Undoctrinate Yourself - #7 - Elyse Schunkewitz

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Elyse Schunkewitz, LCSW is a holistic psychotherapist, brain-based coach, and presenter. Through a full mind-body-brain approach informed by functional neuroscience and medicine, somatic therapies, psychology, and fitness, Elyse works with clients to effectively shift mindsets, overcome obstacles, create better habits, increase focus, and improve overall performance.Find Elyse on Instagram ⁠@neurdy_therapist⁠⁠Elyse's Website⁠: https://elyseschunkewitzlcsw.com/⁠Support the podcast by becoming a patron at: https://www.patreon.com/UndoctrinateYourselfPodcastFollow the podcast on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠@undoctrinateyourselfpod⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Dr. Alexis on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠@dralexisjazmyn⁠

Hello and welcome back to the Undoctrinate Yourself podcast. Today I have another extremely special guest and very dear friend of mine, Elise Shunkowitz. We actually connected through a mutual friend Alina Connor and she is also a big PRI person like our person last week, Rua. But Elise and I connected instantly actually somewhat because my partner's birthday is the exact same day as hers and the same year. So it was like a very big coincidence and we were just kind of instant best friends from there. So I would really like to introduce Elise. She's a licensed clinical social worker and a holistic psychotherapist that has so much amazing insight to share about how we can care for our mental health and, like,

lead a very meaningful and enjoyable life. So welcome, Elise. Thank you so much, Alexis. I'm so excited to be here. Yes. It's a long time coming. And yeah, we definitely don't see each other enough. So I'm so glad that we're able to do this in person.

It's just so much better. And Zoom interviews are also great. But it's just something about the energy in person that really makes. it. Absolutely. Yeah. So I mean, I would love if we just started by hearing a little bit about like how you got into this work because I know there's a lot of psychotherapists out there that aren't coming at this from a holistic lens. And I mean, many would probably say, maybe including yourself, that it's somewhat of a broken system that's actually harming more people than it's helping. And so it's really inspiring that you're trying to be the change in that

and really embodying that and providing people with resources and tools to make lasting meaningful benefits in their lives and their health. So how did you get into it? to this holistic aspect of psychotherapy and mental health care? So it's kind of two separate roads that led to the same thing. So I went to school to become a social worker and I did the conventional thing. I worked at the NYU Counseling Center. I worked at Bellevue Hospital for five years. So for those of you who are listening who don't know,

Bellevue is the flagship for the New York City public hospital system. It's also the training hospital for NYU. So we worked a lot of NYU residents and medical students. We are known for our psychiatric department, and I worked in the inpatient psych unit, the psychiatric emergency room, and the mobile crisis unit while I was there. Simultaneously, I had started my, I was on a lot of medications, starting from when I was a teenager. I struggled with severe depression, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorder stuff, OCD, you name it. I feel like I experienced it. And I had been on pretty much every SSRI that was on the market at the time.

I had filed them all with very little success. I was on Xanax for almost 17 years. Wow. Yeah. I had done all the sleep medications, the stimulants. In addition to that, I was on a daily allergy pill. I was on birth control for also 17 years. And I would go to the pharmacy and they knew me.

Like I felt like I was a grandma bringing home like six different prescriptions, you know. And I was still so depressed. and so anxious and I would go to work at Bellevue. And to be honest, there were times where I was suicidal, like going to work at a hospital where I was, I thought I might even be hospitalized there at some point. I was just that low. Wow. So I was in the system, both myself as a patient on an outpatient basis and working in the system. And seeing that for the most part, it was a revolving door at Bellevue, where people would

come in and out and in and out. And it's not just because of psychiatry. There's also a lot of larger systems at play, homelessness, things like that, that were contributing to people not really getting stabilized and better. But while I was working at Bellevue, I started to become a personal trainer on the side for fun, and I started studying functional neuroscience. And I was working with my own holistic practitioners, doing my own work, and really starting to heal my nervous system and like diving into this connection of the mind, body, and brain. and realizing that all the years of talk therapy that I did were not making a difference.

Like they would, you know, scratch the surface a little bit and make a few dents here and there. But they weren't really changing the root cause of what was contributing to all my mental health symptoms. So I started doing this work on myself as I was studying it and getting off the medication. And it actually wasn't as hard as I expected it to be, which is wild, you know? And so I'm sitting there in Bellevue every day seeing this disconnect of meds, meds, meds, there's no emphasis on nutrition. There's no emphasis on movement on proper breathing mechanics. People are not getting outside.

I mean, it's a really, really sad depressing place to be not only just for the patients, but as a practitioner working there. And I felt like the system was just so broken. And I felt like I felt hopeless a lot of the time. there. Like, what can I do to make change? And ultimately, I work to study more and more functional neuroscience, functional medicine, somatic practices, Reiki, cranial, sacral, breathwork, nutritional sciences, all of it together in order to build the practice that I have today, which was a full mind, body, brain integration to addressing mental health concerns, performance optimization, and things

like that. Oh, my God. Thank you so much for sharing that. You have such a unique perspective, being both a patient of the system and a caregiver in the system. So you're able to really see the flaws that are inherent to the model from both sides. And that personal experience piece is so important when we're thinking about also making a new system to replace the old broken one. Like it's very easy to talk about, you know, the things that are wrong with the way that we're doing things. But it's much more difficult and less likely for people to actually come up with real solutions and new models to actually help people manage what, you know, whatever they're doing. dealing with, whether it's health care or finances or whatever issues are. I actually also love the distinction you make between like the mind and the brain because I think a lot of times in medicine,

just like in the reductionist scientific approach, it's more so like conflation of the mind and the brain as if they're the same thing. But it just, that just couldn't be further from the truth. And I mean, everybody listening to this has a brain and a mind. And you can very closely know the difference between those two things. Even if like at the mechanical level, you could think of like the way your brain is functioning to make you feel certain types of emotions or like perceive your reality in a certain way. But your mind is like there's also this thing that's kind of running in the background all the time. And maybe also, I don't know, maybe you can provide some insight on this like your stream of thoughts that might be part of your mind. And that is kind of someone

out of your control to a certain extent. And I mean, although we can like push on different levers to make changes on that and have more autonomy over that constant stream that, you know, there's many tools, and this also relates to like the nervous system regulation piece that we got into a lot in our last podcast episode. But I just really liked that point that you made. And then also the idea of doctors becoming sick by working in their environment in the medical care environment. And are one of our favorite mentors that we both share is Paul Chek. And he talks about like the average doctor doctor is sicker than his average patient. And there's so many reasons why that is. But I mean, on one hand, it's like the work environment, like you said, is indoor fluorescent lights. And if

anybody's listened to the episode of it on circadian health, I get into like why certain artificial lights are very detrimental compared to others. But the fluorescent bulbs in particular have this huge spike in blue light and UV light, which is completely devoid of the red and infrared parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. And that creates like a very large imbalance in the system because the blue and the UV light are the ones that our bodies are very explicitly tuned to to regulate the circadian rhythm. And so if you're under these fluorescent lights like, you know, at night or at all hours, if you're working a night shift or whatever it is in medicine, you're working kind of all hours. And you're sending your body constantly the wrong signals of what's going on. And so I think

that's also a really important point. It's that if you're embedded within the system as like a caregiver, it's really hard to kind of see the flaws there because you're just kind of numbed out to it because you're, it's just kind of painful to inhabit your own body. And you're becoming just as sick as the people that you're caring for. And so the fact that you were able to step out of that. And I'd love to hear next about like what you did when you started having these realizations, how it changed how you were operating within Bellevue or other areas of your life. And then how you've expanded that to develop your own practice. Yeah. When I was at Bellevue, I did what I could. You know, I remember when I started learning joint mobility just from a brain-based movement, essentially,

I would go on the overhead and call for social work group and all the patients would come into the room, we'd shut the door, and I'd be like, psych, we're doing movement group, doing breathing group, we're doing anything that could possibly help you start to get in touch with your body and start to actually feel like you have some sort of control of what's happening in your nervous system because I think the message that the conventional psychiatry world sends out is you have no control and you need to be on these medications for life. You know, I had one of my patients in my private practice. We got her off Prozac. And she's definitely withdrawing and detoxing because these meds do take a toll on your on your brain, on your nervous system. And she's having a little bit of obsessive

thoughts come back in. And she texted me and said, do I have to go back on Prozac? And I said, listen, I support whatever you want to do because I do think that there can be a time and a place for meds. I think that a lot of people hear me and they say, oh, she's anti-medication and that's not the case. I do think that in some severe cases, medication can be really beneficial with hopefully the long-term goal of getting off of it. But I said, you know, you're not depressed or having obsessive thoughts because your body lacks Prozac. Right. We don't need the Prozac to fix it. We just have to figure out what's contributing to that and help you detox your body off of this so you can feel better and feel like you have a sense of control of your nervous system. The biggest thing I see with

people is a lot of anxiety and kind of like under, you know, I use anxiety more as an umbrella term because you have things like OCD, social anxiety, phobia, things like that under that umbrella term. A lot of it I find is the less people's nervous systems feel safe inside their body, the more they grasp for control on the outside, right? Because if we don't feel like we can control what's happening inside here, we're going to seek a sense of control and safety outside of us. And that's where anxiety really plays a role because it helps give us a sense of control and safety, even though it's a little bit false because we can't really control what's happening outside of us.

So that was what I started to do at Bellevue was I tried to contribute in ways that I could in the system. But eventually got to a place where I really felt like the scale to the other side and I had a strong soul disconnect while I was there. And it's hard to go to a place where every day you feel like sometimes you're doing more harm than good. You know, and I know that's a very bold statement to say. I'm almost even hesitant to say it on here because I do agree that the hospital system, like I said with medication, it can be helpful. There's a lot of times the hospital system is necessary. And there are times where I've had to send my private practice patients to the hospital. hospital because they're not safe. You know, they're suicidal. They're not able to care for themselves. And the hospitals exist for that reason. And then I'm very grateful that they are. But, you know, when we start really causing medical trauma and forcing people to take medication against their will that can really damage them, which we should definitely dive into, that's where it's really hard to watch. It's really hard to watch people get restrained against their will and injecting with

medications on a almost daily basis and feel like there's other things we could be doing to help them or that we should at least be doing in addition to the medication. Absolutely. I mean, that sounds absolutely horrifying. And I think most people couldn't even fathom what that was like. And especially with your background, having already issues with anxiety and management of your own nervous system, I'm sure that was even more traumatizing for you when you're already coming from a place of less civility.

And so that's just horrifying. And totally the point is well taken that the tools that, like, doctors are given to help patients are just few and far between. Really, like, doctors are trained to be diagnosticians and, like, diagnose illnesses and treat them with drugs. And there's no foundational pillars. Again, Paul Chek talks about, like, the four doctor model. Like, you have, there's certain things that you have to do in order to lead a healthy life. You need to be hydrated. You need to move your body.

You need to get outside in nature. You need to have some goals or purpose in life bigger than you. You need to get good sleep and have a good relationship with yourself. And, you know, these are just like basic foundations for any human being to live well. And that's completely devoid from the medical education, which is just very disheartening when you think about it. So what your initial training was kind of in, did you say in nervous system? It was Z health, right? Z health, yeah.

Yeah. So that's when you started learning about joint mobility. And like what was your next kind of foray into like the more holistic stuff? Was Z health like your entrance point? Z health was my entrance point. Yeah, because after we do joint mobility, we get into cranial nerve testing and breathing mechanics and visual system, vestibular system. And it dives a little bit into the nutritional component of things and how that impacts your body.

So I studied that for nearly the five, the same five years that I was at Bellevue. I actually took my first Z health class. I started in Bellevue in August of 2016. I took my first Z-Health class in November of 2016. Oh, wow. So it kind of, really, they coincided with each other. And then from there, I really cleaned up so much in my life. Like, I got rid of the toxic pants.

I started eating organic food, started drinking better quality water, you know, started getting outside regularly and changing my movement and breathing patterns, stopped wearing a bra, which is that's actually how we connected because we met during the camera. We were changing to get ready for her to take a painting class of a little mom. And I was like, oh, sorry, I'm not wearing a bra like when I put on this new shirt. Oh, please. It's fine. I stopped wearing a bra since I listened to Paul Checks episode about why broth are so

harmful for you. And I really went through this crazy revamp in my life. I threw out my microwave. There was so much that was involved. started diving into morning routine work and the biohacking world. I know that can get a bad rep, but just for the purposes of terminology here. And that was, yeah, so that was my entrance into it. And I worked with so many incredible coaches and mentors and practitioners along the way that

exposed me to all these things. I think at the end of the day, my biggest education source was from my friends, my mentors, and my practitioners that I worked with, even though I was sitting in class and studying these things formally in the ZHealth curriculum. and in personal training studies and anatomy, but really the people you surround yourself with can sometimes be your best teachers, which is one of the things I'm so grateful for in our friendship,

is that I learned so much from you. And, you know, I think you're absolutely brilliant. So, yeah, I mean, it's amazing what you're putting out into the world and doing. And I was really, really lucky that those people came into my life at that time. Yeah, I think there's the saying that's like, when the students ready, the teacher will appear. And it's just so true in so many ways, because when you're unconscious of things, like let's say your health, like you're not,

you're just living kind of by accident and things are happening to you and you don't have any conscious awareness of what you're putting in or on your body. Once you like suddenly start to become aware of that, like you see so many things that you never saw before, including people like for good or for worse, like certain people in your life that maybe are very helpful for you and like you want to explore that relationship more and like support that relationship more and other people who are maybe like leaching energy from you and are not, like supporting you in your in your goals especially when they start changing i mean jordan peterson talks about like cleaning your room and he says like he says like once you start cleaning your room

you might find other people in your family start like lashing out at you about it because they're not happy you're cleaning your stuff up or what make are you think you're better than us yeah it's so it can really trigger people yeah and you know part of that process which is still something that's hard for me to sit with is my friendships have evolved so much in this time and i'm so my friends make fun of me that I literally collect friends. Like, I meet people every day ago, and I'm so, so, so blessed. It's very liberal. Is it?

Yeah. But at the same time, it's hard because I don't have as many friendships from a long time ago, you know, because I've evolved and grown and changed so much. And something I'm actually revisiting now this year is the meaning of early childhood and teenage and college year friendships. and even though we might be so different why they're so important and reconnecting with some old people. But when you're going through this massive evolving, changing growth spur and it's like years and years long, sometimes it's hard to keep those people around because they're doing

something very different from you and your values might not align. And for me, it's been this kind of full circle of realizing that, you know, I can have people around who eat differently than me and act differently than me. And but for a while it was hard. And I do regret that it didn't always turn out the way I wish it had. But I've also collected some really awesome people along the way. You definitely, this change in you cleaning up your room, cleaning up your body, whatever it is. It totally changes how you interact with the world and then who you interact with.

Yep, absolutely. And I think, I mean, there's sayings about like you, you know, what you attract is like who you are or how you're being. in the world and I think that's really true and I mean there's definitely a lot of and this also comes maybe into like the mental health aspects of if we're thinking about health anyway but like people can be very energy sensitive and I think a lot of people who are in these very intense psychiatric wards like a lot of them may just be very sensitive to their surroundings which is super interesting to think about like I know on Paul's podcast he had some guests on but they were talking about like oh maybe the schizophrenics are like actually the next evolution of

of like our species. Literally what I say. I was telling my friends the other day, I said, I think that some of my patients who are quote unquote psychotic in Bellevue were actually more in touch with reality than we are. Yeah. And not to get all conspiracy, although this is the indoctrine.

Exactly. Not, you know, to get into that is that I really felt like sometimes, well, sometimes there were people I worked with who were very, very dangerous and very violent. And I worked with some of the most intense psychiatric cases in, in all of New York City and we had a prison floor affiliated with Rikers and I worked with a lot of people coming off of that floor as well. But I of course had these thoughts of like, you know, what this patient is saying about her computer being hacked and people listening on her phone are not far fetched. Why aren't medicating her? Right. It's almost like, let's shut you up.

You can't talk about this. You know, like don't let this get out. And that's also when I really start to be like, oh my gosh, like, what's actually happening here? Why are we silencing these people? Mm-hmm. When maybe they're not so dangerous. And then there's like the ego thing that happens with the clinicians at the hospital where it's like, well, you know, you're coming in and you're the crazy patient, right? We really devalue these lives. Yeah, and the amount of gaslighting that occurs. So much gaslighting. Like what they were saying may be very valid and true, but they're just completely written off. 100%. And I can tell you stories about times where I really, towards the end of my

time at Bellevue by half a decade there, I really felt like people were being discredited. Like I remember going on a mobile crisis call with a woman who basically we were on this mobile crisis team where if someone in the community felt like there was another person out there that was a danger to themselves or others or had an inability to care for themselves, they can call this hotline in New York City and it activates a mobile crisis team that's affiliated with one of the hospitals in the city. I remember going to a call and there was a woman who was considered delusional and she had some sort of illness. I can't remember if it was cancer or not, but she said, I'm going to heal my illness through prayer. And did she have your conventional

markers of psychosis in other ways? Yes. Like, I can't deny that she wasn't a hoarder and living among a very filthy home that she was in. And there were other things coming up. But she was basically deemed not able to care for herself because she was too psychotic to make medical decisions. And I think too psychotic in quotes for air quotes for those who are not watching the video right now. But I also know having studied Joe Dispens's work and having studied Paul Checks work and all these people who do talk about the power of your mindset and impacting your brain and body and your healing process, I know that it is very possible to do work to heal your body without the use of conventional medical intervention in some cases, right?

And once again, not poo-pooing all medical intervention because I think that a lot of it can be super valuable. But, you know, what does Paul Chek say? He says the most toxic organ you can have is your mind. If you, you could have all your ducks in order. You could be eating perfectly. You could be breathing perfectly. You could be sleeping perfectly.

If you are having toxic negative thoughts, that is going to impact your entire system and how healthy you are. And here I am arguing with my colleague about whether we should be removing this woman against her will and bringing her to the hospital for assessment because is she too, once again, quote unquote, psychotic to care for herself because she doesn't want to use conventional medical intervention. And like I said, there were definitely other things that may have warranted a removal from her home. But that was really hard because I was basically told I was wrong for thinking that she could cure her illness. through prayer and more mindset work. And we removed her against her will. And I did not agree with the decision.

And my choice was overruled. So things like that are just so heartbreaking to see and witness. And we disregard. We disregard the impact that our mindset has at our health. Totally. And I mean, there's a whole field of like neuropsychoimmunology. And it's also just very, something that's very obvious that people can realize, like if you're stressed out, you kind of feel

crappy in your whole body. But it's because you're mounting this stress response, whether it's acute, like you got scared by something acutely or you have this chronic stressor, like maybe a very challenging relationship or whatever it is, that's creating this kind of toxic milieu and your bloodstream of stress hormones. And that's putting your body into this like survival mode, this like fight or flight state that's basically antithetical to the parasympathetic healing, rest and digest phase of the nervous system that's required to like mount a healthy immune response and anti-inflammation and wound healing and all of the processes that are required to like build and maintain tissue function and integrity and like so yes that connection is very well mapped out and

so this isn't even in the realm of woo at all this is like very hard science at this point but i think it's still something that people um don't like place out a high enough esteem and just kind of like brush it off and think that you know it's not as important. as other areas when it very much is. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, do you have any other, before we move on, do you have any other stories that were like very pivotal for you? Or was that like basically that last story, the one where it was like you were ready to move on from Bellevue? Yeah. I mean, I think I want to talk a little bit about court what happens in mental hygiene. Yes. Because that was also really hard to witness.

And so basically when a patient comes in, if they're, you know, if they're deemed a danger to themselves or others. That meets criteria. So when someone comes to psychiatric hospital in New York City, there's mental hygiene law that protects them and protects the doctors and all of that. So you can be committed involuntarily if you are considered an imminent risk and danger to yourself or others, or you are considered unable to care for yourself at a point that it could harm yourself. So there were times where a patient would come in and, be, may be very delusional or psychotic, and they would refuse medicisha. And these medications, these antipsychotics are very, very intense. You know, they're very, they have a lot of side effects. They usually result in weight gain, sometimes constipation, other things that were some, there's some antipsychotics where you have to get labs drawn every week

when you first start taking them because they need to check your markers and make sure you're okay. So patients would come in and sometimes they wouldn't want to take their medications. and, you know, for various reasons. But if they didn't want to take the medication, there was kind of one of two routes you could take. So the insurance company would only cover your stay if you take medication, because medication management is the primary source of hospital.

It's the primary modality in hospitalizations in the United States. So if you refuse the medication, the doctor would basically have to ask themselves, you know, if you're not going to take medication, are you safe for me to discharge you or do I need to overrule this and decide that you do need medication? So the doctor would take the patient to court. And it was very fascinating. I got to court many times. And there's mental hygiene lawyers in the hospital that represent the patients. And it would basically be the patient and their lawyer versus the doctor making a case to the judge as to whether the patient should be required to take medication

against their will. And the judge would ultimately make a decision. If the judge decided that the patient did not mean medication, the patient was instantly discharged. So it wasn't even like, you know, they couldn't stay and on the milieu and get like group therapy or individual therapy or just have a break from life. It was like, well, if you're not going to take medication, you're out, you know, for the most part. There's always exceptions to the rule. But if they, if the judge says, yes, you mean medication. Once again, sometimes it would be necessary if a patient is very violent or dangerous or not able to care for themselves in a way that is going to harm themselves, then, yes, sometimes I think this could be deemed appropriately. But sometimes I also felt

like it was a little bit of an ego thing from the judge and the doctor where the judge would then deem that the patient was required to take medication and they would, you know, list out on the documents which medications they could be prescribed. And then, you know, you go back to the milieu and it's time for medication and the patient is stuck there and they say, nope, I'm not. I'm not. taking that medication still. And then what would happen is that they would restrain the patient and inject them against their will. And something like that is also really, really hard to watch because I don't believe in black and black and white. I think there's a lot of nuances here. Like I said, sometimes patients would really benefit for medication. Of course, I was hoping

there would be other interventions who along with it. But to now sit there and restrain a patient and inject them against their will, that's very traumatizing. That's very traumatizing for a patient. And it's very scary. And it's also very scary as a sensitive clinician to watch that over and over again. So I don't think we talk enough about these things that happen in the hospital system and medical abuse and medical trauma that occurs from seeking medical care. And it's something that I think needs to be spoken about more.

Because while most people go into the field, most doctors go into this field and social workers and nurses, they go because they care and they want to help people. There's so many systems at play that are making it that they, that sometimes are just doing more harm than good. Totally. And I think medical error is in the top five causes of death in the U.S. now. Yes. Which is just insane to think about. It's wild. When the patients who refuse to take their meds, did they often give reasons as to why they didn't take it or they were just refusing it? or they were just refusing it like belligerently,

like they just refused to take it without any sort of rationale? Both. Okay. Yeah, depending on the case, some people just belligerently would refuse. Other people did not want the side effects for the medication. Right, because that's another whole other story. Like if they tried to take it and they felt terrible and had bad reaction to it,

then they shouldn't be forced to take that medication. They should be finding another solution. Right, right. And as someone who had tried so many antidepressants and had, I had the most extreme side effects. like the side effects that are in the tiniest print that no one ever had. So I knew what that was like to be on drugs where you feel like you're a lab rat. I would go to the psychiatrist and I would just feel like, okay, well, that one didn't work.

Here's plan C. And then here's plan D and here's plan E. And like, we're just going to try them all. And your head is like for me, my head would just be spinning of like, okay, well, now my depression, maybe lessened. But now I have to deal with the fact that I sweat all the time because my body's overheated. because my body temperature has gone up from this medication or I have to deal with shakiness or I have to deal with like diarrhea, whatever it was. Like you have to be the, you're constantly weighing the balance of, you know, is this medication

serving me more than it's harming me? Which I think is really hard for patients to deal with, especially when they feel like they quote unquote need this medication in order to function. Right. And the other problem with that is that like doctors aren't providing adequate support to their patients because they only have like an average of like three to five minutes to actually spend with an individual and help support them and manage their care. So it's like you're not even getting the personal support from these people who are supposed

to be caring for you. And so the patients are left to kind of navigate by themselves and try to figure out what the best decisions are. And then sometimes people will try to do their own research online and like read about things. Then they get gas lit by the doctor saying, oh, you think that you're Googling can replace my medical degree. But at the same time, they're not being given the support they need to actually make educated

decisions. Right, right, exactly. Yeah, so it's super frustrating. Yeah, so I mean, so when you, okay, so you were in the courts, you were on the mobile units, you finally transitioned out of Bellevue. What was next for you? So next was I had started my private practice my last year at Bellevue on the side. So it was just, I had transitioned from personal training. I was, you know, when I wasn't at Bellevue, I was personal training at the gym.

And I had like no life. It was tired. I mean, I was working six days a week. I burnt out my hormones. I've known advice doing that, which I know you and I have talked about, the Dutch tests and everything like that. So that was a lot of repair from that of being in a chronic state of high sympathetic tone, working at a place.

I mean, really, I always, I say it as a joke, but, you know, you kind of be a little, you've got to be a little sick to love to work in a place like Bellevue, psychiatric emergency room, right? Like, it's really exciting and really scary. And you're working with these patients who are threatening you, spitting on you almost a time. I mean, the fact that I was there for five years and never got injured is a miracle. because almost every single one of my colleagues have been injured in some way or another by a patient.

You're in this space where you're literally, my office was on the unit and there was a glass window and door. The entire room was just a clear window. So the patients were on the unit banging at the wall screaming at you while you're trying to do notes. And any average person would be like highly dysregulated, right? No, we're all just sitting there being like, la-di-noddy-nodditch. This is normal. Your nervous system gets apt up. I already had this like very, from my childhood experiences, living in a high, anxious, high sympathetic tone all of my life, going, going, going, pumping out all those stress hormones.

And now I'm sitting in this place where it just fuels the fire. It's like, oh, yeah, we love all this chaos. We love all this excitement. So the point where it took me two years of working with a somatic therapist to actually be able to calm my nervous system and sit in silence in a way that was comfortable. But, yeah, so I jumped right in into full-time private practice when I left Bellevue. And so what year was this? This was 20, 21. Okay.

So this was two years ago? Yeah. Yeah. So I've been in private practice full two years. And, you know, just continuing diving into my, my education. As you know, I'm going out to California on Tuesday to go to Homestic Lifestyle Coaching too with Paul Check. I'm really, really pumped.

It'll be amazing. But just continuing. this education of diving in and you're the same way. I think everyone we interact with in our professional world who've now become friends are just what I love about them is that they're so thirsty to learn. And it's amazing to be surrounded by people like that. So yeah, just growing and really trying to get the word out there, right? That's why I love being on podcasts is because I want people to have a sense of hope. I want them to know that things can change and it doesn't have to be so hard all the time. There is hard work involved. It takes time. It's not going to solve your, you know, you're not

going to solve your issues overnight, that there's so much that you can do to start to evolve and heal your nervous system and really become the person you want to be. And I remember being so depressed and so anxious and feeling like there was no really real reason for living, but also making sure that I visualized and felt what it would feel like to be happy and have what I want in life and try to start to manifest and turn that into a reality. You know, Joe Dispenter says, in order to change your reality, you need to change your personality. So that was a lot of, in addition to all the organic food and the supplements and the infrared sauna and this and that, a lot of it was also mindset work.

Totally. On my end, you know. So. And one of the things I wanted to say was actually one of the best things I did for myself when I was working at Bellevue was drop out of therapy. I own therapy. Okay. Yeah. Why was that?

Can you expand? Because I felt like I was in all this convention. therapy for so long and it wasn't doing much. And I was, I always struggle with self-esteem issues, always. And it was just, I felt like year after year after year I was doing the CBT for it and the talk therapy modalities and the, I even went to a straight up behavioral therapist, like not even cognitive, like straight up just behavioral therapist, but nothing was changing. And eventually I was like, you know what, I'm actually going to go drop out of therapy and go learn a new skill and learn how to fail. So that's when I became personal trainer. I, for the first time,

my life learned how to be okay with failure. That's so important. I'm not saying that like I'm still, I'm great at it, but like to go from barely being able to fail to being able to take risk and be okay with it and like not beat myself up tremendously and want to go crawl into a ball and hide under my couch, that's a huge deal.

And it wasn't until I quit therapy and actually started engaging in in real world situations and practicing skills. That's really what changed. me. Oh my God, incredible. Actually, this is drawing a really nice parallel to the episode that I released, well, the two-part episode with Dr. Tom Seeger, he was mentioning how he's, he is an advisor for graduate students and how his best students are always the athletes and the musicians. And it's because they're so used to, like, iteration and then failing fast and like, and just failing is normalized. Yes. And it's important because failing isn't something, and despite like what

our education system kind of indoctrines us to believe that like failing is bad and that should be punished in some way. Instead, failing is an opportunity for immense learning. So you fail forward. And like Paul says, there's only winners and learners. There's no losers. I love that. Yeah. And it's so true because there's always going to be something that you, some nugget of wisdom that you can get from that experience that like, oh, I can do this differently next time and I can, you know, do better. It's not like there's something that we have to punish ourselves for. Exactly, exactly. And I realized, and this wasn't until my late 20s, keep in mind, I realized that I had only ever engaged in activities and classes and things like that where I knew I wasn't going to fail. Because my self-esteem, I talk about this a lot, the difference in confidence and self-esteem.

Confidence, this is a definition I got from my amazing performance coach, Mickey Laysa, who I absolutely adore, but actually confidence is your ability to take risk. self-esteem is your ability to tolerate potentially failing at that risk. So there are a lot of people who are very outwardly confident. They're able to go out there and do the thing. But when they get rejected and when they fail, they just, they feel so incredibly vulnerable that they just want to hide. And they feel really bad about themselves because they take this quote unquote failure and really internalize it and make them about them.

They're like, I failed. I must be a failure. And your ego and your sense of self is so fragile that every time that happens, it feels like it just gets shattered. You know, it's like someone took a crystal ball and just, you know, like slammed it with their hands and it just broke and to smithereens. And I think the way out of that from what I did on myself and what I do with my patients is intentionally learning how to fail. And I think a huge part of that, what I do with them is I teach them all these, this nervous system work. and healing their body and being able to breathe better and take care of themselves and use these fun neuro tools to help regulate their emotions. So that when they go out and practice failing, which we do in

small increments, right? Like we're not going from zero to 100. We're not being like, okay, you're going to go like ask this person out who you've been, you know, you've been dying to ask out forever and you might die inside if they say no. No, we're going to do like small little things. Like maybe you're going to ask a stranger for the street what the time is, right? So when you do these little things, and get slowly, slowly outside of your comfort zone, but having the tools to start to calm your body down, you can really make big changes in how you start to view yourself because you get yourself uncomfortable. You go try to do that thing that you fail it. And then you're able to bring yourself back and be like, okay, I'm going to calm myself down.

I didn't die, even though my nervous system thinks it's dying right now. I'm going to be okay. Regroup. And then I'm going to go out and I'm going to do it. again. And each time I'm going to like do something a little bit more challenging. And over time, you see crazy things happen. I mean, I saw crazy things happen with myself. I was doing dance classes for this purpose. You know, I would go to these dance classes where I had no hip hop training whatsoever. And I want to go in the corner and hide. And the dance instructor would yell at me that

I was too much in my head. She yelled me in front of everybody. It's a little funny. Yeah, yeah. It was like every Monday. Every Monday I went to go see this to this hip hop dance class. And after a few months, I would stand in the front of the class. And be so into it, even though my dance skills were still not great. They were like, maybe I got like, I don't know, 5% better. I don't know. And she would yell at me in front of the class. I would just laugh about it.

Like my entire mentality around it changed. And I went there not with the purposes of learning how to dance, but with the intention of learning how to be bad at something and be okay with it. Because in my childhood and teenage years in my 20s, I couldn't tolerate being bad at something. Mm-hmm. So. Actually, this is another perfect parallel.

to the conversation I had with Tom because we talked about how important in the writing process it is to be willing to be bad because you need, and also Jordan Peterson talks about like, you need to write a bad first draft. Like it's an essential part of the writing process. And once you have something down that first bad draft, then you can, you know, have an iterative process to make it better over time. And that's how the process goes. But some people get writers block and or just like even also conversationally if somebody has fear of public speaking. It's kind of just this like, an unwillingness to be vulnerable at a core level. Yeah. It's like a freezer spot. Yeah. Righters block. Totally. It's you, you're so scared of making, of putting out bad

material or not worthy material, whatever it is, right? Because it's subjective, really in a especially if it's art. And you're like, I can't do it. I can't do it. I mean, happens to you when I try to paint sometimes. Oh, yeah. Every painting I make needs to be a master piece. And then I like, take the paintbrush to the paint and I'm like, I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I'm stuck. Totally. Bernie Brown talks about this. She says, you know, vulnerability is the birthplace of love and creativity and connection, right?

And if you aren't able to be vulnerable and make art or music or whatever it is or do things that you might potentially suck at or might not come out the way you hope it would or might not come out in the way that other people praise it and love it, how will you ever actually create a masterpiece? piece. When you haven't tried, all the other, you know, you haven't tried the five different types of heat pouring that you can do or wrote 100 songs that all failed and sucked. But in that, you're going to find a little bit of magic of like, ooh, this thing that I'm doing right here out of my 100 attempts, this is really good. Now I should totally roll with this. You never found it if you didn't fail that 100 times before that. Totally. And it's like a squandering of potential,

ultimately because like humans kind of have limitless potential, like whatever, we're kind of undifferentiated. We can go so many different directions. And like Bruce Lipton talks about epigenetics, but like how every experience you have is kind of activating a new, unique part of you that you're not going to have the opportunity to experience and explore if you don't actually take the leap and be vulnerable and be willing to try it and no matter what the outcome is. Right. Exactly. And it's scary. It's really scary. I still get scared to do new things. I think we all do. But a lot of the work that I have done on myself and continue to and then do with my patience is, is this is teaching them that's okay and that's actually i do a lot of in person work in new york city

even though i've licensed in a bunch of states when people meet with me in person if they want to do that experiential work we go out and do it amazing because i feel like they need a cheerleader yes i want the therapy to translate into real life that's the goal right you go sit in this room this box with a couch you know looking across the way from this stranger and what's the point of doing that that 45 minute, hour long session, if it's not going to change outside of that room. So my biggest thing I'd love to do is I take people and, you know, the work that we do in the room and we got to bring it outside. We got to bring it into your life, whatever it is, however it is. If you have phobias, if you have, you know, social anxiety, if you want to

understand, I take so many people to grocery stores, you know, and do nutritional science work with them. If they're into muscle testing, we'll muscle test the food if they want to do that. Like really, I've had patients where I teach them how to cook. We cook together. you know so not that i'm any chef you know but like not basic so basic so i think that's so important i want i want my patients to ultimately be able to go out and live their best lives and not depend on me you know if they want to come back and it's a great check it that's that's great i want you know some people that accountability that check in that constant growth is really cool and really important but sometimes they don't need to be you know they they they accomplish their goals we get to them to where

they want to be and then they quit therapy. They graduate therapy, however you want to call it, and they go on and live their life. Yes. I mean, I think the goal of every health care provider should be to put themselves out of business. Knowing that they never actually will because there's an endless number of people that need your help and your support, but like your goal as the provider should be to help this person not need you anymore. And that's like a healthy relationship. Yes. There's a lot of like Freudian stuff going on in most medical patient interactions where it's like this overbearing mother archetype almost where it's like you need me and just very unhealthy dynamic. I also love the idea of you being like your patient's cheerleader

because it's so Leo and she's a Leo moon and Venus. So it's like very, it's very on brand. I love that. Can you share with us a little bit about the types of people that you typically work with? Yes. So my practice has ranged literally from people who struggle to just function day to day life. Like they are struggle to go to work. They struggle to go to school, whatever it is. all the way through professional athletes, doctors, lawyers, high-powered executives, and everything in between, which I know sounds so crazy because it's like, well, how can one person work with all those things? You're in New York.

Exactly. But, you know, when you work with the nervous system, there's so much that you can do, right? And I'm sure your client load also is very diverse. It is. Yeah. So a lot of college students, I would say, like, a third of my practice is college students because I have a lot of experience working at NYU and Tulane University is from back before and after my master's degree.

But it's really, you know, the clients who want to try something new and are excited about the innovative, cutting edge, biohacky type work, those are the ones that make the most different, you know, the most change in their life because they're, you know, they're really into the breathwork, they're into the nutrition stuff, they're into the mindset work, they're excited about the, the relationship. that them and I create and built. And I'm not very, I mean, obviously, I'm not conventional by a lot of standards, but I'm also not really conventional in the actual relationship.

Like, I really, I try, I self-disclose when appropriate. Like, my patients do, I mean, obviously, I'm self-disclosing my entire life to the world right now. And that was something I had to, I had to wrestle with for a while, too, of like, I know this is in my, my future and my vision is to make change. in the greater mental health system and how much am I going to put my story out there? You know, because the more you put your story out there, the more you're likely to get criticized. And that's something that's scary for me.

I'm not going to lie. But my patients feel really relieved when they, when they're trying to get off medication. And I tell them, you know, I did that too. They feel like there's a connection there or like I've struggled with this self-esteem thing too. And this is how I overcame it. And I realize, you know, them and I might not take the exact same path, you know, because I realize that what works for me is not going to work for everybody,

which is why I just continue to study and learn. So I have a lot of tools. So if the first two things we try aren't really great for you, then we have a lot of other things that we can go and try. But I like to keep the relationship like fun and casual too. Like we're going to do a lot of really hard work. We're going to cry. You might scream.

You might be really angry at me or get really sad or get really, you know, frustrated or feel really uncomfortable emotions. and we need to do that work to get to be able to feel them and metabolize them and work through them. But also like we need to laugh too. We need to have a little bit of fun in therapy sometimes also. And I want it to be something people enjoy coming to. Yes. It should be a chore. Rue and I last week talked about how whenever you're trying to like invoke motor learning or just learning or unlearning of anything, you need to have access to your parasympathetic state because that's the state where your body is actually able to perform those necessary biochemical reactions or whatever it is that is needed to make the new neuronal connections.

And so you developing like a personal connection with your clients is super important because it makes them feel safe. Yes. And that feeling of safety is required for them to actually make the positive change. Spot on. Yes. Right. And like this is so missing in the therapeutic relationship, broadly speaking, that it's like no wonder that we're having this major crisis and just like all. sectors of health care. And so it's amazing work that you're doing. So good. Thank you. And I, along those lives, I always tell my patients, you know, I want to create the safest space possible for you. If I do anything that makes you feel like you can't be yourself, I'm not doing my job.

You need to tell me. You know, I say, I do my best. I'm not perfect. I'm a human being. And everyone is a little different. Everyone responds. You know, I kind of almost bring a different personality to every client. Because you know, very Libra. people need something different. Yes. So I try. They're not in genuine personalities. They're really all parts of who I am.

Just like, you know, you bring a different personality. Each friend you hang out or when you spend time with family members versus friends, you might be very different. But I want to create this space where patients can open up, right? Because I know that for some people, it is really, really scary to say this is my deepest fear. that I can't even tell myself. Or I'm so ashamed of XYZ or I'm really embarrassed that I did this or that. And the more they can bring it to the therapy, the more we can work on it,

the more change we can make. But I do recognize that if I don't create a safe space for my patients to feel like they can share that, then they're not going to be able to bring it. And then we're not going to be able to work on it. Absolutely. I mean, Paul also, again, says, like, name it, blame it, tame it. I think he might have taken that from somebody else, but I remember the quote from him, and it's so important, like, if you're avoiding being honest with yourself about something, it's almost like it kind of doesn't exist, even though it does, but you're kind of ignoring it. The moment you like say it out loud and you're like really, you know, being precise about this is what's going on, suddenly you can bring your consciousness to it and now you can make changes. Like it doesn't have to stay this way. And at the very least, if it's something that happened in the past, it can be a reframe. But if it's something that's currently happening or you expect to happen, you can potentially change trajectory. and avoid the catastrophe that you're so fearful of.

Right. 100%. And when you can have someone with you being that cheerleader and creating that safe space, you can really accelerate your growth and your change. And there is something so therapeutic about the therapeutic alliance, right? Some people would even say that I don't know the exact statistic, but something like 70% of the growth that happens in therapy is based on the relationship between therapists and quiet.

And I do think modalities are very important at knowledge that the patient, that the therapist has and brings to the session. But yeah, if you can create, think about someone who has really, you know, grew up in a really unstable home and has, has a lot of, you know, with attachment work, just really struggles to connect with people because of maybe how they were brought up with their primary caregivers. And they're struggling to build connections and trust people. And, you know, the therapist comes in and they're a steady figure week after week in that person's life and they're there for them and this unconditional love that you can create and help that person

feel safe. And it's like, I'm not leaving. You know, like, I'm here. I have patients who, like, you know, can become very dysregulated because of previous trauma and have like screamed at me and hung up the phone. And they know I'm still there. You know, and I actually get now I get text from them being like, I'm sorry. Like right after, like a minute later, I'll be like, I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't have done that. And I'm like, okay, this is good. Like we're we're creating this, this relationship. because what happens outside of the therapy, the way you interact with people in your life is eventually going to play out. Yes, right.

It's like a microcosm. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And I didn't really believe that at first when I started this journey. I was kind of like, whatever, like I'm going to bring these tools. I'm going to help people rewire their nervous system and that's it. But now I really, you know, now I get it. Now I get it.

Like the people pleaser out there is going to be the people pleaser with me. I jokes to my patience. I say the day you tell me that you're angry at me is going to be the best day ever. I know you can't tell up to anybody else, but I know I'm going to do things to piss you off. And I want you to tell me. So it's a very powerful thing. And I think picking a therapist is hard. It's a very oversaturated market.

And it's hard to find someone. And I'm not the right fit for everybody. I recognize I also don't have the right skill set for everybody. If you have a couple, like a, you know, if you have like a relationship issue, dating issue, marriage, family therapy stuff, that's not my forte. You know, I can help people navigate relationships. and friendships, but, like, you know, you just see someone who specializes in that. Like, so I, but finding that right fit, I think is so important for the healing process. And I think it's also something important to throw out there because I think there are a lot of

people out there who have, like, tried a lot of different therapists and they feel like, oh, it didn't work. It didn't help me. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's so much variability. Like, it's hard to say if therapy failed you or it's like this one specific practitioner is the problem and, like, you just need a better fit. Yeah.

And maybe you don't need therapy. Maybe you need, you know, with you. nutrition. Right. Maybe you need to rehab your microbiome. Maybe you need to get out in the sun and regulate your circadian rhythm. Exactly. I totally support that. Yeah. That's, I mean, there are many times I send people, my patients to other practitioners first to start to do that work to heal themselves before they, before we start therapy, if it's work that I can't do. Because if you're not, you know, if your gut microbiome needs to get healed, and that's definitely not my area of expertise. I mean, I have some knowledge of it. But if I need them to see someone like, you, I've got to do that first because if your gut microbiome is causing all these issues in your mental health, I can talk, talk, talk to you all day. It's not to make a difference. Right, because it's like biochemical. It's like, yeah, exactly. The mindset piece is really important, but it's not going to fix necessarily the biochemical imbalance that's caused by the, you know, dysbiosis or any sort of

imbalance of microbes in the gut. And I think the gut brain axis is super interesting and like, we're only just scratching the surface there too. But yeah, yeah, I think that's super important. So I would love to hear a little bit about the tools that you use when you're working with clients. Like you're in, do you have like an initial tool set that you try out or is it going to vary a lot based on how somebody's presenting? It varies. It's a very, very individualized approach. So, you know, I take a history. I don't just want a mental health history. I also want a medical history. You know, I even care like if you if you have dental work done. Yes. Because that's really important, which I don't know, I don't know how many therapists are asking stuff like that.

But I care about your medical history. I care about. Obviously, like what's going on in your relationship, what's going on in your environment. You know, I see patients who have a lot of mold toxicity, right, and heavy metal toxicity. And that's important for me to know and understand. So I, while I'm still diving into these things and studying them, then I can consult with people like you or other colleagues or other friends or send them to other people like you to start to heal that work because it all goes hand in hand. You know, so I kind of got to assess where they're at what they've tried.

A lot of people have company. They've already tried a lot of things too, right, in the conventional model. and maybe they're just getting their foot in the door in the functional medicine world, which is really, I love that because I think they love that, right? To have a therapist who understands the functional medicine stuff is really important. But I'm always, you know, the biggest thing, and I take this from Paul Check, if you're not eating well, moving well, breathing well, sleeping well. If your relationships are crappy, we're not going to make much change.

So that's where I start of like what's going on there. What's going on with your sleep, with your breathing, with your food? Are you getting outside every day? what are your relationships like? I teach a lot of breathing mechanics to start out. You know, I'm thinking about a top down and bottom up approach. You know, we want to help you feel better as soon as possible. So maybe I give you tools, breathing tools, Vegas nerve stimulation tools, calming tools to help you feel better in the moment. But then I'm also thinking about how do we start to rewire your system long term? And I don't expect

you to completely change your, you know, you're eating right off the bat, but can we make like one or two changes to just start off? Can we make sure you're getting outside in the sun every morning? Can we make sure you're getting your feet in the grass? You know, can we just slightly improve the quality of your food, you know, and really start to lay that foundation down so that the mental work we do doesn't feel like it's such an uphill battle. You know, so like I have a patient who came to me with a severe phobia. I don't want to get into two specifics just, you know, just for like hip-up purposes, but she came with a really severe phobia. And I think the conventional therapy modality would have been using cognitive behavioral therapy to address it,

which I do have a lot of issues with CBT. I don't know how effective it is all the time. But instead, I just taught her how to breathe properly. We engaged some somatic experiencing. She cut down her caffeine in half. Oh my God. Let's get into that. stimulants at some point, but yeah, finish your story first. And she, we put her on a few supplements to help with Gabba. The phobia she came to for me almost went away by itself without even working to work on it. I mean, that's really amazing, right? Yes.

Why don't we have to sit there and white knuckle it and like force yourself to do this thing that's so hard to do when if your nervous system feels safe and it can move through the world, right? The brain's the more job is survival. That's all it cares about. And if your nervous system feels like it's dying and you're not, it doesn't have the nourishment that it needs or the proper breathing that it needs to feel safe, then of course it's going to drive more anxiety in the body to make change. Well, you're going to be anxious because it's like, well, you know, I got to Paul Schack talks about this.

It's like your body's freaking out. I'm asking, where's the line? Where's the line that's about to chase? So we get the nervous system feeling better and then a lot of that stuff just goes away on its own. Or if it doesn't completely resolve, it's a lot easier for us to then engage in that more conventional coaching or psychotherapy modalities to make the change. Yes.

Yes. So important. And actually this reminds me again of Paul. I was listening to an episode on my way over here with Isabel Friend. And she's like this amazing water scholar. Oh my God. The episode was great. I highly recommend.

But he was saying how the role of a mentor is really to minimize the suffering of the mentees. So it's like the mentor has experience and wisdom that they can impart to like minimize the amount of obstacles you have to go through to get to the same endpoint that they reach. So it's like a shortcut almost. I'm so good. I love that. But it's like because ultimately there's a lot of trial and error when we're, you know, navigating our own health and the fact that you also have your own health journey is really important to not only connect with your patients, but also to potentially save them from some suffering that's not necessary because, you know, you already ruled

that out as that's not going to work or you can do this. It's better. But so important. But yeah, I want to circle back to stimulants because coffee specifically in caffeine is just like the most normalized drug in our culture and it's highly addictive and it causes insane withdrawal and like people just have normalized it to such a large extent that like it's you're crazy if you say caffeine's bad not to mention that the research for coffee and caffeine is like oh coffee is good for the liver and it's great for your health or whatever but there's no like the research is not there that says like caffeine is necessarily bad for your mental health in some people but like experientially some people are very sensitive to stimulants especially if you've been like using or abusing them for a

long creative time, they're going to activate the anxiety circuits. They're putting you into that fighter flight state. And if you're coupling, stimulant use with, like, not moving your body and you're kind of just, like, basically putting yourself in a freeze mode without realizing what you're doing. So what's your experience with, like, stimulants and how often do that, does that come up within your practice? Oh, all the time. I have a patient. I love him. Like, he's, we've worked together for years, but he always complains me on his sleep. And then he shows up to, like, our five o'clock session in person with a huge deck of donuts coffee. And I'm like, okay, I beg you to go outside of a morning. And at this point, we have a very casual relationship. We actually do what he calls.

What is millennial therapy? Our therapy sessions are over like lunch or coffee. Like we go, we'll go out to a cafe. But once again, just like really meeting each client where they're at and what they want in that process. But, you know, his sleep cycle is just so off. And I've begged him, like, please, we go outside in the morning. Like first thing in the morning, get something in your eyes, give them education on the circadian rhythm, all of that. He's like waking up at noon, not going outside, telling me it's so hard to wake up to but outside. And I'm like, when you are showing up to our session 5 p.m. with a huge cup of coffee.

Like, what's going on here? You're not listening to me. So I really like, right, because we have this relationship where you just joke about it. But yeah, I mean, one of the things I always ask people if they have anxiety is what their caffeine intake is like. Because I think about also, side note, Ellen Vora. Do you know who she is? Dr. Only through you, but I very little. So she's, she's my fave. I absolutely adore her.

She's a functional medicine psychiatrist, and she wrote the book, The Anatomy of Anxiety, which I really, I ask a lot of my patients to read, and it's kind of like one of my Bibles. But I remember listening to a podcast interview. She was on Bulletproof Radio. And, yeah, but he, oh, my, I'm totally blanking on his shoe. Dave Asprey. Dave Asprey. I thought of any other time because he were interviewing me.

Dave Asprey's like almost like harassing. her about why she talks about, you know, she talks about to cut out caffeine and how that can really benefit people. And, you know, he loves his coffee. He has built up. And fire ground bulletproof coffee and, you know, selling this, this drink. And so, but she does talk about in her book, how it could really benefit people to cut out caffeine. So it is something I assess in all of my patients. And it is just that taking stimulants. You know, a lot of, you know, you see this vicious cycle happen with patients where they're on stimulants. they can't sleep at night because they're taking the stimulus during the day.

Then they need a sleep medication or a benz-o at night in order to fall asleep. They also have no appetite during the day. So they're not, you know, I can't even get them to eat in a way that helps nourish their body and help with their gut microbiome and help, you know, get all those amino acids to build those neurotransmitters. So it's like this vicious cycle we're constantly doing with the stimulants. And, you know, I don't always say like, okay, do you want to, if they want to get off the ADHD medication, we work together to do it.

They don't always want to, but a lot of them are scared to. Right. Just the same reason for coffee, right? Like how am I going to function? How am I going to focus? What if I start overeating? The jewel, I mean, the jewel is another one. Yes.

The addictive properties of the nicotine is a stimulant. So it's absolutely something I see in my practice. And if people want to get off of it, which I would love because I want to, you know, help them ultimately feel better and be able to function better without the use of these supplements or substances. then yeah we start to make adjustments in life yeah the first time i came off of coffee was like three summers ago and i probably had that wasn't crazy like coffeeaholic i would have like one or maybe max two cups a day but it was for like 10 years straight probably from early high school up

through college and it's just very normalized so you don't even think anything of it but i try to come off that and i literally had i weaned off first of all like i like i tapered onto decaf and macha and then I kind of tapered off of that. I literally had no energy for a month. Wow. But I had to give myself permission to just feel like crap. Yes. Because I had to come off of it.

The detox process. Yes. It's not, it's not going to feel good to get crap out of your system. Totally. Wow. I didn't realize that you did that. Yeah.

So that was intense. And now I usually cycle off of caffeine for at least a month every year. Okay. And it's not been that bad since. I think once I gave myself that break after that very long term use. Yeah. That was like the big one. But honestly,

it's still pretty amazing to think about like 10 years of daily use. It took a month only to get back to like a baseline, normal baseline. That is wild. The rate is so fascinating, right? It is so crazy when it's able to. So what, so how much caffeine do you use now? Um, so I usually drink uh, uh, has some thanine too, which now, which is like a nice, is a nice balancing effect of caffeine. So I mean, it's a pretty large size. I would say maybe it's like 100 to 125 milligrams of caffeine. Yeah. in the morning. I never have it after like noon. And that works for me. But I'm also due for like a stimulant break soon. The last one I had was like in February. I was off it for four weeks. Okay. Yeah. And that's like, you know, no nicotine, no caffeine, no. I usually don't use Adderall, but sometimes I'll take like two and a half milligrams occasionally. But I don't know how some people do like crazy doses of Adderall. Like I actually have somebody who was just recently

talking to me about, oh, I'm taking 20 milligrams a day and I feel nothing. I know people being really, really dependent on tolerance. Yes. Tolerance. I have patients who can't function without. I mean, I was on a call this week with a patient who she's running low on Adderall and because there was an Adderall shortage. Yes.

I probably also went over, uh, prescription like over, over prescribing it. But she's so depressed. And I was just like, did you take your Adderall taste? She's like, no, because I don't, I don't, I only have like three pills up. I was like, you know what? Take it. Right. And this is in certain circumstances where I'm like medication is not so bad.

Like if I can't, if you're so depressed that you're not functioning and not going to class, I need you to take it just. so I can get you somewhere, you know, like even if it's going to just get you out the door and out into the sunlight. And then I literally sat on the phone. She was on the other end of Zoom. I was and we called all the pharmacies in her area to find the Adderall. And I found one. Thank God. After we called my, I probably called like seven. Wow. But I'm like, you know what? Right now this is what you need. But with the long term goal, and she does want to eventually get off of it. But it's really scary to think that these,

I think about all the time, all the medications I took and how your brain is so dependent. But we normalize that, just like we normalized coffee because a doctor prescribed it to you, whether it be an antidepressant or a benzodiazepine or a stimulant or whatever it is. You know, it's really, really hard. You know, I actually have a weird question for you. I know it's like, I don't know if you've thought about this. So, but like, what's the deal with European countries that people can drink coffee at like 11 p.m? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, on one hand, there is definitely a tolerance that's built the more that you have any stimulant, I think, but like coffee being among them. So at one point your receptors become desensitized, so it's affecting you less.

Okay. Maybe your metabolic pathways also adapt so you can metabolize it more quickly, but there are certain people who are like slow metabolizers of caffeine versus like fast metabolizers. So the slow metabolizers tend to be like hyper, like have a hyper response to it. Yeah. And it takes them longer to like go back to a baseline versus people who are fast metabolizers. So there could be a portion of it that's like like their genetic haplotypes just happen to correspond with more fast.

metabolizing so they get affected less from that. Additionally, there could be like a downregulation of the receptors, most likely, or like desensitization of them. But on the other hand, like, their sleep could actually be disrupted. They're just not realizing it. Yeah. Because a lot of people aren't tracking their sleep and like you don't even necessarily need to track your sleep to to know that you're sleeping well. But like, I think a lot of people just beat the morning fatigue and feeling of like blah by having more coffee. So it's like it just, it just becomes like a new baseline. And then if you try to, you know, come off of that, it can be a real shock to the system. And so for the stimulants and all drugs, really, if you're, like, working with somebody to come off

for them, like, it's always going to be a tapering process. Yeah. I made a biggest mistake when I was working at Bellevue. I was taking stimulants for binge eating disorder. Uh-huh. It's like off-label. And I realized, like, I was like, stupidly before I had started the story, I was like, I'm just going to stop.

Cold turkey. Like, I'm going to tell my second. I had a headache for days. Oh, my God. They're so powerful. They are. They're so powerful. And I like that you mentioned that, you know, you will occasionally use nicotine or use an

adol every once in a while because like we've said, like the drugs are not all bad all the time and they can help occasionally. Totally. So as long as you're not depending on them, you know, every day of your life, then, you know, having them every now and then or enjoying a cup of coffee every now and then, you know, it could be nice. Yes. And also benefit your work and things like that. Yeah, it's just really nice to have flexibility. And like in certain cases, you know, you really need to meet a deadline or you really need to focus and maybe there's other things going on in your house or whatever. It's hard to focus. Like that's where you can reach for these tools and you can get the benefit of them, but not becoming overly reliant. And I also wanted to circle back on like the tapering off things, especially the benzos. I'd love to hear your experience with this because I've had a client who was prescribed benzos. It was I think Valium for like a long time. Probably he was on them for like 15 years or 20 years. And as prescribed,

by the doctor. So, and this also is applicable to Adderall, too. Like, it will say on the bottle, take daily, which is just a whole mess. Like, you should take it as needed, but they're just telling you to take it daily, which is insane. But the benzos, so he was taking it daily as prescribed by his doctor and wanted to come off it. And he told me that he'd never, he didn't feel normal, like back to like a baseline normalcy for literally a decade of work, like hard work. That doesn't surprise. That can't surprise. That can't surprise me. I too really struggle with my cognitive functioning since I was on benzos and my memory. My memory was so sharp before I started.

Wow. I remember in high school and it being so good. And then after that, I really actually think I developed ADHD from being on these medications. That's my hypothesis. No one has confirmed that. But based on my own understanding of kind of looking at where I was premeds and where I am post meds, yeah, it was, first of all, these things, you have to go so slowly.

as you know, because they're very, they taught me at Bellevue. Ben's, what are the three Bs that are very, very addictive is Benzos, booze and barbiturates. So when you're tapering off, which is why when people go into the hospital and they're tapering off booze or other drugs, alcohol or other drugs, you know, there needs to be a medical, it's medically observed. Yeah. They're taking your vitals every day. Sometimes they're doing an alcohol taper or a drug taper with benzodiazepines to help ease the pain and the detox. effect and the withdrawal effect, but it has to be done very slowly. And I always say before we even start this, you know, I think the biggest thing that people

hate when they change their habits or change their behaviors or change their lifestyle and medications is the preparation phase. Yeah. But it's the most important phase because you don't feel like you're actually making any action towards your goals, but you need to prepare, whether it be, you know, changing your habits of engaging in, you know, like cooking more or going to the gym or getting off medication. You need to spend time preparing. And your nervous system needs to feel safe.

We need to nourish it. Once again, going back to the foundation work, you know, sleeping, moving, breathing, eating, all that stuff. To help the body feel as safe as possible, encourage healthy detox. You know, I have a saw, my infrared sauna in the corner of my apartment, which has been such a lifesaver with getting off the medication. Amazing. But doing the things that's going to help your body feel safe as you start to taper off

these medications because it's going to be a big shock to the system. and your body's going to want to, it's going to do everything it can to hold on to that medication. You know, the brain will stay with an unwanted hell. Like the, I'm like blinking on how I phrase this all the time and I've heard it from somebody else. But like the devil you know is is better than the devil you don't know. Exactly.

A familiar hell. Yes. Yeah, exactly. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. Familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven. Because the body wants safety. How does it find safety in pattern? recognition or prediction. And if I've been taking my Xanax every day for the last 10, 15 years,

whatever, that's what I'm prepared to do tomorrow and the next day and the year after. So when you start to taper, you need to give your body nourishment in other ways and make sure that it feels safe because it's going to feel so unsafe and so scared, which is why what happens is, and Ellen talks about this in her book, is that people start to get off these medications and these stimulants, the coffee, whatever it is. And like a lot of doctors will be like, oh, well, that's your depression, that's your anxiety coming back up because you're not on the medication anymore. Like you need the medication. Right. You're like to be. Whatever more.

Right. You need the medication in order to feel better because your brain can't live without the medication. But you're, she says, you know, you're going through a withdrawal. Mm-hmm. Your brain is learning how to be without this medication. And it's, it's going really crazy right now because it doesn't know what it's like without the medication. Right. So slowly, slowly, slowly, give your body, what it needs. Be prepared to feel a little crappy. Detoxing. Our society hates. Our culture hates feeling crappy. Like we are like, it can't be productive. I'm all the birth control thing I think is like a huge.

It is like, don't listen to your natural feminine cycles. Like let's shut that down. So you. Never be a man. Yeah. And you, you know, and and and you'll never feel bad in a day in your life because you're not really ovulating and you're not really getting your period. And and it's, it's really hard. We're fighting at such a young, masculine energy that we don't even let ourselves. There's like no good time to get off your medication.

Never. Yeah. It's always inconvenient. It's always inconvenient. I get that. I feel that. There's never really good time for meeting it off my medication either. So it's good to make sure that you spend some time going into the YIN

and doing what Paul calls the, Paul Chek calls the working in exercises and all of that in order to help with it. Yeah, I love that distinction. Actually, we should maybe just discuss. working in briefly because I think it's super important and it's not talked about like working out means you're like expending and energy you're you're you're giving away your energy whereas his working in exercises which you can probably describe some of them to us because you've been learning about them but the working in exercises are helping you cultivate energy and and chi and so that's like actually filling up your

cup instead of emptying your cup absolutely yes exactly and there's these beautiful what he calls the zone exercises where you're doing movement with breath and you know depending on what's going on in your body, an emotional state or physical state or specific medical issues, he talks out which zone to target, which is really nice. Like the one with the energy push, which is my favorite, this is for zone three. And it has a lot to do with like if you're struggling with self-esteem or you're dealing with your being very sensitive to criticism, doing something in the zone three area is really nice, can help with things like that. So this working in concept is, first of all, I absolutely love it. When I learned it in HLC1, I was like, I'm obsessed with this.

this is so good. But I think for people who are on overdrive and are high sympathetic tone and they're going very much like how I was for all of my life until really the last year and I'm probably still like teetering in and out of it, like working in is really uncomfortable. It's really scary because when we're used to that chaos, like that chaos I had at Bellevue and the chaos I had at home growing up, being still and calm does not feel safe. And doing that working in does not feel safe. And if anything, I feel like it always would drain me even more than the working out did. The working out was just fueling the fire and giving me more energy.

And I felt like, well, this is the answer. Like, I can just keep going and going and going. And now that I'm learning how to work in, I actually get tired when I work out. I never get tired. Wow. Oh, I can keep going forever. Yeah. But it's, I like this working in idea of the chigong or the Tai Chi or the zone exercises

because it's a great way to start bringing awareness. to your body and nourishing yourself and like you said, filling up your cup, especially when something like still meditation feels so unsafe for somebody and it's really challenging to do. Totally. But that balance is so important. The yin, it's, oh my gosh, we need it. We need it so much in our environment and our culture and our, you know, workplaces do not encourage it.

Yeah, it's so absent from just life in general. I mean, we have all the EMF that's around, which is a whole lot of. story, but this is like a low grade stimulating our nervous system as well. Absolutely. And so between that and like, you know, whether it's like noise from the TV or focused on your phone or whatever it is, there's just so much stimulus around us constantly. Yes. That being like you said in that like that quiet inner space can feel very intimidating and

like unfamiliar because it is. It's so new terrain. I always say our biggest obstacle is staying focused in a world that wants our, that is so distracting and wants all of our attention. And it's even worse. Like I always think about like, think about like the 80s and the 70s, like before cell phones. You know, it was just like like, like you had your landline and, you know, you call a friend. Okay, I'm going to meet you here for dinner. Okay, good. There was like no texting about it or anything like that. You just, you're just in your life. Like maybe you watched a little TV. You played outside with your friends. You had dinner with your family.

But you weren't checking your emails from like five different devices. Right. Your iPad, your computer, your phone, whatever, your Apple watch, whatever it is. you weren't constantly being barred with texts. You weren't feeling the need to absorb so much information and material constantly. You weren't scrolling on your Instagram and TikTok. And, you know, it's like, I'm shocked when people don't have ADHD. Right.

Totally. We're just expending energy constantly and trying to absorb things. We're just, we are not meant to absorb. Right. And then the anxiety is heightened and everybody and mental health issues are heightened and everybody. Of course it is. The nervous system is going haywire. Totally. We didn't evolve. We didn't evolve for this type of environment. It's very new, very novel. It's like really like our generation and the younger generations are really taking the brunt of it, I think. Like the millennials, we really like,

we got internet like probably around. It was like middle school for me. But we were, we weren't kids. When we were kids, we kind of had a normalish life. Yeah. Like more outside play. Like, of course, some TV time and media, but like it was more so like how we, I don't know, how culture was, previously but now it's just completely different paradigm oh my gosh so different i even think about i don't if you did this but you know waiting for you know the next friend's episode to come on next week full house episode right it's like there's this excitement of having to sit and wait yes for your next favorite ever the radio i love i mean we talked about this earlier how i radio show in college but i love radio but one of the things i actually miss is getting excited about your favorite song coming on

the radio. Totally. And right now everyone, there's so much distress tolerance. Like people can't really tolerate waiting for things. And having that lapse of time. Now you can just binge watch any TV show or any movie you want any time. What about when they used to air movies on TV and you would like, you don't have to sit in front of the TV and watch it and then there'd be commercial and you go to the

back. I even think like the extinction of commercials is so bad for us. I could see that. I feel like it is a natural break. You know, you get up from the couch, you go to the bathroom, you get a snack, you, you know, talk to whoever you're watching TV with. And then you go back and you're not so intensely absorbed into what's happening on the screen. Right. Your visual system gets a break.

It's almost like dissociation from reality while you're just like sitting there for hours binge watching. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I remember when Netflix first came out. I became so depressed, just like binge watching stuff. Like staying up to like 2 a.m. Yeah. on like a work night.

Let me watch this nonstop. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I actually feel really depressed right now. Wow. I can't handle this. Right. It almost feels like you're out of control. It's almost like something's taking over you. It's like I need to keep watching.

Yes. It's just like scrolling Instagram. It's like just keep scrolling for a little bit more. Like it's always like a little hip that's coming like a little dopamine hit by just like the surprise of like what's coming next. Exactly. Yeah. And there's just like I miss that. I miss that simplicity.

And even just in the course of our lifetime alone, the way that technology has upgraded and expanded and grown is just exponential. It's not a steady state of like, okay, here's the evolution of the television. And like before it was black and white and now it's in color and like now it's gotten thinner. Now it's just like every year. Like I knew the TV is being evolved and the iPhone is being evolved in a way that it's like, how do our brains keep up with this? It's so wild.

And there's also like this weird rat race of like, people just want the new next best thing. And it's like never satisfied with what you have. We were talking about your computer. Yeah, exactly. I was like, oh my gosh, this thing is ancient that we're filming on right now. That's 12 years old. But look, the picture is pretty good.

It's amazing. And I think I could do four laptops. It's fresh for New York. Yes. I think I could do four laptops. It's fresh because they break. They're not made. Things are not made.

Like they use. They're not. It's a real bummer. They're like made to break. They're made for us to consume. consume, let's over consume. They're not going to be able to handle the intent. Oh, and now, oh, well, you know what?

Your laptops always post the last every three to five years entirely, right? And the reality is, look at yours. You've replaced the heart. You said you replaced the hard drive, the battery, and it's going great. Yeah. So, I mean, I love that. And right, and there's this like, I feel like now with social media, the jealousy factor or the phone factor, right?

Like someone posts, oh, I got my new phone. I got my new this. I got my new that. And now it's like, oh, I need that. I want that. And then we have Amazon and it can deliver to you sometimes even the same day. like, exactly instant gratification.

I mean, I find it. So I don't know if you find it hard to turn off. I find it really hard to turn off. I do. I mean, it's, I feel like it's almost like a mind virus that's, yeah,

it doesn't feel like it's me, but it's definitely influencing me. Like, it could at least. Yeah, it's so hard. And then like, you know,

even people, I want to go through phone detoxes and I know people who do it. But then as soon as you go back on, it's, you're like back to right where you started. I know. Like in it,

you know. Yeah. And it's especially hard if you, like, are making a living from your, like, Instagram, for example. So, like, my business is through Instagram. And, like, now it's like my livelihood is tangled up with my addiction to the app. Ever since I started posting up for my business on Instagram, even though I, you know, it's like not as much, like you've been doing a lot longer. I feel so addicted to it. Yeah.

Like, I do a post and I'm like, oh, my God, I got to check. Engagement. No, no. Exactly. And then I look at people like you or our friend Alina and, you know, who have way more followers than me. and I'm just like, how do you handle all the overload of messages coming in? You know, it's just, I can barely handle the three new messages, I guess, every day.

And I'm like, you're probably getting, like, I don't know how many new messages are getting in a day. So my Instagram hates me and like probably deprioritizes me. I don't know how much and like how it works like. You're indoctrinated everybody. Exactly, exactly. So I don't honestly get that many messages and my engagement sucks. But like followers keep growing, which is great. And awesome.

Yeah, so I mean, the more we do podcasts and continue to grow this. And like I go on other platforms, like it builds the audience. But like my story views are still quite low. Really? Yeah. So like when I had 2,500 followers, I was getting like four or 500 story views. Okay. And now I have about 9,000 followers and I get 200.

What? Because I'm deprioritized by the algorithm. Yes. And this is a problem too. In our culture and our world is that we're not the truth. Yes. Doctrinate yourself is not coming out. It's getting suppressor.

I think about this. Why I called the Czech Institute the other day to sort something. out about my class. And I was talking to the woman who actually is the assistant director for the podcast. Oh, amazing. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh, my dream, our dream was like, oh, I'm Paul. We love you so much. And I said, you know, it's so, it's so crazy. Paul's work hasn't blown up. Like, what's the deal? And she's like, I know, it's so crazy. And we do the podcast and the interviews all these incredible people and you learn so much about it. You and I talk, you're like, oh, my God, did you listen to this incredible? Yes. Everyone. You're like, all the time.

Yeah, and it's like, how is someone who is so brilliant? not blow up. I mean, I tell people, oh, I'm going to the Czech Institute. Do you know who Paul check is? It's like one in like 30 people who will be. And we live in a world where like a lot of people, like the people I'm asking are in our world, the functional holistic medicine world. So the fact that so few people even are in our world know about him, I understand that like the average layperson wouldn't know about him. But it's like his stuff is just, you know, he puts it out. And then they're like, stuff it down. Like we got to get rid of that. Yeah, it's scary for sure. But I think ultimately like if we are, you know,

continue to be honest in alignment. Like our people will eventually find us. It's just a matter of time. And like, but it can, it can be easy to get discouraged too. Because it's like you're putting a lot of effort and work and energy into things. And you're not getting like the feedback that or the support that you would have hoped.

But yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's just, I don't know. It's an interesting journey for sure. But it's so crazy. But it's important. It is important. And this is as an aside.

Meanwhile, it's like I talked to my patients who are in college and do they have like huge TikTok colleagues. And my patients like, oh yeah, there was a video of me, mattress, mattress surfing down the stairwell and it got 200,000 light. Oh my God.

And your mattress surfing video gets literally like hundreds of thousands more less. Right. Right. I think about this all the time. Like I follow a lot of cute pet accounts. I'm like, they're getting like 1.2 million like views on their reels. And I'm like, what am I doing with my life? Right.

For like 20 lives. Yeah. I know. It's very hard. And we, you know, in addition to that, you know, we're talking about this lack of ability to tolerate frustration and waiting and being patient is that now you also have a generation of people. And I see this in my practice of wanting the instant gratification in work too. Yeah. And making money.

And I tell them, you know, when am I out of college, I was working at my gym part time to cover my membership. and I was literally cleaning gym equipment and washing towels. You know, and I worked at Bloomingdale's where I would have to just take endless items, you know, out of the dressing room, I put them back on the rack and filing. One of my first jobs in high school was filing and treading. I mean, that's like the most mind-ups that you possibly do. But you learn this, it's character building, and you learn how to do things that are boring, which no one is good at anymore.

And you learn how to work hard for your money. but that's not a thing anymore. And I don't, you know, I don't want to poo-poo this other, this new, this younger generation because perhaps they're working smarter, not harder, which I can't blame them, you know. But it's kind of wild because you could be a content creator at the age of like 15, bringing in like, you know, more than your and mine incomes combined and then triple it. Mm-hmm. And they're like living a fun life.

And it's like, like I kind of have this, you know, like, like I'm confused. I'm like, wait a minute. It was the work I did worth it for. $10 an hour to file paperwork. And now people are making, you know, $10,000 every time they post on TikTok. It's just so crazy. It is. I mean, I definitely see there's pros and cons.

Like, on one hand, maybe AI can replace all the menial jobs that, like, people don't need to do and people can then move on to doing things they're passionate about and they feel called to do, which that's important. But there's also, like, honest work is also important. Like you said, it's character building. It's important to, like, not always just have things your way and, like, get exactly what you want one you want it. Yes. And I think that that has caused a lot of anxiety in my younger patients of getting a lot. And this is not a criticism of them. It's a criticism of the larger system.

But they have always gotten their way and they get it quickly. And like I said earlier, the distress tolerance is very low. The ability to deal with uncomfortable situations and uncomfortable feelings is barely exists. It barely exists. So a lot of the work we do is I teach them how to sit with uncomfortable emotions. And I always say, you know, they're always afraid of something, you know, something coming up. Maybe there's a social anxiety thing that's causing a fear of like attending a party or raising their hand in class or whatever or going to a job where they have to do something you don't want to do. And I say, really, it's not that you're afraid of that thing. You're afraid of the emotions that are going to come up when you do that thing.

And because they haven't learned how to sit with those uncomfortable emotions, which is also quite frankly, most of America. You know, totally. You learn how to do that. We learn how to be okay with them. And the best thing is, is when you learn that you can sit with any emotion and you're not going to die, you can do anything. Mm-hmm.

Because you're not scared at them anymore. Right. Because it's not you. It's just something moving through you. Like Paul talks about energy and motion. Emotion is energy in motion. And it's just some energy that's moving through you. But as long as you're not identifying with it as like, this is an existential threat.

Like, and just witnessing it happening, that really like, that space allows you to really like take a breath and respond to whatever situation is coming up instead of like just being very reactive. Yes, totally. And that's been so huge in my healing through depression and anxiety is that, you know, we feed this narrative of it's not good to be depressed. It's not good to be anxious. So you have to take a pill to get rid of it.

And to actually learn to sit with it and feel it and recognize that I can feel sad and it's okay. And it's not here. permanently. I'm not going to be sad 24 hours a day, seven days a week for years and years and years on end. There's going to be moments of happiness, even if you have long-term sadness for a while. That completely changes the game because now you can be with that emotion and know, okay, I'm feeling really sad right now. It doesn't feel good. It feels crappy, but it's going to move through me. It's not, you know, it's not going to completely crumble my entire world because that's what we do is we feel it and then we go, oh my gosh, my entire world is falling apart and I feel like I'm

completely drowning because I can't get out of this emotional state. Mm-hmm. So. Yeah, I think it's super important to be able to just be willing to feel whatever is coming up and like just realizing that like that you're probably feeling this way for a reason. Like you could have anxiety about something going on in your life or it could also be anxiety like you mentioned before, like some nutritional deficiency for example. your hormones or whatever.

Yeah, totally. So that's also a very valid reason that your body would feel anxious. So just getting super curious about like, why am I feeling this way? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Your emotions are so important. They give you information.

And sometimes working through emotions is looking at, I do a lot of inner child work and inherited family travel work with my patients, but looking to see like, is this an old emotion that's coming up and what's happening. But yes, I love that. And that's what my coach always says. Get curious about what is happening. in your body and then you can learn to explore it and sit with it and ask your body, what do I need? What do you want me to do to help manage this?

And yeah, I remember I had a patient who was actually a doctor, a medical doctor who was very depressed and had gotten off of the antidepressants and he was wondering if he should get back on. And I said, you know, it's okay to be depressed. Like if you're not functioning, it's a different story. but it's okay to be sad every once in a while. And he looked at me like I said the most profound thing he's ever. Wow.

Because we're, you know, yeah, we're feeding this narrative that's so destructive. Yeah. You remember that without these emotions that are sometimes uncomfortable, you also don't have the beautiful, fun, happy, you know, amazing emotions too. Yes, yes. I was actually just thinking that because the SSRI is like, okay, maybe they remove some of the valleys, but they also reduce the size of the peaks too.

100%. Just flattened you out. 100%. And I felt so flat. I felt so disconnected. It was like I was walking around with a film over my eyes. You know, everything. It's like those clareton commercials, you know, where it's like the film and they take

your clarity and the film disappears. That's literally what I felt like. Wow. Like all of my life since I was on medication. And when you can remove that and experience all the emotions in this world and let them move through you. It's just so beautiful. And because as we know, when you suppress these emotions, they can turn into disease. Yes. This is. That's what it is, right? So, and then we see this. We see this when people develop medical issues and cancers and different types of things,

especially in different organs, it's different emotions. You know, it's really, really interesting stuff. So it is. We need to learn to feel our emotions and there's this course I took emotions to power. and it talks about like how the energy moves, like how anger is up and out, right? And then sadness and depression is in and down. It's these beautiful characteristics to the emotions. So then you can start to identify what's happening in your body and be with it. That's beautiful. Oh, I was also thinking about like SSRIs in particular, but also a lot of the psychiatric medications, like, we don't even really know how they're working. Don't know how they're working. A lot of them, which is insane, right? Like, how did this get, how was this made to be like a thing? Or the, like, a thing?

like the status quo and we don't even know the mechanism by which this is actually giving a benefit to some percentage of people. Right. Right. And they say that a lot of these drug trials, the placebo effect is as effective, if not more, right? That always blew my mind because, you know, I could say that at my time in Bellevue and working with hundreds and hundreds of patients, you know, there were definitely situations where the medications were not effective and then there were definitely situations

where they were. And it's like, well, what, you know, and we have so many options. It's like, I don't know how many antidepressants are on the market. and how many antipsychotics and, you know, what are the chances of them working? What's not the chances of them working? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that's where the shift to like end of one medicine is so important

because instead of just like conducting the science where we're like taking the average response of everybody in the trial and then looking to see if this works on average, well, what if we looked at the individual responses and said, okay, for people who have, you know, maybe this genetic background or have this, you know, experience or whatever specific characteristics about that person may be associated with the success or the failure of that drug in them, we should be collecting that data and then just using that to decide who this drug is best suited for. Instead of just like the trial and error constantly, that could be very like demoralizing, I would guess for a patient where it's like nothing's ever going to work. Like I'm just going to feel like

this. Absolutely. That's how I felt. That's what I felt. And then actually seeing like what are your hormone mark, like what's what's going on your hormones? What's going on your labs? Like what's going on with all this other stuff that could be contributing to the medication like working or not and what your diet like and what's your thought process like and yeah it is it's really really wild and i agree with you it's like how do we develop all these drugs and we don't even really know how they're working yeah it's wild i think a lot of them got like grandfathered in i guess they were originally used maybe discovered that there were like effications and some people and then it's like medicine used to be much more esoteric than it is now like it's become this weird like dogma like regime

but it used to be like the doctors going to your home, they knew your family, they had a relationship with you, they would probably give advice about like your lifestyle, your diet, your exposures, things like that. And now it's so detached from that. And also like medicine way back would have been a lot of like herbal remedies and nutritional therapies. And it's like that's just completely missing now. Right, right, right. And we lack the humanistic part of medicine. And really, I think at the end of the day, if you ask people what they love about their doctor when they see a doctor that they're really excited about, I really do think most of the time it's because that person gave them that attention and treated them like a human being. Those are my favorite doctors. You know,

I come out of those appointments. I'm like, wow, that was the best doctor's appointment I've ever had because that person sits with you and talks with you. And unfortunately, because of our insurance model, there's no opportunity to do that anymore. And, you know, the cost of a functional medicine is very high for a reason because these doctors have gone on to get all this additional training and experience and they're giving such individualized care, they can't see like 20 patients in a day. Exactly. They spend literally 30 to 60 minutes with each patient.

If you're working 8 to 10 hours a day, that's only 8 to 10 patients. Yeah. So, you know, I hope, I hope there's a revolution in the health world because we need it. Yeah. We all need it. Yeah. I mean, I really think the cash-based system is the way forward, like, just outside of the insurance model. The insurance model is just so limiting for, and it really, like, ties the hands of the facilitators or the practitioners or the physicians or wherever it is.

They have to operate for liability purposes within this specific model of, like, basically prescribing a drug that's indicated for this specific condition. And then there's, like, a pipeline of different therapies that have to try in, like, a specific order. And it's just, like, completely dehumanizing. and it's not in any way personalized the person in front of them. And so I do feel for the for the physicians, the practitioners as well, because it's like not only that whole system is just a mess, but then their whole education system is like they learn these facts that they are, well, they're taught as facts, but it's, you know,

science is always open for debate and changing. So there's also this like ego that's developed as part of the training process. And I think that ego is intentional. Yeah. I really do. I think there's a system, you know, think about how long medical, doctors are in the system for it. They do, you know, four years of undergrad. They might end up doing a postback. Then they do four years of medical school. Then they do their fellowship,

which or their residency, which could range from like two to like six years probably. And then they want to do a fellowship. I mean, we're talking about over a decade, well over a decade of just being in the system and spending a lot of money too. Medical school is not so much money. Yeah. So yeah, by the time they enter into their own practice or they join a hospital group, it's like they're in so much debt. They're just worried about paying that off and not worried about the care that they're giving. They're just burned out. Right, right.

And I do think there's this, there's this, like you said, the ego. It's like, we've become a society where it's like, well, doctor's orders. That's what my doctor said. And I see that so much with some of my loved ones. And it's so frustrating because they're like, well, my doctor told me to do this. And my doctor told me to eat this. And my doctor told me to take this medication. And I'm like, but have you thought for yourself?

Right. There's actually even common sense involved in this recommendation or prescription or this diagnosis and and we've built this system where the doctors in many ways and my best friend's a doctor so I don't want to you know but have play God. Yep. People's lives and they look up and they, their patients look up to them like they are God. Yep. Yep.

And I'm going to do whatever you tell me to do. It doesn't matter if it's right or wrong or if it's individualized for me. And that continues to perpetuate this cycle of a patient that is is helpless and and not. empowered to do what they need to do, which is why, you know, I love the material you put out because you're empowering people. You know, yeah. I mean, you're doing when they engage with you, even if they're not, you know, able to work on with you one-on-one or attend your programs and your groups, you know, they can at least

get some knowledge from me. My friends love your content. Oh, my gosh. Because my friends met you at my birthday a few years ago. They're always like, did you see this on Alexis in post? Did you do it? And like, they're like, can you ask Alexis this thing? And they're really like, they've learned just so much from your.

your visibility and your exposure, which is why it's amazing what you're doing this podcast, because... Yes, I'm excited about it. It's a long time coming. Yes. But I think the timing was just right. Like, I could have started during grad school. Maybe there would have been some merit to, like, shedding light on that experience as well.

But I think, I don't know. I think the timing is good. And also, like, I just have a whole... I should probably do an episode on, like, all the shortcomings of, like, graduate education and just, like, the higher academic learning process and institutions, too, because it's also the same idea. where it's like you're putting this ivory tower and it's like you're somehow better than everybody else and has all the answers and it's just not the case like the day that I the day before I graduated

with my doctorate was I was the same person the next day like after I graduated there wasn't some magical like gift of knowledge bestowed upon me it was it's just a constant learning process and that's going to happen far beyond when I graduated always it's just going to continue so like that that's what I think is really missing from medicine is like the continuation of learning as a lifelong process and not just like this is how things are. This is, you know, and this is just how they're going to be. And then once I've achieved my MD and I've finished residency and I'm now attending, then I'm done. Right. And it's not like that. We're all as human beings. It's a lifelong journey and process. And that's something that also was huge for me in my mental health journey and

getting off medication is that we're constantly thinking life will be better when I hit this marker or when I achieve this particular goal. And I'm not going to say that life might not be better when you achieve certain things or change things about yourself or grow closer to becoming the person you want to be. But I was just always like, life will be better when I'm off these medications. And life will be better when I get over the sphere. And when I do this and when I do that. And I was never living in the present moment because instead I was always thinking about the future and freaking out about the future and thinking that that's when my happiness will come. But the reality is, is we're so imperfectly perfect right now. And if we can find that,

sense of purpose and and love and ourselves in this moment and and you know that just like even though it's a huge win and a huge accomplish to graduate with that PhD across that stage and you know you've worked so hard for stuff know that it's not the end you know that it's a constant it's a constant journey and that's part of life you know part of living is is the pain and the love and the grief and the fear and the happiness and the accomplishments and the success it's it's it's never ending it's never going to go away. Truly. And I think that's like a beautiful part like of being human.

It's like you don't really know what's to come. And that's excitement and anxiety are like really the same circuits running. It's just like the tone of like how we're thinking about it. So yeah, yeah, it can go either way. So I know we're wrapping up soon because you have to go to an appointment after this for dinner. But do you have anything else that you want to share with with the audience before we wrap up? I do want to say I because we talked a little we talked a lot about things like medication in the system and whatnot and with with a critical eye which I think you know we've both been through our own extreme health journeys and learning and growing and continue to do so and I do just want to say you know remember that we were there at one point where we were in a place where we were kind of like like for me all speak for me specifically like I was on a lot of medication at one point and I I even though I I feel like I have a lot of side effects long term from them.

I also want to acknowledge that at that time, it's what was available to me and what, you know, I had access to. And, you know, I did survive through it and I'm here today, probably in part because of that, you know, in part because of the medication, both good and bad results from it. And, you know, don't feel like you need to make all the changes at once. Don't think you're a bad person or you're in the wrong if you're on medication. I don't want people to think that ever, that things are not, like I said earlier, they're not block and white. They are nuanced.

We need to do what we need to do for ourselves with hopefully the goal and the journey of healing ourselves and getting better. And ultimately, becoming the people we want to become, right? Like if you're struggling and wrestling with things that are making life harder, then we want to change that and grow and evolve so that you can live a life that feels less toxic and less. like there's all these barriers in your way and obstacles in your way all your time. You want to be more in a state of flow. And if getting off medication or becoming healthier is going to help you get there, then that's really cool. But, you know, I just want to throw that out there that we recognize,

especially with our backgrounds, I think with our academic backgrounds and our more conventional training and backgrounds that things are nuanced. They're not black and white. That some of these things can be great tools like we're talking about using nicotine or using stimulants from time to time. So keep that in mind, you know, like that. that we're all on this health journey and that we're all just learning and evolving and growing. And sometimes we might do things that in the moment are what we feel like we need to do.

And they might not always be helping us or serving us 100%. But it doesn't mean that those things can't grow and change also. So don't get yourself up, you know, give yourself love and make changes from a place of love and self-acceptance and care for yourself, not out of place of self-loathing or hate. Amen, that's beautiful. And also, like, just the fact that the healing journey is not linear either. Yeah. So there's going to be setbacks.

There's going to be challenges. You're just, like, staying on the path with the notion that it's, you're going to reach your goal eventually. And it's like, it's going to look like jagged. It's not going to be a straight line. Oh, my God. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And remember to leave space to detox and feel crappy sometimes. Yes. So important. Not even if you're just getting off that occasion, but just in life. You know, like, I remember this week even. And, you know, I had my period and I went to the gym and I was like, oh, I do not feel good today. And in the past, they would have just pushed through and tried to like stack all these supplements to feel better and maybe even taking coffee. And I was like, you know what, it's okay that I don't feel so good today.

It's okay that my brain feels like much this week and that I'm not going to push us hard and I'm going to give myself that opportunity to rest. Like, you know, even those of us in this world, it's impossible for us to feel 100% of the time. I don't even, I think it's healthy to feel 100% all of the time. So give yourself that grace and that love and that working in and the end in time. Yes, because all of that is just the body communicating in different ways. And so instead of numbing it out or trying to like trick it into feeling a different way, just accept what it's telling you and try to understand it. Yes, exactly.

Totally. So if people want to work with you, what are your offerings? Like you work one-on with people, do you have any group containers? Are you thinking about doing group-plice? Yes, that is the next thing I'm working on, hopefully in January. Amazing. I'd like to do some groups, like four, six, eight week groups, nothing too too long. But yes, I do, I do accept one-on-one clients.

I'm going to be expanding into groups. So if people follow me on social media or they can check out my website, they can find out about that. Yeah, that's where I'm at right now. And hopefully, hopefully we'll be involved in where I've taught in a few retreats. We'll be doing that again in January, which I'm really excited about. and just finding collaborations with other practitioners who are like minded and I'm kind of working on some things there. So, you know, things are in the process right now. Nothing has come to fruition yet

in terms of like those longer, longer programs, but they will be coming in 2024. Amazing. And do you see people online or in person or is it one or the other? It's both. So I have a practice in Manhattan once a week where I do work with people in person. And then virtually other times. I am licensed in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida, but I also work in a coaching capacity with people outside of those states if they're looking for other modalities that may not be like strict therapy or maybe they have a therapist and they want some adjunct work and complementary work. I do that as well. Amazing. And so finally, how can people find you if they're interested in working with you or chatting with you more and learning more about you?

Yeah, and you welcome. Any questions or comments or feedback or whatever. whatever, if people just want to reach out, they can contact me on social media. So my Instagram and TikTok handles are nerdy therapists, but like neurology, N-E-U-R-D-Y, under underscore therapist. I have my website, which you do, can you share that? Yeah, oh, absolutely. And email also that you can get from my website or you can contact me through a submission form there. but yes, I always welcome people reaching out.

I love when I get comments after podcasts and hear people's thoughts. Amazing. Yeah. And I'm going to share her Instagram handle, a website and all that information in the show notes. You guys can access her. And she's just a wealth of knowledge. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you. We need to do it again. We can probably go on for another two hours if we wanted to. Well, especially after HLC2. Oh, yes. I don't even know what I'm in for. I'm like, I don't even know what I'm going to go learn there. I'm just showing up.

So she's going for contact, she's going to Paul Chek's HLC2 training. And so she's going to be back out for that to share the wealth of knowledge that that's going to impart. I'm sure it's going to be amazing. And yeah. So but for now, this week's episode, I hope you love it. If you like it, just leave a comment, rating, message us, give us some feedback. And I hope you guys have a great week and we'll see you again next week.