109: Trauma Therapy and the 5R’s of Emotional Detox

Transcript of Episode 109: Trauma Therapy and the 5R's of Emotional Detox

With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra, and special guest Suzanne Rucker. We also recommend learning about EFT tapping for anxiety and emotional detox.

Meredith:
This is Episode 109, and I have Dr. Pompa here, of course. And today we have special guest Suzanne Rucker, and before we jump in, I’m going to tell you a little bit about Suzanne. Suzanne Rucker is a licensed Mental Health Therapist in the state of Florida. She’s also a Certified EMDR Therapist and Trauma Expert. She’s the owner of Orlando Intensive, and offers a 3-Day Trauma Intensive for those seeking resolution to their trauma. She’s been featured professionally on the Discovery Channel, and you can read more about Suzanne at suzannerucker.com. So welcome, Suzanne and Dr. Pompa, to the show.

Suzanne:
Thank you.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, mm-hmm.

Meredith:
Okay, so excited to have you here. This is a really interesting topic talking about emotional detox and trauma and some things that we’ve discussed a little bit on the show before but haven’t really delved into this deeply. So before we start off and dive into more of what you do, I’m kind of curious about how you got interested in EMDR and trauma therapy in the first place.

Suzanne:
Yeah. That’s a great question. Actually, I’m an Addiction Specialist, and so looking at the spectrum of addictions, there’s always or most usually a trauma component to most addictions. So if you’re going to heal addictions, you’ve got to first start, as Dr. Pompa says, upstream. So you’ve got to start with the trauma, and heal the trauma in the brain and in the body. If you don’t do that, chances are that the addictions will continue. So that’s how I got interested in it.

Meredith:
Mm-hmm, awesome.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No. It’s amazing. Because how we got onto this topic, Suzanne, you had watched the show that I did with Phil.

Suzanne:
Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
It was talking about emotional detox, right? And I was—we made the point of how important it is to remove emotional stressors, in this case emotional trauma, right, as a part of somebody’s healing, and how that affects not just the brain but the entire body. And so often, when I’m dealing with clients, when someone’s not progressing the way we’d expect by removing chemical interference or chemical stressors, we look to the emotional stressors that people have. So from that show—you had watched that show, and you said I have to add to it. And you asked me some questions on the show, and I said, hey, let’s do a show on that. Because I realized what you do with this, the EMDR, is added to that. So talk a little bit about that because you did see the show. You loved the show, but you felt like this was in addition too. Explain that.

Suzanne:
Right. I thought Phil did a great job, and he was talking about changing the thinking. And I think for most people or a majority of people you can change your thinking. However, if you’ve had childhood trauma or you’ve had an adult acute trauma, it’s really, really difficult to change that thinking. So if you talk about people that have panic attacks, well, you can’t just say to them, well, think to yourself it’s okay. You’re safe. You’re all right. It doesn’t stop the panic attack.

So why is that? Because a panic attack is coming from a different part of the brain. The thinking comes from the prefrontal cortex, and I’m going to go over all this in—yeah, in my diagram that I emailed Meredith. The thinking comes from the prefrontal cortex, but trauma comes into the midbrain, in the limbic area, the amygdala, the hippocampus, that area of the brain. And that area of the brain, that midbrain or limbic system, is always going to win the battle between the midbrain and the prefrontal cortex. So prefrontal cortex is saying you’re okay. It’s—you’re fine. You’re safe. But that midbrain or the limbic system is what keeps us alive.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah and that’s where the middle brain, that primitive brain, that limbic system that you’re referring to…

Suzanne:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That’s where we store memories. That’s how we know that—not to touch the stove, right, because, oh, we got burned. And then, of course, we store that there, and that’s also the system that drives our hormone system, right? I mean, that’s, of course, because we have adrenaline associated with certain memories. So if we have a bad memory, we can think about that, and we can drive that same chemistry throughout the body. Correct?

Suzanne:
Exactly.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay. So and we discussed that, right? So with Phil, we talked a little bit about that, and how our thoughts can obviously re-pattern the memory. However, with severe trauma people, people that have a lot of trauma, they have trouble even getting to the thoughts.

Suzanne:
Exactly. Because that limbic system overrides the prefrontal cortex, which is the rational and logical thinking part of the brain, in order to keep us alive.

Dr. Pompa:
Right, absolutely. Yeah. So okay, so…

Meredith:
Something to add in too, oh, in case anybody’s wondering. The episode everyone is referring to with Phil is Episode 102 on Emotional Healing, so if you’re listening for the first time, missed that episode, check out 102.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. So I think someone watching that episode then would say, yeah, I just—the thoughts are the problem for me, right? I mean, we’re saying, hey, eventually change your thoughts. Become a new habit, even speaking the words. Even though your thoughts aren’t there yet, eventually you can form new habits, etc., new neuropathways. But your point, people that have had severe trauma, we have trouble even with changing the thoughts to even change the neurology.

Suzanne:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
And this is where the EMDR comes in.

Suzanne:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
Let’s back up though. I want to back up just for a minute.

Suzanne:
Sure.

Dr. Pompa:
We’ll talk about that and how to add to what Phil and I discussed with the EMDR. But I think a lot of people would say, okay, great. We get trauma affects the brain. It affects—it’s held in this memory in the center of the brain.

Suzanne:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
And you start to live out of those memories, and it becomes who we are. So maybe we need a little more explanation there but then a little more explanation or reminder how then that affects the body and, potentially, why we’re not healing from some sickness or why we don’t feel well. So go through that just so people can relate to what we’re talking about before we move to what is EMDR and how that is an answer, an additional answer.

Suzanne:
Yes. Right. Okay, can I—I’m going to show you the diagram of my brain.

Dr. Pompa:
I love it.

Suzanne:
Can you see that?

Dr. Pompa:
Perfect.

Suzanne:
Okay. So this area is the prefrontal cortex, right? That’s the logical, rational thinking part of the brain. That’s a part of the brain that says you’re okay. You know when you’re having a panic attack? It’s saying you’re okay. You’re safe. But the panic attack is coming from this area, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Suzanne:
You have the amygdala, which holds the emotions. You have the hippocampus, which you were talking about, the memories. It’s like a filing cabinet of trauma. Now trauma, a lot of people think that trauma is things like rape, and robbery, and car accidents, and things like that. But you’ve really got to take a look at childhood trauma. Neglect, any kind of abuse: sexual, verbal, emotional, physical. You’ve also got to look at abandonment in childhood, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Mm-hmm.

Suzanne:
So there’s big traumas, which are acute, and then you’ve got your small traumas, which add up over time in childhood.

Dr. Pompa:
Now what about me? I always say my first trauma was not knowing how to read, right? I had dyslexia. I—if I was called on to read, I mean, it was traumatic for me. It was. I just—it was horrifically embarrassing, and I mean, is that enough trauma?

Suzanne:
Absolutely, absolutely. So the amygdala, what the amygdala said was this is fear, right, or what have you, whatever emotion that you felt. I’m assuming it was fear, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, fear, embarrassment.

Suzanne:
And then the hippocampus held the memory of maybe a teacher saying what’s wrong with you, or another student laughing at you, whatever the memory was, right? So then whenever you’re called on to read, these two join together to keep you alive. And the thing about the limbic system, a lot of this is unconscious material.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Suzanne:
You don’t even know that it’s there. It just is.

Dr. Pompa:
Mm-hmm.

Suzanne:
And I think Phil was talking about a fire and a crow or something like that, and how he linked the two together whereas if there’s a fire, there’s a crow. Well, I’m going to give a trauma example here in a little bit, and show you how this exactly works. Now this part of the brain, this limbic system, is connected to the body through the brain stem, through the autonomic nervous system, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Suzanne:
And you have the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system running down. The sympathetic is your fight and flight.

Dr. Pompa:
Correct.

Suzanne:
Okay. And then your parasympathetic is your freeze. So the sympathetic is the gas. The parasympathetic is the brake.

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Suzanne:
In fact, when people are traumatized, they usually use one or the—one of the two, the parasympathetic or the sympathetic.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay.

Suzanne:
If they use the sympathetic, their body gets charged up.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay.

Suzanne:
Ready for survival, right? If they use the parasympathetic, they freeze. You know when animals play dead in order to survive? Some people do that in traumatic situations, so they use usually one or the other. But it can affect both eventually. And this—the effect of trauma can go on for decades. That’s what people don’t understand. They’re like, oh, no. That was way, way back in childhood. I’m fine now. I don’t even want to look at my childhood.

Dr. Pompa:
Mm-hmm.

Suzanne:
But you have to look at the childhood, especially if people are having a problem, and with adult issues, you’ve got to take a look at the childhood.

Dr. Pompa:
So how do people live if they’re stuck in the sympathetic fight or flight versus the parasympathetic? Because you’re saying that they can almost be stuck in one neurological response versus the other, and what does that look like?

Suzanne:
So if you think of the sympathetic, they’re stuck in the gas go mode, right? So I’ll read a list of things that it affects: heart rate increases, so the cardiovascular system; the nervous system, the blood pressure goes up; respiratory system, breathing increases; muscular system, so the muscles can tense up and even create headaches; the gastrointestinal system, a lot of stomachaches or digestive issues; the endocrine system, right, constant release of cortisol into the system. You can imagine what that’s doing to someone over time.

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Suzanne:
Right? The skin, a lot of sweating will happen. The pancreas, the blood sugar rises. There’s a production of insulin. The immune system is repressed, so all of these symptoms result in night terrors, difficulty concentrating, overall agitation, and extreme startle reflex. So whenever I’m out in public and let’s just say a car backfires or somebody drops a glass in a restaurant, and usually I can tell someone that’s been traumatized because they have an extreme—yes.

Dr. Pompa:
Mm-hmm.

Suzanne:
They have a real reaction to that, right? How about people that have anger or rage? People that have road rage? That is a trauma response.

Dr. Pompa:
Wow. Yeah.

Meredith:
Yeah. It’s true.

Suzanne:
Feelings of being numb, right, or disconnected, body aches and pains, muscle and joint pain, lower back pain, chronic fatigue, palpitations, dizziness, insomnia, fibromyalgia, weight gain or weight loss, right, and then we’re getting into depression, anxiety, panic attacks, phobia, PTSD. So you can see what this does to the body. It wreaks havoc on the entire system. There’s not a system in the body that is not reached by trauma.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That’s interesting because it—I was just thinking as you read those, so many of those symptoms are also linked to chemical stress, right, chemical interference. And yet, and I always say, the body reacts the same, whether it’s physical, chemical, or emotional stress, but I think that people ignore the emotions.

Suzanne:
They do.

Dr. Pompa:
Especially because a lot of people have suppressed a lot of the trauma to survive, but yet, they’re still living from that midbrain, right? So we see people that are creating a certain environment, creating a certain life, living a certain way. They become this person all because of how the trauma affected their midbrain. And now, literally, the cells in their body become this person from the trauma.

Suzanne:
Absolutely.

Dr. Pompa:
And it could happen epigenetically, I mean, neuropathways. So here you are today. Our identity, the way people know us is literally formed from these stressors in our life, whether chemical, physical, or emotional, and you just proved the point of emotional.

Suzanne:
Yes. Emotional can be a real big one. And a lot of people say, oh, but that happened a long time ago. I don’t even think about that anymore. You may not consciously think of it.

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Suzanne:
But it’s the—that midbrain or that limbic system that holds that unconscious material. And that material gets dysfunctionally stored in there. So that area becomes hyperactive, and when it’s hyperactive, you’re constantly scanning your environment for threats.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Suzanne:
There may not be any, but that midbrain says that there is.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Suzanne:
Right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. You become untrusting. They live their life—I mean, do some of these people actually even create that emotion around them? I mean, it’s—they almost create a certain environment around them that I don’t know if they—it feels more normal to them, or they just need that to adapt through their day. Because I see certain responses from people that have these traumas.

Suzanne:
Yes. And it could be unconsciously as well, right?

Dr. Pompa:
I believe most of it would be unconsciously. Yeah.

Suzanne:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
They don’t realize they’re doing it. Nor do they have control of it.

Suzanne:
Yeah. So I wanted to talk about what is trauma? Well, trauma is different to a lot of people. It really depends on your personality, your genetic makeup, and it also depends on your childhood. What was your attachment like to mom? Was it a secure attachment, right? So something that might traumatize you might not traumatize me or vice versa.

Dr. Pompa:
I didn’t think of that. Yeah.

Suzanne:
Right? So trauma is events that occur without warning. Something that you were not prepared to deal with. So imagine if you’re dealing with maybe a death in the family, and then you’re in a car wreck. Well, that car wreck may then traumatize you because you’re already traumatized from the death of someone in your family, right? So it weakens your system. The more trauma you pile on, the weaker you get. It’s like you can’t rebound, right?

Dr. Pompa:
It’s the same with toxicity. How I give the—your bucket’s overflowing. The higher it is, just a little bit of stress of any type overflows it.

Suzanne:
Exactly.

Dr. Pompa:
It bioaccumulated through their life. You’re saying it’s the same thing with emotional trauma, which is interesting.

Suzanne:
Exactly. So you think of those people that have a lot of childhood trauma, layer, upon layer, upon layer of trauma. Let’s just say that they get into a car wreck, right? They’re going to be traumatized, and then they’re going to be fearful every time they come to that intersection. They’re going to go into a panic attack or what have you because of all the childhood trauma. So you’re right. It’s the bucket gets too full.

Dr. Pompa:
So people that have a lot of chemical exposures through their lifetime, that puts them on age—on edge for just that one little emotional trauma that maybe you or I would bounce back from.

Suzanne:
Exactly.

Dr. Pompa:
Okay. I love that. That’s great.

Suzanne:
Exactly. So any kind of chronic childhood abuse or neglect, now abuse can be verbal. It can be emotional. It can be sexual. It can be physical, even events that left you feeling remorseful without a resolution. So you think you did something wrong, or you should’ve done something. So once again, the big teaser things like—the big traumas are things like rape, robbery, automobile accidents, obviously war and natural disasters, even being fired. That is a big trauma for a lot of people, divorce, witness to an accident. How about miscarriage? That’s a huge trauma, right, cancer diagnosis, illness of a loved one, betrayal from a spouse or a friend.

The little tease, now these are chronic, and they’re usually in childhood: abandonment, neglect. What if you were bullied in the schoolyard all the time, right? That really adds up. What I see a lot of and a lot of people don’t think about this is an abusive teacher. So in other words, a teacher holds your test up, and says you didn’t study for this test and humiliates you in front of the class. That is a trauma. So if you think about trauma, it’s a lot broader than what most people think. They think, oh, rape and robbery or what have you, right? So it can be a lot broader than that.

Dr. Pompa:
So I mean, then when I got sick, my sickness, of course, physical trauma was obvious, having chronic mercury exposure. But it became emotional trauma.

Suzanne:
Absolutely.

Dr. Pompa:
So the double whammy. Compared to most, I grew up trauma free. The dyslexia was my first. My sickness was my second major, anyway. I mean, of course, it sounds like we all have small traumas in between everything. It’s a matter of how we detox the traumas just like we detox the chemicals. We’re all exposed to chemicals. Genetically, some of us get rid of the chemicals much better but some of us bioaccumulate even the small stuff. It’s amazing the correlation here.

Suzanne:
Yes, absolutely, and going back to my brain, so you have the amygdala and the hippocampus which sends signals down to the hypothalamus when activated. So you can imagine what that does, and then the hypothalamus then sends signals down through the autonomic nervous system.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. And the hypothalamus is what tells the pituitary what to do.

Suzanne:
Correct.

Dr. Pompa:
The pituitary runs our thyroid and our adrenal glands.

Suzanne:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
Most of the hormonal system. So that sits up there as a control tower, if you will.

Suzanne:
Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
Taking in information from the midbrain and from the rest of the body and then driving it, a response, through our adrenal glands, our thyroid and our hormonal system. So hormonally then, we are now victim because of something that’s being driven from a memory from our childhood. So it’s now driving our hormones. Interesting.

Suzanne:
Absolutely. So let me give you a trauma example. Let’s just say I was at the mall. I was out in the parking lot, and a tall white man with red hair, a white sweatshirt, and a black hat knocked me down. I hit on my right elbow, and he snatched my purse. That’s a robbery, right? That’s a trauma. So the amygdala is going to say fear. The prefrontal cortex is actually going to say I’m not safe, even maybe a decade later, right? It gets stuck dysfunctionally, and then the hippocampus is obviously going to register tall white man with red hair, white sweatshirt, black hat, mall parking lot, unconscious material.

So then every time I go to the mall and I’m in the parking lot—let’s just say it’s 20 years later. And all of a sudden my heart starts racing, and I go into a panic attack. And I’m thinking what is wrong with me? Why am I into a panic attack because I’m walking in the mall parking lot? It’s because this area remembers.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I call that a negative anchor.

Suzanne:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. You’re anchored into that.

Suzanne:
And it activates the body into that fight or flight, right?

Dr. Pompa:
I mean, I know that if—there’s rape victims. If they smell the same smell that they smelled, let’s say it’s a cologne; it would immediately create the exact same adrenal response. The same chemicals released, everything, without obviously—they relive it. The body doesn’t know. The subconscious thinks it’s the same situation. It literally creates the same chemicals.

Suzanne:
And how many people see a therapist for anxiety and depression or PTSD, a lot of people, right? And a lot of people are medicated for these things, and it’s simply—and I say simply loosely. It is trauma. If you can clear the trauma out of this midbrain, you’re no longer going to have that anxiety. You will no longer have the panic attacks.

Dr. Pompa:
You know what’s so funny is is that when I talk about how people get sick from fillings?

Suzanne:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
I knew that my problem was my hypothalamus pituitary, and I knew that that was driving my thyroid, my adrenals, and my hormone system to malfunction. I narrowed it down to that. So that was chemicals that bioaccumulated, and according to studies, that’s where the mercury ends up, that hypothalamus.

Suzanne:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
Trauma is doing the exact same thing. I mean, the…

Suzanne:
It’s in the same area, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. And here’s the funny part. Now then after I got the mercury detoxed from my brain, I got my energy back, all these things better, I was left with a chemical sensitivity from my planet. I was realizing that every perfume, every carpet, everything—and it was—yeah, my body was going danger, danger.

Suzanne:
Danger, danger.

Dr. Pompa:
It was the same response with one system because it remembered that that would make me not feel well. So it neurologically drove that pattern, but it was all from what was stored in that—in the amygdala, the emotion.

Suzanne:
Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
Which is driving my hypothalamus and driving the hormonal reaction.

Suzanne:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
We have been watching this that that’s the case. So that’s another example of what you’re talking about.

Suzanne:
Yes. And you were over—you were able to overcome that by changing your thinking, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Suzanne:
And yet—and that goes back to a really strong foundation in your life, a good attachment to mom, a good childhood. So you had a really strong foundation.

Dr. Pompa:
I did.

Suzanne:
Think of those people that don’t have that.

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Suzanne:
They can’t do what you did.

Dr. Pompa:
And that was your point.

Suzanne:
Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
You said listen, Dr. Pompa, let me tell you about people that are going to have trouble with that. And I said, yeah. I get that. I heard you. I heard you. That’s why I said let’s do this show.

Okay. So that brings us right into it. So there’s people watching this. They’re out there. You could have physical issues that aren’t clearing up, and it could be this trauma. Where do we start? What is EMDR? What is it, and why does it work, and how does it get to this midbrain?

Suzanne:
Well, EMDR therapy stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. That’s a big old long word. What it really is is it’s bilateral stimulation of the brain, and bilateral simply means back and forth, right? So some therapists will use their fingertip, and the patient will watch the fingertip with their eyes going back and forth, right? What I use is headphones. I find that easier. And the headphones simply have alternating beeps to the ears. What the theory is is that it’s like REM sleep. When you sleep at night, right, and your eyes are going back and forth rapidly, and you wake up, and maybe a situation that when you went to bed, when you went to sleep, was really disturbing, it’s not as disturbing in the morning. It’s because of the REM sleep, the rapid eye movement, right?

So going back to my diagram, with bilateral stimulation, you’re hitting the prefrontal cortex. You’re hitting this limbic system, which, by the way, in talk therapy does very little to this area. That’s why EMDR therapy is so beneficial. Because it—it’s kind of like a rotor rooter in plumbing. You’ve got a clog. We’re going to unclog it. We’re going to push it out of the system, right? And EMDR therapy also involves the body. So like my trauma example of being pushed down in the mall parking lot, right? I fell on my right elbow. If I would to receive EMDR therapy for that, my negative thought would be I’m not safe. My amygdala would be fear, and then the hippocampus would be the image that represented the worst part of the robbery, which could’ve been the robber’s face or whatever.

And so what you do in EMDR therapy is you hold those in your thoughts, right? The image, the sensation in my right elbow because I fell on my right elbow, and the fear. And what it does is it’ll take something that is really disturbing—so we do a scale from zero to ten, ten being the most disturbing. And what EMDR does—and it can easily do it in an hour. I’ve seen it happen in an hour.

Dr. Pompa:
Wow.

Suzanne:
Really, really traumatic events in an hour can desensitize down to a zero or a one with their disturbance. So imagine that I had gotten robbed in the mall parking lot. My disturbance was a ten. I was having panic attacks. I’m at Target. In front of me is a tall white man with red hair. I’m going into a panic attack. I call my therapist. I get EMDR therapy. It’s going to take the disturbance down to a zero or a one so that I can go to Target, and see a tall white man with red hair, and not have an emotional, or a cognitive, or a physical response to a tall white man with red hair.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, fascinating. Wow. So, I mean, with that said, do you have to go through every trauma? I mean, so you have—do you have someone write down all the traumas, and you take one trauma at a time? Once you do one, is there an affect that it just clears them all? I mean, how does that work?

Suzanne:
Yes. There can be a domino effect, so that’s what I normally see. So let’s just say that in childhood you were physically abused. So here physically abused and let’s just say you were smacked around 50 times. You’re not going to have to do 50 sessions. You might only have to do two or three to actually clear that trauma. And the reason that I keep going back to childhood, imagine if I have a weed coming out of the ground. This is 18 years plus, and then that weed has a root system, right? This is 0 to 18. If you just deal with adult issues, adult traumas, and you have childhood trauma, that weed is going to grow back. You have to address the childhood trauma.

Now let’s just say you’ve had a car wreck, and you’re fearful to drive, and you just want to do the car accident. You can do that. But if you have a lot of childhood trauma, chances are it’s going to ignite a lot of this as well. So that’s something that you definitely want to deal with is the childhood. And a lot of people don’t—they think that EMDR therapy is just for something like a car accident, or a rape, or a robbery. It’s not. It’s for a lot of different things.

Dr. Pompa:
Wow.

Suzanne:
If you have anxiety, or depression, or anything like that, you ought to consider what’s happened to me in my life? What I like to do is I like to start with my patients primary negative cognitions. I’m not good enough. I have to be perfect to please everyone. I’m not safe. Things like that. I find out what’s going on in their thoughts. And then go back in time, and say where did that come from? Why are you thinking you’re not good enough? Well, you know, I brought home a C on my report card, and my dad told me I was a dummy, and I’d never amount to anything. There’s your target, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Suzanne:
And so a lot of people say how long will I be in EMDR therapy? It really just depends. If you had a really good childhood and a really good attachment to mom and you’ve had an adult acute trauma, I’ve had adult acute traumas that clear in two or three sessions.

Dr. Pompa:
Wow.

Suzanne:
Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Suzanne:
And their symptoms are gone. They’re asymptomatic.

Dr. Pompa:
Because I guess it’s just like anything else. People are doing detox downstream, doing a colon cleanse, right, a liver cleanse, and that could be useful. Let’s compare that to just talk therapy, right?

Suzanne:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
So it’s down here. However, the problem is in the midbrain, and you made the comment that talk therapy does very little for the trauma that’s in the midbrain.

Suzanne:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
Therefore, you’re downstream. You’re doing a colon cleanse as opposed to really getting upstream to the cellular level, and what I always say, in particular, the brain.

Suzanne:
Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
But in this case, the midbrain is really what this therapy does is it gets to really where the big cause is. It’s so—the similarities with true cellular detox, right, Meredith, in how we say you have to get to the brain, in particular, the hypothalamus pituitary.

Suzanne:
Right.

Dr. Pompa:
It’s remarkable actually. Yeah.

Suzanne:
Yes. It does. It is remarkable. And I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of these cases, and the results are absolutely phenomenal. I mean, I absolutely would not believe it if I didn’t see it for myself, the results. I have people that have panic attacks that can’t even go to a grocery store. There’s some kind of trigger from a grocery store. And we’ll do this kind of therapy, and then I’ll go to the grocery store with them, and they’re fine. Elevators, a lot—I go on a lot of elevators, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Suzanne:
Right? Flying, so there’s so many things that hold people back in life. Not only does this affix—affect them physically, but it affects their life where they can’t get on a plane, or they can’t get on an elevator, or they—they’re fearful of the grocery store or what have you. It can—there’s a remedy for it, right? And that is this EMDR therapy.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That’s remarkable. I mean, I know that a lot of those people that manifest in this way, they also have just control issues. I mean, they—it manifests trying to control everything in their life. I mean, how does that tie in?

Suzanne:
Well, if you think about that midbrain or that limbic system being hyperactive all of the time, it is telling that person that everything is dangerous. So you have to then control your environment. So people that are like control freaks, you realize that that’s just their anxiety up to here. Why is there anxiety up to here? Now anxiety can have a genetic component to it, right? But there can also, most likely, be some type of trauma component that’s causing their anxiety. That’s making them want to control their environment and everyone else.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would argue that the gene gets turned on. We all have susceptibilities, right? Mother had anxiety. Yeah, but what trauma, physical, chemical, or emotional triggered the gene? Really, that’s what we learned is the genetic component.

Suzanne:
Exactly.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. It’s amazing how many people with chemical problems, chemical detox issues, have anxiety and sleep issues as well, and here you’re saying the exact same thing.

Suzanne:
Well and a medical condition, a serious medical condition can create a trauma, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Oh, yeah. It happened to me. I mean, my was traumatic, right, absolutely.

Suzanne:
Exactly. And so that’s just the spiral down the rabbit hole, right?

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No doubt. It’s really hard to get people to understand how their childhood, their traumas can affect their physical being later. It really is. I mean, I hope people listening get that and get that connection. Because a lot of people that watch this show, they’re watching it to find an answer for why they all of a sudden can’t lose weight, why they can’t gain weight, or why they don’t feel well still despite have a perfect diet and exercising. I always say look upstream. There’s a stressor that still is there, physical, chemical, or emotional in one format or another, and this is proof positive to what we say. So Meredith, I know you probably have some questions as well. This is an interest of yours.

Meredith:
Yeah. I do, and I’m thinking too people may be watching in or just interested in exploring this therapy. And they’re wondering what does a session look like? What—how do you approach EMDR with a client? What could someone expect from a session?

Suzanne:
Yeah. That’s a great question. So normally, whenever I get a new client, the intake session, I’m going to be looking at their history, including their childhood. And also, what is their primary negative cognitions that are going on in their life? So we’re really getting a really good history is number one. That’s the first session.

The second session is normally preparing for EMDR. So preparing is creating a safe place. Resource development, frontloading, those are all different names for making sure that the patient is able to go from something really, really emotional that has a lot of charge to it back to a safe place, a calm place. So they’d have to be able to do that in order to do EMDR. And we practice that in session. That’s session number two.

Session number three is normally going ahead and processing a target. So you have the target, which would be the image that represents the worse part. So in my trauma example, it would be the face of this white guy with red hair, right? My negative cognition would be I’m not safe, or I’m in danger. My emotion would be fear. My body sensation, I might feel it in my stomach. I might feel it in my chest. I might feel it in my throat.

A lot of people feel things in their throat because they didn’t have a voice when they were a child. A lot of people get headaches doing EMDR as well. So a lot of times I see the trauma moving around. But in my example, maybe my right elbow because I fell on my right elbow. I’ve actually had clients when I was doing EMDR therapy with them that would scream out in pain in certain areas of their body. That’s because the trauma was clearing out of the body. So you can imagine how freeing it is. Most people say it’s a freeing experience. I feel like weights have been lifted of off them each and every session.

Dr. Pompa:
Right.

Suzanne:
Yes. So when we do EMDR therapy, we’re targeting the thinking, the fear, the body sensation. And we’re taking all of those, and what happens is the bilateral stimulation goes on for about 20 seconds. And then I stop the machine, and I ask them what came up for you? They may have a new image. They may say, oh, my gosh. I remember his black hat.

Dr. Pompa:
Wow. Wow.

Suzanne:
Or they may say I’m having a pain in my side right now. Well, it’s a very holistic process in that we just go with what the body and the brain is doing. We don’t try to force anything. The more that the patient just lets go and lets the process happen, that’s really when it starts to work, right? So we process that target, and we try to get the disturbance down to a zero by the time that patient leaves the office, right? And then I prep them telling them they may have some dreams. They may have some nightmares. They may even have some physical sensations or emotions outside of the office.

And if they do, the next time they come back they report that. And then we check to see if the disturbance is still clear, or if maybe it went up to a two or a three, what new information do they have, and what needs to be processed all the way out then? And usually, that is it for that particular target.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. It’s remarkable. It’s the same with chemical detox. We call it true cellular detox. This will be true cellular emotional detox. It’s remarkable. I mean, my gosh. I mentioned my traumas.

Suzanne:
Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
I want to get it done.

Suzanne:
Yeah.

Dr. Pompa:
I’m all about removing any interference.

Suzanne:
So there’s also something called future template that we do in EMDR therapy. So let’s just say that with my trauma—the tall white guy with red hair, let’s just say that, with a therapist, that has been cleared out and the disturbance is now zero. Then we do a future template. We imagine if I go to Target, and I imagine being in line with a tall white guy with red hair and a black hat. I imagine being there so that when I go out into the public and I see a person that is similar to my robber, I’m okay. I don’t have a reaction to it. So that’s called future template, which is also done in EMDR therapy.

Dr. Pompa:
I have to ask the obvious question. Because I’m sure people are like me right now. Gosh, they want it done. I mean, I have clients from all over the world. I do with Skype, and I coach them back to health. I teach them the detox pathway. I teach them the whole process.

Suzanne:
Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
And what about this? I mean, how does someone find an EMDR practitioner?

Suzanne:
Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
What do they do?

Suzanne:
Good question. I think the best way is probably go on psychologytoday.com and find an EMDR therapist in your area. I would highly recommend that you go with someone that is certified in this therapy. It’s a five-day training. A lot of therapists get trained for five days, and they’re out of the gate and doing it. And I have had such abreactions in my office to doing this therapy. You need a therapist that knows how to deal with something that might come up.

For instance, I did have a client who was at the age of 4 exposed to a fire up close, and she had inhaled the smoke from the fire. And this had created a huge trauma for her. And when we were processing, she started choking. I mean, she literally thought she was back in the fire. And I literally had to grab her and shake her, and bring her back to my room. So you want to make sure it’s a therapist that has done numbers, hundreds and hundreds of EMDR therapies with clients or patients. You also want to make sure they’re certified. Certified means they have been with a supervisor. They have been filmed doing EMDR therapy, and they’ve been certified doing it.

Dr. Pompa:
Perfect. Meredith, questions?

Meredith:
I want to try it too. And I think, as well, as you’ve been saying, the alignment with the 5R’s of true cellular detox in healing is uncanny, and I love that you sent too, Suzanne, over your 5R’s of emotional detox. So I thought we could just go through those a little bit too and expose them.

Suzanne:
Sure.

Meredith:
Because they overlap so much with what Dr. Pompa does. And so your R1 is also to remove. But you’re removing the trauma that is lodged in the brain and body.

Suzanne:
Right. And that—yes, that is done through the bilateral stimulation. So as you do the bilateral stimulation, you’re removing the trauma from not only the brain, but it’ll move around in the body and eventually work its way out. That’s the beauty of it. And my patients can feel it. They’ll be like, well, my—it moved from my stomach to my rib, or it moved from my rib to my chest, or it’s in my throat now. And it kind of freaks them out, and I have to normalize it for them. And I have to say that’s perfectly normal. It’s just the trauma working itself out. Just keep going with it. You’re perfectly okay, right?

Meredith:
You had mentioned before about a machine.

Suzanne:
I’m sorry.

Meredith:
Is that what you were referring to? They’re hooked up to a machine?

Suzanne:
Yes. I use headphones that apply alternating beeps. That’s the bilateral stimulation.

Meredith:
That’s the stimulation. Awesome, got it. All right, so your R2 then is to regenerate new thinking. I love that.

Suzanne:
Yes. And that is in that prefrontal cortex, right? That thinking part of the brain that may say I’m not safe. So we’re going to go from, like in my trauma example, I’m not safe to maybe I’m a survivor. There’s a big difference in between I’m not safe and, hey, you know what? I survived that. I was robbed. But you know what? I’m okay, and I survived it so regenerating new thinking. And that’s what the bilateral will do is it’ll change that thought process from something negative to positive.

Meredith:
Huge, huge, love it. All right, R3, restore the body to health.

Suzanne:
Yes. And so that is that trauma moving out of the body, right? Restoring the body because how can the body heal if the body is having trauma responses? If it’s constantly agitated, the body cannot heal.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Suzanne:
So you’ve got to get the trauma out of the body, right?

Dr. Pompa:
That’s right. It’s awesome.

Meredith:
Do you recommend any exercise or diet protocols along with the EMDR?

Suzanne:
What I tell people is to walk briskly. Because if you think of walking or running, that’s a bilateral stimulation because your feet are going like this, right? And so that—I believe that really helps the therapy along.

Meredith:
Okay. Great, all right and R4 is to reduce negative emotions.

Suzanne:
Right. And so that’s that amygdala, which is in that midbrain or limbic system. So in my trauma example, it was fear, right? And we want to reduce that fear down to zero or one, right? Where that when I see somebody that’s tall with red hair, I might go, oh, maybe I ought to be careful, but no big deal, right, reduce the fear. So that’s that amygdala area that holds those negative emotions whenever we’re traumatized.

Meredith:
Okay. Love it. And last one, R5. Reestablish homeostasis in the body and brain.

Suzanne:
Yes. And so that is the outcome, homeostasis, right, for the brain. We’ve got new thinking. We’ve got new emotions, and now we have a body that’s calm and relaxed, homeostasis.

Dr. Pompa:
A new habit is formed when this equals this, right?

Suzanne:
Exactly.

Dr. Pompa:
And ultimately, that forms a new identity. You know?

Suzanne:
Yes. I did want to mention real quickly secondary gains, and that is when someone wants to be sick.

Dr. Pompa:
Mm-hmm. I was going to ask you about that. Yep. Identity, they want to be. It’s their identity.

Suzanne:
It’s their identity, or they’re getting some kind of gain out of being sick, right? Such as, well, if I’m in bed with depression, I don’t have to do the laundry, and I don’t have to clean the house. My husband will do it, right? And so if I have a patient that’s not getting better, I have to take a look at what is holding them back. And one of the sessions that we do with bilateral might be what are you getting out of being sick? What is it? And we just process that because it can even be unconscious.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.

Suzanne:
Maybe they were little, and they got pneumonia, and mom for the first time in their life paid attention to them. You got to take a look at the secondary gains. Why people stay sick? And they may not even consciously be aware of it.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No, it’s so true. Yeah. I would say not. Yeah. Wow. I mean, incredible. That was a fast time. I mean, it was like I just –I learned so much. I’m going to re-watch the show.

But I think—I know our viewers and listeners got a lot out of that Meredith. Because I know that we have so many people, Suzanne. They just watch this show just looking for why they’re still stuck.

Suzanne:
Absolutely.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. And we’re always telling them go upstream. You have to get to the cause. If you’re not progressing, there’s still something there, physical, chemical. In this case, most definitely could be emotional. I mean, no doubt about it because we repress a lot of those traumas. We don’t see them, or like you pointed out, a lot of the traumas that we didn’t even think were traumas could absolutely be traumas because you had chemical stress. Listen, a lot of our viewers, they get lead from their mom in utero. They got mercury from mom’s fillings in utero. They come out stressed.

Suzanne:
Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
And then it’s one, a few more traumas, even as babies, and then as children, it seemed minor to them. But yet, it was massive to their nerve system and their central brain.

Suzanne:
Absolutely.

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. And here they are sick today, and that’s just filling that bucket even more so.

Suzanne:
Yes.

Dr. Pompa:
If you’re listening or watching, you have to empty the bucket. But there’s emotional stuff in that bucket too, and I think this is great. I hope—I know we’re going to get a lot of emails. I know we’re going to get a lot of questions, but you gave them resource. Are there people—are there trained people just about in every city, every major…

Suzanne:
Yes. Yes. Make sure that they’re certified.

Dr. Pompa:
I mean, if they couldn’t find someone, could you do it via Skype? Could you do it virtually?

Suzanne:
No. No.

Dr. Pompa:
No. Yeah. You had said that before.

Suzanne:
I could do it in Florida. They could come to Orlando. I could do it in Florida, but not via Skype. They’d have…

Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. That makes sense. Because you have to have—right. It’s not like—yeah. We’re able to do that. But, yeah, so, well, that is so—thank you so much for coming on.

Suzanne:
You’re very welcome. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely. I mean, I feel like we have two really good shows to help people with this area that I know is holding people back. And I always say, hey, I’m not the expert here, but we’ll bring you the experts. And thank you. So thank…

Suzanne:
You’re welcome.

Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.

Meredith:
Perfect, Suzanne. Thanks so much for watching, everyone. I’m ready to get a session as well. I’m sure a lot of us that are watching are ready to try it because it’s just—it sounds like such an amazing therapy and another piece of the healing puzzle. So thanks, everyone. Make sure to tune in next week, and have a wonderful weekend. Take care.