#7 - Elyse Schunkewitz

Hello, and welcome back to the Undoctrinate yourself podcast today. I have another Extremely special guest and very dear friend of mine Elise Shungowitz We actually connected through a mutual friend Alina Connor and she is also a big PRI person like our person last week Rua But at least and I connected instantly actually somewhat because my partner's birthday is the exact same day as hers and the same year So it was like a very big coincidence and we were just kind of instant best friends from there So I would really like to introduce Elise She's a licensed clinical social worker and a holistic psychotherapist that has so much Amazing insight to share about how we can care for our mental health and like lead a very meaningful and enjoyable life So welcome Elise. Thank you so much. Alexa's I'm so excited to be here. Yes. It's a long time coming and yeah We definitely know each other now. So I'm so glad that we're able to do this in person It's just so much better and I zoom interviews are also great But it's just something about the energy in person that really makes it absolutely. Yeah So I mean, I would love if we just started by hearing a little bit about like how you got into this work because I know There's a lot of psychotherapists out there that aren't coming at this from a holistic lens and I mean, I mean, many would probably say maybe including yourself that it's somewhat of a broken system It's actually harming more people than it's helping and so it's really inspiring that you're trying to be the change in that and really embodying that and providing people with resources and tools to make lasting meaningful benefits in their lives and their health So how did you get into this holistic aspect of psychotherapy and mental health care? So it's kind of two separate roads that led to the same thing So I went to school to become a social worker and I did the conventional thing I worked at the NYU counseling center. I worked at Bellevue Hospital for five years So for those of you who are listening who don't know Bellevue is the flagship for the New York City public hospital system. It's also the training hospital for NYU. So we worked with NYU residents and medical students We are known for our psychiatric department and I worked in the inpatient psych unit the psychiatric emergency room and the mobile crisis unit while I was there Simultaneously I had started my oh, I was on a lot of medications starting from when I was a teenager I struggled with severe depression anxiety PTSD eating disorder stuff OCD you name it I feel like I experienced it and I had been on pretty much every SSRI that was on the market at the time I had filed them all with very little success. I was on Xanax for Almost 17 years Yeah, I had done all the sleep medications the stimulants in addition to that I was on a daily allergy pill. I was on birth control for also 17 years And I'm going to the pharmacy and they knew me like I believe I felt like I was a grandma bringing home like six different prescriptions You know, and I was still so depressed and so anxious and I would go to work at Bellevue and to be honest There were times where I I was suicidal going to work at a hospital where I was I thought I might even be hospitalized there at some point I was just that low So I was in the system both myself as a patient on an outpatient basis and working in the system and Seeing that for the most part it was a revolving door at Bellevue where people would come in and out and in and out and there's It's not just because of psychiatry There's also a lot of larger systems at play almost nests things like that that were contributing to people not really getting Savorized and better But while I was working at Bellevue I started to become a personal trainer on the side for fun and I started studying functional neuroscience And I was working with my own holistic practitioners Doing my own work and really starting to heal my nervous system and like diving into this connection of the mind body and brain And realizing that all the years of talk therapy that I did Were not making a difference like they would you know scratch the surface a little bit and make a few dance here and there But they weren't really changing The root cause of what was contributing to all my mental health symptoms So I started doing this work on myself as I was studying it and getting off the medication Mm-hmm, and it actually wasn't as hard as I expected it to be which is wild, you know and So I'm sitting there in Bellevue every day seeing this disconnect of meds meds meds There's no emphasis on nutrition. There's no emphasis on movement. I'm pop proper breathing mechanics People are not getting outside. I mean, it's a really really sad depressing place to be not only just for the patients, but as a practitioner working there and I felt like the system was just so broken and I felt like I Felt hopeless a lot of the times there like what can I do to make change and ultimately I Worked to study more and more functional neuroscience functional medicine somatic practices raky cranial sacral breath work Nutritional sciences all of it together in order to build the practice that I have today Which was a full mind body brain integration to addressing mental health concerns performance optimization and things like that Oh my god. Thank you so much for sharing that you have such a unique perspective being both a patient of the system and a caregiver in the system so you're able to really see the Flaws that are inherent to the model from both sides and that personal experience piece is so important When we're thinking about also making a new system to replace the old broken one like it's very easy to talk about You know the things that are wrong with the way that we're doing things But it's much more difficult and less likely for people to actually come up with real solutions and new Models to actually help people manage what you know whatever they're dealing with whether it's health care or finances or whatever issues are I actually also love the distinction you make between like the mind and the brain because I think a lot of times in medicine Just like in the reductionist scientific approach. It's it's more so like Conflation of the mind and the brain is if they're the same thing Yes, but it just that just couldn't be further from the truth And I mean everybody listening to this has a brain and a mind and you can very closely know the difference between those two things Even if like at the mechanical level you could think of like the way your brain is functioning to make you feel Certain types of emotions or like perceive your reality in a certain way, but Your mind is like there's also this thing that's kind of running in the background all the time and Maybe also I don't know maybe you can provide some insight on this like your stream of thoughts That might be part of your mind and that is kind of someone out of your control to a certain extent and I mean although we can Like push on different levers to make changes on that and like have more autonomy over that constant stream that You know there's many tools and this also relates to like the nervous system regulation piece that we got into a lot in our last podcast episode, but I just really liked that point that you made and then also the idea of doctors becoming sick by working in their environment in the medical care environment and Are one of our favorite mentors that we both share is Paul check and he talks about like the average doctor doctor is sicker than his average patient and There's so many reasons why that is but I mean on one hand. It's like the work environment like you said is indoor fluorescent lights and if anybody's listened to the episode he did on circadian health I get into like why certain artificial lights are very detrimental compared to others But the fluorescent bulbs in particular have this huge spike in blue light and UV light Which it is completely devoid of the red and infrared parts of the Electronite and spectrum and that creates like a very large imbalance in the system because The blue and the UV lighter the ones that are our bodies are very explicitly tuned to to regulate the circadian rhythm And so if you're under these fluorescent lights like you know at night or at all hours if you're working a night shift or whatever It is in medicine you're working kind of all hours and you're sending your body constantly the wrong signals of what's going on And so I think that's also a really important point It's that if you're embedded within the system as like a caregiver It's really hard to kind of see the flaws there because you're just kind of numb down to it because you're It's just kind of painful to inhabit your own body And you're becoming just as sick as the people that you're caring for and so the fact that you were able to step out of that And I'd love to hear next about like what you did when you started having these realizations how it changed how you were operating within Bellevue or Other areas of your life and then how you've expanded that to develop your own practice. Yeah When I was at Bellevue I did what I could you know like I remember when I started learning Joint mobility just from a brain-based brain-based movement essentially I would go on the overhead and call for social worker group and all the patients would come into the room Which up at door and I'd be like psych or doing movement group breathing group We're doing anything that could possibly help you start to get in touch with your body Mm-hmm. And start to actually feel like you have some sort of control of what's happening in your nervous system Because I think the message that the conventional psychiatry world sends out is you have no control And you need to be on these medications for life. You know, I had one of my patients in my private practice We got her off pro-zac and she's definitely withdrawing and detoxing because these meds do take a toll on your on your brain on your nervous system And she's having a little bit of obsessive thoughts come back in and she texted me and said do I have to go back on pro-zac? And I said listen I Support whatever you want to do because I do think that there can be a time in a place for meds I think that a lot of people hear me and they say oh she's anti-medication and that's not the case I do think that in some severe cases medication can be really beneficial with hopefully the long-term goal of getting off of it But I said you know you're not depressed or having Obsessive thoughts because your body lacks pro-zac, right? We don't need the pro-zac to fix it We just have to figure out what's contributing to that and help you detox your body off of this So you can feel better and feel like you have sense and control of your nervous system. The biggest thing I see with people is a lot of anxiety and kind of like under, you know, I use anxiety more as an umbrella term because you have things like OCD, social anxiety, phobia, things like that under that umbrella term. A lot of it I find is the less people's nervous systems feel safe inside their body, the more they grasp for control on the outside, right? Because if we don't feel like we can control what's happening inside here, we're going to seek a sense of control and safety outside of us. The anxiety really plays a role because it helps give us a sense of control and safety, even though it's a little bit false because we can't really control what's happening outside of us. So that was what I started to do with Bellevue was I tried to contribute in ways that I could in the system, but eventually got to a police where I really felt like the scale tip to the other side and I had a strong soul disconnect while I was there and it's hard to go to a place where every day you feel like sometimes you're doing more harm than good. You know, when I know that's a variable statement to say I'm almost even hesitant to say it on here because I do agree that the hospital system, like I said with medication, it can be helpful. There's a lot of times the hospital system is necessary and there are times where I've had to send my private practice patients to the hospital because they're not safe. They're suicidal. They're not able to care for themselves. And the hospitals exist for that reason and then I'm very grateful if they are. But you know, when we start really causing medical trauma and forcing people to take medication against their will that can really damage them, which we should definitely dive into. That's where it's really hard to watch. It's really hard to watch people get restrained against their will and injected with medications on an almost daily basis and feel like there's other things we could be doing to help them or that we should at least be doing in addition to the medication. Absolutely. I mean, that sounds absolutely horrifying and I think most people couldn't even fathom what that was like and especially with your background having already issues with anxiety and management of your own nervous system. I'm sure that was even more traumatizing for you when you're already coming from a place of less civility. And so that's just horrifying and totally the point is well taken that the tools that like doctors are given to help patients are just few and far between really like doctors are trained to be diagnosticians and like diagnose illnesses and treat them with drugs. And there's no foundational pillars. Again, Paul check talks about like the four doctor model like you have there's certain things that you have to do in order to lead a healthy life. You need to be hydrated. You need to move your body. You need to get outside in nature. You need to have some goals or purpose in life bigger than you. You need to get good sleep and have a good relationship with yourself. And you know, these are just like basic foundations for any human being to live well and that that's completely devoid from the medical education, which is just very disheartening when you think about it. So what your initial training was kind of in did you say in a nervous system? It was Z-HELP, right? Z-HELP, yeah. Yeah, so that's when you start learning about joint mobility and like what was your next kind of foray into like the more holistic stuff? Was Z-HELP like your entrance point? Z-HELP was my entrance point, yeah. Because after we do joint mobility, we get into a cranial nerve test day and breathing mechanics and visual system, vestibular system. And it dives a little bit into the nutritional component of things and how that impacts your body. So I studied that for nearly the five the same five years that I was at Bellevue. I actually took my first Z-HELP class. I started to build you in August of 2016 and I took my first Z-HELP class in November of 2016. So it kind of really they coincided with each other. And then from there, I really cleaned up so much in my life. Like I got rid of the toxic pants. I started getting organic food, started drinking better quality water, you know, started getting outside regularly and changing my movement and breathing patterns. South America brought, which is that's actually how we connected because we met deeper in the ocean. We were changing to get ready for our to take a painting class with a little bit of love. And I was like, I'm sorry, I'm not wearing a bra like when I brought this new shirt. I didn't know what to say. Oh please. It's fun. You guys stopped wearing a bra, because I listened to Paul Chex episode about why broths are so heartful for you. And I really went through this crazy revamp in my life. I threw out my microwave. There was so much that was involved. Starting getting diving into morning routine work and the biohacking world. I know that can get a bad breath, but just for the purposes of terminology here. And that was, yes, so that was my entrance into it and I worked with so many incredible coaches and mentors and practitioners along the way that exposed me to all these things. I think at the end of the day, my biggest education source was from my friends, my mentors, and my practitioners that I worked with, even though I was sitting in class and studying these things formally in the Z-Health curriculum and in personal training studies and anatomy. But really the people you surround yourself with can sometimes be your best teachers. And you know, which is one of the things I'm so grateful for in our friendship is that I learned so much from you. And you know, I think you're absolutely brilliant. So yeah, I mean, it's amazing what you're putting out into the world and doing. And I was really, really lucky that those people came into my life at that time. Yeah, I think there's the saying that's like when the students ready to teach a role appear and it's just so true in so many ways because like when you're unconscious of things like let's say your health, like you're not you're just living kind of by accident and things are happening to you and you don't have any conscious awareness of what you're putting in or on your body. Once you like suddenly start to become aware of that, like you see so many things that you never saw before, including people like for good or for worse, like certain people in your life that maybe are very helpful for you and like you want to explore that relationship more and like support the relationship more and other people who are maybe like leaching energy from you and are not like supporting you in your in your goals, especially when they start changing. I mean Jordan Peterson talks about like cleaning your room and he says like he says like once you start cleaning your room, you might find other people in your family start like lashing out at you about it because they're not happy. You're cleaning your stuff up. But what will make are you think you're better than us? Yeah, it's so true. It can really trigger me. Yeah. And you know part of that process, which is still something that's hard for me to sit with is my friendships have evolved so much in this time and I'm so, my friends make fun of me that I literally collect friends. Like I meet people and I go and I'm so so so so blessed. It's very really, bruh. Is it? But at the same time, it's hard because I don't have as many friendships from a long time ago. You know, because I evolved and grown and changed so much. And something I'm actually revisiting now this year is the meaning of early childhood and teenage and college year friendships. And even though we might be so different, why they're so important and reconnecting with some old people. But when you're going through this massive evolving, changing growth, growth spur and it's like years and years long, sometimes it's hard to keep those people around because they're doing something very different from you and your values might not align. And for me, it's been this kind of full circle of realizing that, you know, I kind of people around who eat differently than me and act differently than me. And but for a while, it was hard. And I do regret that it didn't always turn out the way I should have, but I've also collected some really awesome people along the way. You definitely, this change and you cleaning up your room, cleaning up your body, whatever it is. Totally changes how you interact with the world and then who you interact with. Yep, absolutely. And I think, I mean, there's sayings about what you attract is who you are or how you're being in the world. And I think that's really true. And I mean, there's definitely a lot of and this also comes maybe into the mental health aspects of if we're thinking about health anyway. But people can be very energy sensitive. And I think a lot of people who are in these very intense psychiatric words, like a lot of them may just be very sensitive to their surroundings, which is super interesting to think about. Like I know on Paul's podcast, he had some guests on, but they were talking about like, oh, maybe the schizophrenia are like actually the next evolution of like our species. Literally, why say? Telling my friends the other day, I said, I think that some of my patients who were quote unquote psychotic in Bellevue were actually more in touch with reality than we are. Yeah. And I'm not to get all conspiracy. Although this is the unductioneer. Exactly. Not, you know, to get into that is that I really felt like sometimes, well, sometimes there were people I worked with who were very, very dangerous and very violent. And it works with some of the most intense psychiatric cases in all of New York City. And we had a prison floor, a affiliate with rakers. And it worked with a lot of people coming off of that floor as well. But I've of course had these thoughts of like, you know, this, what this patient is saying about her computer being hacked and people listening on her phone are not far fetched. Why are you meditating carver? And it's almost like, let's shut you up. You can't talk about this. You know, like don't let this get out. And that's also when it really starts to be like, oh my gosh, like what's actually happening here? Why are we silencing these people? And maybe they're not so dangerous. And then there's like the ego thing that happens with the clinicians at the hospital where it's like, well, you know, you're coming in and you're the crazy patient, right? Let me devalue these lives. Yeah, the amount of gaslighting that occurs. So much gaslighting. Like what they are saying may be very valid and true. But they're just completely written off 100% and I can tell you stories about times where I really towards the end of my time at Bellevue by half a decade there, I really felt like people who are being discredited. Like I remember going on a mobile crisis call with a woman who basically we were on this mobile crisis team where if someone in the community felt like there was another person out there that was a danger to themselves or others or had an inability to care for themselves they can call this hotline in New York City and it activates a mobile crisis team. That's affiliated with one of the hospitals in the city. And I remember going through a call and there was a woman who was considered delusional and she had some sort of illness I can't remember if it was cancer or not but she said I'm going to heal my illness through prayer. And did she have your conventional markers of psychosis in other ways? Yes. Like I can't deny that she wasn't a hoarder and living among a very filthy home that she was in and there were other things coming up but she was basically deemed not able to care for herself because she was too psychotic to make medical decisions and I need you to sign letting in in quotes for air quotes for those who are not watching the video right now. But I also know having studied your dispenses work and having studied Paul Czech's work and all these people who do talk about the power of your mindset in impacting your brain and body and your healing process. I know that it is very possible to do work to heal your body without the use of conventional medical intervention. In some cases, right? And once again not poo-pooing all medical intervention because I think that a lot of it can be super valuable. But you know what does Paul Czech say? He says the most toxic organ you can have is your mind. If you you could have ever all your ducks in order you could be eating perfectly, you could be breathing perfectly, you could be sleeping perfectly. If you are having toxic negative thoughts that is going to impact your entire system and how healthy you are. And here I am arguing with my colleague about whether we should be removing this woman against her will and bring her to the hospital for assessment because is she too once again quote unquote psychotic to care for herself because she doesn't want to use conventional medical intervention. And like I said, there were definitely other things that may have warranted a removal from her home. But that was really hard because I was basically told I was wrong for thinking that she could cure her illness through prayer and more mindset work. And we removed her against her will. I did not agree with the decision. And I was oh my choice was overruled. So things like that are just so heartbreaking to see and witness. We disregard we disregard the impact that the that our mindset has at our health. Totally. And I mean there's a whole field of like neuropsychomyology that's and it's also just very something that's very obvious that people can realize like if you're stressed out you kind of feel crappy in your whole body. But it's because you're mounting this stress response whether it's acute like you got scared by something acutely or you have this chronic stressor like maybe a very challenging relationship or whatever it is. That's creating this kind of toxic milieu in your bloodstream of stress hormones. And that's putting your body into this like survival mode. This like fight or flight state. That's basically antithetical to the parasympathetic healing, rest and digest phase of the nervous system that's required to like mount a healthy immune response and anti inflammation and wound healing. And all of the processes that are required to like build and maintain tissue function and and integrity. And like so yes that connection is very well mapped out. And so this isn't even in the realm of woo at all. This is like very hard science at this point. But I think it's still something that people don't like place out of high enough a steam and just kind of like brush it off and think that you know it's not as important as other areas when it very much is. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean do you have any other before we move on? Do you have any other stories that were like very pivotal for you? Was that like basically that last story the one where it was like you were ready to move on from Bellevue? Yeah. I mean I think I want to talk a little bit about core. What happens in mental hygiene? Yes. Because that was also really hard to witness. And so basically when a patient comes in if they're you know if they're de-indeeded dangerous themselves or others that meets criteria. So when someone comes to psychiatric hospital in New York City, there's mental hygiene law that protects them and protects the doctors and all of that. So you can be committed involuntarily if you are considered an imminent risk and danger to yourself or others or you are considered in able to care for yourself at a point that it could harm yourself. So there were times where a patient would come in and be maybe very delusional or psychotic and they would refuse medication. And these medications, these anti-psychotics are very very intense. You know they're very they have a lot of side effects they usually result in weight gain, sometimes constipation, other things that were some there's some anti-psychotics where you have to get labs drawn every week or you start taking them because they need to check your markers and make sure you're okay. So patients would come in and sometimes they wouldn't want to take their medications and you know for various reasons. But if they didn't want to take the medication, there was kind of one or one of two routes you could take. So the insurance company would only cover your stay if you take medication because medication that I know right now. Medication management is the primary source of hospital, it's the primary modality in hospital and hospitalizations in the United States. So if you refuse the medication, the doctor would basically have to ask themselves, you know, if you're not going to take medication, are you safe for me to discharge you or do I need to have overrule this and decide that you do new medication. So the doctor would take the patient to court and it was very fascinating. I got to court many times and there's mental hygiene lawyers in the hospital that represent the patients and it would basically be the patient and their lawyer versus the doctor making a case to the judge as to whether the patient should be required to take medication against their will and the judge would ultimately make a decision. If the judge decided that the patient did not need medication, the patient was instantly discharged. So it wasn't even like, you know, they couldn't stay and on the milieu and get like group therapy or individual therapy or just have a break from life. It was like, well, if you're not going to take medication, you're out, you know, for the most part. There's always exceptions to the rule. But if the judge says yes, you need medication. Once again, sometimes it would be necessary if a patient is very violent or dangerous or not able to care for themselves in a way that is going to harm themselves, then yes, sometimes I think this could be deemed appropriately, but sometimes I also felt like it was a little bit of an ego thing from the judge and the doctor or the judge would then deem that the patient was required to take medication and they would, you know, list out on the documents which medications they could be prescribed and then you go back to the milieu when it's time for medication and the patient is stuck there and they say, nope, I'm not taking that medication still. And then what would happen is that they would restrain the patient and inject them against their will. And something like that is also really, really hard to watch because I don't believe in the black and black in way. I think there's a lot of nuances here. Like I said, sometimes patients would really benefit from medication. Of course, I was hoping there would be other interventions who along with it, but to now sit there and restrain a patient and inject them against their will, that's very traumatizing. That's very traumatizing for a patient and it's very scary. And it's also very scary as a as a sensitive clinician to watch that over and over again. So I don't think we talk enough about these things that happen in the hospital system and medical abuse and medical trauma that occurs from seeking medical care. And it's something that I think needs to be spoken about more because while I most people go into the field, most doctors go into this field and social workers and nurses, they go because they care and they want to help people. There's so many systems at play that are making it that they that sometimes are just doing more harm than good. Totally. And I think medical error is in the top five causes of death in the US now. Yes, which is just insane to think about. It's wild. When the patients who refused to take their meds, did they often give reasons as to why they didn't take it or they were just refusing it like bulletinately, like they just refused to take it without any sort of rationale. Both. Okay. Yeah, depending on the case, some people just allegedly would refuse. Other people did not want the side effects from medication. Right, because that's another whole other story like if they tried to take it and they felt terrible and they had bad reaction to it, then they shouldn't be forced to take that medication. They should be finding another solution. Right. Right. And as someone who had tried so many antidepressants and had I had the most extreme side effects like the side effects that are in the tiniest print that no one ever had. So I knew what that was like to be on drugs when you feel like you're a lab rat. I would go to the psychiatrist and I would just feel like, okay, well, that wouldn't work. Here's plan C and then here's plan D and here's plan E and like we're just going to try them all and your head is like for me, my head would just be spinning. Um, like, okay, well, now my depression may be lessed, but now I have to deal with the fact that I sweat all the time because my body's overheated because my body temperature has gone up from this medication or I have to deal with shakingness or I have to deal with like diarrhea. Whatever it was, like you have to be the you're constantly weighing the balance of, you know, is this medication serving me more than it's hard to me, which I think is really hard for patients to deal with, especially when they feel like they can't, quote, unquote, need this medication in order to function. Right. And the other problem with that is that doctors aren't providing adequate support to their patients because they only have like an average of like three to five minutes to actually spend with an individual and like help support them and manage their care. So it's like you're not even getting the personal support from these people who are supposed to be caring for you. And so the patients are left to kind of navigate by themselves and try to figure out what the best decisions are. And then and then sometimes people will try to do their own research online and like read about things and then they get gaslipped by the doctor saying, "Oh, you think that you're googling and replace my medical degree, but at the same time they're not being given the support they need to actually make educated decisions." Right, right, exactly. Yeah, so it's super frustrating. Yeah, so I mean, so when you, okay, so you were in the courts, you were on the mobile units, you finally transitioned out of Bellevue. What was next for you? So next was I had started my private practice my last year of Bellevue on the side. So I just, I had transitioned from personal training. I was, you know, when I wasn't at Bellevue, I was personal training at the gym and I had like no life. It was hard. I mean, I was working the six days a week. I burnt out my hormones. I know an advice doing that, which I know you and I have talked about the Dutch test and everything like that. So that was a lot of repair from that of being in a chronic state of high sympathetic tone, working at a place. I mean, really, I always, I say it as a joke, but you know, you kind of be a little, you've got to be a little sick to love to work in a place like Bellevue, Psychiatric Emergency Room, right? Like, it's really exciting and really scary and you're working with these patients who are threatening you, spitting on you, almost at times. I mean, the fact that I was there for five years and never got injured is a miracle because almost every single one of my colleagues have been injured in some way or another by a patient. You're in this space where girls literally my office was on the unit and there was a glass window and door. The entire room was just a clear window. So the patients were on the unit, banging at the wall, screaming at you while you're trying to do those. And any average person would be like highly dysregulated, right? No, we're all just sitting there being like, "Ladda, daddy, not just normal." This was normal. [laughter] You're nervous and get apt off. I've already had this very, from my childhood experiences, living in a high anxious, high sympathetic tone, all in my life, going, going, going, pumping out all those stress hormones. And now I'm sitting in this place where just it just fuels the fire. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we love all this chaos. We love all this excitement. So if we were, it took me two years of working with a somatic therapist to actually be able to calm my nervous system and sit in silence. And we know it was comfortable. But, yeah, so I jumped right in into full time, private practice, when I left Bellevue. And so what year was this? This was 20, 20, why? Okay. So this was two years ago? Yeah, I was in private. I've been in private just for two years. And, you know, just continuing diving into my, my educate is, you know, I'm going to out to California on Tuesday to go to a holistic lifestyle coaching too with Paul Shack. I'm really, really pumped for the amazing, but just continuing this education. I'm diving in and you're the same way. I think everyone we interact with in our professional world, who've now become friends, are just what I love about them. Is that they're so thirsty to learn. And it's amazing to be surrounded by people like that. So yeah, just growing and really trying to get the word out there, right? And like, that's why I love being on podcasts is because I want people to have a sense of hope. I want them to know that things can change and it doesn't have to be so hard all the time. There is hard work involved. It takes time. It's not going to solve your, you know, you're not going to solve your issues overnight. But there's so much that you can do to start to involve and heal your nervous system and really become the person you want to be. And I remember being so depressed and so anxious and feeling like there was no really real reason for living, but also making sure that I visualized and felt what it would feel like to be happy. And have what I want in life and try to start to manifest and turn that into a reality. Joe D'Sunza says, in order to change your reality, you need to change your personality. So that was a lot of, in addition to all the organic food and the supplements and the if red sawed and this and that, a lot of it was also mindset work. Totally. On my end, you know. So, and one of the things I wanted to say was actually one of the best things I did for myself when I was working at Bellevue was drop out of therapy. I had a therapy. Okay. Yeah. Why was that? Can you expand? Because I felt like I was, I was in all this conventional therapy for so long and it wasn't doing much. And I was, I was struggling with self-esteem issues always. And it was just I felt like year after year after year I was doing this. The CVT for it and the talk therapy modalities and the, I even went to a straight up behavioral therapist. Like not even cognitively, like straight up just behavioral therapist, but nothing was changing. And eventually I was like, you know what, I'm actually going to go drop out of therapy and go learn a new skill and learn how to fail. I actually, so that's where I became personal trainer. Yeah. I, for the first time in my life, learned how to be okay with failure. That's so important. I'm not saying that like I'm still, I'm great at it. But like to go from barely being able to fail to being able to take risk and be okay with it and like not beat myself up tremendously and want to go crawl into a ball and hide under my couch. That's a huge deal. And it wasn't to like quit therapy and actually started engaging in in real world situations and practicing skills. That's really what changed this for me. Oh my god, incredible. Actually, this is drawing a really nice parallel to the episode that I released. Well, the two-part episode with Dr. Tom Seeger, he was mentioning how he's, he is an advisor for graduate students and how his best students are always the, the athletes and the, the musicians. And it's because they're so used to like iteration and then failing fast and like, and just failing is normalize. Yes. And it's important because failing isn't something that, and despite like what our education system kind of indoctrinates us to believe that like failing is bad and that should be punished in some way, instead failing is an opportunity for immense learning. Absolutely. So you fail forward and like Paul says, there's only winners and learners. There's no losers. I love that. Yeah. And it's so true because there's always going to be something that you, some nugget of wisdom that you can get from that experience that like, oh, I can do this differently next time and I can, you know, do better. It's, it's not like there's something that has, we have to punish ourselves for. Exactly. Exactly. And I realized, and this wasn't until my late 20s, keep in mind, I realized that I had only ever engaged in activities and classes and things like that where I knew I wasn't going to fail. Because my self-esteem, I talk about this a lot, the difference in confidence in self-esteem, confidence, this is a definition I got from my amazing performance coach, Mickey Lase, that go absolutely adore, but should confidence is your ability to take risk? Self-esteem is your ability to tolerate potentially failing at the risk. So there are a lot of people who are very outwardly confident. They're able to go out there and do the thing, but when they get rejected and when they fail, they just, they feel so incredibly vulnerable that they just want to hide and they feel really bad about themselves because they take this quote unquote failure and really internalize it and make them and about them, right? They're like, I failed, I must be a failure. And your ego and your sense of self is so fragile that every time that happens, it feels like it just gets shattered. It's like someone took a crystal ball and just slammed it with their hands and it just broke into some other reins. And I think the way out of that, from what I did on myself and what I do with my patients is intentionally learning how to fail. And I think a huge part of that, what I do with them is I teach them all these, this nervous system work and healing their body and being able to breathe better and take care of themselves and use these fun neurotools to help regulate their emotions. So that when they go out and practice failing, which we do in small imprimance, right? Like we're not going from zero to 100. We're not being like, okay, you're going to go like ask this person out, you've been dying to ask out forever and you might die inside if they say no. No, we're going to do like small little things like maybe you're going to ask a stranger for the street what the time is, right? So when you do these little things and get slowly slowly outside of your comfort zone, but having the tools to start to calm your body down, you can really make big changes in how you start to view yourself because you get yourself uncomfortable, you go try to do that thing that you fail it and then you're able to bring yourself back and be like, okay, I'm going to calm myself down. I didn't die even though my nervous system thinks it's dying right now. I'm going to be okay, regroup, and then I'm going to go out and I'm going to do it again and each time I'm going to like do something a little bit more challenging. And over time you see crazy things happen. I mean, I saw crazy things happen with myself. I was doing dance classes for this purpose. You know, I would go to these dance classes where I had no hip hop training whatsoever and I would want to go in the corner and hide and the dancer church would yell at me that I was too much in my head. She yelled me in front of everybody. It was a little funny. Yeah, I'm with it all like every Monday. Every Monday, I went to see this, so this have a hot dance class. And after a few months, I would stand in the front of the class and be so into it, even though my dance skills were still not great, they were like, maybe I got like, I don't know, five percent better. I don't know. And she would yell at me in front of the class. I would just laugh about it. Like my entire mentality around it changed. And I went there, not with the purpose of learning how to dance, but with the intention of learning how to be bad at something and be okay with it. Because in my childhood and teenage years and my 20s, I couldn't tell her if he's being bad at something. So actually, this is another perfect parallel to the conversation I had with Tom because we talked about how important in the right process it is to be willing to be bad because you need, and also Jordan Peterson talks about, like, that you need to write a bad first draft. Like, it's an essential part of the writing process. And once you have something down that first bad draft, then you can, you know, have an iterative process to make it better over time. And that's how the process goes. But some people get writers block and or just like, even also, uh, conversational if somebody has fear of public speaking, it's kind of just this like an unwillingness to be vulnerable at a core level. Yeah. It's like a freeze response. Yeah. Writer's block totally. It's you, you're so scared of making of putting out bad material or not worthy material, whatever it is, right? Because it's it's subjective. Really? Especially if it's art. And you're like, I can't do it. I can't do it. I mean, have a seat when I try to paint sometimes. Oh god. Every painting I make needs to be a masterpiece. And then I like take the paintbrush to the page. And I'm like, I can't do it. I can't do it. I'm stuck. Totally. Brandy Brown talks about this. She says, you know, vulnerability is the birthplace of love and creativity and connection. Right. And if you aren't able to be vulnerable and make art or music or whatever it is or do things that you might potentially suck at or might not come out the way you hope it would or might not come out in the way that other people praise it and love it, how will you ever actually create a masterpiece when you haven't tried all the other, you know, you haven't tried the five different types of paintcoring that you can do or wrote 100 songs that all failed and sucked and right. But in that, you're going to find a little bit of magic of like, oh, this thing that I'm doing right here out of my 100 attempts, this is really good. Now I should totally roll with this. You can never have found it if you didn't fail that a hundred times before that. Totally. And it's like a squandering of potential, to me, because like humans kind of have limitless potential, like whatever we're kind of undifferentiated. We can go so many different directions. And like Bruce Lipton talks about epigenetics, but like how every experience you have is kind of activating a new unique part of you that you're not going to have the opportunity to experience and explore if you don't actually take the leap and be vulnerable and be willing to try it. And no matter what the outcome is. Right. Exactly. And it's scary. It's really scary. I still get scared to do new things. I think we all do. But a lot of the work that I have done on myself and continue to and then do with my patients is this is is teaching them that's okay. And that's actually I do a lot of in person work in New York City, even though license in a bunch of states. When people meet with me in person, if they want to do that experiential work, we go out and do it. Amazing. Because I feel like they need a cheerleader. Yeah. I want the therapy to translate into real life. That's the goal. Right. You go sit in this room, this box with a couch, you know, looking across the way from this stranger. And what's the point of doing that 45 minute hour long session if it's not going to change outside of that room. So my biggest thing I'd love to do is I take people and you know, the work that we do in the room and we got to bring it outside. We got to bring it into your life. Whatever it is. However it is. If you have phobias, if you have, you know, social anxiety, if you want to understand, I take so many people to grocery stores, you know, and do nutritional science work with them. And if they're into muscle testing, well, muscle test, the food, if they want to do that, like really I've had patients where I teach them out of a cup. We cook together, you know, so not that I'm any chef, you know, but like not anything. So I think that's so important. I want I want my patients to ultimately be able to go out and live their best lives and not depend on me. You know, if they want to come back and it's a great check it, that's great. I want, you know, some people that accountability, that check in, that constant growth is really cool and really important. But sometimes they don't need to be, you know, they they accomplish their goals. We get to them to where they want to be and then they quit therapy. They graduate therapy. However you want to call it and they go out and live their lives. Yes. I mean, I think the goal of every health care provider should be to put themselves out of business. Yes. Knowing that they never actually will because there's an endless number of people that need your help and your support. But like your goal as the provider should be to help this person not need you anymore. And that's like a healthy relationship. Yes. There's a lot of like Freudian stuff going on in most medical patient interactions where it's like this overbearing mother archetype almost where it's like you need me and just very unhealthy dynamic. I also love the idea of you being like your patients cheerleader because it's so Leo and she's a Leo moon and being this. So it's like very very it's very on brand. I love that. And you share with us a little bit about the types of people that you typically work with. Yes. So my practice has ranged literally from people who struggle to just function day to day life. Like they are struggled. They're struggling to go to work. They struggle to go to school. Whatever it is all the way through professional athletes, doctors, lawyers, high-powered executives and everything in between, which I know sounds so crazy because it's like well how can one person work with all those things? You're in New York. I'm going to be struggling. But you know when you work with a nervous system, there's so much that you can do. Right. And I'm sure your client load also is very diverse. Yeah. So a lot of college students, I would say like a third of my practice is college students because I have a lot of experience working at NYU and two leading universities from back before and after my master's degree. But it's really, you know, the clients who want to try something new and are excited about the innovative cutting edge biohacky type work, those are the ones that make the most different, you know, the most change in their life because they're, you know, they're really into the breath work. They're into the nutrition stuff. They're into the mindset work. They're excited about the relationship that them and I create and build. And I'm not very, I mean obviously I'm not conventional by a lot of standards, but I'm also not really conventional in the actual relationship. Like I really, I try, I self-discoll is one appropriate. Like my patients do, I mean obviously, I'm self-discoll is my entire life to the world right now. And that was something I had to, I had to wrestle with for a while too of like, I know this is in my, my future and my vision is to make change in the greater mental health system and how much am I going to put my story out there? You know, because the more you put your story out there, the more you're likely to get criticized. And that's something that's scary for me. I'm not going to lie. But I do, my patients feel really relieved when they, when they're trying to get off medication and I tell them, you know, I did that too. They feel like there's a connection there or like I've struggled with this self-esteem thing too. And this is how I overcame it. And I realize, you know, them and I might not take the exact same path, you know, because I, look, I realize that what works for me is not going to work for everybody, which is why I just continue to study and learn. So I have a lot of tools. So if all, if the first two things we try aren't really great for you, then we have a lot of other things that we can go and try. But I like, you know, to keep the relationship like fun and casual too. Like we're going to do a lot of really hard work. We're going to cry. You might scream. You might be really angry at me or get really sad or get really frustrated or feel really uncomfortable emotions. And we need to do that work to get to be able to feel them, metabolize them and work through them. But also like we need to lap too. We need that a little bit of fun and therapy sometimes also. And and I want it to be something people enjoy coming to. Yes. It should be a chore. Ruh and I last we've talked about how whenever you're trying to like invoke motor learning or just learning or unlearning of anything, you need to have access to your parasympathetic state because that's the state where your body is actually able to perform those those necessary biochemical reactions or whatever it is that is needed to make the new neuronal connections. And so you developing like a personal connection with your clients is super important because it makes them feel safe. Yes. And that feeling of safety is required for them to actually make the positive change. Spada. Yes. Right. And like this is so missing in the therapeutic relationship broadly speaking, that it's like no wonder that we're having this major crisis and just like all sectors of healthcare. And so it's amazing work that you're doing. So good. Thank you. And along those lines, they always tell my patients, you know, I want to create the safest space possible for you. If I do anything that makes you feel like you can't be yourself, I'm not doing my job. You need to tell me. You know, I say I do my best. I'm not perfect. I'm a human being and everyone is a little different. Everyone responds. You know, I kind of almost bring a different personality every client because you're very lean. It's people need something different. Yes. So so I try it. I'm they're not in genuine personalities. Yeah. So really all parts of who I am. Just like you know, you bring a different person on each friend you hang out or when you spend time with family members versus friends, you might be very different. But I want to create this space where patients can open up, right? Because I know that for some people, it is really, really scary to say this is my deepest fear that I can't even tell myself. You know, or I'm so ashamed of XYZ or I'm really embarrassed that I did this or that. And the more they can bring it to the therapy, the more we can work on it and the more change we can make. But I do recognize that if I don't create a CFS for my patients, to feel like they can share that, then they're not going to be able to bring it and then we're not going to be able to work on it. Absolutely. I mean Paul also, again, says like name it, blame it, tame it. I think he might have taken up from somebody else, but I remember the quote from him and it's so important. Like if you're avoiding being honest with yourself about something, it's almost like it kind of doesn't exist even though it does, but you're kind of ignoring it. Yes. The moment you like say it out loud and you're like really, you know, being precise about this is what's going on. Suddenly you can bring your consciousness to it and now you can make changes. Like it doesn't. have to stay this way. Absolutely. And at the very least, if it's something that happened in the past, you can be a reframe. But if it's something that's currently happening or you expect to happen, you can potentially change trajectory and avoid the catastrophe that you're so fearful of. Right. 100%. And when you can have someone with you being that cheerleader and creating that safe space, you can really accelerate your growth and your change. And there is something so therapeutic about the therapeutic alliance, right? Some people would even say that I don't be exact statistic, but something like 70% of the growth that happens in therapy is based on the relationship between therapists and clients. And I do think modalities are very important at knowledge that the patient that the therapist has and brings to the session. But yeah, if you can create, think out someone who has really, you know, grew up in a really unstable home and has really has a lot of you know, with the attachment work, it just really struggles to connect with people because of maybe how they were brought up with their their primary caregivers and they're struggling to build connections and trust people and, you know, the therapist comes in and they're a steady figure. Week after week and that person's life and they're there for them and this unconditional love that you can create and help that person feel safe. And it's like, I'm not leaving. You know, like I'm here. I have patients who like, you know, can become very dysregulated because of previous trauma and have like screaming at me and who got the phone and they know I'm still there. You know, and I actually get now I get texts from them being like, I'm sorry. Like right after like a minute later, I'll be like, I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't have done that. And I'm like, okay, this is good. Like we're we're creating this this relationship because what what happens outside of therapy, the way you interact with people in your life is eventually going to play out. Yes. Right. It's like a microcosm. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. And I did it. Really believe that at first when I started this journey, I was kind of like whatever. Like I'm going to bring these tools and help people rewire their nervous system and that's it. But now I really, you know, now I get it. Now I get it. Like the people please are out there is going to be the people please are with me. I joke to my patients. I say the day you tell me that you're angry at me is going to be the best day ever. I know you can't talk to anybody else, but I know I'm going to do things to piss you off and I want you to tell me. So it's it's a very powerful thing. And I think picking a therapist is hard. It's a lot. It's a very oversaturity to market. And it's hard to find someone I'm not going to I'm not the right fit for everybody. I recognize I also don't have the right skill set for everybody. If you have a couple like a you know, if you have like a relationship issue, dating issue, marriage, family therapy stuff, that's not my forte. You know, I can help people navigate relationships and friendships, but like, you know, you just see someone who specializes in that. Like so I but finding that right fit, I think it's so important for the healing process. And it's also something important to throw out there. I think there are a lot of people out there who like tried a lot of different therapists and they feel like, oh, it didn't work. It didn't help me. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's so much variability. Like it's hard to say therapy failed you or it's like this one specific practitioner is the problem and like you just need a better fit. Yeah. And maybe you don't eat therapy. Maybe you need, you know, with you nutritional code. Right. Maybe you need to rehab your microbiome. Maybe you need to get out in the sun and regulate your chakadian rhythm. Like exactly. I just only support that. Yeah. That's I mean, there are many times I send people my patients to other practitioners first to start to do that work to heal themselves before they before we start therapy. If it's work that I can't do because if you're not, you know, if you're got microbiome needs to get healed and that's definitely not my area of expertise. I mean, I have some knowledge of it, but if I need them to see someone like you, I got to do that first because if you're a gut microbiome is causing all these issues and your mental health, I can talk, talk to you all day. It's not gonna make a difference. Right. Because it's like biochemical. It's like, yeah, exactly. The mindset piece is really important, but it's not going to fix necessarily the biochemical imbalance that's caused by the, you know, dysbiosis or any sort of imbalance of microbes in the God. And I think the gut brain access is super interesting and like we're only just scratching the surface there too. But yeah, I think that's super important. So I would love to hear a little bit about the tools that you use when you're working with clients. Like you're, do you have like an initial tool set that you try out? Or is it gonna vary a lot based on how somebody's presenting? It varies. It's a very, very individualized approach. So, you know, I take a history, I don't just want to mental health history. I also want a medical history. You know, I even care like if you, if you have dental work done. Yes. Because that's really important, which, no, I don't know how but therapists are asking stuff like that. But I care about your medical history. I care about obviously like what's going on in your relationship, what's going on in your environment. You know, I see patients who have a lot of wool toxicity, right? And, and heavy metal toxicity. And that's important for me to know and understand. So I, while I'm still diving into these things and studying them, then I can consult with people like you or other colleagues or other friends or send them to other people like you to start to heal that work because it all goes hand-in-hand. You know, so I kind of got to assess where they're at, what they've tried. A lot of people have come to you. They've already tried a lot of things too, right? And the conventional model. And maybe they're just getting their foot in the door in the functional medicine world, which is really, I love that because I think they love that right to have a therapist who understands the functional medicine stuff. Totally. Is really important. But I'm always, you know, the biggest thing and I take this from Paul Chek if you're not eating well, moving well, breathing well, sleeping well, if your relationships are crappy, we're not going to make much change. So that's where I start of like what's going on there? What's going on with your sleep, with your breathing, with your food? Are you getting outside every day? What are your relationships like? I teach a lot of breathing mechanics to start out. You know, I'm taking, thinking about a top down and bottom up approach. You know, we want to help you feel better as soon as possible. So maybe I give you tools, breathing tools, biggest self-simulation tools, common tools to help you feel better in the moment. But then I'm also thinking about how do we start to require your system long term? And I don't expect you to completely change your, you know, your eating right off the bat, but can we make like one or two changes to just start off? Can we make sure you're getting outside in the sun every morning? Can we make sure you're getting your feet in the grass? You know, can we just slightly improve the quality of your food? You know, and really start to lay that foundation down so that the mental work we do doesn't feel like it's such an uphill battle. You know, so like I have a patient who came to me with a severe phobia. I don't want to get into two specifics just, you know, just for like hip up purposes, but she came with a really severe phobia. And I think the conventional therapy modality would have been using cognitive B and ROT therapy to address it, which I do have a lot of issues with CBT. I don't know how effective it is all the time. But instead, I just taught her how to breathe properly. We engage some somatic experiencing. We, she cut down her caffeine in half. Oh my god, let's get into that. Simul does some point, but yeah, finish your story first. We put her on a few supplements to help with GABA. The phobia she came to for me almost went away by itself without it. I mean, that's really amazing, right? Why don't we just, they're in white knuckle it and like force yourself to do this thing that's so hard to do when if your nervous system feels safe and it can move through the world, right, that the brain's a wrong job as survival. That's all it cares about. And if your nervous system feels like it's dying and you're not, it doesn't have the nourishment that it needs or the proper breathing that it needs to feel safe, then of course it's going to drive more anxiety in the body to make change. Well, you're gonna be anxious. It's like, well, why do you know I got to pull a check talks about this. It's like your body's freaking out. I'm asking, where's the line? Where's the line? It's about to chase state. So we get the nervous system feeling better and then a lot of that stuff just goes away on its own or if it doesn't completely resolve, it's a lot easier for us to then engage in that more conventional coaching or psychotherapy modalities to make the change. Yes. Yes. So important. And actually this reminds me again of Paul. I was listening to an episode on my way over here with Isabel Friend and she's like this amazing water scholar. Oh my god, the episode was great. I highly recommend. But he was saying how the the role of a mentor is really to minimize the suffering of the mentees. So it's like the mentor has experience and wisdom that they can impart to like minimize the amount of obstacles you have to go through to get to the same end point that they reach. So it's like a shortcut almost. So good. I love that. But it's like because because ultimately there's a lot of trial and error when we're you know navigating our own health and the fact that you also have your own health journey is really important to not only connect with your patients but also to potentially save them from from some suffering that's not necessary because you know you already ruled that out as that's not going to work or you can do this. It's better. But so important. But yeah, I want to circle back to stimulants because coffee specifically in caffeine is just like the most normalized drug in our culture and highly addictive and it causes insane withdrawal and like people just have normalized it to such a large extent that like it's you're crazy if you say caffeine's bad. Not to mention that the research for coffee and caffeine is like oh coffee is good for the liver and it's great for your health or whatever. But there's no like the research is not there that says like caffeine is necessarily bad for your mental health in some people. But like experientially some people are very sensitive to stimulants especially if you've been like a using or abusing them for a long period of time. They're going to activate the anxiety circuits. They're putting you into that fighter flight state and if you're coupling stimulant use with like not moving your body and you're kind of just like basically putting yourself in a freeze mode without realizing what you're doing. So what's your experience with like stimulants and how often do that does that come up within your practice? Oh all the time. I am a patient. I love him. Like he's we were together for years but he always completes me on his sleeve and then he shows up to like our five o'clock session in person with the huge second donut coffee and I liked it. - Oh my god. - I'm thankful. I do to go outside of the morning. And at this point, we have a very casual relationship. We actually do what he calls, what is millennial therapy. We're actually, our therapy sessions are over lunch and coffee. We'll go out to a cafe. But once again, just like really meeting each client where they're adding what they want in that process. But I've, his sleep cycle is just so off. And I beg to eventually please me, go outside of the morning. First thing in the morning, get some light in your eyes, get the medication on the circadian rhythm, all of that. He's waking up at noon, not going outside, telling me it's so hard to wake up to bed outside. And I'm like, when you are showing up to our session 5 p.m. with a huge cup of coffee, like what's going on here? Because you're not listening to me. So I'm like, Joe, right? Because we have this relationship, we should joke about it. But yeah, I mean, one of the things I always ask people if they have anxiety is what they're caffeine and tea is like, because I think about also, I know Ellen Vora, do you know who she is, Dr. Velley? Only for you, but I'm very little. So she's my fave. I absolutely adore her. She's a functional medicine psychiatrist. And she wrote the book, The Anatomy of Anxiety, which I really-- I ask a lot of my patients to read. And it's kind of like one of my bibles. But I remember listening to a podcast interview she was on Bulletproof Radio. Nice. And he-- but he-- I'm like, why am I-- Oh, I'm-- Oh, blinking on his shoot. Dave Asperin. Dave Asperin. I thought I'd leave any other time. I'm not going to be here to be angry. Dave Asperin's like almost like her breath about why she talks about-- you know, she talks about to cut out caffeine and how that can really benefit people. And you know, he loves his coffee, his built up. And I'm a fire ground bulletproof coffee and selling this drink. And so-- but she does talk about her book, how it could really benefit people to cut out caffeine. So it is something I assess in all of my patients. And it is issues that taking stimulants. You know, a lot of-- you know, you see this vicious cycle happen with patients where they're on stimulants. They can't sleep at night because they're taking the stimulants during the day. Then they need a sleep medication or a benzo at night in order to fall asleep. They also have no appetite during the day. So they're not-- you know, I can't even get them to eat in a way that helps nourish their body and help with their gut microbiome and help, you know, get all those amino acids to build those neurotransmitters. So it's like this vicious cycle we're constantly doing with the stimulants. And you know, I don't always say like, do you want to get off the ADHD medication we work together to do it? They don't always want to. But a lot of them are scared to. Just the reason for coffee, right? Like, how am I going to function? How am I going to focus? What if I start overeating? The jewel-- I mean, the jewel's another one. The addictive properties of the nicotine is a stimulant. So it's absolutely something I see in my practice. And if people want to get off of it, which I would love, because I want to help them ultimately feel better and be able to function better without the use of these supplements or substances, then yeah, we start to make adjustments in life. Yeah, the first time I came off of coffee was like three summers ago. And I probably had-- that wasn't crazy like coffee at Hall like I would have like one or maybe max two cups a day. But it was for like 10 years straight, probably from early high school up through college. And it's just very normalized. So you don't even think anything of it. But I try to come off that. And I literally had-- I weaned off first of all, like I tapered onto decaf and matcha. And then I kind of tapered off of that. I literally had no energy for a month. But I had to give myself permission to just feel like crap because I had to come off of it. The detox process. Yes. The detox isn't always fun. I tell my patients that it's not going to feel good to get crap out of your system. Totally. Well, I didn't realize that you did that. Yeah. So that was intense. And now I can usually cycle off of caffeine for at least a month every year. OK. And it's not been that bad since. I think once I gave myself that break after that very long term use, that was like the big one. But honestly, it's still pretty amazing to think about like 10 years of daily use. It took a month only to get back to like a baseline. I did. A baseline. The rate is so fascinating, right? It is. It's so crazy when it's able to. So how much caffeine do you use now? So I usually drink ulong tea, which now, which is like a hasynthanine too, which is a nice balancing effect to caffeine. So I mean, it's a pretty large size. I would say maybe it's like 100 to 125 milligrams of caffeine. Yeah. In the morning, I never have it after like noon. And that works for me. But I'm also due for like a similar break soon. The last one I had was like in February, I was off it for four weeks. OK. Yeah. And that's like, you know, nicotine, no caffeine, no-- I usually don't use Adderall. But sometimes I'll take like two and a half milligrams occasionally. But I don't know how some people do like crazy doses of Adderall. Like, I actually have somebody who was just recently talking to me about, oh, I'm taking 20 milligrams a day. I feel nothing. I know people really, really dependent on-- The tolerance. Yes. The tolerance. The tolerance, who can't function without me. I mean, I was on a fall this week with a patient who-- she's running low on Adderall. And because there was an Adderall shortage, it's a full of it. I probably also went over prescription, like over prescribing it. But she's so depressed. And I was just like, did you take your Adderall? She's like, no, because I don't-- I only have like three pills up. I was like, you know what? Take it. And this is in certain circumstances where I'm like, medication is not so bad. Like if I-- if you're so depressed, you're not functioning and not going to class. I used to take it just so I can get you somewhere. You know, even if it's going to just get you out the door and out into the sunlight. And then I literally sat on the phone. She was on the other end just doing what I was-- and we called all the pharmacies in her area to find the Adderall. Because I-- and I found one. They got after we called my-- the cry called like seven. Wow. But I'm like, you know what? Right now, this is what you need. But with the long-term goal, she does want to eventually get off of it. But it's really scary to think that these-- I think about all the time, all the medications I took, and how your brain is so dependent, but we normalize that, just like we normalize coffee, because a doctor prescribed it to you, whether it be an antidepressant or a benzodiazepine or a stimulant or whatever it is. You know, it's really, really hard. You know, I actually have a weird question for you. I know it's like-- And now if you've thought about this, so-- but like, what's the deal with European countries that people could drink coffee at 11 p.m.? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, on one hand, there is definitely a tolerance. It's built the more that you have any stimulant, I think. But like coffee being among them. So at one point, your receptor has become desensitized, so it's affecting you less. Maybe your metabolic path is also adapt so you can metabolize it more quickly. But there are certain people who are slow metabolizers of caffeine versus like fast metabolizers. So the slow metabolizers tend to be like hyper-- like have a hyper response to it. Yeah. And it takes them longer to go back to a baseline versus people who are fast metabolizers. So there could be a portion of it that's like their genetic haplotypes just happen to correspond with more fast metabolizing. So they get affected less from that. Additionally, there could be a down regulation of their receptors, most likely, or desensitization of them. But on the other hand, their sleep could actually be disrupted. They're just not realizing it. Yeah. Because a lot of people aren't tracking their sleep. And you don't even necessarily need to track your sleep to know that you're sleeping well. But I think a lot of people just beat the morning fatigue and feeling of blah by having more coffee. So it's like-- Right. It just becomes like a new baseline. And then if you try to come off of that, it can be a real shock to the system. And so for the stimulants, and all drugs, really, if you're working with somebody to come off them, it's always going to be a tapering process. Yeah. I made a biggest mistake when I was working up LBWI's taking stimulants for bingeing to sweaters. It's like off label. And I really-- when I was like, stupidly, before I had started this story, I was like, I'm just going to stop. Cold turkey. I'm going to tell my second. I had a headache for days. Oh my god. It's like, they're so powerful. They are. They're so powerful. And I like that you mentioned that you will occasionally use nicotine or use an addle every once in a while, because like we've said, the drugs are not all bad all the time. And they can help occasionally. Totally. So as long as you're not depending on them every day of your life, then having them every now and then or enjoying a cup of coffee every now and then, it could be nice. And also benefit your work and things like that. Yeah, it's just really nice to have flexibility. And in certain cases, you really need to meet a deadline or you really need to focus. And maybe there's other things going on in your house or whatever it's hard to focus. That's where you can reach for these tools and you can get the benefit of them, but not becoming overly reliant. And I also wanted to circle back on the tapering off things, especially the benzos. I'd love to hear your experience with this, because I've had a client who was prescribed benzos. It was, I think, valium for a long time. Probably was on him for 15 years or 20 years. And as prescribed by the doctor, and this also is applicable to Adderall too, it will say on the bottle, take daily, which is just, well, mass. You should take it as needed, but they're just telling you to take it daily, which is insane. But the benzos, so he was taking it daily as prescribed by his doctor and wanted to come off it. And he told me that he didn't feel normal back to a baseline normalcy for literally a decade of work, like hard work. That doesn't surprise me. That keeps post-getting off of me. Yes. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. I too really struggle with my cognitive functioning since I was on benzos at my memory. And my memory was so sharp before I started. Wow. I remember in high school and it being so good. And then after that, I really actually think I developed ADHD from being on these medications. That's my hypothesis. No one has confirmed that. But based on my own understanding of looking at where I was, and where I am post-meds. Yeah, it was, first of all, these things you have to go so slowly, as you know, because they taught me a Bellevue. Benz-- what are the three B's that are very, very addictive is benzos, booze, and barbituets. So when you're tapering off, which is why when people go into the hospital and they're tapering off booze or other drugs, alcohol or other drugs, there needs to be-- a medical, it's medically observed. - Yeah. - You're taking your vitals every day. Sometimes they're doing an alcohol taper or a drug tape. - Totally. - If benzodiazepines to help ease the pain and the detox effect and the withdrawal effect, but it has to be done very slowly. And I always say, before we even start this, you know, the biggest thing that people hate when they change their habits or change their behaviors or change their lifestyle and medications is the preparation phase. - Yeah. - And you're taking your own symptoms of organ phase because you don't feel like you're actually making any action towards your goals, but you need to prepare. Whether it be changing your habits and engaging in, you know, like cooking more or going to the gym or getting off medication, you need to spend time preparing. And your nervous system needs to feel safe. We need to nourish it once again going back to the foundation or, you know, sleeping, breathing, eating, all that stuff. You can feel as safe as possible, encourage healthy detox. You know, I have a saw at my inference on it in the quarter of my apartment, which has been such a lifesaver with getting off the medication. - So doing the things that's going to help your body feel safe as you start to taper off these medications because it's going to be a big shock to the system. And your body's going to want to, it's going to do everything it can to hold onto that medication. You know, the brain want, will stay with an unwanted hell, like the, like, blinking on how I freeze this all the time and I've heard it from somebody else. But like the devil, you know, is better than the devil. You don't know exactly a familiar hell. - Yes. - Yeah, exactly. You know, it's better than the devil. You don't have familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven. Because the body wants safety. How does it find safety in pattern recognition or prediction? And if I've been taking my Zanix every day for the last 10, 15 years, whatever, that's what I'm prepared to do tomorrow and the next day and the year after. So when you're taped, you know, when you start to tipper, you need to give your body nourishment and other ways and make sure that it feels safe because it's going to feel so unsafe and so scared. Which is why what happens is an Ellen talks about this in her book is that people start to get off these medications and these stimulants, the coffee, whatever it is. And like a lot of doctors will be like, oh, well, that's your depression, that's your anxiety coming back up because you're not on the medication anymore. Like you need the medication. You're like the I have a more medication in order to feel better because your brain can't live without medication. But you're she says, you know, you're going through a withdrawal. Mm-hmm. Your brain is learning how to be without this medication. And it's it's going really crazy right now because it doesn't know what it's like without the medication. Right. So slowly, slowly, slowly, give your body what you need. It's be prepared to feel a little crappy detoxing with our society hates our culture hates. We're like, we are like, it can't be productive. You can't be, well, I'm all about the birth control thing. I think it's like, oh my god. And it's like, don't listen to your natural feminine cycles. Like, let's shut that down so you never get man. Exactly. Yeah. Because he's produced, produced, produced. And you, you know, and you'll never feel that in a day in your life because you're not really occupating it. You're not really getting your period. And it's it's really hard for fighting and such a young masculine energy that we don't even let ourselves. There's like no good time to get off your medication. Never. It's always a convenient. It's always a good, I get that. I feel bad. There's never really good time remedial off my medication either. So it's good to make sure that you spend some time going to the end and doing what Paul calls the Paul check calls the working in exercises and all of that in order to help help with it. Yeah, I love that distinction. Actually, we should maybe just discuss working in briefly because I think it's super important and it's not talked about. Working out means you're like expending an energy. You're giving away your energy, whereas his working in exercises, which you can probably describe some of them to us because you've been learning about them. But the working in exercises are helping you cultivate energy and she. And so that's like actually filling up your cup instead of emptying your cup. Absolutely. Yes, exactly. And there's these beautiful, what he calls the zone exercises, where you're doing movement with breath. And, you know, depending on what's going on in your body, an emotional state or physical state or specific medical issues, he talks out which zone to target, which is really nice. Like the one with the energy push, which is my favorite, this is for zone three. And it has a lot to do with like if you're struggling with self esteem or you're dealing with your being very sensitive to criticism, doing something in the zone three area is really nice can help with things like that. So this working in concept is, first of all, I absolutely love it. When I learned it in HLC one, I was like, I'm obsessed with this. This is so good. But I think for people who are on overdrive and are high sympathetic tone and they're going very much like how I was for all of my life until really the last year. And I'm probably still like teetering in and out of it. Like working in is really uncomfortable. It's really scary because when we're used to that chaos, like that chaos I had at Bellevue and the chaos I had at home growing up, being still and calm does not feel safe. And doing that working in does not feel safe. And if anything, I feel like it always would drain me even more than the working out did. The working out was just feeling the fire and giving me more energy. And I felt like, well, this is the answer. Like I can just keep going and going and going and now that I'm running out of work in, I actually get tired when I work out. I never get tired. Wow. I keep going forever. Yeah. But it's I like this working in idea of the Chigong or the Tai Chi or the zone exercises because it's a great way to start bringing awareness to your body and nourishing yourself. And like you said, filling up your cup, especially when something like still meditation feels so unsafe for somebody and it's really challenging to do. Totally. But that balance is so important. The end, it's, oh my gosh, we need it. We need it so much in our environment and our culture and our workplaces do not encourage it. It's yeah, it's so absent from just life in general. I mean, we have all the EMF that's around, which is a whole other story, but this is like, like a low grade stimulating our nervous system as well. Absolutely. And so between that and like, you know, whether it's like noise from TV or focused on your phone or whatever it is, there's just so much stimulus around us constantly. Yes. That being like you said, in that, like that quiet inner space can feel very intimidating and like unfamiliar because it is. It's so new train. I always say our biggest obstacle is staying focused in a world that wants, that is so distracting and wants all of our attention. And it's even worse, like I always think about like, think about like the 80s and the 70s, like before cell phones. You know, it's just like like, yeah, you're living in line. You know, you call a friend, okay, I'm going to be, you hear from dinner. Okay, good. There was like no texting about it or anything like that. You just, you're just in your life. Like maybe you watched a little TV played outside with your friends, you had dinner with your family. But you weren't checking your emails from like five different devices. Right. You had your computer, your phone, whatever your your your Apple watch, whatever it is. You weren't constantly being invited to attacks. You weren't feeling the need to absorb so much information and material constantly. You weren't scrolling on your Instagram and TikTok and you know, it's like, I'm shocked when people don't have ADHD. Right. Because we're totally dating. I know. We're just expanding energy constantly and trying to trying to absorb things. We're just, we are not meant to absorb. Right. And then the anxiety is heightened and everybody and mental health issues are heightened and everybody. Of course it is. The nervous system is going haywire. Totally. We didn't evolve. We didn't evolve for this type of environment. It's very new, very novel. It's like really like our generation and the younger generations are really taking the brunt of it. I think like, yeah, the millennials, we really like, we got internet like probably around. It was like middle school for me. We weren't kids. When we were kids, we kind of had a normal-ish life. Yeah. Like more outside play. Of course some TV time and media, but it was more so like how we, I don't know how culture was previously. But now it's just completely different paradigm. Oh my gosh, so different. I even think about, I don't know if you did this, but you know, with waiting for, you know, the next friends episode to come on next week. Yeah. That's full house episode, right? It's like, there's this excitement of having to sit and wait for your next favorite episode. The radio, I love, I mean, we talked about this earlier hard radio show in college, but I love radio. But one of the things I actually miss is getting excited about your favorite song coming on the radio. Totally! What can I do to be fun? There's, you know, and right now everyone, there's so much distressed tolerance. Like people can't really tolerate waiting for things. And having that lapse of time. Now you can just binge watch any TV show or any movie you want at any time. What about when they used to air movies on TV and you would like, you don't have to sit in front of the TV and watch it. And then there'd be a commercial. And you go to the bathroom. I even think like the extension of commercials is so bad for us. I can see that. I feel like it is a natural break. You know, you get out from the couch, you go to the bathroom, you get a snack, you, you know, talk to whoever you're watching TV with. And then you go back and you're not so intensely absorbed into what's happening on the screen. Right. And then you just get to break. It's almost like dissociation from reality. But while you're just like sitting there for hours, binge watching. It's just like, oh my gosh. I remember when Netflix first came out, I became so depressed. Just like binge watching stuff. Like staying up to like two a.m. Yeah. And like overnight. Let me watch this. Not stop. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I actually feel really depressed right now. Wow. I can't handle this. Right. It almost feels like you're out of control. It's almost like something's taking over you. It's like, I need to keep watching. It's, it's a day. Just like scrolling Instagram. It's like, just keeps scrolling for a little bit more. It's always like a little hip that's coming like a little dopamine hit. Right. But it's just like the surprise of like what's coming next. Exactly. Yeah. And there's just like I miss that. I miss that simplicity. And even just in the. course of our lifetime alone, the way that technology has upgraded and expanded and grown is just exponential. It's not a steady state of like, okay, here's the evolution of the television. And like before it was black and white and now it's in color and like now it's gotten thinner. Now it's just like every year. Yeah. Like I knew the TV is being evolved and the iPhone is being evolved and the way that it's like how do our brains keep up with this? It's so wild. And there's also like this weird rat race of like people just want the new next best thing and like never satisfied with what you have. It will be weird to like make your computer. Yeah, I really like, oh my gosh, this thing is ancient that we're building on right now. That's 12 years old. But look, the picture is pretty good. You think it's just, yeah. It's been four or a lot. You said you had this expression in your phone. Yes. I think I could do four laptops. It's French and you're making some of those because they break. They're not made. Things are not made like they use their not. They're not. It's a real bummer. They're made to break. They're made for us to consume. Consume. Yeah. Let's over consume. They're not going to be able to handle the entire. Oh, and now, oh, well, you know why you're not so always supposed to last every three to five years. Right. And the reality is, look at yours. You replaced the heart. You said you replaced the hard drive, the battery and it's going great. Yeah. So I mean, I love that. And right. And there's just like, I feel like now with social media, the jealousy factor and the phone. Yeah. Like someone post, oh, I got my new phone. I got my new this. I got my new that. Oh, I need that. I want that. And then we have Amazon. It can deliver to you sometimes even the same day. Like, it's like instant gratification. Yeah. I mean, I find it. So I don't know if you find it hard just for enough. I find it really hard to turn off. I do. I mean, it's, I feel like it's almost like a mind virus that's. Yeah. It doesn't feel like it's me, but it's definitely influencing me. Like it could at least. Yeah. It's so hard. And I'm like, you know, even people, I want to go through phone detoxes and I know people who do it. And then as soon as you go back on, it's. You're like back to right where you started. I know. Like in it, you know. Yeah. And it's especially hard if you like are making a living from your like Instagram, for example. So like my business is through Instagram and like now it's like my livelihood is tangled up with my addiction to. Yeah. Exactly. Ever since I started posting up for my business on Instagram even the way I, you know, it's like not as much like you've been doing a lot longer. I feel so addicted to it. Yeah. I mean, do a post it. I'm like, oh my god, I got to check. Somebody likes. I don't know how to say it, but I look at people like you or our friend Alina and you know who have way more followers than me and I'm just like how do you handle all the overload of messages coming in? You know, it's just I can barely handle the review messages, I guess. I'm dying. And I'm like, you're probably getting like, I don't know how many new messages will be in the dead. So my Instagram hates me and like probably deprioritizes me. I don't know how much is like how it works. I'm indoctrinated everybody. Exactly. So I don't honestly get that many messages and my engagement sucks, but like followers keep growing, which is great. And awesome. Yeah. So I mean, the more we do podcasts and continue to grow this and like I go on other platforms, like it builds the audience, but like my story views are still quite low. Really? Yeah. So like when I had a 2500 followers, I was getting like four or five hundred story views. Okay. And now I have about 9,000 followers and I get 200. What? Because I'm deprioritized by the algorithm. Yes. And this is a problem too in our culture and our world is that we're not the truth. Yeah. And indoctrinated yourself is not coming out. It's getting suppressor. I think about this. Why I called the check institute the other day to sort something out about my class. And I was talking to the woman who actually is the assistant director for the podcast. Oh, amazing. Yeah. And I was like, Oh, my dream went our dream. Like I'm full. I love you. So and I said, you know, it's so it's so crazy. Paul's work hasn't blown up. Like what's it? And she's like, I know it's so crazy. And we do the podcast. And he interviews all these incredible people and you learn so much about you and I talk. You're like, Oh my God. You listen to this incredible. Yes. Everyone. You're like, Oh, it's all right. Yeah. And it's like how is someone who is so brilliant? Not blown up. I mean, I tell people to all go to the check institute. You know what Paul check is? It's like one in like 30 people. Wow. And we live in a world where like a lot of people, the people I'm asking are in our world. The fact that we're in Madison, also the fact that so few people even are in our world all about him. I understand that like the average lay person wouldn't know about him. But it's like his stuff is just, you know, he puts it out and then they're like, stuff it down. Like we got to get rid of that. Yeah. It's scary for sure. But I think ultimately, like if we are, you know, continue to be honest and alignment. Like our people will eventually find us. It's just a matter of time and like, but it can it can be easy to get discouraged too. Because it's like you're putting a lot of effort and work and energy into things and you're not getting like the feedback that or the support that you would have hoped. But yeah, it's just, I don't know. It's an interesting journey for sure. But it's so crazy. But it's important. It is important. And this is as an aside meanwhile, it's like I talked to my patients who were in college and do they have like huge tech colleagues. And my patients like, Oh, yeah, there was a video of me mattress, a mattress surfing down the stairwell. And it got 200,000 like. Oh my god. Oh my god. And you're a mattress or you can get literally like hundreds of thousands or less. Right? Right. I think about this whole time. Like I follow a lot of cute pet accounts and like they're getting like 1.2 million like views on their reals. And I'm like, what am I doing with my life? Why am I looking so hard? I love 20 lives. I know. It's very hard. And we, you know, in addition to that, you know, we're talking about this lack of ability to tolerate frustration and waiting and being patient is that now you also have a generation of people. And I see this in my practice of the wanting the instant gratification in work to. Yeah. And I tell them, you know, when I'm out of college, I was working at my gym part time to cover my membership. And I was literally cleaning gym equipment and washing towels. You know, when I worked at Bloomingdale's where I would have to just take endless items, you know, out of the dresser group, I put them back on the rack and you do it. I filing one of my first jobs in high school was filing and trying to do this like the most my job. But you learn this. It's character building and you learn how to do things that are boring, which no one has got anymore. And you learn how to work hard for your money. But that's not a thing anymore. And I don't want to poo poo this other this new, this younger generation because perhaps they're working smarter, not harder, which I can't blame them, you know, but it's kind of wild because you could be a content creator at the age of like 15, bringing in like, you know, more than your mind incomes combined and then triple it. Living a fun life. And it's like I kind of have this, you know, like, like I'm confused. I'm like, wait a minute. Was the work I did worth it for? Right. $10 an hour to file a paperwork and now people are making, you know, $10,000 every time they post on TikTok. It's just so crazy. It is. I mean, I definitely see there's pros and cons. Like on one hand, maybe AI can replace all the menial jobs that like people don't need to do and people can then move into doing things they're passionate about. And they feel called to do, which that's important. But there's also like honest work is also important. Like you said, it's character building. Yeah. It's important to like not always just have things your way and like get exactly what you want when you want it. Yes. I think that that has caused a lot of anxiety in my younger patients of getting a lot of criticism of them. It's a criticism of the larger system, but they have always gotten their way and get it quickly. And that like I said earlier, the distress tolerance is very low. The ability to deal with uncomfortable situations and uncomfortable feelings is barely exists. It barely exists. So a lot of the work we do is I teach them how to sit with uncomfortable emotions. And I always say, you know, there are always afraid of something, you know, something coming up. Maybe there's a social anxiety thing that's causing a fear of like attending a party or raising their hand in class or whatever or going to a job where they have to do something you don't want to do. And I say, really, it's not that you're afraid of that thing. You're afraid of the emotions that are going to come up when you do that thing. And because they haven't learned how to sit with those uncomfortable emotions, which is also quite afraid the most America, you know, totally learn how to do that. Learn how to be okay with that. And the best thing is when you learn that you can sit with any emotion and you're not going to die, you can do anything. Because you're not scared of that anymore. Right. Because it's not you. It's just something moving through you. Yeah. Paul talks about energy and emotion, emotion is energy emotion. It's just some energy that's moving through you. But as long as you're identifying with it as like this is an existential threat, like, and just witnessing it happening, that really, like that space allows you to really like take a breath and respond to whatever situation is coming up instead of like just being very reactive. Yes. Totally. And that's been so huge in my healing through depression and anxiety is that, you know, we feed this narrative of it's not good to be depressed. It's not good to be anxious. So you have to take a pill to get rid of it and to actually learn to sit with it and feel it and recognize that I can feel sad. And it's okay. And it's not here permanently. I'm not going to be sad 24 hours a day, 70s a week for years and years and years and years on. And there's going to be moments of happiness, even if you have long term sadness for a while, that completely changes the game because now you can be with that emotion and know, okay, I'm feeling really sad right now. It doesn't feel good. It feels crappy, but it's going to move through me. It's not, you know, it's not going to completely crumble my entire world because that's what we do is we feel it. And then we go, oh my gosh, my entire world is falling apart. And I feel like I'm completely drowning because I can't get out of this emotional state. Mm-hmm. So yeah, I think it's super important to be able to just be willing to feel whatever is coming up and like just realizing that like that you're probably feeling this way for a reason. Like you could have anxiety about something going on in your life or it could also be anxiety like you mentioned before like some nutritional deficiency for example. Or your hormones or whatever. Yeah, totally. So that's also a very valid reason that your body would feel anxious. So just getting super curious about like why am I feeling this way? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Your emotions are so important they give you information. And sometimes working through emotions is looking at me, I do a lot of inner child work and inherited family travel work with my patients. But looking to see like is this an old emotion that's coming up and what's happening. Yes, I love that. And that's what my coach always says get curious about what is happening in your body. And then you can learn to explore it and sit with it and ask your body, what do I need? What do you want me to do to help manage this? And yeah, I remember I had a patient who was actually a doctor, a medical doctor who was very depressed and gotten off of the antidepressants and. He was wondering if you should get back on. And I said, you know, it's okay to be depressed. Like if you're not functioning as a different story, but it's okay to be sad every once in a while. And he looked at me like I said the most profound thing he's done. Wow. And I think that's because we're feeding this narrative that's so destructive. Yeah, I remember that without these emotions that are sometimes uncomfortable, you also don't have the beautiful, fun, happy, you know, amazing emotions too. Yes, yes, I was actually just thinking that because the SSRI is like, okay, maybe they removed some of the valleys, but they also reduced the size of the peaks to just flattened you out. And I felt so flat. I felt so disconnected. It was like I was walking around with a film over my eyes, you know, everything. It's like those clad in commercials. You know, it's like, you know, take your clad to the film. That's literally what I felt like. Wow. Like all of my life since I was on medication. And when you can remove that and experience all the emotions in this world and let them move through you. It's just so beautiful. And because as we know, when you suppress these emotions, they can turn into disease. Yes. This is what it is, right? So, and then we see this. We see this when people develop medical issues and cancers and different types of things, especially in different organs, yes, how different emotions. You know, it's really, really interesting stuff. So it is. It's just needs to learn to feel our emotions and there's this corset to other motions to power and it talks about like how the energy moves like how anger is up and out. And then sadness and depression is in and down. It's beautiful characteristics of the emotions. So then you can start to identify what's happening in your body and be with it. That's beautiful. I was also thinking about SSRIs in particular, but also a lot of the psychiatric medications like we don't even really know how they're working. A lot of them, which is insane, right? Hey, David. Like how did this get, how was this made to be like a thing or like the status quo when we don't even know the mechanism by which this is actually giving a benefit to some percentage of people. Right. Right. And they say that a lot of these drug trials, the placebo effect is as effective if not more, right? That's why that always blew my mind because you know, I could say that if I time in Bellevue and working with hundreds and hundreds of patients, you know, there were definitely situations where the medications were not effective. And then there were definitely situations where they were. It's like, well, what you know, and we have so many options. It's like, I don't know how many antidepressants are on the market. How many antipsychotics and you know, what are the chances of them working? What's not the chances of them working? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that's where the shift to like end of one medicine is so important because instead of just like conducting the science where we're like taking the average response of everybody in the trial and then looking to see if this works on average. Well, what if we looked at the individual responses and said, okay, for people who have, you know, maybe this genetic background or have this, you know, experience or whatever specific characteristics about that person may be associated with the success or the failure of that drug in them. We should be collecting that data and then just using that to decide who this drug is best suited for. Yes, instead of just like the trial and error constantly, that could be very like demoralizing. I would guess for a patient where it's like nothing's ever going to work. I'm just going to feel like this. And yeah, that's how I felt. That's what I've actually seen. Like, what are your hormone mark? Like what's going on your hormones? What's going on your labs? Like, what's going on with all this other stuff that could be contributing to the medication, like working or not, and what you diet like and what your thought process like. Yeah, it is, it's really, really wild and I agree with you. It's like how do we develop all these joys when we go to the really know how they're working. Yeah, it's wild. I think a lot of them got like grandfathered in, I guess they were originally used, maybe discovered that there were like efficacious and some people and then it's like medicine used to be much more as a tarot than it is now. Like it's become this weird like dogma. Like regime, but it used to be like the doctors going to your home, they knew your family. They had a relationship with you. They, you know, would probably give advice about like your lifestyle, your diet, your exposures, things like that. And now it's so detached from that. And also like medicine way back would have been a lot of like herbal remedies and and nutritional therapies and it's like that's just completely missing now. Right, right. And we lack the, the humanistic, part of medicine. And really I think at the end of the day, people's, if you ask people what they love about their doctor when they see a doctor that they're really excited about. I really do think most of the time it's because that person gave them that attention and treated them like a human being. Those are my favorite doctors. You know, I come out of those appointments. I'm like, wow, that was the best doctors appointment I've ever had because that person sits with you and talked with you and unfortunately because of our insurance model. Yes, there's no opportunity to do that anymore. And you know, the cost of a functional medicine is very high for a reason because these doctors have gone on to get all the traditional training and experience and they're giving such individualized care. They can't see like 20 patients in a day. Exactly. They spend literally 30 to 60 minutes with each patient. If you're working eight to 10 hours a day, you're, that's only eight to 10 patients. Yeah. So, you know, I hope I hope there's a revolution in the health world because we need it. Yeah, we all need it. Yeah, I mean, I really think that the cash based system is the way forward, like just outside of the insurance model, the insurance model is so limiting for. And it really like ties the hands of the facilitators of the practitioners or the physicians or whoever it is, they have to operate for liability purposes within this specific model of like basically prescribing a drug that's indicated for the specific condition. And then there's like a pipeline of different therapies. I have to try and like a specific order. And it's just like completely dehumanizing and it's not in any way personalized the person in front of them. And so I do feel for the for the for the physicians, the practitioners as well because it's like. Not only that whole system is just a mess, but then the whole education system is like learn these facts that they are well, they're taught as facts, but it's, you know, science is always open for debate and changing. There's also this like ego that's developed as part of the training process. And I think that ego is intentional. Yeah. They really do. I think there's a system, you know, think of how long medical doctors are in the system for. Yeah, they do, you know, four years of undergrad, they might end up doing a post back. Then they do four years of medical school, then they do their fellowship, which their residency, which could range from like two to like six years probably. And then they want to do a fellowship. I mean, we're talking about over a decade, well over a decade of just being in the system and spending a lot of money to medical school is so much money. So yeah, by the time they they enter into their own practice or they join a hospital group, it's like they're in so much debt. They're just worried about paying that off and not worried about the care that they're giving. They're just burned out. Right. And I do think there's this, there's this like you said the ego. It's like we've become a society where it's like, well, doctors orders. That's what my doctor said. And they're like, no, and I see that so much. That's what my loved ones and it's so frustrating because I'm like, well, my doctor told me to do this. I'm a doctor told me to eat this. I'm a doctor told me to take this medication. And I'm like, but have you love yourself. Right. People's lives are actually even common sense involved in this recommendation or prescription or this diagnosis. And and we've built the system where the doctors in many ways. And my best friends are doctors. I don't know, you know, but have played God. And they look up and they their patients look up to them like they are God. Yep. And I'm going to do whatever you tell me to do. It doesn't matter if it's right or wrong or if it's individualized for me. And that continues to perpetuate this cycle of a patient that is is helpless and and not empowered to do what they need to do, which is why you know, I love the material you put out because you're empowering people. You don't. Yeah. I mean, you're doing when they engage with you, even if they're not, you know, able to work out with you one on one or attend your programs and your groups. You know, they can at least get some knowledge from my friends love your car. Oh my gosh. I was like, friends met you at my birthday party a few years ago. They're always like, did you see the number of Lexus and folks? Yeah. And like, they're like, can you go to school, Lexus and think and they're really like, they've learned just so much from your, your visibility and your exposure, which is why it's amazing that you're doing this podcast because. Yes, I'm excited about it. It's a long time coming. Yeah, but I think the timing was just right. Like I could have started during grad school. Maybe there would have been some air to like shedding light on that experience as well, but I think. I don't know. I think the timing is good. And also like I just have a whole I should probably do an episode on like all the shortcomings of like graduate education and just like the higher academic learning process and institutions too. It's also the same idea where it's like you're putting this ivory tower and it's like you're somehow Better than everybody else and has all the answers and it's just not the case like the day that I The day before I graduated with my doctorate was I was the same person the next day like after I graduated There wasn't some magical like gift of knowledge bestowed upon me It was it's just a constant learning process and that's gonna happen far beyond when I graduate It always it's just gonna continue So like that that's what I think is really missing for medicine. It's like the continuation of learning as a lifelong process And not just like this is how things are this is you know, and this is just how they're going to be and then once I have achieved my MD And I finished residency and I'm now attending then I'm done right It's not like that. Right. We're all as human beings. It's a lifelong journey of process And that's something that also was huge for me and my mental health journey and getting off medication is that We're constantly thinking life will be better when I hit this marker Or when I achieve this particular goal. I'm not gonna say that life Might not be better when you achieve certain things or change things about Yourself or grow closer to becoming the person you want to be but I was just always like life will be better when I'm off these medications and life will be better when I get over this fear And when I do this and when I do that and I was never living in the present moment because instead I was always thinking about The future and Freaking out about the future and thinking that that's what my happiness will come but the reality is is is We're so imperfectly perfect right now and if we can find that sense of purpose and And love in ourselves in this moment and and you know, know that just like even though it's a huge Wind and a huge accomplished to graduate with that pH across that stage and you know you work so hard for stuff Know that it's not the end, you know, that it's a constant. It's a constant journey and that's part of life You know part of living is is the pain and the love and the The grief and the fear and the happiness and the accomplishments and the success. It's it's it's never ending. It's never gonna go away Mm-hmm truly, and I think that's like a beautiful part like of being human It's like you don't really know what's to come and that's she excitement and anxiety are all like really the same circuits running It's just like the tone. Yes of like how we're thinking about it. So Yeah, yeah, it's go either way So I know we're wrapping up soon because you have to go to an appointment after this for dinner But do you have anything else you want to share with with the audience before we wrap up? I do want to say I Because we talked a little we talked a lot about things like medication and this to step and whatnot and and with with a critical eye Which I think you know, we've both been through our own extreme health journeys and learning and growing and continuing to do so and I do just want to say you know Remember that We were there at one point where we were in a place where we were kind of like set like for me all speak for me It's specifically like I was on a lot of medication at one point and I I even though I feel like I have a lot of side effects long-term from them I also want to acknowledge that at that time It's what was available to me and what you know, I had access to and You know, I did survive through it and I'm here today probably in part because of that medic, you know in part because of the medication both good and bad results from it and you know Don't feel like you need to make all the changes at once. Don't think you're a bad person or you're in the wrong if you're on medication I don't want people to think that ever That things are not like I said earlier. They're not blocking white. They are nuanced We need to do what we need to do for ourselves with though hopefully the The goal and the journey of healing ourselves and getting better and ultimately becoming the people we want to become right like if you're struggling and wrestling with things that are making life harder Then we want to change that and grow and and evolve so that you can live a life that feels Less toxic and less like there's all these barriers in your way and obstacles in your way all their time You want to be more in a state of flow and if getting off medication or becoming healthier is going to help you get there Then that's really cool, but you know, I just want to throw that out there that we recognize especially with our backgrounds I think with our academic backgrounds and our work conventional trading and backgrounds that things are New odds. They're not black and white that some of these things can be great tools like we're talking about using nicotine or using stimulants for a time to time so so keep that in mind, you know like that that We're all on this health journey and That we're all just learning and evolving and growing and and sometimes we might do things that in the moment are Are what we feel like we need to do and they might not always be helping us or serving us 100% But it doesn't mean that those things can't grow and change also so don't get yourself up You know give yourself love and make changes from a place of love and self-acceptance and care for yourself Not out of place of self-loathing or hate Mm-hmm. Amen. That's beautiful and and also like just the fact that the healing journey is not linear either Yeah, so there's gonna be stepbacks. There's gonna be challenges as you're just like staying on the path with the with the Notion that it's you're going to reach your goal eventually and it's like it's gonna look like jagged It's not gonna be a straight line. I got absolutely absolutely I remember to leave space to detox and feel crappy spotac. Yes, so important not even if you're just getting off that occasion But just in light, you know like I remember this week even you know I had my period and I went to the gym and I was like oh I do not feel good today and in the path They would have just pushed through and tried to like stack all these supplements to feel better and maybe even taking coffee And I was like, you know what it's okay. They don't feel so good today It's okay that my brain feels like much this week and then I'm not gonna push as hard I'm gonna give myself that opportunity to rest like you know, even those of us in this world There it's impossible for us to feel 100% of the time. It's only I don't think it's healthy to feel 100% Mm-hmm all of the time so Give yourself that race and that love and that working in and the in Yes, yes, because all of that is just the body communicating in different ways And so instead of numbing it out or trying to like trick it into feeling a different way just Except what what it's telling you and try to understand it. Yes, exactly Totally so if people want to work with you What what what are your offerings like you work one-on-one with people? Do you have any group containers? Are you thinking about doing group? Yes, that is the next thing I'm working on hopefully in January I'm amazing like to do some groups like four or six eight new groups nothing too too too long But yes, I do I do accept one-on-one clients Um, I'm going to be expanding into groups So if people follow me on social media or they can check out my website they can find out about that uh Yeah, that's where I'm at right now and hopefully Hopefully we'll be involved in where I've taught in a few retreats We'll be doing that again in January which I'm like excited about um And just fighting collaborations with other practitioners who are like minded and I'm kind of working on some things there so Uh, you know things are in the process right now nothing has come to fruition yet in terms of like those longer longer programs But they will be coming in 2024 amazing and yeah, and do you see people online or in person or is it one of the other? It's both okay, so I have a practice in Manhattan once a week where I do work with people in person Uh, and then virtually other times I am licensed in New York New Jersey Pennsylvania and Florida, but I also work in a coaching capacity with people outside of those states um if they're looking for For other modalities that may not be like strict therapy or maybe they have a therapist and they want some adjunct work and And complimentary work I do that as well Amazing and so finally how can people find you if they're interested in working with you or chatting with you more and learning about you? You've welcomed any questions or comments or feedback or whatever it people just want to reach out They can contact me on social media so my Instagram and TikTok handles are nerdy therapists that like neurology and EU are dy Under underscore therapists um, I have my website which you do you can you can you share that yeah? Oh absolutely and email also That you can get from my website or you can contact me through a submission form there But yes, I always welcome people reaching out. I love when I get comments after podcasts and and hear people's thoughts Amazing. Yeah, and I'm gonna share I'll share her Instagram handle a website and all that information in the show notes You guys can access her and and she's just a wealth of knowledge I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for coming on We need to do it again. We could probably go on for another two hours if we want to do Actually after each I'll see show. Yeah, I don't even know what I'm like. I don't even know what I'm gonna go right there Yes, yeah, so she's going for for context. She's going to pull checks HLC2 training and she's gonna be back after that to share the you know wealth of knowledge that that's going to impart I'm sure it's gonna be amazing. Yes, and yeah, so but for now this week's episode I hope you love it if you like it just leave a comment rating message us give us some feedback and I hope you guys have a great week and we'll see you again next week