How Does Emotional Trauma Physiologically Affect Us Later in Life
Episode 185
Trauma is often the result of an overwhelming amount of stress that exceeds one's ability to cope. Depending on how you're affected, trauma may cause difficulties in your daily life. On this week’s episode of Integrative Wellness Radio, we’ll be discussing the connection between mental trauma and our physiological health and how that can actually manifest later down the line. Trauma is also described as an emotional wound causing a psychological injury. Most of us know that trauma affects us negatively, but we often fail to understand how that can actually play a role in our health, diagnosis, and symptoms. Leading the episode, Dr. Nicole alongside, Dr. Nick, will be shedding important insight on this topic and will help us understand how this emotional piece of the puzzle can affect us in ways that we may be completely unaware of. Interested in learning more about Dr. Nick & Dr. Nicole’s courses, memberships, or private work? Learn more at Integrative You . Have a quick question, Would you like to schedule a call, or just want to say hi? Text us at 732.913.0009. Our mission to innovate humans & Healthcare does NOT start and stop with us! This is why we are also dedicated to helping other practitioners in evolving healthcare too! If you are a healthcare leader and are looking to up-level your clinical + business excellence Learn more about our course membership: Limitless Healthprenuer and start boldly disrupting this industry! What you’ll learn: Trauma can not only mentally affect you but can also take its toll on your physical health. What is transgenerational trauma and what are the ways to overcome it? What are the things that affect your judgments and triggers? Importance of having a value system and how it affects our decisions. How poor stress management can cause hormonal imbalances.
Topics: trauma, emotional, health, stress, affect, later, life, understand
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## How Does Emotional Trauma Physiologically Affect Us Later in Life?
- Trauma's impact extends beyond mental distress, significantly affecting physical health and well-being.
- Understanding transgenerational trauma and effective strategies for its resolution is vital for breaking cycles.
- Our personal value system plays a critical role in navigating triggers and influencing decision-making processes.
- Poor stress management can directly lead to disruptive hormonal imbalances, impacting overall physiology.
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, hello everyone.
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. Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on the- Hello, hello everyone. Welcome to our next part of our series this month, and one of the specific topics that we are covering today is more so in relation to emotional adversities that we go through.
**Unknown:** So today my goal is to really help you guys understand how different things that we've gone through emotionally can actually play a role physically and physiologically in our bodies. I know that a lot of us have gone through stress and, you know, we say that, "Every time I'm stressed, I get a knot in my stomach. Every time I'm stressed, you know, I don't wanna eat. Every time I'm stressed, I wanna eat everything," or, "When I get stressed, you know, I get headaches." And we always know that stress affects us in a negative way and can also create physical symptoms, but we don't always necessarily understand how that can actually manifest later down the line, and we don't always understand how that can actually play a role in our health and even the onset of a diagnosis or the onset of symptoms.
**Unknown:** So tonight I'm going to be having you understand more about how this emotional piece of the puzzle can actually affect us in a negative way and can affect us in a way that you are completely unaware. Because I know in my own personal experience, you know, I know that I went through certain things when I was young and, you know, there were times in my life that I felt a lot of anger, a lot of resentment, and a variety of other emotions, but as time passes, you assume that you have healed from those specific scenarios or that because it's not in your conscious mind that you're not being affected by those previous situations or those previous emotions. And I realized that one of the biggest obstacles for my personal healing journey actually had a lot to do with the fact that I had a lot of unresolved emotional components that I didn't even realize could actually play a role in my physical health, and it was a huge, huge aha moment for me as a practitioner. I'm really excited about bringing this information to you, and I also will have Dr.
**Unknown:** Nick be, uh, joining us shortly, he's just finishing up with some of his patients, because Dr. Nick is really the one who actually heads, uh, an amazing, uh, method in our practice that helps people to work through these emotional layers that are contributing to them not feeling emotionally well but also that could be contributing to their physical health declining. So, uh, so get ready because it's gonna be some really awesome information that you guys have never heard before and I'm actually going to give you specifics on how specific diagnoses and pathologies are actually linked to very specific types of emotions. So you guys are gonna literally have your mind blown tonight.
**Unknown:** And guys, like for those of you that are here, just don't feel ashamed of your emotional stuff. We all have stuff. Anybody who says that they're emotionally sound is lying to you, and it's okay that we've all gone through things. It's okay that we have judgments sometimes.
**Unknown:** It's okay that we feel a certain way and that we sometimes get reactive. But tonight I'm gonna help you guys understand why. Why do you get triggered? Why do you have these emotional resentments?
**Unknown:** Like, why do you have judgments against like certain people or certain ways people act? It's gonna help you feel clarity but also help you feel more free of these things and obviously help you to understand how this is actually playing a role in your body and in your health. So overall for the both of us, I, I think that we both have different stories. I know you guys have heard my story a million times of why we do what we do.
**Unknown:** I wanna actually let Nick share because he is the one who is really heading this type of work in our practice and, you know, his reasons for being so passionate about helping people work through their emotional stuff is, is really part of his own journey. So I'll let you tell them a little bit more about like why you are interested in this work in the first place. So if I can get Pappy to relax a little bit. Yes, I am.
**Unknown:** I got into the mental emotional aspect honestly when I was a really, really young age. First and foremost, I realized just to be great, great... a great athlete, I really had to not just own the physical side, but I had to also own the, the mental strength as well. It's like, you know when it's fourth and goal and the ball's going to you, you gotta have that mental strength that's like, "Yeah, I'm, I'm the perfect one that's designed to take on this pressure and to come through with it." So all of that initially started...
**Unknown:** You're killing me, Pappy ... as, as a young kid being an athlete and then- I love you, too. Going through, going through that, my mom actually had stage one breast cancer when I was also very young, and I was at a point where I didn't really understand it. I just knew we're a medical model-Uh, she went through, uh, and she had radiation, she had chemotherapy, she had a mastectomy.
**Unknown:** I remember her just, like constantly throwing up, losing her hair, just like... I'm like, "This is not what health and wellness is." Um, and it left an, an everlasting mark, uh, emotionally on me. And throughout my journey, kind of fast-forward, it wasn't till I got into college playing college football, I got my sixth concussion, and with that, pretty much everything was a big reset. I had to stop playing football.
**Unknown:** My whole identity was wrapped up as an athlete, so I didn't know who I was. Um, I had a lot of post-concussion syndrome issues from that. At the time, people didn't even know what post-concussion syndrome was, so nobody knew how to, A, diagnose me correctly, and also help me with my symptoms. But my symptoms, I had light sensitivity, I had a lot of gastrointestinal issues.
**Unknown:** I had this low level of anger that would literally come around all the time, and fortunately or unfortunately, nobody could help me. I went to therapists, they said it was all in my head, that I had to get a different hobby because I was an athlete, and I just had to find a different sport. I was crazy competitive with that, but I still... it didn't help my...
**Unknown:** a lot of the symptoms that were happening. And from that, I realized for me, my neurological system came down, and what came up were all my other issues that I wasn't having symptoms earlier, but as soon as I had the chance, uh, then it arose. So my stomach issues that weren't really a problem became a problem. My emotional issues that I hadn't dealt with from, A, figuring out who I was as a person, what was most important to me, uh, but also things of dealing with my parents, um, having health issues.
**Unknown:** So my mom had stage I cancer that eventually turned into stage IV cancer. My dad had multiple sclerosis. Like, my, my grandad had... was a farmer, ended up dying of four different types of cancers.
**Unknown:** So it was a lot of frustration and anger coming around that perception. That really led me into realizing that in order to heal, I had to look at every single system, and not only individually, but also how each system worked together. Understanding now, probably what I love focusing on the most are both neurological as well as the mental-emotional areas of the life, but understanding that our biochemistry as well as our energetic, it all affects all the different systems. But for me, I had to really go through and help pretty much, quote unquote, not heal, but bring into balance my, my emotional discrepancies that were polarized, and actually in order to allow my brain chemistry and neurology to help even out so I could work on those exercises and heal- And I was there for the whole journey, guys.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. So talk about support. She might have gave me more challenge than anything- ... but, you know, it was support in her mind.
**Unknown:** Yeah. It is always interesting how they say opposites attract, and then, you know, you're, you're opposites, but you're there to balance each other, and, uh, we couldn't actually have been more opposite. But, um, but it actually ended up really creating a lot of growth on either side. So, so when you're having those judgments against your, your spouse for challenging you, you know, it's actually a really beneficial thing that we really...
**Unknown:** You know, once we put our guards down, I think we actually really helped each other a lot. So, you know, as we get into this conversation, I think that one of the big things that's a really huge disclaimer to make is that, you know, and I say this in all of my webinars, it's, it's not your fault that you feel a certain way, or you haven't been, been able to work through, you know, your grief, or you haven't been able to work through your anxieties, or you haven't been able to work through, you know, feeling ashamed or, or your abandonment. You know, there's a lot of different things that show up in our lives, and we really... we don't always understand why they present themselves.
**Unknown:** Um, you know, in reality, when we look at medicine and we look at psychology and psychiatry, it's so easy nowadays to just, you know, provide some type of palliative fix, which is a medication. And, you know, I always ask the question of, you know, what would the world be if there was no medication? You know, if we really had to dig deeper and we had to figure out a way to cope. And medications obviously serve their purpose in extreme states, but if we really had to, to deal with the situation, I think that, you know, it would be different, because it's so easy nowadays to stay in the bad relationship or stay at the job that we hate because we could just take the medication and really just buffer the symptoms.
**Unknown:** And, you know, if we had to, had to feel the feelings, we might actually take action on those things and, and seek out a different path. But obviously, there's other situations that are more difficult when we deal with, you know, childhood emotional traumas and abuse and things like that, and it's really being able to know that there are methods out there that can help to work through these types of things. So some of the, the foundational things that we really look at in this practice is that obviously we want to really understand is the emotional side-Part of the health puzzle. But also too is when you are working with a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and you're dealing with some type of depression or anxiety or some other type of mental health issue, then a lot of times they're not necessarily asking you more questions about your physical health, and they're not necessarily looking at, you know, do you have an underlying gastrointestinal issue?
**Unknown:** But when you look at basic physiology, 95% of your serotonin, which is your feel-good hormone, is actually made in your gut. So we have this healthcare system that is based on the segregation of our systems, and we're completely ignoring basic physiology, and we really need to understand that the body is an integration of systems. And sometimes the depression or the anxiety is being caused by that chemical deficiency, but sometimes that chemical deficiency is actually a result of the emotional adversities that we've gone through. Nick now has to compete with how much I talk.
**Unknown:** It's not a competition. I just sit here and be quiet. So as we start to get into this topic and talking more about it, I think that, you know, some of the things that you guys are gonna take away tonight is that trauma can actually manifest in physical tissue. And a lot of this foundation comes from Chinese medicine, which we're gonna talk more about.
**Unknown:** But I think that one of the most fascinating things that we have really started to understand and ask better questions in our consultations is how not only do specific emotions manifest in specific tissues, but also the left and the right side of the body actually have different manifestations when it comes to female versus male, and I'm gonna make more sense of that in, in a minute. So we had a specific patient who came in to s- she saw me specifically, and when we were doing her testing, she just had some really interesting things coming up. Um, she said that she was dealing with a lot of depression and anxiety. She didn't necessarily talk more about it.
**Unknown:** She's just like, "I've been dealing with this for a really long time, but that's not really why I'm here. I'm here because I'm having a lot of gastrointestinal pain, and I'm also having a lot of pain on my right side. My right shoulder is really hurting. I'm having chest pain, and then I'm also having, like, pain in my ribs." So, like, anatomically, I start thinking, o-okay, does she have something going on in her liver?
**Unknown:** Does she have something going on in her lung, et cetera? So we did a bunch of lab testing, and it actually turned out that she was having a really significant issue in her right lung. She was actually, um, coming up with emphysema. Emphysema, just so you understand, is like a ri- a rigidity in the, um, the tissue.
**Unknown:** Like, the tissue is not expanding. There's loss of elasticity. In addition, she was also coming up with very elevated liver enzymes, which was the culprit for her gastrointestinal problems. It was also the culprit for some of that right-sided ribcage pain, and this was not due to a virus.
**Unknown:** This was all non-viral hepatitis. Hepatitis just means inflammation in the hepatocytes, which is the liver s- cells. So as I'm, like, uncovering these different things going on, she really didn't have infections. Like, she didn't really have toxins.
**Unknown:** So I started to ask better questions, and I said, "You know, just so you know, the liver is associated with anger, resentment, and even rage." I was like, "The lung, on the other hand, is associated with grief, and the right side of the body is associated with a male figure. So by any chance, do you feel like you have any anger or resentment or even have... like, feel like you have loss in relation to a male figure?" And she breaks down in tears, and she says, "I'm divorcing my husband because he's been cheating on me." And I was like, oh, so anger, resentment towards him for her, h- the betrayal, and then grief of the loss of this person who hasn't been lost because he died but losing him now as a partner in life. And it was just so fascinating because this is a person who has physical manifestations, like, physical problems in her tissue, but it was all tied, and all of the onset of her symptoms, by the way, were when she found out that her husband was cheating, and it was completely tied to these emotional components.
**Unknown:** And I know that you've seen a variety of different, like, things like this happen. Mm-hmm. So it's really just when you ask better questions because most of the time you're not... no doctor ...
**Unknown:** you're not going in with a, a lung issue or a liver issue, and they're asking you these questions. But we do because we know that anything can cause anything. It's not going to be just black and white, like, "Oh, you have a virus. Let's call it a day." These are the people that go in, they're like, "I feel like crap," and your blood work looks good, and you get told you're depressed.
**Unknown:** So it's really a matter of understanding the, the bigger picture here. So, um, so I'm gonna let Nick talk about this too, but I think one of the biggest myths is that time heals all. I know that that's, uh, such a term that is said, is that, like, time will heal anything. But what I know in my own experience is that just because time has passed does not mean that you have resolved the, the person that you had an emotional charge towards, or you have let go of a situation, you have let go of a judgment or a trauma.
**Unknown:** This is something that a lot of people don't realize because we'll say, "You know, we see some of these things coming up in your testing. You know, do you feel..." They're like, "Well, I felt like that a long time ago, but I don't even think about that now. Like, that can't be possible that's affecting me now." But when you, when you ask, like, "Oh yeah, I cried all the time. Like, literally, I just, like, wanted nothing to do with them, and I still don't talk to them.
**Unknown:** But that was so long ago, and I don't care about that anymore." And people don't realize that just because time has passed and it's not in your conscious mind, it still is negatively impacting your body. How deep can I go? Oh gosh, here we go. Go, go for it, Carothers.
**Unknown:** So I'll try not to get too crazy deep. Um, but really it's like when you look at-Time heals all is straight 100% myth because all trauma, everything, uh, it's foundationally just energy, and all energy runs through cycles. So I always give feedback of, you know, you look at the stock market, it's a cycle. You look at the housing industry, it's a cycle.
**Unknown:** You look at the weather patterns, it cycles through the different seasons. And the same thing happens through anything that's actually unbalanced energy. So it's like when you look at our emotions, really fundamentally our emotions are just energy. So the easiest way I always say is to look at it like a magnet.
**Unknown:** So all magnets have a north and south polarity, just like the Earth. The Earth has a north pole and it has a south pole. So emotions, understanding that anything created has to have energy and actually has to be balanced. It's our, really our awareness, um, and how we perceive things that tends to be imbalanced.
**Unknown:** So we see, quote-unquote, too much of the positive, the benefits, or too much of the negative polarity, the drawbacks. Uh, and what really needs to occur to actually bring that into harmony is that we have to see both sides equally. So time heals all is really kind of a false perception because anything that we actually don't bring into that harmony, that actual balance, uh, is going to cycle back into our life into the same or a different form to really give us an opportunity to learn, uh, from the situation. So it's really not until we take the time to go deep within ourselves, bring the aspects that we either judge or don't, quote-unquote, love ourselves into that balance that then we can break the cycle and move on with our life.
**Unknown:** And this is a big foundation of the Demartini method, which we're gonna talk about. But, you know, one of the other things that I mentioned earlier is that emotions cannot affect physical tissue. So the fascinating thing is that we have really separated out Eastern and Western medicine, and when we're talking about, you know, the foundation of Chinese medicine, this is something that's been around for thousands of years, and we really ignore it in, you know, in this day and age, especially in the US. And really when you get back to the foundation of understanding some of the principles of, of Chinese medicine, there is so much relevance that is still affecting all of us in this day and age.
**Unknown:** We have just completely transformed everything to be so focused on medication, surgery, medication, surgery, when really at the end of the day, we have to start acknowledging these other layers. 'Cause we all have stuff, and we all have been through things, and we are not necessarily being told that these things can play a role in our physical health. So my personal weak organ was my liver, and liver is associated with resentment, rage, and anger. We have lungs, which are associated with grief and loss.
**Unknown:** Kidneys are associated with fear and lack of life force. So this is kind of interesting because this is in relation to almost like not, not knowing your purpose and not being able to kind of feel like you know what your goals in life are, and you can expand more upon that as well. Yeah. I mean, when you look at Chinese medicine, your kidney is really one of your most important organ systems 'cause it is your life force.
**Unknown:** It's, it's you being connected with the Earth and with yourself and everything else, which is- And preserving your blood- Which is- ... which you can't live without blood ... it's one of the most important filters in the body. But it's like when you look at even the meridians of the body, your first, uh, kidney meridian is on the bottom of your foot, so it's like walking barefoot is so important for grounding, uh, because it's giving you the life force up to help your kidneys really be able to resonate with that Schumann resonance, that seven point three hertz.
**Unknown:** Um- Nobody knows what that is, by the way. Nobody knows what that is. Somebody knows what that is. This is our dinner table conversations- This is right ...
**Unknown:** by the way. So really when you're looking at kidneys, and especially when the, the biggest thing that challenges or stresses the kidneys out on that emotional level is fear. Um, the cool thing about fear is that very rarely, unfortunately, are we present, uh, throughout the day. Um, science has shown that we're only present about five to 10% of the day.
**Unknown:** So it's not that we use 10% of our brain, we use 100% of our brain, we're only conscious and present 10% of the day. So when we're not present, it's our subconsciousness, uh, that's really running through and taking over. So it's really the quality of those programs running our subconsciousness that's really creating your reality, because we're not making the decisions over 90% of the time to serve ourselves. So when you're looking at the kidney, the biggest thing that affects it is fear.
**Unknown:** The interesting thing about fear is we really only fear two things. The dinner conversations. Yes. I love this.
**Unknown:** The come, come join, come eat. The only two things that we fear in life, which is great, because anytime that you challenge yourself and you catch yourself experiencing fear, ask yourself this question. First, be like, "This is interesting," 'cause that takes you out of the limbic system and puts you into the prefrontal cortex where you can actually make a decision and you're not firing up your limbic system being judgmental. Which is your emotional center.
**Unknown:** Which is your emotional center. The second part is, all right, I can only fear one of two things. I fear a gain or a loss. So when you look at the animalistic nature, the animalistic mind, we're always trying to avoid pain and then go through...
**Unknown:** I'm looking at the best dinner conversation ever.... have been chasing pleasure. So we wanna avoid pain, gain pleasure. So when it comes to fear, it's like we're fear of losing our pleasure- Mm-hmm ...
**Unknown:** or fear of gaining pain. Yeah. Once you can really narrow that down, like, all right, which one of these am I fearing, then we can actually create some better quality questions to answer, why am I fearing this? You know, why am I fearing this gain of pain or why am I fearing the loss of this pleasure?
**Unknown:** Because that's the attachments externally that we're really avoiding within ourselves, and then we can ask the questions and really bring into balance the shit within ourselves into harmony. Yeah, I think it's just, like, such a fascinating thing because that's really just the foundation of so much of our program, is that everything is supposed to be good, and nothing is supposed to be bad. It's like a, a world with only peace and no war, and we've been programmed to think that that's what we're all striving towards, is that everything is gonna be good and nothing should be bad, and this is what cr- constantly creates this level of disappointment, and it creates this massive imbalance, and we're seeking out something that is so unbelievably not realistic. Um, and then we're, we're going after positive affirmations.
**Unknown:** Like, how many... for those of you into this world, like, how many of you have read, "Write down positive affirmations, and write them on your mirror, and think positive, and think positive, positive thinking"? And it's like, it literally can make you schizophrenic, like, I'm not even exaggerating. Our mentor, Dr.
**Unknown:** Demartini, who created the foundation of the method Dr. Nick does in our practice, he literally said that he did positive thinking for how long? Was it a year or two years? I think it was two years, yeah.
**Unknown:** And he literally journaled it, and as he journaled it, he was moving into, like, a state of psychosis because he was- It was more suppressive. Yeah. Yeah. He was so imbalanced, and it was just so fascinating hearing this because we're creating this unrealistic ex- expectation that everything is always gonna be good and nothing is gonna be bad.
**Unknown:** So- But it's like we also... I mean, for the longest time, that was me. It's like I wanted to search for peace, but then it's like when I started just increasing my awareness, I saw that there's not peace inside of us. It's like we have an immune system that's attacking things.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. And if we didn't have that attack, we would sometimes wouldn't survive. Mm-hmm. And it's like, I've unfortunately broken a lot of bones because I'm a boy and I do stupid things, but with that, it's like learning how bones actually rebuild.
**Unknown:** There's break down and there's build up. Yeah. You can't have actually the growth without a destruction at the same time. It's just, it's- It's always in balance- Yeah ...
**Unknown:** without a doubt. Uh, so these are just some really interesting things that, uh, really manifest in the tissues. But I would say that some of the most common things that we see within our practice is we definitely see a lot of respiratory issues that are in relation to, um, people that are just holding onto massive amounts of grief. We also see a lot of people that are dealing with the inability to digest, um, due to pancreatic stress, and pancreatic stress has so much to do with self-identity.
**Unknown:** So many people just, like, don't even know who they are. They don't know, like, they don't feel like they're living their purpose. And I would say another big one too is the large intestine, and the large intestine has a lot to do with rejection and being defensive. But also too, it's like when you're having specific symptoms, like, uh, specifically you're having constipation, a lot of that is, like, what are you not willing to eliminate out of your life?
**Unknown:** Or if you're having chronic diarrhea, it's like, what are you trying to eliminate out of your life at a rapid rate? So there's so many interesting, like, metaphysical, um, manifestations of these different emotions and how they show up in our physical body. Would you say there's any specific ones that you see a lot? I'd say it's cool, like, I mean, when you look at Chinese principles and having different things, um, if you wanna go back to that last one, when emotions get held into the tissues, the tissues are your subconsciousness.
**Unknown:** So it's like when all information first comes into the mind, it comes in through that limbic system, uh, for us to be able to judge something. And when we can see it as whole, uh, balanced both on the positive, negative polarity, equal amount of benefits and drawbacks, that's actually love, uh, seeing something completely true for just what it is. When we see for something as love for what it is, we actually transcend that into our imminent mind, uh, which is known as our super consciousness. The opposite side of that is when information comes in, uh, through our limbic system, and we judge it for either more good than bad, more positive than negatives, more benefits than drawbacks, that's split.
**Unknown:** So that information actually goes down to our subconscious mind, our animalistic nature, which that is a pol- polarization change, and then it gets held into the subconsciousness, which is our body. So that's like people always talk about a body, mind, and soul, so it's really your soul governs your mind, and your mind dictates your body. So it's depending on how the mind actually rules and views things, that's going to dictate the expression of your body. Your body's gonna there create your reality.
**Unknown:** Your reality is gonna come back and give you either a positive or a negative feedback mechanism of symptoms, what we call pain and things that we either really, really like or really, really don't like, which is really just us being able to see if something serves our value system or not. We're getting there. I know. Don't jump.
**Unknown:** But- Don't jump ... but all of that is really going to get held into our tissues. Done. I knew he was gonna do this.
**Unknown:** So I wanna, I wanna actually come back to this one, but there is a really fascinating book here that was- Hi, Victoria ... was written by Louise Hay, which we've heard that d- this is- It's fine. It's fine ... mainly Demartini's work.
**Unknown:** It's Louise Hay. But anyway. So this actually goes through very specific conditions and how these con- what are these conditions actually attached to, and there's just some really fascinating ones that I do find hold true in a lot of the things that we do or the lot of people that we see come through our practice. So one of the specific ones was lupus, and lupus had a lot to do with giving, but also it was better to die than to stand up for oneself.
**Unknown:** And I literally had a patient today that I just talked to with lupus, and she said that she has never stood up for herself, and her lupus onset was literally when her family just, like, ostracized her, and she didn't stand up for herself, and then her husband, she found out he was cheating and also had a child with another woman, and she didn't divorce him. And she just kind of just dealt with all of these scenarios and then started losing her hair and was diagnosed with discoid lupus. Do you wanna explain what lupus is? Lupus is a, an attack, an autoimmune attack on your connective tissue.
**Unknown:** It can manifest in many, many different ways. So this is definitely something really significant that, you know, it doesn't usually just happen overnight. It's usually brewing over time, but some sp-S- like significant emotional trauma can really put it into motion. So even like headaches and migraines, this is, um, resisting the flow of life.
**Unknown:** So really just always resisting what's coming at you or thinking that you are a victim of your situation. Knee pain. How many people have knee pain? Has a lot to do with being stubborn, um, having a big ego or pride, inability to bend.
**Unknown:** Are you laughing? I have knee pain right now. Yeah. But I thought this was interesting, even just as a female, how many women complain of like having fat in their like hip and thigh area.
**Unknown:** And, um, I was getting a kick out of this for my personal self, was lumps of stubborn fat or lumps of stubborn fat from your... having resentment towards your parents. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is, this is fantastic." So there are a lot of different correlations here when it really comes to these specific emotional things. So again, this is not everyone, but what you need to understand about this is if you're the person who's been trying to heal your psoriasis or trying to heal your lupus or trying to get rid of your knee pain and nothing is working, conventional, functional, holistic, whatever, there might be this other layer that is completely being overlooked or missed.
**Unknown:** And it's usually not just, you know, black and white, one thing. It's usually you resolve this emotional piece, and then you can actually do the physical work that your body needs in order to heal. You know, that's a big thing is like we always look at the body as just a single system. Mm-hmm.
**Unknown:** You know, like all you have is emotional crap or all... like it's all physical- Yeah ... or maybe it's just, you know, it's like you have an infection in this tissue, but it's really, it's like it's all about layers. Mm-hmm.
**Unknown:** Uh, it's all like an onion. So it's like first you might have to focus on emotional imbalances, but then after that it's like there may be an infection. Yeah. And then after that, it's like now we can actually work on rewiring the nervous system so the body and the brain are connected again.
**Unknown:** Well, I think it's all about timing. It's that... That's what a lot of people don't understand is they might say, "I've already tried that and it didn't work," but it might not be the right timing because there might have been more of a foundational problem. So there are some people that we do this type of work with, um, from an emotional perspective, and we do it right away because that's their foundational problem, and there's some people that they have to foundationally get more things balanced, deal with their gut issues or whatever the case may be before their, their body and brain is, is even ready to work on that, that other emotional layer.
**Unknown:** So I think that one of the most significant things that we have learned over time is that there is a such thing as a disassociation. There are definitely people that have been through really, really traumatic things in their life that they have disassociated from, so they actually don't consciously remember a specific s- event or a specific trauma. And with this, we have actually different ways that we test this in our practice to see if there is an emotional component, you know, when did it, what did, when did it happen, and what is that emotion that they're holding onto. So this is something that's really significant for those people that just feel so mentally unwell or unstable, but they're, they're not really able to pinpoint when, why, or how.
**Unknown:** So, um, so there is a such thing as a disassociation. This is very, very common with, um, physical and sexual abuse as well. But one thing too is, uh, we'll get weird on you now, is, uh, something called transgenerational trauma. And I wanna, I want people to understand this because some of you may have had this experience as a child or you may have a child or have a niece or a nephew that's dealing with it.
**Unknown:** So when you have kids that you're like, "Why does my two-year-old have anxiety?" Or, "Why would my five-year-old be depressed?" Or, "Why is my kid worrying about things that they should know nothing about?" And you see these really odd dynamics and these odd behaviors. Sometimes the, the different things that this kid is holding or experiencing is not theirs. It was either the fact that mom could have been super anxious while they were in the womb or mom could have had a car accident that created a PTSD type of reaction or there has been a lineage of, of anxiety in the family or a lineage of addiction in the family, things like that. And I'm not saying that this is genetic.
**Unknown:** I'm saying that these are different behavioral traits that could have started generations back. There could have been a specific type of trauma that was never resolved that then imprinted in the genome and kept getting passed down generation to generation. So when you have these kids that are exhibiting these really odd behaviors, this is not always just like, "Oh, that's, you know, my kid's being weird," or maybe they watched something on TV. Sometimes it's more of a, a pattern that's happening generation after generation.
**Unknown:** You wa- you wanna go somewhere with it? I can. So a lot of times what I see with transi- transgenerational trauma, science is... Well, let me take a step back.
**Unknown:** So there's epigenetics. Epigenetics is that transgenerationalAspect of our genes. Um, the cool thing that science has actually proved now, I think it's up to seven generations. I know that I've read that science has proved that literally five lineages, at least five, uh, generations, that trauma can be passed down throughout our genes.
**Unknown:** Um, I think it's up to seven, but I haven't read that personally, so I'm not gonna say it. But the, the cool thing is, is like you look at the body, and it's not just physical. So I always, uh, explain really nobody for the most part understands meridians. It's really just the energetic side, the energy side of our nervous system.
**Unknown:** So we have our nervous system of these highways that transmits literally information all throughout the body. On the energetic side of the body, we have meridians, which are do the exact same thing as our nervous system. It's just in an energetic aspect that runs mainly through our fascia. And by the way, when people are like, "Meridians, what does that even mean?" That's the foundation of acupuncture.
**Unknown:** So if you've had acupuncture, and you've seen improvement with it, that's because you've had some type of stressors on your meridians, and when they put those needles into the meridian, it helps to clear that out. So, so that's definitely something that you can understand 'cause I feel like a lot of people know acupuncture. They know that it helps people, but they actually don't know what it, what it's doing and how it's working. And the cool thing is that there is a science that actually proves meridian points as well as the whole meridians.
**Unknown:** So it's like every single meridian point actually has a higher electrical gradient. So if you actually go to and, like, take a, a meridian point and measure the electrical output, it's gonna be higher at that meridian point than compared to the skin around. And that just shows that there's these electrical impulses- Mm. -information that's really tra-traveling through.
**Unknown:** But after that side point, there's epigenetics, which is the actual physical, uh, translation of that trauma being passed down. And what happens is it creates a mutation in the actual gene, and that mutation will either cause a gene to turn off or turn on its expression. So on the energetic side of that, instead of having epigenetics, uh, what we have is called a miasm. So miasm is like in the energetic meridian world, it is the exact same thing, but for the most part, it's actually in, not to get too weird on you guys, uh, but in the magnetic field.
**Unknown:** So anything that has electrical, like electromagnetic, has electrical but it also has magnetic. And that magnetic aspect is... Like, you can look at your body, and most people talk about auras. Auras sound voodoo, but the cool thing is that auras are real.
**Unknown:** It's just our magnetic field. We just don't talk about it in the science point of view. We talk about it usually in the energetic, uh, point of view. But your aura is really just your magnetic field that comes off of your electrical activity, hence for the most part, our nervous system.
**Unknown:** So really our miasms are our energetic field, our magnetic field containing the same thing as your epigenetics but just in the energetic transformation of energy. Well, I think too is like a lot of people when it comes to this whole energetic component and, like, people are like, "I don't even know what that means, and is that even real?" But I think one of the things that we can all relate to is that when you meet someone, you're either like, "I love this person," or like, "I'm good. Don't ever wanna hang out with them again." And all that is is really just a transfer of energy, and you're kind of like picking up on their vibes, is what we call it. But really you're just picking up on their energy, and you've already made an executive decision if you like them or not.
**Unknown:** So this type of transfer is happening all the time, and a lot of people are feeling it. Some people are s- more sensitive than others. But it's like the same thing, like you go into a hospital, and you're like, "Ugh, I don't like, I don't like hospitals." Like, it's just a bad, bad vibe in here, a bad feeling in here, and it's like you're just picking up on the energetic things around you. So all of us are, are experiences, experiencing this to some capacity.
**Unknown:** We just don't really know what it is. So I think that one of the big things is that people know that they get triggered. They just don't know why and what it actually is. So there's kinda two aspects that we're gonna talk about in these next two slides is number one is your judgments and your triggers come from your values.
**Unknown:** And I'll tell my story because I think that, you know, some people will relate to that, and I'm gonna have Nick expand upon it. But this is, like, such a silly story, but I feel like a lot of people can relate to it in some capacity. But I remember for me, before knowing, like, what my values were or anything, I would go out, you know, to dinner with friends, and I would have my group of friends that we would all go out together and, you know, enjoy, you know, going out. It was like one of our favorite things to do was spending quality time and eating good food.
**Unknown:** And we would have, you know, some friends that would come along, and they would, like, nickel and dime the bill, and it would always just, like, kill the vibe. And we were just like, "Oh, like why do they have to do that? It's so annoying when they have to do that." And it's so interesting because when I came to really understanding my values, I understood that one of my highest values was quality time in relationships. So in my mind, I could not put a price on going out with the people that I cared about and spending time with them.
**Unknown:** So, like, I didn't care what the bill cost because that wasn't my highest value. My highest value was the time that I was able to spend with the people that I care about. So what I didn't realize at that time is I'm placing a judgment on these people that are, you know, maybe nickel and diming the bill, but really at the end of the day, their values were completely different. They valued probably how much savings was in their bank account, and they valued that maybe because they wanted to have a savings account to put their kid through college one day.
**Unknown:** I don't really know. But I'm sitting here placing a judgment on someone who values something completely different. And in that moment of realizing this, it was just so freeing of knowing that so many other things that I get annoyed about or-Or a trigger to me really have to do with me pushing my values onto others. And this was something that once I was able to realize that, I was able to really step into situations differently and also feel...
**Unknown:** not feel triggered and also feel less judgmental and let go of judgments even that people were potentially pushing onto me, because I knew at that point they were just operating out of their own value system. Everyone is always operating out of their value system, and when your in-laws are telling you how you should raise your kid or how you should, like, clean your house, they're doing it because that's their value system and that's what, what they know best. So it's just like, "Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you so much," and just knowing that that's okay that you're not maybe in alignment with those values.
**Unknown:** So I'll let Nick talk more about that. No. It's like, I mean, 100% you nailed it. It's like really any time we become triggered, it's because we're trying to control a situation, and we always want to control our belief system, and our belief system really is our values.
**Unknown:** Our values create what we believe to be true to us that's gonna serve us the most. So when that's getting challenged, of course, when we're going to create a trigger and try to control the situation because we don't want what's most important to us, our values, to really be challenged. And in doing so, I always... and I might be jumping forward, just let me know if I am.
**Unknown:** Um, but with relationships, we, we only have three options. We have a win-win, a win-lose, and a lose-lose. So with that, the understanding that there's always an exchange with everything that we come in contact to, and it needs to be a fair exchange. So it's like when a win-win comes down, first you have to figure out what's most important to you, your values, so that you can actually serve those.
**Unknown:** But then in relationships, whether it's a relationship at home, a relationship with your kids, a relationship at work, it has to be that win-win. So you have to figure out what's most important to that other person so that their values can be just and equally as served as your values so that both parties are having a fair exchange. When a lot of times, though, what happens, and especially in the States, it's a, it's at least a win-lose or a lose-lose. Mm-hmm.
**Unknown:** So the win-lose is, "Well, you should really be acting in accordance to my value system because that's what I want to happen, and I know better than you because I'm really smart." That's really understanding that you don't love the other person, you expect them to act and see what's in your value system, and really what love- It's the famous saying, though, "If you just do it this way-" Yeah. "... everything will be better." If you just pick up the kids on time or just keep the house clean, then everything will be better, and that's really one of our very close friends that run Relationship Development, they call that demand relationship. Mm-hmm.
**Unknown:** And we just have kind of a different name for it, is it's really just you're, you're projecting your values onto someone else and not really understanding that both sets of values in a relationship are actually serving two different purposes. You know, how many people get divorced because the woman maybe decided to stay at home and take care of the kids, and her highest value is, is making sure the kids are in a good school, they're playing sports, they're learning an instrument, and, like, you know, the big focus is that and making sure obviously the house is well-kept. And then there's men that are, like, out and their, their primary value is to make... You know, unhappy with each other because they're just like, "You need to spend more time with the kids," and, "Oh, maybe you should go get a job." And i-and there's this dynamic when really at the end of the day if they were to see more clearly or be probed with better questions, they would understand that they can't really function independently.
**Unknown:** You need the money to make sure that, you know, the kids are going into the schools that you want, they're getting their school clothes, they're able to, you know, get the, the music lessons and all of that. And then also the male is, you know, being able to come home to a comfortable house where, you know, he feels cared for. So it's been so interesting seeing you, as well as even Demartini, take people through these, these, s- uh, the Demartini method and asking better questions and being able to just bring into their perception that they are in perfect balance, but they're just projecting their values on each other and with blinders on. Oh, 100%.
**Unknown:** And it's like a lot of times, you know, it's like first you gotta have information to be able to make a decision on that. And one of the things, especially in marriages, is always start at the foundation, the actual day we got married. So when you say your vows at the end, it's like, you know, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer. All these things we're not really conscious of, but it's saying that you love equally both sides and both potentials of the person.
**Unknown:** Yeah. And it's just like when you look at it, it's just brilliantly beautiful. Yeah. Nick's always gonna get emotional.
**Unknown:** Talking about feelings here. Geez. One thing I, I think is really interesting too is that when... Uh, being from New Jersey and living in the tri-state area between New York, Philadelphia, Jersey, there is a lot of strong-willed and strong-minded people, and I cannot tell you how many times I hear, "Yeah, I'm stressed.
**Unknown:** Everybody's stressed. I can handle it, though. I can handle stress. I'm really strong, you know.
**Unknown:** Like, I, I know how to deal with it and, you know, like stress, whatever. I can handle it." And it's very interesting because I then explain to them that just because you can handle stress doesn't mean that your body has evolved past those stress responses. So when you're stressed, and maybe it's because you got into an argument with your spouse or maybe you got a, a nasty email from your boss, your body immediately starts to pump out stress hormones as if you were in the woods about a fight... a-about to fight a tiger or run.
**Unknown:** So despite you being able to handle stress, that does not mean your body is not having a physiological response. So living in a state of stress or just dealing with stress and not necessarily changing your situation, that is not necessarily something that you're handling. Because physiologically, your body is going to be stressed, but then it's going to get into a state of crisis, and that state of crisis is when you're so fatigued that you can't-Get out of bed anymore. Or you're not sleeping anymore and you're completely burnt out and can't think straight.
**Unknown:** Well, and the common aspect of it is like when doing an integrated practice, it's very cool to see because like the longer we handle it, the more stress onto our adrenals, which produces cortisol for us to be able to handle it, then cortisol goes back to the brain and it affects your pituitary gland, which also affects your thyroid as well as your reproductive organs. Yeah. So a lot of times you'll see people with hormone issues. That's them, the hormones being off, and now they're trying to go and chase their hormone imbalances- Yeah ...
**Unknown:** that's really just been coming back to them handling their stress, which is called the adrenal burnout. Yeah. So that's the fascinating thing is like we work with hormones all the time, but very rarely are we helping someone's hormones through using different, you know, supplementation, nutraceuticals, bioidenticals to manipulate their hormones. Once we fix the foundation of dealing with the stress or, or dealing with liver issues or dealing with inflammatory issues or dealing with neurological issues, once you balance that out, almost everyone's hormones autocorrect.
**Unknown:** So if you've been on this journey of like, "Fix my hormones, fix my hormones," and it's not necessarily improving, then it definitely could be a lot more deeper rooted. And I'm not gonna say that every time it's emotional, but it could easily be some type of overproduction of stress hormones like Nick said, or it could be even a toxicity issue. So don't chase hormones because very common, there is more of a foundational problem. So I know that we've already talked about the judgment aspect, but again, is the judgments are very dictated by what your values are.
**Unknown:** And once you realize that and you just... When you get triggered by that person and you go, "Oh, all right. They're pushing their values onto me. That's okay.
**Unknown:** I get it," and you're able to really feel free of that, it's just such an interesting way that you show up in the world. By the way, Instagrammers, this is gonna cut us off in a minute and a half. So if you do want the full webinar, you're gonna have to shoot us your email through a direct message. So I know the biggest thing too is that people are probably like, "Can you even do testing for these types of things?" And obviously it's about asking better questions is number one when it comes to really digging into are, you know, is the...
**Unknown:** are there issues from an emotional perspective that are causing you to not be well or are causing you to have an obstacle with getting well. And with our practice, we actually have a couple of different ways of analyzing this. So number one, this is super blurry, but, um, we have actually a technology called the BioScan. The BioScan has the ability to actually evaluate different types of emotional things that you are holding in your subconscious.
**Unknown:** It also has the ability to help to neutralize some of these things. But in addition, we main-we mainly use this when we hit a roadblock with certain patients that are just like, "I don't know what I'm holding onto. I know I'm stressed and I know I feel like crap, but I just don't know because I've been through so many things in my life," or whatever the case may be. So we use this as a tool.
**Unknown:** We don't use it necessarily as a diagnostic. It just gives us more information that we might not be able to gather through conversation. But from there, we're really able to also leverage what we call the Demartini Method, which we're gonna talk more about. So I know that a lot of times therapy is really the first thing that's presented to us.
**Unknown:** And for those of you that have been with us the entire time, I said very early on is that I think therapy has its time and place, but we opted to try to learn a different modality outside of just conventional therapy. And we did that primarily because of our background in neurology, and we wanted to find a different way to help people really collapse these judgments and perceptions and resolve their perceptions around these, these different, you know, situations, traumas, whatever you wanna call it. And we wanted to do it in a way that we weren't having to have them tell their story over and over again, because that story creates a lot of really strong neurological pathways. And once you have these strong pathways, it makes it harder and harder to actually work through and, and resolve the judgment, the emotion, the resentment, you know, what-whatever the case may be.
**Unknown:** So the method is really a beautiful thing because of it using the foundation of physics, number one, and it also taking into consideration what are your actual values. And I'll let Nick just kind of talk about a little bit more about the method and, and how it is using physics in a really strategic way to help to balance things out in, in the mind as well as the body. Yeah. So I mean, we talked a little bit about it, you know, the myth that therapy is the only option, and it would be a myth thinking that the Demartini Method is the only option as well.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. It's like I've learned well over a dozen different methods, systems, techniques to help the, the body, the system, the mind deal with emotional triggers and stresses. And some of, of, some of them are amazing, but they're short-lived because you can remove the stress, but unless you actually change the program, as soon as that stress has come back into the system, it's like, well, we gotta deal with it again because our program's gonna react the exact same way 'cause we've never changed it. And that's one of my favorite things about the Demartini Method is that it's sustainable.
**Unknown:** I mean, we go through, literally feels like every week now, we have to update our cell phone because there's a better program for it to work off of. But our mind, we haven't updated it maybe ever. So it really, like when you look at our brain being able to increase the quality, uh, to increase the quality of your life, we have to update the programs that we're utilizing for ourselves. And for me, that's where the Demartini Method comes in because not only is it helping you not to pretty much increase that neuroplasticity that Ni- Nicole was talking about, that the story of going over and over and over, it's like riding a bike, you know, eventually you can ride a bike with no hands, and I always joke about now kids are riding a bike textingWhich is just crazy.
**Unknown:** So it's, it's the same thing. It's like eventually you don't even have to think, and your nervous system is running the story that's really just creating havoc and chaos within your body, and whether that ends up in the liver, or when over time that compounded stress is going to create symptoms and pain. So really when looking at the Demartini Method, it stops... it starts with really figuring out who you are, what's most important to you, and that's known as your top three values.
**Unknown:** You can, uh, one of the... If you're listening to this right now, definitely afterwards go over to his website and do the values determination method. It's amazing. So after you figure out really what's most important to you, then we go through and we really figure out what's most imbalanced in your life, what's actually controlling you and you don't have any control over.
**Unknown:** So it's either, you know, on that positive or on that negative side, it could be something that you are, have a fantasy about, or it could be something that you really resent or despise. So it's really getting crystal clear on what that is, if it's an action, if it's an inaction or a trait, for, 'cause you can only change one thing in your life, and that's facts. Uh, you can't change the story, which unfortunately so many therapists are working with a story, and the story wasn't even real, uh, so you're just wasting a lot of time and money when that's what you're focusing on. When- Well, it's not to be insensitive that the story is not real, but it's just very often it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, that you only see one side because of the animalistic nature.
**Unknown:** So you're only seeing either the drawbacks or the positives, or vice versa. So when we only see the one side, that's when we have this story or we have this imbalance. Yeah, and I mean, initially we created a story to help protect us, but eventually that story, what was once a service, ends up becoming a disservice. So it's really going through and having that quality awareness to be able to bring the...
**Unknown:** and working on the actual facts back into where what you once resented, you actually end up being grateful for because you see all the benefits that actually came out of it that you weren't aware the first time. Uh, so it's really crazy and it doesn't matter if, you know, it was something crazy traumatic or just a small judgment. Once we can bring that into balance and see that there's an equal amount of drawbacks as well as benefits, then we actually have a choice to be able to use it to serve us instead of us being... or it being the program and running us.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think that, you know, the method is just, you know, people are like, "Holy crap, I didn't know that." And that's really the beauty of why we do this, is because you don't know what you don't know, and you could be easily suffering with some type of chronic illness, autoimmune condition, gut issue, and n-nobody is necessarily asking you better questions about, you know, did this start when you had a time of stress? Did this start after your loved one passed?
**Unknown:** Did this start after you got a divorce? And- Did this start after you got a concussion? Yeah. So it's really just so significant because when you ask better questions and you dig deeper, then you really start to piece the puzzle together, and you actually can help people on a deeper level because you're figuring out what is the root, what is the foundation.
**Unknown:** All right, guys. So if you want more information, check out our website integrativewellnessgroup.com. So we will see you next week, and we hope you enjoy. We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to Integrative Wellness Radio.
**Unknown:** 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. All night, no sleep.
**Unknown:** '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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