Episode 298: Healing From Emotional Toxicity
with Dr. Eva Detko
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Today I welcome Dr. Eva Detko, who is a mind transformation and holistic autoimmune specialist.
As you know, educating about detox is one of my biggest purposes in life, and it's important to include the emotional component as well. Dr. Eva is here to explain how to identify and overcome emotional toxicity, and you'll learn her top emotional detox strategies to achieve optimal wellness. You will also hear about the link between emotional toxicity and its vast effects on your health.
More about Dr. Eva Detko:
Dr Eva has studied natural medicine and the human mind for over 20 years. She has recovered successfully from chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and reversed Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Now she is passionate about helping others recover their health.
Dr Eva has an extensive knowledge and experience in the field of human physiology, biochemistry, and nutritional sciences. She also uses a wide range of mind-transforming tools and modalities, including: Havening Techniques ®, Brain Working Recursive Therapy ®, psychoanalysis, hypnotherapy, Mindfulness, and applied psychoneuroimmunology.
Transcript:
Ashley Smith:
Hello, everyone, welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I'm Ashley Smith and today we welcome mind transformation and holistic autoimmune specialist dr. Eva Detko. She is here to discuss the whys and hows of emotional detox for optimal healing. She'll also share her top emotional detox strategies to achieve optimal wellness. This is an important topic, and I cannot wait to turn this over to both of you. Let's get started. Welcome, Dr. Eva Detko and Dr. Pompa to the show. This is Cellular Healing TV.
Dr. Pompa:
Welcome, Dr. Eva, thanks for being here.
Dr. Eva Detko:
Oh, thank you so much for having me. I am so hugely passionate about this topic, so really excited to talk about it with you.
Dr. Pompa:
All the way from southern Spain, nonetheless.
Dr. Eva Detko:
Yes, at the moment, yes, there are plans to move to Poland, but yes southern Spain at the moment, a bit nomadic.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, which is—your heritage is from Poland, correct?
Dr. Eva Detko:
Yes, that's right, yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
It's technology, right? You're in Spain, right now, and here we are. I love that, 9:30 at night where you are, and 1:30 where I am.
Dr. Eva Detko:
I apologize in advance if I'm not completely with it, but yes it is a bit late.
Dr. Pompa:
We had to get you before you went to bed. All right, but that's good. I'm glad that—thank you for making the time. This subject, I actually have been just fascinated. I always say, look, I'm not the expert when it comes to emotional detox. That's why I have you here. I'm the expert when it comes to chemical detox and how that affects our lives, but when we look at conditions, which, this is another area of your study. It's autoimmune.
This is a big topic for me because so many people have it, unknowingly. I talk about it as a three-legged stool meaning that one leg, a certain gene gets triggered of autoimmune. It's different for all of us. All of us have these weaknesses or susceptibilities. The center leg is the stressors that turn on that gene. It could be physical, chemical, or emotional. In my doctor training the other day, we all were in agreement that we see this combination of chemical and emotional traumas that take place in a perfect storm in both. We have the autoimmune condition, or whatever condition it is. Then the gut plays a role here as well as part of that three-legged stool.
Today, emotional trauma, I think that it doesn't really get the attention that it really deserves in that trapped emotions are no different than trapped traumas, or trapped toxins, in that the body doesn’t know the difference. I want to give some solutions for people. That's why you're here. Let's talk about the problem as it relates to conditions like autoimmune. How do traumas cause the same type of thing that a chemical would?
Dr. Eva Detko:
First of all, I really want to say that I want to draw some parallels here because obviously you talk a lot about biochemical detox. I talk a lot about emotional detox. It’s true, for the body, toxins are toxins, right, whether they are emotional or chemical. Unfortunately, what happens is for one reason or another—there's obviously a multitude of reasons for this. There seems to be quite a—what I find a superficial approach to emotional detox.
I remember when you kindly gave me an interview for one of my summits. We were talking about biochemical detox. You were talking about the fact that some people can approach a biochemical detox in a superficial way, just taking a supplement that says, “Oh, this is a detox supplement.” Let’s just take that. A few days later, I'm considering myself detoxed.
I have to say that I find the same problem with emotional detox. This is why I really encourage people to dive a little bit deeper into the subject. When we have a lot of emotional toxicity—and believe me, anybody with chronic physical symptoms whether it is autoimmunity or something unidentified, which a lot of people go through. Maybe they don't have a diagnosis, but they have a whole host of physical symptoms that they've had for years. If there's anything like that going on, obviously anything like cancer obviously falls into that category as well, we’re really talking about you're not going to get to that point that the body manifests physically in that way without having a level of emotional toxicity.
In all honesty, I haven't seen this yet, myself. Perhaps there’s somebody out there who has seen this. I have not seen a person with physical issues that wouldn't have complex emotional stuff going on. They may or may not be aware of how much emotional complexity there is because actually that's part of the issue.
Part of the issue why people treat it so superficially is because it's not so easy to understand for people. It can be quite confusing. It can be quite overwhelming. People who specialize in biochemical stuff won't necessarily, at the same time, be experts on emotional stuff. If you go to a functional medicine doctor, they will tell you to manage your stress. That may mean that you will occasionally do a meditation. That is just not going to do it. It’s just not going to do it.
I just wanted to just put it out there that we really need to—when we're talking about cellular healing, when we're talking—well, in functional medicine, natural medicine, we're talking about root causes when it comes to healing. We want to really go after the root causes rather than treat symptoms, which is obviously what conventional medicine tends to do. With emotional healing, it has to be the same.
We can't just treat symptoms. We need to go after the root causes. Of course we're going to go into more detail with early childhood advanced emotional trauma. There's obviously other layers to that, but that's another thing that I want people to think about when you're thinking about your emotional healing. You need to be—rather than think, “Oh how do I, maybe, numb the bad feeling that I have being frustration, anger, sadness.” You need to be thinking, “Why is it that I am experiencing this feeling on a regular basis?”
Obviously, we're talking about chronic stuff. If you occasionally get angry, by the way, this is a normal human response. There’s nothing wrong with that. I'm talking about symptoms, which I will hopefully get to that in a moment, what sort of symptoms are we talking about when we're talking about emotional healing. We’re talking about stuff that goes on chronically day in, day out.
The issue with that is that a lot of people are not even aware that that's happening because—why is that? We desensitize. If we’re exposed to something, day in, day out, and we experience something day in, day out, very often people will get to a point where they will desensitize to the fact that they may be chronically angry, or chronically anxious, or chronically fearful or upset, whatever is, sad, because that's been with them for such a long time. They will say, Well, that's just how I've always been. They won't even go to question why they're feeling this way in the first place. They just accept it as part of who they are, which then causes other problems because it becomes part of their identity. That's called [00:08:26].
Dr. Pompa:
It's similar to—gosh, I mean, I didn't realize I was angry, but they had mercury in their brain. It's like, “Oh gosh, I just respond that way.” With these emotional toxins it's the same thing. How do we identify? I'll use myself as an example. I had dyslexia as a child and got through it. As a matter of fact, I would argue that it's part of my gifting, today, I mean what makes me special in the sense that I can remember things the way I do. I wouldn't have even the influence that I have it wasn't for my dyslexia.
However, when I dug deeper here, I realized how many things that I do react certain ways because of my insecurity. It was developed thinking I was dumb because I couldn’t read—all of that. I literally had to uproot that. I would look and say, “Well I wasn't abused that's a real trauma,” meaning that that's real stuff. I didn't have that. I always looked at—put myself in the [00:09:33], well, I didn't have these emotional traumas. I did. Arguably, my brain perceived it as traumatic as being abused. The point is is how do we identify it? That was me looking back and identif4y something that I didn't think affected me but did.
Dr. Eva Detko:
Yeah, you made a good point there about the sort of severity of trauma. This is very interesting because people often think of trauma, they will hear a term, PTSD, and they will assume that in order to consider themselves traumatized, they would have had to go through something very major, perhaps be in a war zone, or somebody dying, or even a divorce, or something like that, being abused. That, obviously, is an issue. Something like this has happened to somebody, then that is one of the adverse childhood events what we talk about.
However, people really do underestimate the sort of trauma that doesn't necessarily happen as a one-off big event, but rather is an accumulation of small, not even events, but daily—perhaps daily, maybe, teasing at school, something like that. I had that. I was bullied at school for four years. It wasn't necessarily that one big thing happened. That was highly damaging. That was highly, highly damaging because it was something that happened over a long period of time.
In addition to that, and this is the biggest one that I see, when I work—because I currently work with people with chronic health issues and highly complex emotional issues. The one that I sort of see as most underestimated is the developmental trauma. The developmental trauma is even more interesting because it's not about one big thing that happened, although it obviously could be.
It's really about lack of bonding. That's really what developmental trauma is about. The first year, the zero to four in particular, extremely vulnerable years for any human being. In those years, if there isn't enough human contact, if there isn't enough, basically, kisses, cuddles, connection that every human being needs, then that could result in a person actually being traumatized. That is perfectly [00:12:28]. In fact, that that sort of trauma will usually affect people's identity. It's not so much that it will just affect their behavior. No, it will cut much deeper. It will go right through to the core.
Why is that important? This is important because when dealing with emotional stuff, the behavioral—so for instance somebody could have a phobia. They're doing this phobia. Phobia is really a behavior. When they're doing this phobia, maybe they see a spider, and they freak out, and every time they run this pattern over and over. That is actually fairly easy to do. With a straightforward phobia, I can deal with a client in a matter of half an hour, and maybe sometimes not even that, and that phobia is gone forever. That's actually an easy—if it's a straightforward phobia, obviously, not a complex one.
Then what most people, actually, with chronic illness will experience—they will experience erosion of their core identity. That is actually a much—so that would take a little bit more time to resolve. It still can be resolved, but it's not a superficial issue. It’s a core identity issue. That comes from—a lot of the time, from the fact that people may have just felt abandoned as a child, or just purely and simply their emotional needs in the first few years of their lives were not being met sufficiently.
Dr. Pompa:
How would you know? Just like a toxin. I always say when we look at the toxins there are so many parallels here. The number one source is actually what we inherited from our mother and father. You don't know that, right? Especially, mom, gives lead and mercury through utero. You don't remember that, of course. You don't remember not being cuddled or kissed. You don't remember what happened, or the stresses in that time which can create that.
I just taught a master mind to my doctor group. I was talking about—really about functioning from your true identity. I'm trying to help these doctors, and when I see them not functioning from a true identity is when they don't build rapport with patients whether they're speaking from stage or one-on-one. It's because they're not coming across as authentic in a sense. The key is is they're not functioning from their true identity.
What you're saying is when you're not in your true identity that affects your life in many ways. Here I am training professionals. The ones that are having trouble functioning just from who God made them, who they should be, the gifts they have, they're not. They're struggling. It could be all the way back from two years old.
Dr. Eva Detko:
That's absolutely right. It's very interesting because, of course, as you said, that's going to affect so many things. It's going to affect your whole life. Ultimately, erosion of your identity means you're not going to be comfortable with who you are. It doesn't get any worse than that, let's say, when it comes to emotional healing. You need to heal that. That's going to be—that's the foundation. That's the foundation of everything.
If you're not comfortable with who you are, and if you—maybe you self-criticize, you beat yourself up over various things. You tell yourself that you're not good enough, that you’re too stupid, too fat, too thin, too this, too that. When you do all that on a regular basis, a lot of people have this negative self-talk that just goes on every hour of every day. They don't even know that they’re doing it.
Of course, rapport with other people will be difficult because you will always project. In psychotherapy, we call it projection when you project your own emotional crap onto other people. That would, for instance, manifest. Let's say somebody feels—they they're self-critical. They're critical of themselves. They don't feel good enough. Immediately, what they're going to do, is they're going to assume that other people are critical of them. That's what I mean by projection.
When you think about it, every single relationship that you have will be affected by that including relationships with patients. If you're not comfortable with who you are, undoubtedly you will impact the relationship with your patient. Of course, we know how important the relationship with the patient is for their—through their healing.
Dr. Pompa:
Here’s the thing. It's just like toxicity. How do we identify it, and then, okay, how do we detox these emotions? Give some solutions of how we identify areas where this may have affected our identity. This may have caused emotional traumas, and we don't even know. How do we know?
Dr. Eva Detko:
Actually, yes, you asked that question. Yes, I was going to answer that. Let’s start with how do we know. I actually devised this questionnaire that I have on my website. If people want to go in a little bit deeper, I'll explain in a minute what symptoms we're looking out for. If you want to do it at the deeper level, you can go to my website. Check out that questionnaire. It's just free for people to look at.
Dr. Pompa:
We’ll make sure. Ashley will put that up here. Then we can go to your website.
Dr. Eva Detko:
The reason I say that is oftentimes people will say, “No, I'm good. I really don't have anything like that going on. When they do the questionnaire, that really opens up their eyes. There are things that people wouldn't have thought about when it comes to emotional toxicity. Let me give you a few examples. I already mentioned, in passing, negative self-talk. If you identify that you do have negative self-talk, then that is emotionally toxic. That definitely tells me that there would have been some issues earlier on in your life. Anything to do with, in fact, poor self-worth, poor self-esteem, poor self-image, those are the ones that are identity-based.
Dr. Pompa:
Give us examples of the negative self-talk and—
Dr. Eva Detko:
Yeah, sure, so for instance you're doing something and you're thinking, “Oh I'm not really doing this right. I should be doing this and should be doing that. Maybe I'm not good enough to do this. I'm not smart enough to do this.” Just talking yourself down, talking yourself down, really, is what I'm talking about. It's looking yourself in the face in the mirror, looking at yourself and thinking, “Oh gosh, I'm so ugly. I wish I didn't have this pimple or whatever else.” I mean, it's just that constant negativity directed at yourself.
Dr. Pompa:
Let me ask you a question. I want you to keep going, giving us examples, but I have to ask this right here. Can it go the opposite way, meaning narcissistic people, oftentimes out of great insecurity, they make this false thing? You look at these people and you go, “My gosh, they must be super insecure because they're the greatest and everything. They're always right.” I mean, so can it be the opposite to protect that person?
Dr. Eva Detko:
A lot of people overcompensate. You're right. You can spot that from miles away. You can spot. You can sense when somebody is truly comfortable with who they are. They're a confident person, and they’re an assertive person, which assertive is a positive thing. It's good to be assertive, right, and assert yourself in life. There’s nothing wrong with that.
There is that line that some people cross. It’s quite true. They go out of their way to appear confident, or they always have to prove that they’re right. For instance, they would—if somebody questions them, they would go and research on the internet, and dig out the encyclopedia, whatever. They will just go out of the way to prove that they're right on this particular point. Stuff like that is overcompensation.
Dr. Pompa:
Then they have almost an obnoxious self-positive talk. It's like you look at it and go—I mean it's just not normative. They have that kind of talk too.
Dr. Eva Detko:
Yeah, and so part of it is actually a personality trait. Part of it is a personality trait. I use different personality profiling tools. One of them is Enneagram, which people may be familiar with. There’s nine personality types. What’s interesting is it's not necessarily that that you’re one thing or the other. It's just that you dominate in one area with your personality. We all do.
What's also interesting is that across each type, it’s a spectrum. You can be at a high expression of that personality type, or at a really low expression of that personality type. That narcissistic type person would be actually the lowest expression of type A, for instance, yes. However, you see, if that person ever comes out of their narcissistic bubble, which obviously with narcissists it’s not the whole thing. They just don't see the wood for the trees.
Occasionally, that may happen that people decide to embark on self-development, or whatever else they're going to do. They may actually recognize that even though their safety is in always being right, and always being superior, or whatever else that they need to do to feel important. When they step out of it, they understand that they can actually be more balanced, and still feel good about the world and about themselves.
That's a journey that is very difficult for somebody who is naturally skewing in that direction. Yes, a part of it is actually a personality thing. Most people—so yes, we have a lot of narcissists there, that's true. Most people, in particularly people who have chronic health issues, they will be on the other side of this. They will be more inclined to do the negative self-talk.
Dr. Pompa:
Self-talk, negative self-talk is one symptom. What’s another side?
Dr. Eva Detko:
Another side is anything such as not feeling deserving. Something happens, and you feel, “Oh yeah, this is nice, but I just don't feel like I truly deserve it.” Again, just feeling like you’re worth less, and everybody else around you is somehow more worthy than you are. That's a big identity issue as well.
Chronic guilt and shame, this is quite a big one because that will come out from early childhood as well. I'm not talking about healthy shame because there's such a thing, but most people these days because the society shames us in so many different ways. I mean it's nuts, right, it's nuts, from the word go, particularly the West. I’m talking Western society, obviously. Children are shamed for all sorts of things. Particularly when they’re shamed around this toddler age, preschool age, that could cause big problems later on. That is something to be aware of, just going in and thinking, “Well do I feel guilty all the time? Do I feel ashamed?” All the time there’s something that people may actually be aware of.
Another thing is feeling constantly anxious, and constantly worried, or fearful. Of course, anxiety is just a symptom. It’s not actually the root cause because anxiety is basically fear. It's fear of something. How interesting. Do you not find it interesting that not so long ago we didn't even have the label that is the generalized anxiety disorder? Now we have this thing that is generalized anxiety disorder, which means that this would be somebody who is just anxious all the time about everything. Sometimes they don't even know what they're anxious about.
That is highly emotionally toxic. Your winding up. You’re basically stressing your nervous system, constantly. It’s constant fight or flight. Of course, you can't heal, and you can't detoxify if you’re constantly in fight or flight, as we know. Those fears could be all sorts of things. It could be fear failure. A lot of people have that fear of failure, fear of losing control, which are connected. Fear of criticism, fear of rejection, that's a big one. Of course, even things like fear of death or fear of illness.
Let's not forget that illness, itself, is a trauma. When somebody has been chronically ill for a very long time, often time, before I even get to any other trauma of with them, I need to work with them on the trauma of the illness, itself. Some people actually do have fear of the unknown, which links back to fear of not being in control. There are also other things.
People who over analyze or overthink a lot because what that means—that means that they live in their heads so much that they almost lost the connection to their feelings and to the body. Why is that? Why does that happen? Usually this happens as a result of a bad experience. This is a protective mechanism. Some people think that if they’re able to rationalize and analyze the hell out of everything, they feel safer if they can do that.
Of course, it's not exactly possible to do that all the time. Sometimes we need to accept that there are things that we don't have control over. There are things that we cannot analyze or understand. That would make somebody that way inclined very uneasy. When people have this—often people say, “Oh, I've got a monkey mind. I can't meditate because my mind is so busy. We know there’s something majorly toxic going on at the emotional level if you can't make your mind go quiet, and you've got these constant thoughts, and they're usually negative coming into your mind just constantly, so the monkey mind, obviously, as well.
Dwelling on anything that happened in the past—how many people do you know, literally, who still go over, today, something that happened ten years ago, twenty years ago, and they just can't let it go. It’s that inability to let go of stuff, inability to forgive, that resentment, that chronic resentment that some people hold, the chronic grudges. That's obviously highly toxic, and that definitely points that to the fact that there's been—that something went on earlier in life, some level of trauma must have occurred in order for you to have that chronic resentment.
Of course, when people are in toxic relationships is another one because you—again you need to have serious identity issues. You, yourself, have to feel quite unworthy in order to let other people take advantage of you and treat you like dirt. If you're in a personal or otherwise a relationship where people treat you—walk all over you and treat you like a doormat, then you know that there is an issue there. That’ why we say, there's quite a lot within that, but nonetheless it’s really important for people to pay attention to all those things.
Dr. Pompa:
I mean, you gave us, literally, nine things there that people need to look at. I mean it's not like you'll have all of them. How many of those would you say, yeah, okay, you need to really look deeper that you have some emotional toxicity from your childhood.
Dr. Eva Detko:
I'm going back to the questionnaire because I’ve graded it. There's 42 questions on that questionnaire. I've given you nine, but there is, obviously, when you break it down there is more. If you answer to any more than five, then you already have a level of emotional toxicity that needs to be looked at.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, so take the quiz. Well put how to access the quiz right here.
Dr. Eva Detko:
Yeah, I believe that will be really helpful to really some more light for people on this and where they’re at. Essentially, before we can move forward and look for solutions, we need to assess where we are. We do that with biochemistry as well.
Dr. Pompa:
Again, the parallels with chemical toxicity, we want to know what we're up against. It's like, okay, great, now we've identified that mold and mercury are prevailing here. Now we know what we can do about it. We’ve taken the test. Thank you for that. Then okay, great, now what can we do about it? Now what do we do? This is that detox question. How do I detox these emotions out of me so that I could live a happy, normal life? Also, again, we're talking about turn off this illness that I'm dealing with because we know just like the chemical toxins, it can keep these symptoms there, no different. I need this next level detox, so I can get where I want to go with my health, or my emotions, whatever it is.
Dr. Eva Detko:
Yeah, that certainly was the case for me. I had chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. I was really sick. I couldn't get out of bed at some point. It was not so much the diet because I had already been gluten free at that point anyway. I was quite careful about what I was eating. It was actually doing the trauma work that got me out of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia.
I definitely see that with many of my clients because what ends up happening is I get a lot of inquiries from people who have already done a lot of work on the biochemistry front. That's what people tend to go to first because it's just easier. Then the emotional stuff is left till the end, usually. What I'll say here is don't leave it till the end. Just do this work alongside each other because that really—
Dr. Pompa:
I agree. What’s the work? How do we do it? What's going on?
Dr. Eva Detko:
We've got the awareness bit. That is really important because you can’t deal with something you don't know what you're dealing with. Trauma work, there are a number of superb modalities these days. The go-to modalities for me are havening techniques and brain working recursive therapy. Havening techniques is actually a psychosensory modality, which means that you simulate the receptors on the skin. That acts directly via the nervous system connection on the amygdala part of the brain, so the part of the brain that is responsible for processing emotions.
This is a really incredible method because you can use it for severe trauma, but you can also use it as a management tool. For instance, you go into a meeting, and you have to give a speech, or whatever, you have to speak, or give a presentation, and you’re a bit anxious. You can actually use it to manage the symptoms of anxiety, but of course I always encourage to get to the root of the anxiety. You can use that method for that.
Dr. Pompa:
How do you spell it? You said havening techniques?
Dr. Eva Detko:
Havening, like haven as in haven the safe place, havening. The havening touch itself, it's actually very simple, but please do not underestimate. Just because this is simple, and easy to do, a child can do this, doesn't mean it's less effective for it. It's actually incredibly effective. It also combines really well with all sorts of other modalities. It's a very flexible method. People may be familiar with emotional freedom techniques. I've got havening, so I don't work with EFT so much because I've got havening, but of course EFT is also an excellent technique to work with.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, just so people know, EFT is the tapping.
Dr. Eva Detko:
Yes, that’s the tapping.
Dr. Pompa:
Could you show us what the havening technique is?
Dr. Eva Detko:
Yes, since we've got the video go here. There are three sites. Essentially, what's really interesting about havening techniques, is that by stimulating the receptors on the skin, like I said, you are actually able to change your brainwave activity. Usually, when we’re stressed, or when we're going through a traumatic experience, the brainwave activity is really high. With havening, we’re able to bring it right down all the way to Delta level, which is the same level of activity that we experienced in deep sleep, which of course is when we heal. Havening is very conducive to healing in that respect.
There are three sites. It's really simple so the first one is the face. All we’re doing, essentially, is strokes like this. You can go from the top of the forehead, or you can go from—even from under the eyes. That's the first one. The second one is the arms. You can do it through one layer of clothing. Of course, if you have lots of layers, you need to remove some of them. You don't need to do it on the skin. You can do it through one layer of clothing, like I’ve got now, and you've got now. We're going from the top of the shoulder and sweeping all the way down to the elbow. Obviously, I'm just doing this now. You don't need to hold your arms up in the air. I'm just wanting to show this. You're obviously keeping them down here so that you're comfortable.
That's more or less the speed and the tempo of it. It doesn't need to be too slow or too fast. It's just moderate. Then the third one is your hands. It goes like this. It's basically almost like washing your hands. Very easy, right? Okay, so here's the thing with this modality. You can actually work on a specific traumatic memory with this if you have a memory of something that you experienced that’s still causing an emotional response. That's the key one. You still need to have an emotional response.
Say you go to that memory, you could close your eyes and go there. Then the moment you bring that feeling up—because of course you remember something and immediately you've got that emotional response, you start havening at that point, straight away. We don't want to retraumatize, so we don't want to necessarily go over and over what we experience. What we do with havening is we start stimulating the brain in a variety of different ways. We use humming, we use counting, and we use spatial awareness. For instance, you would imagine that you're walking on the beach, or in the forest, or something like that. You imagine yourself walking, or skipping on a skipping rope, or something like that. There’s movement involved. Then finally we also use the eye movement. People may have heard of EMDR.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Dr. Eva Detko:
Right, so this utilizes the eye movement, also, as well as the havening touch. You're doing that, and at the same time you’re moving your eyes sharply right and sharply left. You can go over your own if you’re obviously—I want to just caveat here. If you have complex emotional trauma, don't try and work on this yourself because you could bite off more than you can chew, obviously.
If you maybe had a family gathering, and somebody really got on your nerves, and then you're still fuming and week later, go back to that in your mind. Bring up the emotional response and Haven on that. In a matter of 10 minutes, sometimes even less, you could get rid of that emotional response. What then happens is you still have the memory, but it does not upset you anymore because essentially it’s the emotional response that's going to put the stress on the nervous system.
If we just have a memory of something, and it causes no emotional response whatsoever, then fine. That’s not toxic. What’s toxic is that the negative emotional response that that memory will induce. That can be addressed with havening. Of course, if people know tapping, then of course they can tap on those things as well, on those negative memories. That is one way of using this modality.
I mix it with all sorts of things. Like I said, I work with really complex emotional trauma. I bring all sorts of other things into where they're bringing NLP, hypnosis, Gestalt therapy, all sorts of other things, inner child work. Of course, when you were—if you had issues in those first formative years of your life, then we need to do some work around that. I obviously use havening alongside other techniques to do that.
Definitely, this is a self-help tool that anybody can use. It's really amazing because sometimes—okay, so maybe you're in the meeting and you're a bit stressed. Okay, fine, you're not going to start stroking your face, but you can still rub your hands. Nobody is going to know any better because people just do that, don’t they? Nobody’s going to question why you’re rubbing your hands. You can even do it in the heat of the moment where you’re going through something stressful. That's really excellent.
Then another one that I use is brain working recursive therapies, actually psychotherapy techniques. There's no sensory stimulation. It's actually a set protocol of steps. Just to describe what we're trying to do is we're trying to interrupt the pattern. For instance, people may know, or may not know, I don't know, but our conscious response is much slower than our instinctive subconscious response.
For instance, if I was to throw something at you, you immediately would either try to catch it, or you would try to get out of the way. It will be something that you would just do, and then a moment later you would be aware that you've done it. It's that the consciousness only catches up a couple of seconds later.
Dr. Pompa:
What was this called? What’s this technique called?
Dr. Eva Detko:
Brain working recursive therapy, or BWRT for short. The idea here is that we want to almost interrupt the pattern because when people have emotional responses is usually that they have a memory and then that emotional response comes in. We want to sort of interrupt. We’re actually almost injecting something else in between the original memory and the response.
We actually work with preferred response, and we’re working with future memories. We’re kind of replacing the original memory, if you will. That's what we're trying to do with this one. Your mind doesn't actually know reality from fiction, so the alternative memory work is actually really effective. That's another great technique that people can do if they have memories that are seriously disturbing to them. They can go—
Dr. Pompa:
Give us an example of how you would interrupt that. I mean, what would—
Dr. Eva Detko:
The protocol has got about fourteen steps in it. You follow this exactly. Basically, what you do is you recall the original memory. With that, usually, there will be an emotional response. Even if there isn't that immediate emotional response, we can still work with the memory. Then we want to then think about how we want it to be instead, in that moment. We know what we did or didn't do. How could you sort of change that original memory to be more positive, more empowering, so you're more in control?
We’re going to keep it positive. We don't be vindictive in it or anything like that, just keep it nice and clean, keep it positive. Then you also create a future memory where in that memory you look back and you realize hey, I had this problem once, but now I can see I don't have this problem anymore. The future movie of whatever is that you're doing is telling you that you don't have that problem anymore. Then, what we're doing is—and there's other steps involved, but basically you’re jumping around between those three stages, between those three memories, the original, and the preferred, and the future memory.
What then ends up happening is that after a while—so you repeat that X number of times, and then there's other steps involved. After a while, what often happens is that you can no longer recall the original memory in the same way as you did initially, number one. Number two, you don't have the emotional response that comes with it. Again, you can eliminate that emotional toxic response, essentially. That's a great one. This one is not so easy to do on yourself, but the alternative memory work—this is not necessarily something completely new because in NLP we use the alternative memory work as well. That people can do on themselves. That is as simple as going over the traumatic memory, or whatever memory that upsets you still, and gives you that feeling of fear, anger, frustration, whatever, or sadness. T
hen you go over that memory in a different way. You create a different movie of that memory as if you're still there doing something different in order for that memory to give you a better—so you have a better outcome in the memory, in other words. You change the outcome. That's another psycho—that’s more of a psychotherapy. Another one that I really want people to have a go at is the inner child work because that that's huge.
As I described, we have those different stages of child development. We've got infancy, we've got toddler, preschool. John Bradshaw was the one who described this really well. If somebody wants to know a little bit more about this, John Bradshaw Homecoming is a great book to read. He talked about infancy, toddler, and preschool, and school child. We have different emotional needs through those different stages because as we develop, our needs change.
In the infancy stage, of course, it's all about touch. It’s about that kind of comfort, a physical comfort. Then as we as become a little bit older, we start learning to say no. Then we start to communicate and so on. Our needs change through those different stages. Sometimes, when people, for example, have difficulty saying no, I already know that there was something that happened at the toddler stage because they never developed this ability to say no and feel good about saying no. That's another symptom, when people will just say yes to everything and then they feel resentful about it, but they're just not able to say no to people. That's already a little red light there.
Another one is, for instance, when people have difficulties expressing anger. That will be more to do with the preschool stage. What we can also do is we can go—if people don't have specific memories of when they were really little, it doesn't stop them from imagining. We're creating some imagery around this time of our lives even if it's not really—it doesn't matter because I already told you your subconscious mind doesn't really tell the difference between what's real and what's not real, which is why you can alter memories and get a better response.
We can create that imagery around the child, and then we can bring our adult self into that memory. We can be the protector for that child. This may sound like something really weird, but people have incredible emotional releases and responses when they do this exercise. Again, if you know that you had loads of trauma as a child, then maybe you do need to be guided through this process.
If you feel that your childhood was okay, but maybe there were some wounds there that you want to heal, okay. If you know that you had a lot of trauma, then potentially that exercise can bring out a lot of stuff that you may feel completely overwhelmed by. If you're in that camp, then it's better to just get two, three sessions with somebody to guide you through this process. Then then you're done.
I just want to be—do this responsibly. I don't want people to end up in a situation where they're not able to handle their own work. People can do their own work. I encourage—I always—that's how I work with people. I coach and teach people to do a lot of their own work. There are some times that when there's a lot of complexity it really pays off to have a little bit of guidance at the beginning. Then you take it away, and you can do it yourself.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, wow, I mean, and I agree. Some people are going to need a coach. I mean, that's what they hire me for. It's like, you’re too toxic. You can't do this alone. Although, I encourage people. I teach people all the time, this is what you should be doing in your life. However, many people are far too toxic physically, chemically, to do it on their own. They need a coach. That's what I do.
Same with this. You made great suggestions here, but many people watching and listening, you need a coach because you could end up in great doo doo, just like chemical toxicity. Hire a coach. That's the point. You have her information here, and the quiz even to take as a starting point, and even some things you can start right away. I’m sure it’s much deeper than that, Dr. Eva. Some people need you, no doubt. I so appreciate this because you gave us really good tools.
I mean, from an understanding of testing, is this me, to start here right away, to start some of this emotional detox work. I think it was the most useful show we've had on this subject. Really, you give us great tools. It’s a set of tools, but yet it's still a starting place. We have to identify this stuff, just like a toxin. Otherwise, you’re not going to get well. It's the hidden toxin of all hidden toxins, frankly.
Dr. Eva Detko:
Yeah, and there's one thing that I didn't mention, but there's definitely a place here to mention values and beliefs. Sometimes, people can have a very negative response to life, not necessarily as a result of trauma, but as a result of something that I call social engineering. This basically happens to all of us from the word go.
We come into this world, and immediately we're being passed on other people's values and beliefs. Quite honestly, without them, we would not be able to survive. You need to know that you don't stick your hand in the fire because this is a bad thing to do. There's obviously a lot of positive beliefs that our caregivers, our parents, our guardians, give us when we—at that young age when we need to learn. At the same time, they had their own hang-ups, and they had their own insecurities, and they're going to end up—a lot of it will end up being your stuff just because it was their stuff.
That is another thing to pay attention to because one of the things that people, and that I didn't mention earlier as a symptom of emotional toxicity, is emotional conflict. This is huge. How do you know you have emotional conflict? You've got that constant er, er, er, er, er going on in your mind. It's like, “Oh, I want to go in this direction, but oh, but no, oh God.” You’re questioning yourself, and going back and forth, and you're feeling conflicted because maybe you think that your biggest value in life is making a lot of money.
At the same time you've got your family, and you want to spend time with them. Do you see what I mean? Maybe that value isn't even your value. Maybe that’s something that somebody said to you when you were young. They said, “Oh, in order for your life to be worthwhile you need to be making lots of money.” Do you know what I mean? You just take it on.
Dr. Pompa:
One of the things that I had said when I you know was coaching my Docs in this is look, you have to go back on a timeline. Of course, look at these potential traumas that occurred, things that really changed your views. Also evaluate not just the events in our life, but the people, teachers, friends, impact that had—that gave you certain premises.
We carry these false beliefs and premises that set up certain values that aren't right, and yet it defines our life, possibly, for the negative. You have to look at these premises and evaluate them. You're right. Sometimes they're given to us, and it's not even who we are, and we're living our life in conflict.
Dr. Eva Detko:
Yeah, and it goes back to having enough self-awareness to step back and go, okay, what is it that is going round and round in my head? Is it that maybe—I actually had a client, once, who believed they were going to die at the age of 60 because their aunt and their mother died at the age of 60. Now, wow, if you have a belief like that, that's really bad. You need to change that.
Dr. Pompa:
Look at the areas in your life that you're not successful or you're struggling, whether it's your health, finances, relationships. Evaluate your premises around those. If you have trouble with the money I promise you there's a belief that was maybe given to you from your family, your father, a teacher, brother, who knows. It's like that's not right. Then it's creating a lot of grief in your life.
Dr. Eva Detko:
Absolutely, so yes, so that’s a big one. People can do that for themselves. They can just sit down and actually just spend 15 minutes, half an hour, to really think what is really important to me? What do I believe about health? What do I believe about myself? What do I believe about my professional life, or whatever else it may be? The things that are important, and to see whether those things align. If you're not aligned, then you're going to be emotionally toxic. We’re back to square one having this problem all over again. Yeah, that's another important thing that I forgot to mention earlier.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, that's great stuff. Thank you so much. Gosh, wealth of knowledge on the subject. I can't wait to visit your site. I'm going to take the quiz, so that’s awesome.
Dr. Eva Detko:
Oh, brilliant, excellent, well, thank you for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. I am really pleased that you’re shining the light on this for people as well because there needs to be more discussion on this. There needs to be more depth. This is not just about doing an occasional guided meditation. There's a lot more to it than that.
Dr. Pompa:
This is important. I think I'm going to have you come to one of my seminars when we get you to the U.S. Let’s get you here. Thank you, Dr. Eva, we appreciate you.
Dr. Eva Detko:
Thank you so much, Dr. Dan. Thank you.
Ashley Smith:
That's it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. This episode was brought to you by Cytodetox. Please check it out at buycytonow.com. We'll be back next week and every Friday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. We truly appreciate your support.
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