Address Your Trauma and Start Mental Healing with Dr Don Wood

How do you handle stressful situations? Everyone's built a little different — some people can take their hits on the chin and come out smiling.

But not everyone can take those hits. The pandemic has taken its mental toll on so many people. Others might still be struggling with past traumas and dealing with anxiety. Their situation keeps them in a state of constant worry and hypervigilance. That state of mind doesn't only harm their mental and emotional health — it can make them sick and more prone to physical diseases. More than ever, it's time to begin mental healing from past traumas, so we can better cope with our daily stresses.

Dr Don Wood joins us again in this episode to talk about the TIPP program and how it facilitates mental healing. He explains how our minds are affected by traumas and how these can affect our health and performance. If we want to become more relaxed, we need to learn how to go into the alpha brainwave state. Since mental healing is not an immediate process, Dr Don also shares some coping strategies we can use in our daily lives.

If you want to know more about how neuroscience can help you achieve mental healing, then this episode is for you.

Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:

1. Learn how trauma can put you in a constant state of survival and affect your performance and daily life.
2. Understand that it's not your fault. Achieving mental healing will require you to learn how to go into an alpha brainwave state.
3. Discover healthy habits that will keep you from entering survival mode.

Resources

• Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron!
• A new program, BOOSTCAMP, is coming this September at Peak Wellness!
• Listen to other Pushing the Limits episodes:
• • #183: Sirtuin and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova
  • #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova
  • #199: How Unresolved Trauma Prevents You from Having a Healthy Life With Dr Don Wood
• Check out Dr Don Wood's books:
• • Emotional Concussions: Understanding How Our Nervous System is Affected By Events and Experiences Throughout Our Life
  • You Must Be Out Of Your Mind: We All Need A Reboot
• Connect with Dr Don Wood: Inspired Performance Institute I Facebook I LinkedIn

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Episode Highlights [06:05] The Pandemic-Induced Mental Health Crisis

• The pandemic forced many people into a state of freeze mode, not the typical fight or flight response.
• As people get out of freeze mode, there will be a rise in mental health issues.
• Teenagers are robbed of the opportunity to develop social and communication skills during this time.

[08:24] How Dr Don Wood Started Studying Traumas

• Dr Don's wife grew up in a household with an angry father who instilled fear.
• He used to think that she would be less anxious when they started to live together, but she struggled with mental healing.
• She had an inherent belief that misfortune always follows good things. Her traumas and fears also led to a lot of health issues.
• She also was hyper-vigilant, which she used as a protective mechanism. However, this prevented her from being relaxed and happy.
• A person's environment can dictate whether they go into this hyper-vigilant state, but genetics can also play a factor.

[15:42] How Trauma Affects the Brain

• Trauma is caused by a dysregulation of the subconscious.
• If your brain is in survival mode, it will access data from the past and create physiological responses to them.
• These emotions demand action, even when it is no longer possible or necessary.
• This dysregulation prevents you from living in the present and initiating mental healing.
• In this state, people can be triggered constantly, which interferes with their day-to-day life.

[21:07] The Role of the Subconscious

• Your conscious mind only takes up around 5%, while the subconscious takes up 95%.
• Your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between real and imagined.
• In survival mode, people will keep replaying the past and think about different scenarios and decisions.
• You're left stuck because the subconscious mind only lives in the now. It does not have a concept of time.
• This process is the brain trying to protect you.

[25:04] What Happens When You're Always in Survival Mode

• Being in survival mode will take a physical toll since it's constantly activating the nervous system, increasing cortisol and adrenaline.
• When you're in this state, your body and mind cannot work on maintenance and recovery. It is more focused on escaping or fixing perceived threats.
• Over time, this will affect your immune system and make you sick.
• To truly achieve mental healing, you need to get to the root cause of your problems.
• However, you also have to develop coping strategies to manage your day-to-day activities.

[30:18] Changing Your Brainwave State

• Traumatic events are usually stored in a beta brainwave state. Changing your response to traumatic events starts with going into an alpha brainwave state.
• The beta state is usually from 15 - 30 hertz, while the alpha is lower at 7 - 14 hertz. Anything below that is the delta state, usually when you're in deep meditation or sleep.
• People who have trouble sleeping are usually in that beta state, which keeps processing information.
• It's only in the delta state that your mind and body start the maintenance phase. This phase helps not only with mental healing but also physical recovery.
• Learn more about Lisa and Dr Don's personal experiences with these brainwave states in the full episode!

[34:30] Mental Healing and Physical Recovery Starts with the Brain

• Recovery is about genetics and the environment.
• In sleep, your mind will always want to deal with the threats first. It can only get to the delta state once it finishes processing these dangers.
• Your risk for developing sickness and depression rises if your brain can't do maintenance.
• Living in the beta state will make it difficult to focus.

[41:40] It's Not Your Fault

• If you have a lot of trauma, you are predisposed to respond in a certain way. It's not your fault.
• There's nothing wrong with your mind; you just experienced different things from others.
• Dr Don likened this situation to two phones having a different number of applications running.
• Predictably, the device that runs more applications will have its battery drained faster.

[44:05] Change How You Respond

• Working on traumas requires changing the associative and repetitive memory, which repeats responses to threats.
• You cannot change a pattern and get mental healing immediately—it will take time.
• That's the reason why Dr Don's program has a 30-day recovery phase dedicated to changing your response pattern.
• Patterns form because the subconscious mind sees them as a beneficial way of coping with traumas.
• This function of your subconscious is how addictions form.

[47:04] Why We Can Be Irrational

• The subconscious lives only in the present. It does not see the future nor the past.
• It will want to take actions that will stop the pain, even if the actions are not rational.
• At its core, addiction is all about trying to stop the pain or other traumatic experiences.
• Survival mode always overrides reason and logic because its priority is to protect you.

[50:57] What to Do When You're in Survival State

• In this survival state, we're prone to movement or shutting down completely.
• The brain can stop calling for emotions to protect you, and this is how depression develops.
• When in a depressed state, start moving to initiate mental healing. Exercise helps burn through cortisol and adrenaline.
• Once your mind realises there's no action required for the perceived threats, the depression will lift.

[53:24] Simple Actions Can Help

• There's nothing wrong with you.
• Don't just treat the symptom; go straight to the issue.
• Don't blame genetics or hormonal imbalances for finding it hard to get mental healing. Find out why.
• Also, seek things that will balance out your hormones. These can be as simple as walking in nature, taking a break, and self-care.

[56:04] How to Find a Calming Symbol

• Find a symbol that will help you go back into the alpha brainwave state.
• Lisa shares that her symbol is the sunset or sunrise, and this helps her calm down. Meanwhile, Dr Don's are his home and the hawk.
• Having a symbol communicates to all parts of your brain that you're safe.

[59:58] The Power of Breathing

• Stress may lead to irregular breathing patterns and increase your cortisol levels and blood sugar.
• Breathing exercises, like box breathing, can also help you calm down because the brain will take higher oxygen levels as a state of safety.
• If you're running out of oxygen, your brain will think you're still in danger.
• Make sure that you're breathing well. It's also better to do nasal breathing.

7 Powerful Quotes

'The purpose of an emotion is a call for an action. So the purpose of fear is to run.'

'People who have a lot of trauma have trouble sleeping. Because not only is their mind processing what it experienced during the day, it's also taking some of those old files saying "Well, okay, let's fix that now. Right. Let's get that."'

'I was getting maximum restorative sleep. So an injury that I would have that could heal in two or three days, my teammates would two or three weeks. Because they were living in these, which I didn't know, a lot of my friends were dealing with trauma: physical, emotional, sexual abuse.'

'There's nothing wrong with anybody's mind. Everybody's mind is fine except you are experiencing something different than I experienced so your mind kept responding to it, and mine didn't have that.'

'That dysregulation of the nervous system. That's what we want to stop because that is what is going to affect health, enjoyment of life, and everything else.'

'I talked about addiction as a code. I don't believe it's a disease. Your mind has found a resource to stop pains and your subconscious mind is literal. It doesn't see things as good or bad, or right or wrong.'

'If there's a survival threat, survival will always override reason and logic because it's designed to protect you.'

About Dr Don

Dr Don Wood, PhD, is the CEO of The Inspired Performance Institute. Fueled by his family's experiences, he developed the cutting-edge neuroscience approach, TIPP. The program has produced impressive results and benefited individuals all over the world.

Dr Wood has helped trauma survivors achieve mental healing from the Boston Marathon bombing attack and the Las Vegas shooting. He has also helped highly successful executives and world-class athletes. Marko Cheseto, a double amputee marathon runner, broke the world record after completing TIPP. Meanwhile, Chris Nikic worked with Dr Wood and made world news by becoming the first person with Down Syndrome to finish an Ironman competition.

Interested in Dr Don's work? Check out The Inspired Performance Institute.

You can also reach him on Facebook and LinkedIn.

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To pushing the limits,

Lisa

Transcript Of Podcast

Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.

Lisa Tamati: Hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today, I have Dr Don Wood who, you may recognise that name if you listen to the podcast regularly. He was on the show maybe a couple of months ago, and he is the CEO and founder of The Inspired Performance Institute. He's a neuroscience guy, and he knows everything there is to know about dealing with trauma and how to get the mind back on track when you've been through big, horrible life events or some such thing. Now, when we talked last time, he shared with me his methodology, the work that he's done, how he can help people with things like addictions as well and depression, and just dealing with the stresses of life, whether they be small stressors or big stressors.

We got to talking about my situation and the stuff that I've been through in the last few years, which many of you listeners know, has been pretty traumatic. From losing babies, to losing my dad, to mom's journey. So I was very privileged and lucky to have Dr Don Wood actually invite me to do his program with him. We share today my stories, how I went with that, and he explains a little bit more in-depth the neuroscience behind it all and how it all works. So if you're someone who's dealing with stress, anxiety, PTSD, depression, if you want to understand how the brain works and how you can help yourself to deal with these sorts of things, then you must listen to the show. He's an absolutely lovely, wonderful person.

Now, before we get over to the show, I just love you all to do a couple of things for me. If you wouldn't mind doing a rating and review of the show on Apple, iTunes or wherever you listen to this, that would be fantastic. It helps the show get found. We also have a patron program, just a reminder if you want to check that out. Come and join the mission that we're on to bring this wonderful information to reach to people.

Also, we have our BOOSTCAMP program starting on the first of September 2021. If you listen to this later, we will be holding these on a regular basis so make sure you check it out. This is an eight-week live webinar series that my business partner, my best buddy, and longtime coach Neil Wagstaff and I will be running. It's more about upgrading your life and helping you perform better, helping you be your best that you can be, helping you understand your own biology, your own neuroscience, how your brain works, how your biology works. Lots of good information that's going to help you upgrade your life, live longer, be happier, reduce stress, and be able to deal with things when life is stressful. God knows we're all dealing with that. So I'd love you to come and check that out. You can go to peakwellness.co.nz/boostcamp.

I also want to remind you to check us out on Instagram. I'm quite active on Instagram. I have a couple of accounts there. We have one for the podcast that we've just started. We need a few more followers please on there. Go to @pushingthelimits for that one on Instagram, and then my main account is @lisatamati, if you want to check that one out. If you are a running fan, check us out on Instagram @runninghotcoaching and we're on Facebook under all of those as well. So @lisatamati, @pushingthelimits, and @runninghotcoaching.

The last thing before we go over to Dr Don Wood, reminder check out, too, our longevity and anti-aging supplement. We've joined forces with Dr Elena Seranova and have NMN which is nicotinamide mononucleotide, and this is really some of that cooler stuff in the anti-aging, and longevity space. If you want to check out the science behind that, we have a couple of podcasts with her. Check those out and also head on over to nmnbio.nz. Right. Over to the show with Dr Don Wood.

Hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today, I have a dear, dear friend again who's back on the show as a repeat offender, Dr Don Wood.

Dr Don Wood: I didn't know I was a repeat offender. Oh, I'm in trouble. That's great.

Lisa: Repeat offender on the show. Dr Don, for those who don't know, was on the show. Dr Don is a trauma expert and a neuroscientist, and someone who understands how the brain works, and why we struggle with anxiety, and depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. We did a deep dive last time, didn't we, into the program that you've developed. Since then, everyone, I have been through Dr Don's pro program. He kindly took me through it. Today, I want to unpack a little bit of my experiences on the other side, s the client, so to speak. Talk about what I went through.

Dr Don, so firstly, welcome to the show again. How's it all over in your neck of the woods?

Dr Don: Well, it's awesome over here in Florida. COVID is basically non-existent. Oh, yeah. Well, in terms of the way people are treating it, that's for sure. Very few people you see in masks now, everything is pretty much wide open. You can't even get reservations at restaurants. It's unbelievable. The economy is exploding here. There's so much going on. Yeah, I know the rest of the country, a lot of different places are still struggling with whether they're going to put mask mandates back on and all this kind of stuff but Florida seems to be doing very well.

Lisa: Well, I'm very glad to hear that because any bit of good news in this scenario is good because this keeps coming and biting everybody in the bum.

Dr Don: I know. Especially down there. You guys are really experiencing quite severe lockdowns and things, right?

Lisa: Yeah and Australia, more so. Australia has gone back into lockdown. I've got cousins in Sydney who are experiencing really hard times in Melbourne and we've stopped the trans-Tasman bubble at the moment. Trans-Tasman was open for business, so to speak, with Australians being able to come to New Zealand without quarantine, but it's been shut down again. So yeah, we're still struggling with it, and the economy is still struggling with it but actually, in our country, we've been very lucky that we've managed to keep it out because they've had such tight controls on the borders. But yes, it's a rocky road for everybody, and it's not over yet, I think.

Dr Don: Looks like it's going to continue, and that's creating a lot of stress.

Lisa: Oh, yeah, perfect.

Dr Don: This is what I've said. I think we're coming up to a tsunami of mental health issues because a lot of people have gone into freeze mode as opposed to fight or flight. Some people are in fight or flight. You're hearing about that on airlines: people just losing it, and getting mad, and fighting with flight attendants and passengers, and you see a lot of that. But I think that's obviously not the majority. I think most people are in that mode of just get through this, do what they ask, don't cause any waves, and just get this over with. So that's a freeze mode, and I think when people come out of freeze, you're going to start to see some of these mental health issues.

Lisa: Yes, I totally agree and I'm very concerned about the young people. I think that being hit very hard especially in the places that have the hardest lockdowns. If you're going through puberty, or you're going through teenagehood, or even the younger kids, I think, they're going to be affected massively by this because it's going to be a big before and after sort of situation for them.

Dr Don: And just the social. When we were teenagers, social was everything, I suppose. Learning how to communicate, and talk, and get along with other people, and good and bad. There were always struggles in school with learning how to get along with everybody but that is just sort of squashed. It's going to be fascinating to see when they do a study on the real true results of this pandemic. It's going to be a lot different than many people think.

Lisa: Yes, and I think the longer you ignore stuff, is we're going to see it's not just the people are unfortunately dying and being very sick from the actual COVID, but the actual effects on society are going to be big. That's why talking about the topic that we're talking about today, dealing with anxiety, and dealing with stress, and being able to actually fix the problem instead of just managing the problem, which I know you're big on.

So let's dive in there, and let's recap a little bit. Just briefly go back over your story, how you got to here, and what your method sort of entails in a helicopter perspective.

Dr Don: Yeah, basically how I developed this was really because of the life that my wife led first and my daughter. My wife grew up in a very traumatic household with a very angry father that created tremendous fear. So everybody was... Just constant tension in that household. When I met her, I just realised how this was so different than my life. My life was in the complete opposite: very nurturing, loving. So I didn't experience that. I thought when she started moving in and we got married at 19, we were very young, that this would all stop for her. Because now, she's living in my world, my environment, and it didn't.

She just kept continuing to feel this fear that something was going to go wrong and nothing is going to go right. She struggled with enjoying things that were going well. I would say to her, 'We've got three beautiful children. We've got a beautiful home. Everything's going pretty good; nothing's perfect. You have your ups and downs, but it's generally a pretty good life.' She couldn't enjoy that because as a child, whenever things were going okay, it would quickly end and it would end, sometimes violently. So the way she was protecting herself is don't get too excited when things are going well because you'll get this huge drop. So that was what she was doing to protect herself.

I just had a lady come in here a couple months ago, who very famous athlete is her husband: millionaires, got fame, fortune, everything you want, but she had a lot of health issues because of trauma from her childhood. When I explained that to her, she said, 'That's me. Your wife is me. I should be enjoying this, and I can't get there. I want to. My husband can't understand it.' But that's really what was going on for her too.

Lisa: So it's a protective mechanism, isn't it? To basically not get too relaxed and happy because you've got to be hyper-vigilant, and this is something that I've definitely struggled with my entire life. Not because I had a horrible childhood. I had a wonderful childhood but I was super sensitive. So from a genetic perspective, I'm super sensitive. I have a lot of adrenaline that makes me code for, for want of a better description, I'm very emotionally empathetic but it also makes me swung by emotional stimuli very much. So someone in my environment is unhappy, I am unhappy. I'm often anxious and upset. My mum telling me she took me to Bambi. You know the movie Bambi? From Disneyland? She had to take me out of theatre. I was in distraught.

That's basically me. Because Bambi's mother got killed, right? I couldn't handle that as a four-year-old, and I still can't handle things. Things like the news and stuff, I protect myself from that because I take everything on. It's even a problem and in our business service situations because I want to save the world. I very much take on my clients' issues. I'm still learning to shut gates afterwards, so to speak, when you're done working with someone so that you're not constantly... So there's a genetic component to this as well.

Dr Don: Absolutely. So yours was coming from a genetic side but that's very, very common amongst people who have had a traumatic childhood. They're super sensitive.

Lisa: Yes. Hyper-vigilant.

Dr Don: Hyper-vigilant. That was my wife. She was constantly looking for danger. We'd come out of the storage and go: 'Can you believe how rude that clerk was?' 'What do you mean she was rude? How was she rude?' 'You see the way she answered that question when I asked that, and then the way she stuffed the clothes in the bag?' And I'm like, 'Wow.' I never saw her like that. She was looking for it because that's how she protected herself because she had to recognise when danger was coming. So it was protection, and I hadn't experienced that so that made no sense to me; it made perfect sense to her.

Lisa: Yeah, and if someone was rude to you, you would be just like, 'Well, that's their problem, not my problem, and I'm not taking it on.' Whereas for someone your wife and for me... I did have a dad who was a real hard, tough man, like old-school tough. We were very much on tenterhooks so when they came home, whether he was in a good mood today or not in a good mood. He was a wonderful, loving father but there was that tension of wanting to please dad. Mum was very calm and stable, but Dad was sort of more volatile and just up and down. It was wonderful and fun and other times, you'd be gauging all of that before he even walked in the door. That just makes you very much hyper-vigilant to everything as well.

Then, you put on, on top of that, the genetic component. You've got things like your serotonin and your adrenaline. So I've got the problem with the adrenaline and a lack of dopamine. So I don't have dopamine receptors that stops me feeling satisfaction and... Well, not stops me but it limits my feeling of, 'Oh, I've done a good job today. I can relax.' Or of reward. And other people have problems, I don't have this one, but with a serotonin gene, which is they have dysregulation of their serotonin and that calm, and that sense of well-being and mood regulation is also up and down. While it's not a predisposition that you'll definitely going to have troubles because you can learn the tools to manage those neurotransmitters and things like nutrition and gut health and all that aspect. Because it's all a piece of that puzzle, but it's really just interesting, and it makes you much more understanding of people's differences.

Why does one person get completely overwhelmed in a very trivial situation versus someone else who could go into war and come back and they're fine? What is it that makes one person? Then you got the whole actual neuroscience circuitry stuff, which I find fascinating, what you do. Can you explain a little bit what goes on? Say let's just pick a traumatic experience: Someone's gone through some big major trauma. What is actually going on in the brain again? Can we explain this a little bit?

Dr Don: Yeah, this is one of the things that... When I did my research, I realised this is what's causing the dysregulation: is your subconscious your survival brain is fully present in the moment all the time. So everything in that part of our brain is operating in the present. which is what is supposed to be, right? They say that that's the key, that success and happiness is live in the present. Well, your survival brain does that. The problem comes in is that only humans store explicit details about events and experiences. So everything you've seen, heard, smelled, and touched in your lifetime has been recorded and stored in this tremendous memory system. Explicit memory.

Animals have procedural memory or associative memory. We have that memory system too. So we have both. They only have procedural, associative. So they learn through repetition, and they learn to associate you with safety and love, but they don't store the details about it. But we store all the details about these events and experiences. So this is where this glitch is coming in. If you've got the survival brain, which is 95% of everything that's going on, operating in the present, accessing data from something that happened 10 years ago because something looks like, sounds like, smells like it again, it's creating a response to something that's not happening. It's looking at old data and creating a physiological response to it, and the purpose of an emotion is a call for an action. So the purpose of fear is to run, to escape a threat. But there's no threat. It's just information about the threat. That disrupts your nervous system and then that creates a cascade of chemical reactions in your body because your mind thinks there's an action required.

Lisa: This is at the crux of the whole system really, isn't it? This is this call for action to fix a problem that is in the past that cannot be fixed in the now. So if we can dive a little bit into my story, and I'm quite open on the show. I'm sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly. When I was working with Dr Don, I've been through a very, very traumatic few years really. Lost my dad, first and foremost, last July, which was the biggest trauma of my life. And it was a very difficult process that we went through before he died as well. And there's a lift, as you can imagine, my brain in a state of every night nightmares, fighting for his life, he's dying over, and over, and over, and over again.

Those memories are intruding into my daily life, whereas in anything and at any time, I could be triggered and be in a bawling state in the middle of the car park or the supermarket. Because something's triggered me that Dad liked to to buy or Dad, whatever the case was, and this was becoming... It's now a year after the event but everything was triggering me constantly. Of course, this is draining the life out of you and interfering with your ability to give focus to your business, to your family, to your friends, every other part of your life. I'd also been through the trauma of bringing Mum back from that mess of aneurysm that everyone knows about. The constant vigilance that is associated with bringing someone back and who is that far gone to where she is now, and the constant fear of her slipping backwards, and me missing something, especially in light of what I'd been through with my father. So I'd missed some things, obviously. That's why he ended up in that position and through his own choices as well.

But this load, and then losing a baby as well in the middle, baby Joseph. There was just a hell of a lot to deal with in the last five years. Then, put on top of it, this genetic combination of a hot mess you got sitting before you and you've got a whole lot of trauma to get through. So when we did the process, and I was very, super excited to do this process because it was so intrusive into my life, and I realised that I was slowly killing myself because I wasn't able to stop that process from taking over my life. I could function. I was highly functional. No one would know in a daily setting, but only because I've got enough tools to keep my shit together. so to speak. But behind closed doors, there's a lot of trauma going on.

So can you sort of, just in a high level, we don't want to go into the details. This is a four-hour program that I went through with Dr Don. What was going on there. and what did you actually help me with?

Dr Don: So when you're describing those things that were happening to you, what was actually happening to your mind is it was not okay with any of that. It wanted it to be different, right? So it was trying to get you into a state of action to stop your father from dying: Do it differently. Because it kept reviewing the data. It was almost looking at game tape from a game and saying 'Oh, had we maybe run the play that way, we would have avoided the tackle here.' So what your mind was saying 'Okay, run that way.' Well, you can't run that way. This is game tape. Right? But your mind doesn't see it as game tape. It sees it as real now, so it's run that way. So it keeps calling you into an action.

And especially with your dad because you were thinking about, 'Why didn't I do this?' Or 'Had I just done this, maybe this would have happened.' What your mind was saying is, 'Okay, let's do it. Let's do that.' What you just thought about. But you can't do that. It doesn't exist. It's information about something that happened but your mind sees it as real. That's why Hollywood have made trillions of dollars because they can convince you something on the screen is actually happening. That's why we cry in a movie or that's why we get scared in a movie. Because your mind, your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between real or imagined. So that's actually happening.

You were just talking about the movie with Bambi, right? When you were little. 'Why is nobody stopping this from happening?' So your mind was not okay with a lot of these things that were happening, and it kept calling you to make a difference. That's what I never understood my wife doing. That before I really researched this, my wife would always be saying, 'Don't you wish this hadn't have happened?' Or 'Don't you wish we hadn't done this?' What I didn't understand at the time, because I used to just get like, 'Okay, whatever.' She'd go, 'Yeah, but wouldn't it have been better?' She wanted to get me into this play with her, this exercise.

Lisa: This is going on in her head.

Dr Don: Because it's going on in her head, and she's trying to feel better. So she's creating these scenarios that would make her feel like, 'Well, if I had just done that, gosh that would have been nice, thinking about that life.' And her mind seeing that going, 'Oh, that would be nice. Well, let's do that. Yes.' So she was what if-ing her life. And it was something that she did very early as a child because that's how she just experienced something traumatic with her father. In her mind, she'd be going, 'Well, what if I had to just left 10 minutes earlier, and I had have escaped that?' Or 'What if I hadn't done this?' So that's what she was doing. It made no sense to me because I hadn't experienced her life, but that's what she was doing. Her mind was trying to fix something. It's never tried to hurt you. It was never, at any point, trying to make you feel bad. It was trying to protect you.

Lisa: Its job is to protect you from danger and it sees everything as you sit in the now so it's happening now. I love that analogy of these... What was it? Two-thirds of the car or something and...

Dr Don: So goat and snowflake?

Lisa: Goat and snowflake. And they're going off to a meeting and they're late. And what does the goat says to snowflake or the other way around?

Dr Don: So snowflake, which is your conscious mind, your logical reasonable part of your mind, there's only 5, says the goat 95%, which is your subconscious mind. Who runs into a traffic jam says, 'Oh, we're going to be late. We should have left 15 minutes earlier.' To which goat replies 'Okay, let's do it. Let's leave 15 minutes earlier because that would solve the problem.'

Lisa: That analogy is stuck in my head because you just cannot... It doesn't know that it's too late and you can't hop into the past because it only lives in the now. This is 95% of how our brain operates. That's why we can do things like, I was walking, I was at a strategy meeting in Auckland with my business partner two days ago. We were walking along the road and he suddenly tripped and fell onto the road, right? My subconscious reacted so fast, I grabbed him right, and punched him in the guts. I didn't mean to do that but my subconscious recognised in a millimeter of a second, millionth of a second, that he was falling and I had to stop him. So this is a good side of the survival network: stopping and falling into the traffic or onto the ground.

But the downside of it is that brain is operating only in the now and it can't... Like with my father, it was going 'Save him. Save him. Save him. Why are you not saving him?' Then that's calling for an action, and then my body is agitated. The cortisol level's up. The adrenaline is up, and I'm trying to do something that's impossible to fix. That can drive you to absolute insanity when that's happening every hour, every day.

Dr Don: Then that's taking a physical toll on your body because it's activating your nervous system, which is now, the cortisol levels are going up, adrenaline, right? So when your mind is in that constant state, it does very little on maintenance. It is not worried about fixing anything; it's worried about escaping or fixing the threat, because that's the number one priority.

Lisa: It doesn't know that it's not happening. I ended up with shingles for two months. I've only just gotten over it a few weeks ago. That's a definite sign of my body's, my immune system is down. Why is it down? Why can that virus that's been sitting dormant in my body for 40-something years suddenly decide now to come out? Because it's just becoming too much. I've spent too long in the fight or flight state and then your immune system is down. This is how we end up really ill.

Dr Don: We get sick. I was just actually having lunch today with a young lady and she's got some immune system issues. And I said, 'Think about it like the US Army, US military is the biggest, strongest military in the world. But if you took that military and you spread it out amongst 50 countries around the world fighting battles, and then somebody attacks the United States, I don't care how big and strong that system was, that military system was. It's going to be weakened when it gets an attack at the homefront.' So that's what was happening. So all of a sudden, now that virus that it could fight and keep dormant, it lets it pass by because it's like, 'Well, we can let that go. We'll catch that later. Right now, we got to go on the offensive and attack something else.'

Lisa: Yeah, and this is where autoimmune, like your daughter experienced...

Dr Don: About the Crohn's? Yep.

Lisa: Yep. She experienced that at 13 or something ridiculous?

Dr Don: 14, she got it. Then she also got idiopathic pulmonary hemosiderosis which is another lung autoimmune disorder where the iron in the blood would just cause the lungs to release the blood. So her lungs just starts filling up with blood. They had no idea what caused it, that's the idiopathic part of it, and they just basically said, 'There's no cure. She just needs to live close to a hospital because she'll bleed out if she has another attack.' Only 1 in 1.2 million people ever get that. So it's very rare so there's no research being done for it. They just basically say, 'If you get it, live close to a hospital.' That's the strategy.

Lisa: That's the way of fixing it.

Dr Don: And so both of those are autoimmune, and ever since we've gone to the program, she's hasn't had a flare-up of either one of those. Because I think our system is directly now able to address those thing