Dealing with loss during the holiday season
Episode 135
On today’s episode of Integrative Wellness Radio, Dr. Nicole and Dr. Nick discuss one of the most challenging things in life, bearing the loss of someone we love. The holidays can be an especially hard time for those dealing with grief. So with the holiday season upon us, the couple sheds light on why grief is the body’s normal response and how overcoming it can help us cherish the memories we made with our loved ones. Dr. Nick shares his inspiring story on how he coped with his personal losses and how the Demartini Method has helped him and those around him. He gives us a scientific insight into how our body reacts to tragedy and debunks some of the common myths surrounding grief and loss. Dr. Nicole briefs us on how our physical body also bears the burden of loss and how some of the fundamental issues with our health can lead to even bigger mental stress during the loss of a loved one. Tune in to learn more. Interested in working with IWG? Book a complimentary consult call to learn more using this link: https://bit.ly/IWRcall2021 Noteworthy Time Stamps: 00:49 Things that we can’t ignore 02:15 A fresh perspective on grief and loss 04:35 Dr. Nick’s story 13:30 We don’t know what we don’t know 15:00 The conventional tools 20:46 Debunking myths around grief and loss 28:01 Grief is complicated 30:54 The quality of your life is based on the quality of questions you ask 36:08 Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real 40:30 No one is in perfect health 42:57 Leverage better questions & better testing 47:55 Top three takeaways 55:00 Overcoming the “I’m not enough” mindset at IWG
Topics: loss, grief, unknown, talking, health, integrative, nick, here
Key takeaways from this episode
- Dive into Integrative Wellness Radio with Dr. **Unknown:** Nick and Dr.
- Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey.
- And that's really what it's all about tonight is, is bringing a, a different perspective. **Unknown:** And when it comes to this idea of conventional versus integrative, some of you might be like, "What the heck is integrative medicine?
- But, uh, you know, what we're really trying to do is we're trying to look at the whole person. **Unknown:** We're trying to look at every element that keeps us feeling stuck, that keeps us feeling sad or anxious or, or keeps us not feeling our best.
- So I'm going to let you take it from here, Dr. **Unknown:** Nick.
Pull quotes
Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems.
Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey.
Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on the- Hello, everyone. **Unknown:** For those of you that are new here, Dr.
Transcript
**Unknown:** I've been up all night, no sleep. Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems. No sleep. Dive into Integrative Wellness Radio with Dr.
**Unknown:** Nick and Dr. Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine, to learn about what the limitations are with testing, and what you can do to start your health journey. Feel like I'm always dreaming. Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on the- Hello, everyone.
**Unknown:** For those of you that are new here, Dr. Nick and I, uh, well, we're husband and wife. So there'll be an interesting dynamic that you'll get to see tonight. But secondary to that is we are also business partners.
**Unknown:** Uh, we've been practicing for 10 years here in New Jersey. One of the, the biggest things that we have seen in people with all different types of health conditions, chronic illness, autoimmunity, is that there is usually some level of, of emotional involvement, and that could be from emotional adversities when, you know, in childhood, it could be from PTSD, it could be from loss, it could be from grief. But, you know, these are things that we cannot ignore when it comes to human health, mental health, and we feel that it's really important for people to know that there are other modalities out there and other opportunities out there to really shift how we are feeling and thinking about different experiences in our lives. Um, you know, we've made it one of our missions to, to bring this information to people.
**Unknown:** And in 2021, we're not just talking about grief and loss, but we're talking about relationships, we're talking about bullying, we're talking about social media, we're talking about never feeling good enough, we're talking about the comparison game. And, you know, we're really trying to shed light and provide new perspective on how to step into these situations differently outside of what we've all been told is, is the best approach, which, you know, really comes back to our conventional psychotherapy and psychiatry. You know, some people, that is going to create massive benefits, but a lot of you, unfortunately, that are here right now are here probably because you're looking for new, fresh perspective because you haven't necessarily been able to, to heal from the things that you've experienced, and you're looking for new options and new alternatives. And that's really what it's all about tonight is, is bringing a, a different perspective.
**Unknown:** And when it comes to this idea of conventional versus integrative, some of you might be like, "What the heck is integrative medicine? I don't even know what you're talking about." That is okay. We get that response all the time. But, uh, you know, what we're really trying to do is we're trying to look at the whole person.
**Unknown:** We're trying to look at every element that keeps us feeling stuck, that keeps us feeling sad or anxious or, or keeps us not feeling our best. And, you know, when it comes to different things we've experienced in our lives, like loss, you know, sometimes it's harder to cope with loss when we don't feel well, when we know that our health is not in a good standing. It compromises everything from how much you're outputting stress hormones to how much you are actually producing those feel-good hormones. So imagine, you know, having some type of loss in your life when you've been dealing with chronic digestive issues and you have practically no serotonin levels which help you to feel good and experience joy.
**Unknown:** So now the fact that you're experiencing this type of event creates an even bigger impact, and it almost feels like it's too much to even bear because physiologically, your body is not in a good place. So these are some things that we're also shedding light on, is the bigger picture behind, you know, what can be happening in your mind but also happening in your body that is creating more obstacles to healing from these different events. And I'm sure you're curious how we got into this. I want d- Dr.
**Unknown:** Nick to dive in. I'm fortunate that Dr. Nick has a deep, deep passion for this type of work because if it wasn't for him, I don't know where I would be mentally and emotionally. And I think that I would've had a lot of excuses and been a victim to my past if I didn't have the ability to work through it using the Demartini methodology and, and all of the other methodologies that you've really brought together.
**Unknown:** So I wanna hand this off to you because I know that your story is very different and, uh, being able to share really why you're so driven by, by this work. The, the thing that it came to, I'm gonna, like, reverse engineer my story, um, and reverse engineering it by learning one of the main foundational principles with the Demartini method is that our values, what's most important to us, actually comes from the creation of our voids. So what we perceive as missing in our life actually ends up being what we want to fill our life up with, what becomes most important to us, and when we do that, we actually become inspired. And it took me a while to get clarity on really my voids 'cause I was chasing so many things.
**Unknown:** But when I was in seventh grade, my first major void, um, in healthcare came from my mom being diagnosed with stage one cancer at that time. And I'm from the Midwest, and we didn't talk about her situation at all. Um, she had chemo, she had radiation, she had a mastectomy. Um, she would come home.
**Unknown:** She ... Every time I... she came home from the hospital, she lost more and more hair until she was pretty much completely bald. And I would hear her throwing up, and she would try to hide how much, like, weak she was 'cause she was actually one of kind of the center...
**Unknown:** You know, it's the mom. It's like you're a strong, strong center of the foundation of families. Um, so-And I would literally cry myself to sleep because I didn't want to create her pain but I was so nervous that I was gonna lose my mom. And I didn't understand cancer, and nobody really could explain it well anyways.
**Unknown:** Um, not too many people understand cancer. Even most doctors don't even really understand cancer, unfortunately, besides the point. But really that was a big void. And I- one of the things I remember her saying all the time is, you know, "Why do such bad things happen to such good people?" And that was just like on rumination with my mind over and over and over.
**Unknown:** And I realized, uh, you know, reverse engineering that that was a very polarized mark. You know? Bad things, good people. You know, it's just...
**Unknown:** it's one side or the other. There's black and white and no grayness to that statement, and it just stuck with me over and over and over. Fast forward, I had total to date now about 13 concussions, and it was back in the day when most people didn't understand what post-concussion syndrome was unless you had potion- concussion syndrome and you were dealing with those, uh, effects of it. But for me, one of the thing was is that I was an emotional dark place.
**Unknown:** Uh, I had a good life. On paper, everything was perfect, um, but I had so much, like, rage and anger, and I didn't know why. I went to the traditional therapist, and they do all these cognitive behavior tests and said that, you know, my memory is fine. Everything was good.
**Unknown:** Um, but I was fucking angry, and I didn't know how to deal with it. And unfortunately, I used tools that weren't the best tools, but I used alcohol, and I was literally drinking pretty much every single night, most nights to get blackout drunk so I wouldn't feel the pain anymore. And finally got to a point that I was at such a low, I'm like, "This is not working for the quality of my life." And, um, weirdly enough, I actually got injured and I went and saw a chiropractor, and it was the best I'd ever felt. And realizing that it was just a nervous, uh, system stimulation that really helped me function at a higher level than what I had before.
**Unknown:** Um, but I hit a plateau pretty quick with just the chiropractic. Um, but I knew there was more to it, so I went to chiropractic school, learned all through chiropractic, and that was actually when I was first introduced to the Demartini method and Dr. John Demartini and everything else that he teaches. And that really kinda set me up to pretty much I was taking my own health into my own hands to figure out what I needed to do to heal myself.
**Unknown:** Because I'd been to a bunch of neurologists, I've been to a bunch of therapists, and nobody was really giving me answers and helping me. And bringing this long story short, uh, I had to do neurological exercises to, to better my brain, to connect my brain to my body. I had from the gut-brain axis, I had a lot of GI issues, um, that weren't the traditional GI issues because the majority of them were actually caused neurologically and not so much by infections. But then what happened is that my immune system was depressed from all of this, and I did get a couple infections.
**Unknown:** Won't go into those gross stories, the detox. But last, my last pretty much major thing was, uh, I still, I still just wasn't me, and I knew it. And the last piece was the mental, emotional aspect. And for whatever reason, I don't know if I'm just a slow learner from Iowa in the Midwest, but I kind of forgot about the Demartini method and I learned probably about a dozen techniques, uh, all on different mental, emotional, energetic techniques, and some of them were actually pretty good at relieving, uh, stress in the moment.
**Unknown:** But soon as I responded back to a trigger, everything came back rushing in, and I would have to go through the process and I was like, "There has to be something more sustainable." And then I forget the exact happening, but I went back into the Demartini method and learned that. I think I read his book again, uh, one of his first ones, uh, The Breakthrough Experience, and then I attended his, uh, first seminar that you have to attend with him. It's called The Breakthrough Experience, and I did Demartini my mom with that, and I realized that, um, and in that moment, my mom and I did not have a great relationship, um, because her cancer had actually came back, uh, stage four this time. It had metastasized to almost every single bone in her body, and that was about eight, eight or nine years ago, and it was shortly in that timeframe when the cancer, uh, came back to stage four that I got introduced to the Demartini method or reintroduced to the Demartini method.
**Unknown:** And we were not having a good conversation, my mom and I, um, and we were disagreeing a lot because I was wearing my doctor hat, uh, especially the holistic side of things, and I was judging her actions on what she was doing to take care of herself. And I didn't know it at the time, but I was, I was pretty much working out of fear. Uh, I had fear that I was gonna lose my mom. Uh, I wanted to show her the life that I was going to create.
**Unknown:** I wanted to have a lot more time with her. Um, if Dr. Nicole and I do have kids, I wanted her to be around to see and have the grandkids. So I was being very, very selfish.
**Unknown:** And what the... going through the Demartini method, what I realized, kind of bringing, uh, everything into harmony, is that I was pushing all of my values onto her, and that was the opposite of what love is. True love is really looking at somebody and loving them for who they are. And this isn't always easy because we think we may know what's best for them, but, but the lie is that that's the reflective mind, is that's what we should do for ourselves because we all have a perception of what's good and bad when we're gonna get deeper into this.
**Unknown:** But when you realize that everything is both good and bad, nothing is just good and nothing is just bad, and we, we can change our belief system and our awareness to actually see that, we become empowered, and then we can actually serve ourself, but we can understand and love and serve others according to what's most important to them.And soon as I did that, I didn't even have a conversation with my mom about the work that I had been doing, but our relationship changed amazingly overnight, and all I did was change my perspective of what was the relationship with my mom and I. And ever since then, we've had a really close, beautiful relationship. So it- the method has changed my life tremendously just both personally, um, but I also find it clinically to be very empowering. Uh, and when you get into integrative medicine, what we do is we look at the physical, the chemical, the emotional, the energetic, and the spiritual aspects of who we are.
**Unknown:** And that mental component, if we don't take care of that, we're missing an aspect of who we are. So I found that sustainability, the Demartini method, is, has by far changed, uh, our practice and the results that we can get in care as well. Yeah. And I think that a big thing to drive home here is that, you know, we don't know what we don't know, and, you know, it- it's- it's none of it is anyone's fault.
**Unknown:** And when it comes to loss, uh, there is so many scenarios that we play in our mind of how it could have been prevented, how it could have gone differently, how you should have had this conversation or that conversation, and we have all of the shoulda, coulda, would'ves, and that just produces massive amounts of guilt. And it is something that is so unbelievably paralyzing to us. But we have to understand is that, you know, things do occur the way that they're supposed to, and to live in a place of the shoulda, could've, would've is, you know, you're creating scenarios that are probably not realistic in order to, um, cope in whatever way you're coping. And I think it's important when, you know, as we go through tonight, is keeping this top of mind is that, you know, not living in the place of guilt of, you know, what you should and could have done, but knowing that none of this is your fault.
**Unknown:** And being able to, you know, shift your perceptions and to be here is a huge step. And to start doing different things and, and implementing different methodologies that can help you still love that individual, but be able to not necessarily have the massive roadblocks and hold you back in your life, because I know in our rational minds, we always say that, "You know, I know this person wouldn't want me to be sad, and I know this person, you know, would want me to move on with my life, but I can't." And, you know, being able to use, uh, some aspects we're gonna discuss tonight to, to see how you can take that first step, um, because like Dr. Nick said, is this methodology has not just changed our lives, but it's changed a lot of people's lives. So, um, most of us have never been given tools.
**Unknown:** And, you know, when I talked about this a little bit today on, uh, social media, is I was talking about how, you know, the, the tools that we have at our fingertips that are the conventional tools that are offered is talk therapy, um, and then when talk therapy isn't necessarily getting us to our goal, that is when we resort to manipulating biochemistry. And, you know, one thing that I wanna say about psychotherapy, and I would love for Nick to talk about this more, is we are talking about a story that, uh, a, a story that has occurred and potentially a story that we've created. Because what I'm saying is that, you know, we have all the shoulda, coulda, would'ves, and we have this story that we talk through over and over again, and what we don't realize is we're actually creating stronger neurological pathways around that story. And this is something that makes it so much more difficult to overcome in the future.
**Unknown:** And this is usually what causes us to now have to resort to different types of medications that will manipulate our physiology because now these neurological pathways are so strong. And if we also have underlying issues that we're unaware of, like gastrointestinal issues or different types of neuroinflammatory conditions that are completely compromising the hormones that calm us down and calm our stress, and then we have a, a minimal amount of our feel-good hormones, the hormones that help us experience joy, that help us experience fun, that help us to just be able to stay motivated in our lives, then we have this perfect storm that now makes us rely on having to manipulate these pathways. And in some scenarios, this is really necessary, but it should never be a long-term solution. And we're really excited about bringing more tools to people to know that there are other things out there that can really help to shift your thoughts, your perceptions of how you not only deal with grief and loss, but how you show up in your relationships, how you talk to your kids, how you talk to your spouse, how you, you know, show up to work.
**Unknown:** And, you know, these are things that, uh, we're gonna talk about tonight, but we're also going to be talking a lot about as we move into the new year. Did you want me to talk a little bit about that as well? I figured you had something to say. I always have something to say.
**Unknown:** But, I mean, you're 100% right. It... I mean, when I look at the body, I m- both Dr. Nicole and I look at the body very integrative, um, but we l- we have our quote-unquote passions, and her passion is biochemistry, so that's tends to be where she starts looking at things and then expands.
**Unknown:** My passion is the mental-emotional side of things, so that's where I start and expand. But really, every single system of the body affects every other system of the body. You know, you can have, uh, stomach issues that were created from a mental imbalance that created a brain imbalance, and then the brain that connected to the stomach was actually the driver for that. That was the start of my case, um-And my brain injuries but then again you can have a stomach problem that's affecting the parietal cells of the stomach which makes your serotonin your feel-good neurotransmitter which like Dr.
**Unknown:** Nicole was saying and that could really affect you and that could affect you feeling good but it's not the only culprit so it's like it's pretty much that raises the threshold for us to have a symptom but we always for us to feel symptoms we always have more than one system involved and that's that's a big thing that I find with incorporating this mental emotional work is that it's really hard to sustainably correct our issues our problems our diagnoses without pretty much dabbling at least a little bit into that mental emotional arena so tonight we're going to start with some myths and then we're going to crush those myths on about grief and we will move on. One thing I do want to say is that obviously when we have lost people that we have loved, you know, we are not in an emotional great place. And it's very easy to be reactive to some of the principles that we're going to talk about tonight. So I just want to encourage everyone to just kind of take a moment and sit with some of these principles, because these are not based on opinion.
**Unknown:** These are actually based on the science that Dr. Nick is talking about. So being able to ask better questions. So I'm going to let you take it from here, Dr.
**Unknown:** Nick. Yeah, of course. And if you are grieving now or you are still going through grief, you will probably get triggered through this because what a trigger is, is a perception of a past experience. And I don't say that to be like scientific and like a robot, but we will continue to be triggered until our perception changes to be more balanced and to be able to see both the good and the bad.
**Unknown:** And I'm going to go through some myths, break the myths. And then towards the end of that, I'm actually going to go through and I'm not going to fully take someone through this, but I'm going to take you through the steps so you can actually see and understand the process a lot more clear. So myth one, if you don't grieve, you didn't love them. So this was actually my very first quote unquote case of doing a grief collapse with the Demartini method that my client told me is, but I have to grieve.
**Unknown:** If I don't grieve, I won't show my love to them. And that is a foundation of really combining two misunderstood platforms. So if we think of what love is, love is like sharing somebody's, celebrating somebody, literally taking everything in from them and loving them. When you look at what grieve is, grieve is created from a perception that something has been lost.
**Unknown:** So like I was telling before that we live in a world of duality. Duality means that there's cause and effect. So if something has been lost, being lost has nothing to do with showing love, but actually has everything to do with perception of lost. So when we think of loss being a cause, what's the effect for that?
**Unknown:** So the effect is the grief. So the grief is the effect. The loss is the cause. So when we look at really expressing love, we can't love somebody if we perceive them as missing.
**Unknown:** So in order to actually go back and share our love for them, what we need to do is go through and change our belief system that something is missing and be able to see that energy is not created or destroyed. It's only transformed into new forms. So we'll get deeper into this, but as we go through and we can see the new forms that we've are really, that's what we're grieving. We're not grieving the miss of a person.
**Unknown:** We're grieving of what they gave us that we perceive as missing. So this will, that will make more sense. And kind of like all of this is literally pre-framing to get you more excited and more excited, maybe more frustrated, maybe more frustrated. But then at the end, we're really going to put this all together for you.
**Unknown:** Myth number two, nothing could ever replace them. There is such a void in my life since I have lost them. And when I wrote this myth, it was one of the things that have been said, but I put it as them as people, but we can truly be grieving the loss of anything. We can be grieving the loss of a pet.
**Unknown:** We can be during Sandy for Jerseyites. I did Demartini with people that literally were grieving the loss of a house, grieving the loss of things. Anything that is perceived loss that we hold important to us that we were receiving something from, we're going to have more grief. Because when you think about grief, grief is different when you study it from country to country.
**Unknown:** There's some countries that they don't grieve at all. And death is just a celebration because that is the platform. And the perception of death is that it's not a loss. It's actually a gain for the society as well as the person and the afterlife that they go to.
**Unknown:** So when we have our attachments to something, that's not necessarily the truth for the entire world. It's just our truth in that moment because that's the perception that's created from our belief systems. So going back to nothing could ever replace them as a person, it could be nothing can ever replace my house, my home where I raised my kids. Nothing could ever replace my pet.
**Unknown:** It could be in many different forms. So the reason that is false is because like we said, Albert Einstein figured out that energy can't be created or destroyed. It can only be changed from one form to another. So when nothing can replace them, there's actually nothing to replace because the energy has already been transformed in that moment in time.
**Unknown:** So the void and the pain is really from the perceived loss, not from the actual physical loss. Love and move on with your life. MythI forget which two one. Um, but grief is a normal and healthy way of processing loss So grief is a normal response to a loss, but it's not a healthy way to process loss because like we said, grief is an effect from a cause which is a perceived loss And when we do that, that stress affects our body in so many different ways.
**Unknown:** Our grief impairs our immune system because our immune system's really made up of our nervous system and, and the microflora through your microbiome the small cells pretty much that line your gastrointestinal system. So your immune system is a sensory system so if we are sensing very strong emotions which are polarized and unbalanced, that stress will actually decrease the functioning of our nervous system, possibly get stored within our stomach. We've all gotten nervous, like this is kind of a gross story, but I got so nervous in every single, uh, football game that I ever played, I would always have loose stools before. So we know that our nerves, our tension, our stress can really change how we're functioning physically as well.
**Unknown:** Grief can create a lot of sleep disruption. That also goes back to the processing through the nervous system. When we're grieving, we're more on a threshold of a sympathetic, which is our fight or flight response that doesn't allow our body to heal, which is the parasympathetic stress response. But what affects our sleep is if we get stuck in that sympathetic state, that fight or flight, that really going through every single day, what happens is that our cortisol really gets really high, and cortisol and melatonin are inversely related.
**Unknown:** So when at night when our melatonin should be high and we're trying to fall asleep, if we've been ramped up from our grief, literally creating a sympathetic stress response, then our cortisol is gonna be high and it's not gonna allow us to get a good quality sleep. And then that's when things get worse, they get worse, and they get worse because if we can't sleep, we can't heal, and then we wake up and we're fatigued, and then we're stressed, and then we're literally on the edge and the brink of reacting because we can't hold on to our life and have our quote unquote "shit together," and then we end up getting in all these little, little fights that don't serve us. So it tends to be a waterfall effect, and that goes in and it can create, like I said, changes within the stomach, the gastrointestinal system. It can create anxiety and panic.
**Unknown:** And anxiety and depression are literally that duality aspect, um, that are always going back and forth. And then it can even bring up, um, aspects of PTSD. I just wanna say that, you know, we're talking about a lot of different elements here from everything from physical to physiological to mental, emotional because grief is complicated, and there are so many layers to it. And I know that a lot of us want some type of, of magic solution in order to work through the grief, but I promise you, be patient and try to take a moment to, to process some of these different things because this is complicated.
**Unknown:** This is not, "This is why you have grief and this is how you get rid of it," because every single one of you are extremely, extremely different. You have some of you that are storing your emotions in your organs that are causing you to feel physically ill. And I know a couple of people said, "No, I have physical heartbreak." You do. If that's what you feel, you do.
**Unknown:** And some of you have mental and emotional, um, heartbreak. You, you don't have the ability to process anything mentally. Some of you have probably slipped into some type of chronic illness or autoimmune condition after dealing with grief and loss. So every single person's approach to getting better is actually very different.
**Unknown:** But step number one is being able to potentially start to shift how we are perceiving this event because again, we know this is not easy. This is so hard when you lose people that you love, but knowing that, you know, this is something that potentially is holding you back in so many different avenues of your life, that the grief consumes you, and you don't even have an opportunity to have a life, create a new relationship, have a friendship, or have something that, that lights you up and brings you joy because you're so paralyzed. And I want you guys to understand that. Like, we are not necessarily, um, numb to your situations.
**Unknown:** We are completely aware. We have lost people, dogs, and it's, it is hard. It is so, so hard. But we didn't want it to paralyze our lives, and that's why we, we searched for other alternatives, and then we, we wanna share it with other people.
**Unknown:** But we do know that not everyone... This is not for everyone, and that's totally okay. So if you're here and you're like, "All right, I don't get it, but I really wanna learn more," stick around. But if you're just like, "Listen, this isn't for me.
**Unknown:** My pain is too deep and I, I'm not gonna get benefit out of this," then that's okay too. Uh, we love you, and we, we definitely wanna make sure that, um, this information gets to the people that, that really want it, that are just like, "I am so tired of being paralyzed and I, I wanna be able to get my life back." Yeah, amen to that. And it's... The, the method is honestly just so crazy because my favorite quote is, "The quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions that you ask." So it's being able to pause, take a step back, and actually change the questions that you're asking yourself so you can get better quality answers because it's the answers that we create is what we take action onAnd the quality of our actions really dictates the quality of our life.
**Unknown:** And that's really what Dr. John spent the last forty years is creating these quality questions to take someone to actually change the perception of an event that happened to make the perception more in balance. And I know the science is kinda crazy, and it's hard for some people to understand but it'll, it'll really make sense, uh, as we go through. But I just wanna add a tidbit in is that the...
**Unknown:** I mean, when our first... We had a puppy that, that died, actually it got poisoned, um, at a dog park in Philly. And it was a couple years before we learned the technique, and both of us didn't leave our bed for a little over one week. Um, we'd wake up, we'd pee, we'd jump back in bed and just cry and cry and finally fall asleep, and wake up and just cry and do it all over again.
**Unknown:** So I under- like, we understand, and that was, that was a puppy and we both lost humans, um, and many things in our life. But I wanna say is doing this technique, both myself and so many areas of my life with many, many, many clients, the craziest thing is, is that it doesn't come back. The, the grief doesn't come back, and the method, the longest it's taken anybody to go through it is three and a half hours. The shortest is two hours and fifteen minutes.
**Unknown:** It's mind-blowing to think that you can collapse and dissolve your grief, be yourself again, live the life that you deserve to live, be able to actually share the love to the loss that you are experiencing by s- by loving yourself and serving yourself. When we lose someone or we lose something, if they loved us too, like you- Dr. Nicole said at the beginning, is they don't want us to suffer for their loss. They want us to go out and shine our light as strong as we possibly can to be able to show how much that person really affected us, that if that person really gave us so much of themselves, they invested in us, and how are we actually going forward with that investment?
**Unknown:** Are we using it to love ourselves, to love humanity, to bring goodness to the world, or are we going to stay in grief and not actually express everything that they gave us that we can actually share to the world? I'm a little passionate about this. Time is the only thing that can heal my pain. So as we know, grief will last a lifetime.
**Unknown:** Time doesn't heal the pain. What time does is it can actually act as a distraction. If we go longer and longer and longer, which people say it will hurt less. The hurt never becomes less.
**Unknown:** That's bullshit. What happens is we become distracted, so we think about it less, and it doesn't hurt when we're not thinking about it. But that pattern energy is cyclical, so it's still going around. And soon as we get something to remind us, boom, the grief comes back, and it hurts just as much as it happened yesterday.
**Unknown:** So time, honestly, time doesn't heal anything. The only thing that heals something is by changing our belief system around something to be able to change our perception about something. There's only three things that we can control in our life, and if you have a piece of paper, literally write this down if that's the only thing you take away, because so much of society right now is doing and acting literally crazy because they think they shou- should be able to control everything, and they can't. The only things we can control is our perception, and from our perceptions, we make a decision.
**Unknown:** We can control our decisions. When you break down the word decision, it's decide. Cide means to kill. Homicide, pesticide, herbicide.
**Unknown:** Cide means to kill, so we're killing every single other opportunity and only working with one going forward to take action, and action is the very last thing that we can control. So we can control our perceptions, our decisions, and our actions. That's it. So if we were to literally understand that and own that and use those principles for the rest of our life, and everything that we can't control, just let it be and love it and use it for what it is, humanity wouldn't have to fight so much, and we could work together.
**Unknown:** We wouldn't have to fight ourselves so much, and we could use ourself to really help ourself and love ourself, do amazing things. Next myth. I am so devastated. I am so scared that I'm going to lose the people I love.
**Unknown:** So this m- is a myth that's connected to grief, to grief, but it actually has very little to do with grief. Uh, because when you look at it, it actually comes from a state of fear, and you collapse fear completely different than how we collapse grief. But when we look at fear, fear stands for false evidence appearing real, and there's really only two types of fear. When you think about it foundationally, the most simplistic way we can think about fear is that we fear a gain of a negative, a drawback, a pain, or we fear the loss of a pleasure, a positive, a benefit.
**Unknown:** So foundationally, those are the only two things that we can fear. So once we actually get clear, the only thing that we can possibly fear is the fear of, um, losing something that we want, a positive, or gaining something that's actually gonna cause us pain. So when we get clear on what really the perceived loss or gain is, that positive or negative, then we take that because we understand and realize through physics that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. So for fear and loss of a gain-A gain of a negative, then what would be the equal and opposite of that?
**Unknown:** And then own that both to, this is science, not to confuse people, but when you look at it, we have to own the magnitude, the intensity of it, as well as the duration, the longevity of it. So I think a really good example was the first thing that I got introduced to when it comes to Dr. Dean Martini is he talked about some of the most negative events that have happened in the world. One of them being the bubonic plague, which killed millions upon millions of people, that when most people would talk about something like the bubonic plague, they would discuss the negatives of how many people it killed and how detrimental it was to the world.
**Unknown:** And when he started to actually list off the positives and to really acknowledge that it was in perfect balance. And one of the biggest driving forces behind that bubonic plague was the fact that it completely transformed the sanitation systems, which then transformed healthcare because there was such an elimination of infectious disease because there was improvements in sanitation and hygiene. So this was something that was like so interesting to me when he was deducting these different events and showing that there was perfect balance in the event of both. And this is something that really sat with me.
**Unknown:** So every time I have something that I perceive as a negative, I really try to think like, what's the other side of it that I'm not seeing? And maybe that's in the current moment that there's a positive happening, or is it like, hey, this sucks really bad right now, but is this going to actually lead to an opportunity or lead to something positive later? And this just takes asking better questions and taking a moment for acknowledgement. So if you can even take that one piece away of when you are getting emotionally triggered or when you do have something coming up for you is asking that question, what is this?
**Unknown:** Where is this coming from? You know, is it polarized? Is this really just one-sided or is that the only side that I see? And this is something that is very empowering.
**Unknown:** You don't have to have the answer in the moment, but you might start to probe a different perception by asking better questions. Next myth, they were in perfect health. How did this happen? So I started the myths all based on grief.
**Unknown:** But then these last couple ones that we're going to tackle, they're not so much connected with grief, but there are a lot of questions that I had taking people through the grief collapse. And this question actually occurred from a woman after we collapsed. And I'm kind of weirdly, oddly a dick at the very end because I want to push whoever I'm working with to make sure that their perception is actually even and balanced. And she started laughing when I became a dick to her.
**Unknown:** But she finished and she goes, I do have one question. She goes, it just, it seemed like he was in such perfect health. Like, how did this happen? And I smiled and I replied not being a dick that no one's in actually perfect health.
**Unknown:** Dr. Nicole and I, we're not in perfect health and our lifestyle is very clean. But what happens is that some people are more resilient than others. But when we do labs and we do a lot of lab testing and we do a lot of other integrative testing, but every single person comes up with toxins and infections and toxins can be environmental toxins.
**Unknown:** It could be heavy metals. We can have mold. We can have viruses, parasites. But I'm saying like per person, every person has multiple of these.
**Unknown:** Every person that we challenge and check and evaluate has multiple heavy metals, multiple viruses. Usually they have one or two parasites. Honestly, the CDC said one in four and the way they evaluate parasites is horrendous. So it's probably every single person has parasites.
**Unknown:** So it's really about when you're looking at the health of a human being, it's really getting down to just the quality of every single system. Because unfortunately, what we say is perfect health in our society is only looking at blood work and a very small snippet of blood work. So when you actually increase your data points, we have more opportunities to be objective and to be able to make that, I guess, positive change, if you want to say, or a healthy change. I think that this is just really important going back to the previous slide about fear is that there's a lot of us that fear the loss of our parents.
**Unknown:** We fear the loss of individuals in our life. And we potentially fear that because we fear what's going to happen to their health, what's going to happen when they get older. And that's why I think that this is really relevant because people need to know that there is an opportunity to be proactive when it comes to that. And we live in a model that it's don't fix it until it's broke.
**Unknown:** And unfortunately, even mild symptoms are classified as our normal. So we're often not knowing what's going on. And the first sign of a heart attack is a heart attack. And sometimes that heart attack is fatal and sometimes it is not.
**Unknown:** So we really, in order to reduce some of that fear around the possible loss of individuals is really thinking about you don't know what you don't know. And if you're not leveraging better questions and better testing, then it's really impossible for people to know exactly where their health stands. AndYou know, this is definitely something that I do think is, is important to reduce that fear, uh, which is another paralyzing emotion Next myth, this is so horrible I am devastated. So going back, uh, the foundation principles is literally everything for this, is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
**Unknown:** So if something horrible occurred, something equal and opposite has to occur. Something horrible, what's the opposite of horrible? Something amazing. So once we can go through and actually with clarity see that there was an equal and opposite, but not only was there just one equal and opposite, we wanna do it many, many times.
**Unknown:** Uh, so it's really the act of compounding that's going to change our belief system, uh, by something. Just seeing, uh, one difference or one positive, that's not enough to actually go and change neurologically to hit the threshold to change our belief systems. So when we're going through, like you said before, is a lot of what we have surrounding death is really fear, and surrounding loss is fear. And like I said, fear is coming from that, you know, loss or a gain, but even more simply, fear is coming from a loss of clarity and a loss of understanding.
**Unknown:** So first, it's impossible to truly have clarity or understanding when we have an imbalanced mindset because when I went back and talked about data, you think about if we're just seeing the positives and the good in something, we have half of the data points. So, you know, the positive thinkers out there, A, you're attracting the equal and opposite. You're attracting to be sad. But if you're constantly trying to be positive, we're actually putting blinders on to the bad, the negatives that happen, and it's part of life.
**Unknown:** Like, bad shit happens every single day, but good things happen too, and if we can see both, we can actually use both. We can use the good and the bad to serve us. But if we're only focusing on the positives and we're not seeing the negatives, sooner or later we're gonna get smacked in the face and get knocked down because we were ignoring what has been there the entire time. And we'll be like, "Well, where did this come from?" As a...
**Unknown:** Well, you made shitty decisions because you were s- only focused on half the data. So if we saw all of the data, we'd actually be able to make, quote-unquote, better perceptions, better decisions, better actions. It's, it's a very simple process, and it can be used for many, many different aspects of our life, and when we do, we become self-empowered and we can serve us as well as help others. The next myth, holidays will never be the same.
**Unknown:** This one's actually true and false. Um, it's true when we lose a family member or we lose a pet or we lose a house that we spent holidays in, those holidays, they will be different. They will never be the same. That, that is true.
**Unknown:** But the falseness of it is, is that different doesn't have to be worse, doesn't have to be better. It's just different. So we can be a victim of our circumstances or we can use our circumstances to serve us. You know, there are so many times, um, of stories that I've heard just from clients working with and checking back in with them or them reaching out, um, to kinda give me an update on how they're doing, but as so many of, quote-unquote, our losses we can capitalize on.
**Unknown:** And I know that sounds really shitty in the moment, especially when we are in that moment of grieving. But let's say in a holiday that, you know, somebody passed, now we have an opportunity to travel, and we can spend holidays and new ex- create new experiences. Or we can actually bring more family members in because this person didn't get along with that side of the family, and now we can grow our holidays and our experiences and share the love and more gift giving and sharing. And there's, there's always more to a story when we can actually see more.
**Unknown:** But when we can't see more, we can't create more because our perceptions are limited. Yeah, I, I definitely think that's really important is that, you know, we've heard a lot of different stories from individuals we've worked with, and they say, you know, this was different and it really was so sad not to have this individual there, you know, but there was less turmoil. Or, you know, we were able to have the whole family together because we didn't have that divide anymore. And, you know, those things are, are not always able...
**Unknown:** You know, you're not able to appreciate them in the moment because of course you want to, you know, provide that respect and love for that person who has passed, but, you know, sometimes there, there's a different element that is bringing a, a new set of experiences to the table. So top three takeaways that I would like you to take. Um, if you take other takeaways, awesome. Um, but I really wanted to go over these three, that nothing is ever missing in life.
**Unknown:** It is only in a different form than how we're actually looking for it, and a funny, very simple, uh, story. When I did chiropractic school out in California and I was homesick, and really homesick is just a version of grieving the loss of your home, and, uh, a minute version of it. So I became amazing friends, uh, with this gentleman, Devon, and he lived about, you know, half an hour, forty minutes away from the school. And to save money, he lived at home.
**Unknown:** And I would study with him a lot, and we'd hang out, so I'd be at his house, and what I realized is that I stopped having homesickness when I realized that I pretty much had another family adopt me. So we always have everything we need and we want, but it's... most of the time it's just not in the form that we want it to be in, you know. I wanted to be closer to my parents.
**Unknown:** I missed holidays, uh, because I was too poor to fly, uh, fly home.Or timing. I had to study and all these things. But I realized is that I still had, I still had my mom and my dad, it was just in a different form, and they were both giving me parental devi- or advice. Um, Devin's mom was cooking me home-cooked meals, and I sat down and had some quality conversations with his dad, um, about life and about challenges, and it was literally, looking back, it was a very, very, uh, appreciative and grateful, um, that I saw that because then I was able to give them gratitude and respect for really what they were giving and sharing me, investing their time and energy in me.
**Unknown:** Um, but I could have been, you know, just a friend that went to somebody's house and, uh, was pouting because I was homesick and rude to them and didn't respect that they were opening their arms and their house. But because I changed my perception and I saw that, then that was a beautiful, beautiful thing. Our perceptions dictate our feelings. If we feel like something is lost, the effect will be grief, and this is really just, uh, an expression of the cause and effect.
**Unknown:** Um, so understanding that we live in the world of duality, it's one of the major laws that govern us, is that everything is cause and effect. Truly, the only things that aren't cause and effect is when we experience true love, grace, gratitude and joy, and we don't experience those emotions too often, uh, to be honest with you. Now, when you experience those emotions, you will have, uh, literally tears of joy or tears of gratitude, tears of love. Um, it's, it's not a state that we experience too much because really I believe that one of the main reasons we're here is to learn how to love, learn how to love ourselves, and when we learn our- how to love ourselves, then we can actually learn how to love other people.
**Unknown:** But we can't give something we don't have, and it's this law of cause and effect that gives us the feedback mechanism, most of the times in pain, which doesn't feel good, but luckily we can use that pain as a feedback to really change our perceptions, decisions and actions to be able to learn how to love ourselves, and then forward give that on to other people. The last takeaway in this method, uh, is that it can transform your perceptions and serve your life, and that's really what I'm talking about before is, you know, not to get all mushy mushy, but everything... And we've heard the saying is that love and gratitude are always and will be the best healers, uh, that there are. You know, a lot of what Dr.
**Unknown:** Nicole and I do is actually more like rehab for people because they've created so much trauma to their bodies from their diets, their lifestyle, their thinking, their lack of movement, their lack of quality movement. Um, a lot of what we do is really just intelligent rehab, and then it's the education that's actually teaching people how to think, how to love themselves so that they take quality actions that serve themselves and they don't have to recreate that pattern of pain and that negative feedback mechanism. You know, I know that this was a lot of information and some of you are processing and some of you are like, "What the hell did I sign up for?" Um, but, you know, I think at the end of the day when it comes to mental health, uh, emotional health, is that, you know, we don't know what we don't know, and we don't know that other techniques are out there outside of psychotherapy, outside of, you know, medication. We don't...
**Unknown:** A lot of us don't know, and that's what we're here to do, is to really help to give more options to the people that are looking for it. And, you know, we are... We understand this is a difficult process, and I personally really struggled with implementing the Demartini method on my own. Um, I was very reactive.
**Unknown:** I, um, I felt, uh, a lot of things that came up emotionally and it was really hard for me to process. But, you know, since then, uh, we've really brought our... both of our expertise together, and Dr. Nick and I have been talking about this for a really long time because he has been offering the Demartini method privately for a lot of patients.
**Unknown:** And I was like, you know what? I am so heartbroken listening to how many kids are being bullied, how many kids are committing suicide, how many people are getting divorced, and how many people are just struggling every single day, hating their jobs, hating, you know, their boss, and, and just not enjoying life. And I really wanted to bring both of our expertise together to bring a lot of information to people and do it in a virtual way that it's easily accessible. So this is some of the map that we have for next year, but we're talking about anxiety, depression, toxic relationships, being in a toxic relationship with yourself, um, transforming your relationship from life sucking to life fulfilling.
**Unknown:** That was, that was my title. Um, acknowledging and mastering your triggers. Imagine not getting triggered. Imagine being free of getting triggered by other people.
**Unknown:** Like, how awesome would that be? Um, overcoming catastrophic thinking. You know, how many teens have catastrophic thinking? "I broke up with my boyfriend.
**Unknown:** The end of the world is, is happening because of that." You know, and is it fear? Is it fear or is it lack of control? You know, how many of us wanna control every single thing in our lives, and when we can't, we freak the hell out? So we're trying to bring as many diverse topics about bullying, things that are friendly to teenagers, adults, um, being resilient to emotional adversity, to being resilient to racism, being resilient to violence, trauma, PTSD, um, overcoming the I am not enough mindset.
**Unknown:** And really one of the best things in December too is mastering your mind, mastering your life, starting the near- new year right. You know, going through this series and building off of it, of how you show up differently for yourself, how differently you talk to yourself, how differently you show up in your relationships, and being able to build that strong foundation and then be able to step into 2022 as a completely different person. So again, I j- I wanna thank you guys, and, and like Dr. Nick was saying is, you know, people change and that is a good thing.And it's definitely, uh, you know, taking that, that look at what are, you know, what has changed and what are your values?
**Unknown:** Values are, you know, not the easiest thing to figure out. Uh, by the way, I was called a stubborn little bitch by Dr. Demartini, so, uh, like I said, this technique is amazing, but it is not always super easy to get through. Um, but it's being able to, to acknowledge, you know, where you're at and what are some of the things that are driving your thoughts and decisions every day.
**Unknown:** And from there, you're able to take that information into the method to start really nailing down, you know, what are you holding onto? Is it truly grief? And, um, and being able to, to then go from there. Um, so it's multifaceted, I think is the biggest thing to take away.
**Unknown:** But, um, you know, it's, it's all work that is possible, especially through the use of a facilitator. You know, this has been a little bit longer than we expected, but we do want to send a lot of love and compassion to all of you, and, uh, we hope to see you in the new year, um, and take advantage of some of the, the amazing things we're gonna be talking about, um, on the foundation of integrative medicine, but also on the foundation of the Demartini method. Stay safe. Happy holidays.
**Unknown:** We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to Integrative Wellness Radio. If you're looking to learn more about Integrative Wellness Group, as well as Dr. Nick or Dr. Nicole, you can check out integrativewellnessgroup.com.
**Unknown:** All night, no sleep. 'Cause I feel like I'm always dreaming. Wide awake, that's okay
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
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