another way to communicate.

They're going to find. There's billions of sites. They're going to find a way to still. If you, if you look at their text messages on their iPhone and you don't you notice that there isn't a lot going on here. They're finding another place to talk.

They're sneaking.

Have to be investigators right now and see what they're looking at.

Yeah, I'll share this. And I'm not breaking any trust with her because she did a podcast episode with me talking about it. But we had taken social media with my daughter about a year and a half ago because we found a bunch of stuff and we decided to take it away. And then she went and got. She called it a trap phone. So they're sneaky. I mean, she had literally found a second phone to be able to use and was hiding that, which made me look at things differently. That. So I agree with what you're saying. There is to not take it away. You want to be able to track stuff.

If your teen is coming to you, though, and telling you that they're depressed or they're anxious, you know, obviously that's a good thing. But because they're not trying to necessarily impress you, that's not part of the trend. So that means that, okay, now they're bringing it to me. You want to get, you want to get a therapist or any expert, because once you tell a therapist that your child and Especially if your child is depressed. And if you mention the word suicide ideation, that clinician or expert is liable. Now you want them to be liable. The more they know, the less they're able to just walk away from it. And then you're not on that island by yourself or feeling like you've got this level of responsibility and God forbid something happens. So you really want to bring as many experts in, involved in the situation as possible so they know what's going on.

So there's also an interesting thing happening right now where there are not enough therapists for the amount of people that need therapy. I don't know if you've, you've seen that or you heard that, but it's, I can tell you that it's real on my end. What can parents do that need help either with themselves on how to manage this or with it with their teens? What do they do when there's just a lack of therapists right now?

Right. And it's because all the therapists are treating all the parents first of all. But there are other modes such as, you know, even if it's talk therapy or I think better help. It's really not expensive. You can they have it set up where you can pay to have open text messaging with your therapist.

So this is like an app or something that you could do online? Is that what I'm hearing?

It's your app. It's an online. It's I think better. Betterhelp and talk therapy. And I'm sure there's probably more but they have a completely different platform of just you can pay for like being able to text 10 times a day or what anywhere that you can find a site like that or a company like that. At least it's something for them. A place.

Yeah. Somebody to talk to. That's not you as a parent.

Right.

Can we talk about some ways that parents handle things wrong? Because I do see this a lot too and I don't, I'm not. I'm going to ask you if it's right or wrong. My gut is that some of this is not the ideal way to handle. But like when I see a parent mad at their kids for doing these things, they're mad that they're anxious, they're mad that they're depressed, they're mad that they're self harming and they just start getting, they're almost in trouble for doing that. What does that create and what's the right way to be managing this?

Well, all kids are going to rebel, first of all, it's only going to feed into. If a child's truly depressed, all that does is feed into. Feed into their beliefs that they are worthless, that they are, you know, all of these things. So. And I think a lot of times parents will get frustrated and angry because when we're angry, that's helplessness, because we don't know what to do. And so that's why it's important for parents. If you get to a point where you feel like you're frustrated or angry or whatever the case is, a. It's only feeding into the problem. But that's why parents should go to a therapist or go to, you know, whatever their support group is so that they can get to a good place, be calm about it and be able. Because our kids are feeding off of our anxiety and they're feeding off of whatever we're feeling. If we're out of control, if our behavior is erratic, the message that sends to them is, see, the world isn't safe. See, I'm not safe. My parents aren't in control of the situation. So even if a parent is anxious or angry, we've got to fake it till we make it. You don't want your kid to be sensing that because it only further makes the world unsafe.

That's good. So we've got to be more neutral, we've got to be more stable and not have that reaction. I heard you on another podcast are recently talking about how we shouldn't be making comments about their friends. If I heard that correctly, that. That by making comments about their friends, they take that personal because that's their friends. So they'll take that on themselves. I wanted to talk a little about that because that's something that comes up in parent discussions, is monitoring who they're friends with or, you know, being careful about who you allow them be friends with. I want. Can we talk a little bit about that? And the right way and wrong way to handle that.

Well, it's. You might as well be saying the same things directly to your child that you're saying about their friend because they're identifying as like their friend. They're the same. So that's why we. You know, scariest thing you could tell a teen is they can't hang out with their friends anymore. You can't have this friend anymore. That's everything. If you remember when we were that age, that's your world is school and your friends, and that's. That's your world, and that's all that exists. So they're going to hold on to that tight. And they're only going to turn against you in the long run, which doesn't help you.

So what do we do if you genuinely. What does a parent do if they genuinely think a friend is not great for them? Like a friend is. Is doing things that are going to put them in harm's way? Like how. What do you say or do if that's the risk that now they're going to take that personally?

Well, rather than try to get into a power struggle with your kid, you know, if you have the kind of kid that you can, you know, have that kind of conversation, this isn't a good friend. I think you need to, you know, space yourself. If that works, great. If not, the only thing we can do is arm our children. And that's that ongoing dialogue of what do you think is a healthy, healthy friendship? Or do you think this behavior or what your friend did, is that something you would do? Do you agree with that? And just having more of those conversations at the dinner table about integrity, doing what's right in spite of how we feel.

So if I'm hearing you correctly, we're not basically telling them what to do or why it's wrong or scolding, but you're just opening up the conversation and basically facilitating or guiding a conversation that. So they can start thinking for themselves around that.

Right. Because if you think about when they graduate high school and they go out into the world, we're not going to be able to take away the bad people in their lives. So the best thing we can do is to arm them with as much healthy information and tools to be able to navigate and make good decisions for themselves as best as they can.

Oh, that's so good. That's so good. Do you think there is some hope? What do you predict is going to happen here? Because it's really interesting to me how much so much of this is escalated with social media and then last year with people not being in school and people being home more. It just seems like it really snowballed recently. Do you feel this is here to stay? I mean, do you think there's a. There's something on the other side of this?

I think it's just like, you know, when Anna was the big thing. I think it's going to be. It's the same thing. It's just a matter of time. It's a trend and eventually it won't be so popular and there'll be something else that they'll gravitate. But the last thing I want to do is get in a power struggle with our team. But we also have to have that balance. Certain things, you know, we have to pick and choose certain things we need to change, but other things, hey, if your child wants to change their name or, or what have you, we really got to pick our battles, give them a little. But we also have to maintain and shed a little reality into their lives. When you turn 18, you can go out, you can, you know, do whatever surgery you want to do or you can do this, you can do that, but not until you're 18. But I'm more than willing to call you this name and instead of your birth name, I'm more than willing to let you, you know, dress in this certain way. Things that we're not going to agree with. But pick your battles. This trend, it's going to change and it's, it'll probably be, my prediction is in another two years it's not going to be as popular to have a psychiatrist. Yeah, I can already see, I can already see that trend starting to get to a low with, with the doom and gloom.

And it's so funny because when I was growing up, it was embarrassing to have a thing like you wouldn't tell anyone you were getting going to therapy. I mean that was like we would say, I have a therapist. It was like the family secret. You would keep it. Now it's almost the odd man out if you don't have it.

It's a badge of honor if you have a psychiatrist because now, now you're in the group.

Wow.

Like I said, it's like you can, if you read some of their conversation, it's a battle to see who can out depress the other person.

As a mom and a therapist yourself, what do you think about social media? Like do you let your kids have it? Do you advise that your clients don't let their kids have it? What do you, what are on it?

I think it's the most dangerous thing in their lives. Unfortunately right now I think, you know, it could be a good thing. I mean the Internet was created for good reasons. But you know, there's always going to be. Evil's always going to find a way to kind of step into anything that's good. I think that we have to go into our, our kids phones and their computer settings and we have to start blocking things even though they're not going to like it. We have to really be in control and be diligent of what they're looking at on social media.

I've done it. I've done it. So for those of you listening. Sounds scary. So I was of the mindset, like, I don't want to look because I don't want to know. But there's so much power in looking and knowing.

Yeah. And it's the same thing with their journals. You know, like, we want to maintain that trust and those boundaries with our kid, but if we start seeing signs, then it's okay. And we need to go in and look at their journal. We need to be more diligent. We can't be worried about whether or not they're angry with us. If we start seeing any signs of anything, we have to go in and look, because whether they admit it or not, they need us to.

But I'm also hearing you say, when we do, it's not to get them in trouble or to scold. It's so we can be aware, and then we can help them get the help.

So we can be aware and get the help. Yeah, exactly.

And I repeated that again, because I think a natural reaction for so many parents is to react, and that could make things worse if it's not done right.

And that's why we. We can't take it personal.

Yeah.

If you read something that your teen has written, I hate, hate mom or I hate dad or I wish they were dead, you know, nine times out of 10, you know, even with my own teen, she would say, mom, I was 14. I. I didn't know what I was saying. Teens live in the moment.

Yeah.

If they're expressing something. Unless you see in their journal that they're talking about suicide or they're talking about some of those more serious things, read it and just take that into your own diligence to start getting some help for them or just having more conversations with them.

I have another question on a little bit of a twist on this topic, but I want to talk about body image a minute with teens, because when we were growing up, there was an awkward stage for teens. There's no awkward stage anymore. They all look like they're Kardashians or they're like they're comparing themselves online. Is that contributing to this? It's almost like they're forced to look older than they are younger.

Well, of course it absolutely is, but it's either that direction or it's the other direction in terms of identity, transgender or non binary, being confused about their.

Gender, wanting to switch that.

Right. Because if you think, you know, at age 14, kids are trying to figure out who they are, and if you look on social media, there's those particular trends, which is right now it's very popular not to minimize anyone who really is, or you're going to have kids that are. But it's very popular to be non binary, be transgender, go by they and them. And then you look at the, you know, not to bring the Kardashians, but you look at that body shape, too. And it's just what's popular.

It's just confusing for teens, I would imagine, too.

Yeah. Because when we were that age, we didn't have the Internet.

No. We didn't know.

Unless we're looking at those, you know, our, our mom's, you know, Cosmopolitan or whatever. We didn't really have as much influence.

So I had the braces and the Dorothy Hamill hair, and I didn't.

I had headgear that went.

I had that too. Like, I. There was. There was a very awkward stage. It's just that it seems like that's just gone away. With teens, there's no awkward stage. They're in such a hurry to figure out who they are and grow up and to belong. Yeah. Wow. Well, this is good information here. Thank you so much for doing this. So I love those resources. I'm going to link those up that you mentioned about. If you can't find a therapist, there are these online sites. I love that. I didn't even know about that, so that's amazing. While I've got you really quick, can you just touch a little bit about what EMDR is? Because I know people are going to ask, because I introduced you as that and I mentioned that me and Brooks had done that. And can they even work with you on that?

They can. And so EMDR stands for Eye Movements Desensitization and Reprocessing. So essentially, you're working with your subconscious mind. When we go to traditional just talk therapy, there's a reason why when we leave, we feel good for a day, maybe a week, until we get triggered again. And so we're not really changing anything. Core changing responses. Which means we got to find a therapy that works with the subconscious mind. And there's a lot of different therapies and New age therapies. EMDR is just one of them. It's one of the more accredited types. But if hypnosis work, I think we'd all be cured. So what EMDR essentially does, in a nutshell is it's pulling up an old memory for the sake of a belief that we have in terms of our responses in life. We have knee jerk responses. If we don't get into the subconscious mind. The only way to change some of the way we respond to, to respond to things or triggers or patterns of behavior. If we don't get into the subconscious mind by the time we think to do something differently, we've already done it. The only way to change automatic responses, knee jerk reactions is by getting to the subconscious mind. So it's whatever that belief is that prompts that behavior, that response or that trigger or that fear. And we hold that together with where you might have learned that. Because when you think about it, when these beliefs form, beliefs are what prompt all of our actions and responses. We were a certain age, but we never think to pull that memory up and reassess it today. Is this a truth today when I think about this memory and we reprocess it. EMDR includes a bilateral movement though. And the difference is there's a reason why all this stuff is pushed in our subconscious mind. And that's because our conscious mind helps us out and helps us to do that. The bilateral movement is simply distracting your conscious mind long enough for you to pull that memory up to reassess. Is this belief I'm not in control, I'm not capable, I'm not good enough, I can't succeed. Is this a truth today or is it not? So essentially we're just pulling stuff up into your conscious mind and distracting your conscious mind, your little guard in your conscious mind from pushing it back down. We just need to pull it up long enough so the bilateral is just a distraction.

So good. I highly recommend it. And if you're. I'm going to link up where you can find her in the show notes. But I highly recommend doing her intensive because you go in for a week. It's what me and Brooks did. And you completely rewire that memory and you have a very different. You have the memory, but you have a very different charge around it, which is amazing.

So you've noticed a difference?

I totally did and so did Brooks. Yeah. Now I want to go do it for other things like how can I change the memory here with that.

I don't want to get too personal, but have you noticed any specific responses to things that are different?

Yeah. So where I used to get triggered by certain behaviors, especially when it relates to my dad. Like I don't have that charge anymore. So when I was in with with Dr. Sarno, with Michaela, I what she took me back to when I was a little girl, just some memories around that that I like incidents that happened, like things that my mom would say to me or things that my dad said to me and then the belief I formed around it. And that has completely changed. And I don't mind sharing this. It's not that personal. I told my talk to my mom about it, but I had this very clear memory that you worked with me on. I had remembered my mom telling me that losing a kid, you can always replace a kid, but you can never replace your spouse. That was the memory I had. And I had this resentment towards my mom with we did something in there. I don't even know what we did, but we talked about it. And it changed my memory about it, where there's like no charge around that with my mom and to the fact that I've even had conversations with her about it. And she's like, that's not what happened. Like, it was a whole. She had a whole different memory around it. So. But I had this really sensitive thing with her that I had this belief that she thought that about her kids and that we weren't important, that we were replaceable. So you helped me rewire that to a point where it's so neutral with me that I could then talk to my mom about it. And it was. And she had a whole different story around it.

Right. Because when beliefs form, they generalize from that point now we're not important in every situation now, anyone. So I love that. I love that you've noticed that major change.

So what I think about emdr, right, even now with the topic that we're talking about today is for instance, if a parent is triggered by, for instance, by something their kid's doing and they're making it like, let's say their kid is honestly depressed, but it's triggering the parent. That I would imagine is probably from a charge within them, from a belief that they've been holding. That's something that EMDR could help them with because you could figure out why you're getting triggered and charged by at work on you, and then you show up differently for your child.

Right. And teens can get this too. I mean, even my own daughter has. Has done some emdr. They can do it as well. And it's just as effective. You know, just depends the way that that's going to work with your teen just as much as with an adult is you have to feel like you have a good connection with your therapist. If you don't, it really affects it. It doesn't work. So it's important to find a match.

I agree with that because I remember thinking I was with you and I'm like, she dresses cute. She's someone I'd be friends with. I feel like, I felt like you got me and I felt safe with you. I mean, that was just my random, weird thing with you. But I think that's important, too. You want to make sure it's somebody you're comfortable with, that you feel that you can be yourself with.

And you feel that they get you.

Yeah. You feel that they get you. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. I'll put information below on how you can find her and even work with her on AMDR or on her programs. And thank you so much for being here today. Thank you.

Of course. Thank you for having me. It was good to see you.

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