The Profitable Chiro Network w/ Dr. Daniel Kimbley
Welcome to The Profitable Chiro Network with Dr. Daniel Kimbley…
On this podcast, we take deep dives into the science of success, stress, and sustainable practice growth—through the lens of God’s intelligent design. From unlocking the power of your prefrontal cortex to breaking free from pain patterns and maximizing clinic profitability, these conversations challenge conventional wisdom and reshape the way you think about chiropractic, business, and life. This is The Profitable Chiro Network.
The Profitable Chiro Network w/ Dr. Daniel Kimbley
Ep 5: Stress & Trauma (How Your Brain Writes Memories)
Watch the full version on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/lDZKtSz8HbM
Welcome back to another episode of the Profitable Cairo Network. I'm Dr Daniel, my beautiful wife Heather is here, and today we're going to talk about this idea. A lot of people say like, oh, I'm not stressed, everything's good in my life. But the reality is there's this thing called subcortical stress that could be wrecking someone's system, someone's brain, someone's productivity, someone's relationship, someone's connection to financial abundance and profitable business and a profitable life. And what I want to talk about today is not necessarily the fruits and the profit of life, but this thing called subcortical stress.
Speaker 1:So we doing good? Yes, all right, let's go. So here's where we're going to roll is I want to tell a story and before I get there, I think it's important to just know that and you've heard me talk about this before on the podcast, I know we talk about this all the time at home is this idea that someone can be stressed and not know. Yeah, and a lot of times I think that people tell themselves the story, that they're not stressed, but there's a very specific set of things that happen in the brain to create memories, and those memories can wire your body into a stress response.
Speaker 2:I think that a lot of people choose to like stuff it down, that they're stressed because it's like taboo, it's like everybody knows it's not good to be stressed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so interesting that you say that, because I think, even more so than it's taboo that people stuff it down, it's sometimes it can be a badge of honor too, that's true.
Speaker 1:So there's both ways where it's like, yeah, I want to stuff it down, but I'm also like I can take on more stress than anybody else. So then the reality, like they're still stuffing it down, but the way that they stuff it down is to say, well, I'm not stressed, I can take on more, I'm strong, I can do it on my own. And we know we've talked about this and we can talk about the Bible too, if we want, in the context of this idea of subcortical stress. So I should probably just define subcortical first. So subcortical means below the level of conscious thought. So if we think of the cortex and we talked about the brain a lot and we'll continue to do so because I love talking about it the cortex, the cortex of the brain, is responsible for our consciousness. There's other responsibilities to overgeneralizing, but for the sake of this conversation, subcortical sub meaning below the level of cortex of consciousness. And we know, you know, there's a really cool book.
Speaker 1:James Chestnut wrote a book called the 14 Foundational Premises and I would highly encourage anybody to check that out. But one of the things he talks about in there is that the brain processes like a trillion bits of information every minute, but only 50 of them reach our consciousness. 50? Five zero Out of trillions. Yeah, and maybe the number's not trillions, but it's a lot. It's so many zeros on the end that I literally could not do the math when I was looking at it. Wow. And you can check out his book. There's a chart in there. We can put it in the show notes too.
Speaker 1:Why, why, what? Why is that? It's because our brain is wired for efficiency. Okay, our brain is wired for again, and we talked about this before but I only want to pay attention to things that are going to kill me. I want to pay attention to things that are new and exciting and I want to pay attention to things that I value and that I care about, and that's kind of the brain's responsibility. So anything else that's going to create processes memories being one of those which can create a stress response in the body will get there, but those memories are what get wired into the brain, so the brain doesn't have to think about something again.
Speaker 1:And so if you think about someone who has a trauma, let's say they were abused by a guy who was drinking, maybe it's dad, whatever, it doesn't matter male or female, but that abuse is going to be wired into the subconscious nervous system so that the next time there's a guy who's drinking, they trigger that stress response faster, because the thing was a threat before. And if it's a threat before, I want to make sure I'm safe and protected from it next time because it increases my chance of survival. Yes, so we wire those responses. So when I was an example of this would be when I was a kid, my parents played softball and we would go out into the country. There's a place called Mooresville in Indiana and you know Indiana, indiana is filled with cornfields, cornfields everywhere. And did you ever play?
Speaker 2:in the cornfields when you were a kid All the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I would jump out of my cornfields in the middle of the night and try and scare people in cars Not the safest thing. But you know, we had to do what we had to do to make ourselves like entertained in Indiana.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we could probably. That would talk about giving somebody a subcortical stress response. That would probably be the trick. So, um, not to talk about giving people subcortical stress responses, I'm going to talk about myself and this story. So my parents would drop us off at the softball field, so they would play. There were two softball fields backed up to this huge um cornfield and I'm sure if you were a kid that grew up, that was around our age, I don't know if it's the same now, but we would just be allowed to run and roam free, which is so cool. I wish there was more of that now. But like no one watching us, and when I say no one watching us, like no one cared, like my parents were probably drinking. I think everybody was just drinking and it was like the kids are doing whatever we do.
Speaker 1:So we would run through the cornfields. There are these huge walnut trees in between the two cornfields and what we would do is we would line up on either side. So we would like pick teams and we would have what we called walnut wars.
Speaker 2:Is this like you're putting yourself like Red Rover Kind of like?
Speaker 1:Red Rover yeah, and maybe not as tight together, but we would split up and we would have teams and the trees were like the boundary that you couldn't go past. So think of, think of it like this, think of like dodgeball. Okay, set up exactly like dodgeball, but we were playing with walnuts instead of dodgeballs. That literally would hurt, so bad.
Speaker 1:The only rule that was we couldn't throw them direct line drive shots. We had to launch them up in the air and like arch them into the air to hit someone so much better. So it made it in our heads a little bit safer as genius. But what happened? So we're doing Walnut Wars and you know there are kids younger than me, like my brother's, there. I had some friends who live right next door to us. They were there as well. They had an older brother who was a little bit older than me, so he was probably in middle school at the time. And then there were some boys who were way older, like almost freshmen in high school. So I remember we say go, we pick up the walnuts and we start launching them at each other and my first throw I blast this girl in the face. She like looks up and it hits her right in the eye. Oh and this is what's interesting.
Speaker 1:So we looks up and it hits her right in the eye. Oh, and this is what's interesting. So we'll get to the subcortical stress response in a minute. But I can still feel that stress of hitting the girl in the eye Cause I felt bad, like I didn't mean to hit her in the face. That wasn't necessarily the name of the game, right, and it was a girl too. So I blast this girl in the eye and she like instantly has a black eye. And she had one of the brothers who was eighth grade freshman in high school and remember I'm like third, fourth grade maybe.
Speaker 1:So I'm terrified he's going to come after you. And they did. So they got their little crew together and the only thing I knew to do was run because I wasn't going to fight. I was so little because I wasn't going to fight, I was so little. So I just run into the cornfield, deep into the cornfield, and I have my friends, who were my neighbors, yelling for me. I have these boys yelling like where's your friend? When we find him, we're going to get him. And then so I'm hiding in the cornfield by myself. For so long I start hearing parents yelling my name oh, they brought in the troops.
Speaker 2:Because the softball games are over.
Speaker 1:The softball games are over, it was time to go home and I'm like I'm sleeping out here. My life is going to end if I step out. The boys are going to pick on me, and so when I heard the parents, it gave me a little bit of relief enough to be able to step out and be like hey, like I'm over here and those guys are going to beat me up, so can we just get in the car and go home real quick. So that sounds like a super funny story. But why does that matter? It matters because, as I'm sharing the story, I still feel my heart start to race up a little bit when I think about hitting that girl in the face with the walnut that poor thing. And there's this level of guilt. But it's not so much guilt as it is like, yeah, obviously I did something wrong.
Speaker 1:So there's some guilt in it and but I didn't do it on purpose, so that's a weird part of it. But there's also the stress of the simple fact that I thought I literally thought I was going to get beat up, and so I had this fear that I never really processed and it stayed on in my system and so when I think about it it triggers a stress response again, and so that's the subcortical stress that we're talking about, and I know I've never talked to one of our clients of thousands of people that we've taken care of that have said they haven't had that experience. When they think about something and they immediately feel their heart start to race like someone cut them off in traffic.
Speaker 2:I definitely have that experience. Can you think of one? Yeah, so mine is not like as lighthearted. I guess you could say yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:I mean I have more. That's just a fun one. Yeah. Yeah, mine is probably a little dark, but when I was in college, after I graduated undergrad and I was going to physical therapy school, I was like out on my own in an apartment in Indy and my family lived several hours away. I distinctly remember this one night specifically where we did have cell phones I don't think I even had an iPhone yet Early 2000s baby, so keep that in mind.
Speaker 2:So my cell phone was like doing these weird things. I couldn't call out or text out or anything. It wasn't working. And I was really confused because I received a voicemail, and it was a voicemail from my best friend, jess, that said Heather, I am so sorry about your grandpa, please give me a call when you can. And like my phone's not working, but I can receive the.
Speaker 2:I'm like literally getting a stress response talking about this right now. Yeah, so Sorry, my phone is not working. I literally have to run to my neighbor's house like an acquaintance of a guy I was dating at the time, and I'm like can I please use your cell phone? Like I don't understand what's going on right now, but something's not right. Understand what's going on right now, but something's not right and I used his cell phone to call. The crazy part is I'm on a family plan with my mom and my brother, and my mom and my brother's phones are not working either. So I had to call my aunt and ask her what was going on in the family and my grandpa had passed away at that time and so anytime my phone does not work in like more than a 10 to 15 second span, I get this like stress response, like something's going to happen, like negatively, that I'm going to feel or hear this like bad news.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's not very lighthearted but like yeah, that's crazy, so what's interesting if we could just bring it back up? Yes, please, just a little bit, is that? No, that's crazy, so what's interesting if we could just bring it back up?
Speaker 2:yes, please, just a little bit.
Speaker 1:Is that? No, that's so. I never knew that story.
Speaker 2:You never told me that uh, clearly it's like, still barely like so this is the thing with subcortical stress.
Speaker 1:Is that if our body doesn't process the trauma, and we still feel unsafe and unprotected. Those stress hormones stay on, which then can trigger, like these emotions are just a protective mechanism right. But to bring it back up, I think what's funny is that you have so much trouble with tech sometimes.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, yes, I'm so not tech savvy that you probably get triggered by this more often than you.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, Because you're like what is going on?
Speaker 2:I feel like my phone's never working, but it's really me.
Speaker 1:Even with the car You're like I can't get the car to start. I had to put the key fob right here. It's like, yeah, your tech savvy is just not the highest of the time.
Speaker 2:The Lord has not blessed me with that gift.
Speaker 1:So your subcortical stress gets triggered all the time. Clearly, In some ways it gets reinforced, which is what I think is interesting to talk about. So the reason that I bring that up and why it matters is because I think that when people say, like I talked about at the beginning, somebody who says they're not stressed, I would beg to differ because I don't know of anyone I've ever met, no matter how much personal development they've done.
Speaker 1:No, matter how much ayahuasca they've done, no matter how many mushrooms they've taken, no matter how many breath work sessions they've done, no matter how many therapy sessions they've done, could step in and genuinely do the tests that we do in our office and say I don't have stress stuck on in my system, right, not because there's something wrong with people, but because it's how we were designed, right. And I'll always go back to that as, like, these mechanisms are protective so that the next time my phone doesn't work, I have a biological, built-in neurological mechanism to fire parts of my brain to get me to take a certain action to keep me safe. But we're not cavemen and women anymore, right, we still have that same stress response, though, which is so interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, like everybody is experiencing subcortical stress to some extent and they're not able to process it fully unless they do what?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a that's a great question. I think, before we talk about what they do, I think the question should be why, what, how do we get, how does stress get stuck on in the system and why? Okay.
Speaker 1:And so the reason that stress gets stuck on in the system is because, if you remember innately, if we go back to just basic development of the nervous system, the first two, there's only two. There's technically three, but there are two branches of the nervous system. There's the fight or flight branch and then there's a rest and digest branch. So fight or flight branch is the sympathetic, it's the stress branch, and then parasympathetic, or the healing, or the rest and digest branches on the other side. So fight or flight. We call it fight or flight because it's primitive. If we were cavemen and women, we're designed to fight or run away from something. But the example that you shared with your grandpa, and.
Speaker 1:Jess calling you and the text and like nothing going through, but getting the voicemail. Right. I almost said text messages, but then I realized at that time you had to pay by like no, I had.
Speaker 2:I was I'm not that old I did have text messages, but my phone wasn't doing anything out going, so I remember where we had to pay by the text message yeah maybe it was even by.
Speaker 1:I think it might have been by the character.
Speaker 2:I had several times where I was in trouble from my phone bill so Nadege is like.
Speaker 1:I have no idea what you're talking about, did you? That's so crazy.
Speaker 2:I got in trouble so much.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, I share that, because if we don't fight or run away, the brain is wired to say hey, you never did what I released stress hormones to get you to do, which was fight or flight. Fight or flee. Fight something, fight the bear, fight the saber tooth tiger, or run away from it.
Speaker 2:So can we say that if we were cavemen and women, if we really, truly fought, would we be able to rid our body of that stress? I think so, yes, and it no longer would then become that subconscious stress in our system. Yes, okay, what about, uh, sprinters Like you, literally?
Speaker 1:run away for a living? Would they technically be the least stressed of all of human society? Yeah, that's a great question. So here's where. Here's where it gets interesting. So if you talk about I, we see like there was a time when I was seeing a lot of CrossFit athletes and every one of them would come in like hey, I have a six pack and I'm healthy and I work out. And I just had this some the other day where somebody was like but dude, I work out like all the time my joints in my spine are moving, but the key is it's gotta be proper movement of the joints of the spine.
Speaker 1:So this is where we get into like there's a little bit of physiology around chiropractic and I want to do a whole episode, write this down for me where we actually do just talk about the mechanism of chiropractic in the first place. But to get back to your questions, is that if we fought or ran away in that moment when we had the stress, then what are we going to do? So if I fight a bear and I talked about this on another episode if I fight the bear and I kill it as soon as I'm done and the bear is dead, or I'm dead. My system is either going to be gone and it doesn't matter anyway, or the bear's dead and my brain can go. Okay, cool, there's no more threat in front of me. So it's just like you go to goo. It's like, okay, ton of movement, ton of movement, and then the threat's gone. The thing that was there in front of me is still there in front of me, but it's dead now. So there is no threat. So let's go back into rest and digest Lots of movement.
Speaker 1:That's why it's called fighting and flighting fight or run away. On fight or run away. On the other hand, if I run away and I'm moving in that moment, as soon as my body releases stress hormones, then, at if I get far enough away, my brain's going to do the same thing. Okay, cool, I had just lots of movements because remember the fight or flight the stress response is designed to get us up, increase heart rate, increase blood pressure, increase blood sugar levels.
Speaker 1:Why do we do those three things? We increase heart rate and blood pressure because we're gonna be moving. That's why you can feel your heart racing when you have that stress response. That's why you can feel your heart racing if you think about something that happened way in the past, like my walnut story, like the story with Jess calling you and leaving the voicemail about your grandpa that you didn't know about. Have those stresses and we don't fight or run away. The brain goes okay, I'm releasing hormones to get you to move, but you're not moving Cause we live in a modern society where most of our stress comes from. I was just hanging out and I got a voicemail. There was nothing that showed up to attack you. That's all mental. Right.
Speaker 1:Right On my story. A little bit more of like something showed up to attack me and you technically kind of in a way yeah but the threat was still there, seeking me. I never completely got rid of the threat. Okay, so then? So to go back to the question of like well, what about sprinters, if that's an exercise? But if we're sprinting and that's our job, that's also a stress on the system, a positive stress or yeah, but stress is just stress.
Speaker 2:Sure, like, your body doesn't know the difference between positive or negative stress. Why?
Speaker 1:do sprinters look so fit and like they have good muscles and rip six packs and all this stuff?
Speaker 1:Because they're training their bodies to the point where they break down muscle tissue connective tissue and then they build it back up stronger that's the whole process connective tissue and then they build it back up stronger that's the whole process. So they're literally having to break down their system, put it under stress and duress, in order to build it up stronger, to make it faster. So even if they're moving, but joints of the spine aren't moving, well, this is where we get into the subcortical conversation, Because what happens is that when we have subcortical stress, those stress hormones fire and turn off the front part of the brain. The front part of the brain turns off our tiny postural muscles around our spine and it starts to fire up big protective muscles to get us ready to fight or run away. So if that process is happening all the time, when we're sleeping, when we're eating, when we're running at the gym, if it's a constant subcortical, then we're still getting more stress in the system than we're draining out. Okay.
Speaker 4:What about in conflict or conversation? You know the term everyone uses today. Is what you're saying like the fight or flight response, like if someone is coming to confront something. How does that translate into day-to-day conversational settings? To not have a stress response become ignited when, just like I don't know, hashing out disagreement or what does that look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we do, though that's the thing is like, we do have those stresses, and those stresses do, in some ways, like negatively affect our system. So and that's part of the problem is that we have more conflict, I would argue, today, because a lot of us don't have great relationships than what cavemen and women had that is, uh, not even this.
Speaker 1:I think that, just again, it's this idea to me of what I think technology has set us up for. We're more disconnected, sure, even though we're more connected than ever, there's less eye to eye contact.
Speaker 1:We talked about eye to eye contact and oxytocin physiologically on another episode I think there tends to be, like the TV that we watch, and grains, if you look at, like the real housewives of Atlanta and Hollywood, and like all those shows. It's all drama, yeah, and so that normalizes the fact that there should be drama and conflict and I'm not saying that there shouldn't be. But I think that part of the issue, if we really get into like stress and subcortical stress and the stress that humans have in their lives most of it is just relational like I'm starting to think about clients right now and most of them just have relationship stress that they they're not able to say what they want to say or they are just way too confrontational because they can't value someone else without feeling like that person's attacking them and that they're wrong. Like I have to be right and you have to be wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause you've been trained that way, right, like the pride ego.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's so much of it and it's like, well, everybody can have their own opinion. I'm like that's cool, they can. We can still love each other, but most people aren't loving each other. We're just taught to like actually just hate each other and like you're wrong and I'm right be independent.
Speaker 2:Think for yourself first, we're still both human beings at the end of the day it's like that survival mode, um in a different way, though, because everybody's like me first.
Speaker 1:Yeah exactly and it is. It's just straight survival mode, but we've taken away the like. There's a necessity to have a community to be safe and protected if we're cavemen and women. Our community is so different now so it can be fragmented and everybody can have different ideas and everybody can be themselves and they can be whatever they want to be and identify with whatever they want, and I feel like that creates more dichotomy between people and more separation between people, because we don't need it to survive now, before I might have needed you to go pick berries while I hunt.
Speaker 2:That makes sense Me. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I might have needed Wes to be the one to be able to like build a fire and build a building right, and Danielle's the teacher and like whatever. If we just talk about the team. A little village, there's a village and we all contribute to it, and now it's kind of like we're all just out for ourselves.
Speaker 1:So, that makes it stressful in and of itself. And then we could add social media on top of this. I'm just riffing and like ranting now, but you add social media on top of it, where it's like everybody's idea is there. Then we have a comparison game and that triggers a stress response. But again, remember, I've just named a bunch of stresses implicitly and if we don't fight or run away, then we have a subcortical stress response because of how our brain wires and writes memories. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So what if there's someone who has like all this childhood trauma from confrontation in their home, and then they get into a relationship or a friendship and that that subcortical stress comes up, a friend saying like hey, can I ask you a question? Would you say in that moment, like just based on the caveman analogy to the flight instinct comes in to want to either escape, dependent on the person, or the fight instinct to combat and a defensive mode. So you're saying either way the stress is going to be released in the body, no matter which one out of flight or fight is chosen yeah, 100, because the stress hormones are the stress hormones, no matter what.
Speaker 1:There's cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine, that's it, and then it affects dopamine and some other stuff. So I think it would be good to jump into just like a little bit in the nerdy science of how does a memory get written, because then it'll shed some light on kind of what I'm talking about and why this happens this way. Okay, because I don't. I think most people, like we think about trauma and people talk about trauma and that's like a cool thing to talk about right now. Sure.
Speaker 1:My issue with trauma is that it's just a memory in the system, and the word trauma, in both Greek and Latin, just means wound.
Speaker 2:So it's a memory that's created a wound, and would you say that, no matter how you're brought up, who you were raised by, what experiences you had, even if they were like the most perfect of perfect, would you say that everybody still has some type of like memory wound? For sure, I think there are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean there are soul ties. Yeah, would you say that everybody still has some type of like memory wound. For sure I think there are. Yeah, I mean there are soul ties. Yeah, there are. Things can be passed down generationally. So if we talk about epigenetics, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like. I'll give you a great example of this. So my dad's side of the family alcohol, drugs, poverty, a lot of stuff but the mentality of the family on that side was I can do it on my own Right. So we go, grandpa, do it on your own, dad kicked out of the house when he's 18 or supporting the whole family like there was really no in between. There's a whole bunch of stuff I could share about my dad's story. That's crazy.
Speaker 1:It should be a netflix documentary like for real seriously and then we go and I don't want to share too much of that and like, get way off track. But then we go to me and so I've done all this work over the last year, which is why I feel like I'm like well suited to be able to talk about this subcortical stress, because what I know about my generation, generational traumas and some of the stuff that just came from dad too, but like poverty, mindset was passed in the family.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I can do it all on my own was passed in the family, and what I think is interesting about I can do it on my own. Being passed down in the family is like if I can do it on my own, I don't need you which is part of why our relationship suffered.
Speaker 1:I don't need a team around me to help me. I can't delegate to Danielle or West the way that I like I literally couldn't do that stuff before until I started realizing that, like hey, there are these memories that have literally been passed down and it's the exact same thing. Your genes will write and surround themselves around the things that happen to a person. It's called epigenetics, so what's happening in the environment is literally going to affect your genetics.
Speaker 2:So, like the traumas and stresses that your grandpa had, can create the same subcortical stress in your system if it's not taken care of appropriately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it primes the body to carry those wounds and be more more susceptible to them.
Speaker 1:So when someone confronts me, yes, instead of being able to see other sides of the story, I just go. You know what. You're trying to tell me that I'm wrong and I'm just going to go do it on my own and I'll figure it out on my own. The independence yes, independence, yeah, which is interesting. So when we get into a spiritual conversation, remember how stress hormones affect the front part of the brain. Front part of the brain is responsible for faith. If I don't need anybody else, by default, what I'm saying in that, as I also don't, I don't leave any room for God.
Speaker 2:Don't need God yeah.
Speaker 1:Uh, which I think is the craziest thing ever, because he created this system.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And that's what's cool, like just the reminder, and I'll continue to say this every episode. I think it's probably the most important thing that I could say is that when someone has the subcortical stresses, it's turning off the part of the brain that's responsible for bringing them closer to god.
Speaker 2:And the key, one of the key words in there is you're saying when? Because we are always going to experience the stressors. It's how you adapt to it and process it properly.
Speaker 1:And there are ways to process it. Obviously, I'm biased to the answer and the solution to it, but I've seen it just so many times. So let's um, let's just talk about real quick how memories are stored. Okay, so first thing that happens, we have five senses. So all the time we have two things. We have what's called enteroception, which is internal, it's just sensing internally what's happening in our body. So we have all these pressure sensors, we have all these things that are sensing what's happening in our environment so that we can keep our blood sugar regulated, so that we can keep our insulin levels regulated. Can you say that again?
Speaker 4:just for the sake of the mic, which part I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2:The beginning of I can't even say the word, you just said oh, interoception, yeah, sorry.
Speaker 1:So the first thing that happens when we have a stress response, you just have to like the thing to remember is that we have five senses, so our eyes, our ears, our nose, our mouth and then literally what we can feel. Those are all going to get ramped up and we're just going to take information into the brain. And this is part of what's cool about a subcortical stress response is, you have to like I always like to think about the fact that each person, based on how much stress they're under and how their brain is interpreting the world, is different. So you could look at something and think it's scary, and I could look at something and think it's exciting.
Speaker 2:Is that because of like, our sensory is taking it in differently?
Speaker 1:Well, not that it. Yeah, it is, and everybody's can be manipulated, and so I don't even know if we're gonna get into acceptance that you want Is that what you're trying to say you can rewire how your body interprets the sensory information that comes in. Why is it that we can be in the car and I can be freezing cold, cold plunge seat heater on heat blasting freezing cold can't get warm and you're like dude, I'm sweating. Same temperature in the car You're sweating, I'm still freezing.
Speaker 2:It's not because of the cold plunge, is what you're saying.
Speaker 1:No, I'm saying that the car is still the same temperature. So we're interpreting our senses, our brains are interpreting the exact same environment two different ways. Some people love the cold. I hate the cold.
Speaker 2:Oh, me too.
Speaker 1:So, which I think is a spiritual thing. We get into that later. Um, there's, so, there's all these like, there's all these places where we can look at something. So I'll give. I'll give. A good example of this would be this. So, in one of my favorite books ever, it's called the art of choosing, by Sheena Iyengar, and one of the things she talks about in the book is how easily manipulated our senses can get, based on all of the senses. So what they did is they took Hormel, and I think it was chili sauce that they used, or maybe it was tomato sauce. So they took Hormel, tomato sauce, and what they did is they took the logo and they put it on this blind taste test and they had people taste the product and they just had them rate how it tasted. So and you've heard me talk about this.
Speaker 2:I've read this book too, yeah. So I was so intrigued by it after all the information you shared.
Speaker 1:They take a sprig of parsley and they put it in the middle of the logo and they have people do the exact same product different and they rate the taste of the sauce as better.
Speaker 2:Because of the parsley, just by the changing of the logo.
Speaker 1:Because it looked like it was healthier. So nothing changed in the way it actually tasted. Right same ingredients, same spices cook, the same cut up, the same nothing changed. We change the logo. That completely changes our interpretation of the event. So, yes, this is what's interesting is like you talk about this idea, what would be called like anti-fragility, which is the concept that a lot of people look at failures and they look at them as setbacks. But anti-fragility is like how is that? The question is like how is that making me stronger? And Jocko Willink, I think, is the one who talks about it, where he's like anything that happens to me just says good. Right.
Speaker 1:Good no matter what, my car broke down. Good it allows me to get more steps in just make it, switching it to a positive and so that in and of itself is helping rewrite the way that you're sensing and interpreting not what's happening in your body in tarot section, but x tarot section, which is what happens outside.
Speaker 2:So you're like rewiring your ability to accept a memory as a positive thing versus a negative thing. Yep.
Speaker 1:One of my mentors had just bought a it was right when we moved into this office a $500,000 Lamborghini and he used to park it down here yes, On the first floor, furthest away from his offices, furthest away from where anyone would park next to him, and someone dumped a can of black paint all down the side of it.
Speaker 2:I remember this.
Speaker 1:Into the exhaust? Yes, and what's interesting is, I talked to his team and I'm like hey, how's he doing? And the team said we're so surprised we thought he would lose his mind.
Speaker 2:I think we thought that as well.
Speaker 1:And this is like 60, $70,000 worth of work to fix it all because the paint went into the exhaust and there's a whole bunch of work that had to be done. Right. So for him, this same concept of. We thought he would have freaked out and lost his mind, and he was completely cool about it.
Speaker 2:Because he was already in the process of retraining his brain to find a positive out of every circumstance. Yep.
Speaker 1:Just because of the work that he had done. Yeah, so we can change how we interpret the world around us. And if we do that I think Wayne Dyer said this when you change the way you look at things, the way, the things you look at change Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's the concept? Yes, but they're literally talking about neurology and this can get into the idea of subcortical stress. Is that when we have a conversation that's threatening in a way that something was before, our body's naturally going to fire a stress response to keep us safe and protected and it has all these downstream effects as we go.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, crazy. So then, how are memories written? So cortex takes in the senses we fired to the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus reduces, releases a bunch of stress hormones and it fires to. It fires the HPA axis, which is that's what fires up the sympathetics, or the stress response cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine. I'm going to skip some of this stuff just because, um, what I think is most important is that this happens instantaneously, like as quickly as we can experience. Think about, if you heard a loud bang right now. We would probably all flinch without even we didn't even think about it. Our bodies just did it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so that happened. When you spilled the water, we all just flinched and then we were like, oh, it was just the water, so our conscious brain takes time to catch up. It's the scary part of the brain that was going to fire first that takes in all the senses which, naturally, is how we were created. Naturally, is how we were created, because we want to stay safe.
Speaker 1:If it was a bang that was threatening to us, then we are already flinching to keep ourselves safe. Built-in mechanism for survival. So that's why people talk about I'm broken, there's something wrong with me. I'm like no, there's not anything wrong with you, there's just stress stuck on your system that we can unlock subcortical stress. So then, what's interesting to know about when the sensory information comes in? The more emotionally charged it is, the more it will be stored in the brain.
Speaker 1:So the more neutral, the less the brain cares about it. Why? Because of what we talked about with the reticular activating system. I care about things that are scary, I think, care about things that are a value and I care about things that are new so new, exciting, emotionally charged.
Speaker 2:So can you give us an example of like both of those then?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so for me, I'll just use the example that I shared before with the Walnut story. Scary, I threw Walnut, hit somebody in the face. This could be part of the reason why I hate getting hit with in the face with stuff.
Speaker 2:You do, I'm just putting this together Like I hate getting hit in the face.
Speaker 1:That was like I said this to Coco the other day.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, it creates the biggest stress response for him. When he like somebody tosses like a pen and it near his face, he like freaks out. Yeah, I get very mad very quickly, so quickly, quickly, like to the point in my mind it doesn't make sense why you would be so mad that fast. But now, like I can see the correlation, you're like oh, you have subcortical stress let's process this.
Speaker 1:So yeah, coco was literally throwing that little squish mellow at my face yes as hard as she could. The other day. I know when we were sitting up in her bedroom I warned her yeah, and you're like coco, just remember daddy doesn't like that kill you, and so you didn't say those words but, um, so the motion more emotionally charged, so for scary, that could be one right.
Speaker 1:It could be, um, if I almost got hit by a car or I almost drowned when I was like there, and there could be a bunch of them like more traumatic, would you say, or I think that's scary okay, right like, and everybody's interpretation of scary is different.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, that's why some people can watch a horror film and not flinch at all yeah and I can't even like watch the first two minutes of it and I can't ride as a passenger in the car with you, because that's scary exactly so see, you're getting all this subcortical stress that that's just triggering stress in your body and you're not fighting, you're running away and you're, you wonder why it's hard to sleep at night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um. So the more emotionally charged that's the important part of it the more neutral. So if we talk about something that we've, well, let me go um something that's new or novel, so like if you heard a new idea and you're like, oh my gosh, this is really, really exciting. Okay, or oh, I can't wait to learn more about that, and this is, I think I'm a probably a pretty good example of this one too. I'll hear something and I will rip through like all the content on it as quickly as I can.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're so extreme. Taylor's podcast would be a good example of that. Um, there are so many things that it's like, once I hear it, I'll just latch on to it and burn through all of it until my brain's like, okay, it's not new anymore. And then I want to go to the next thing even like listening to a song on repeat. You and coco are the exact same, yeah yeah, we'll listen to a song on repeat over and, over and over and over? You sure will, and over and over, and over and over and over until we're burnt out on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then we don't want to hear it anymore at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, then you're done. That's how she eats too.
Speaker 1:Yep, new and novel. Okay. So that would be an example of new and novel. Again reticular activating system and that's like neutral. Uh no, that's new and novel, okay. So you have stuff that would be. These are more emotionally charged. I get a feeling about a song, so I want to listen to it a lot. I get a feeling about some kind of content or some new book or some new idea or some new thought that I have. You've seen me do this a lot lately. Yes, I have a feeling attached to it. It's emotionally charged, so it gets me fired up. Until it no longer becomes new and novel, I'll continue to just consume and consume and consume, dive in.
Speaker 1:Yep. And then once it's not new anymore, my brain goes. Think about it like this If you ever had a friend when you were a kid I never did this because we were super poor. Friends had a pool and a trampoline, and every single weekend I'm like bro, let me come over, let's jump on the trampoline.
Speaker 2:Inviting yourself over and.
Speaker 1:Let's jump on the trampoline, inviting yourself over. And they're like oh, dude, all right, I guess we can jump on the trampoline.
Speaker 2:They didn't think it was as cool because it wasn't new to them, because it wasn't new anymore. Because they had it whenever they wanted. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So again, same thing. X-teroception, the trampoline's. New and exciting to me. My Riftixer activating system likes that. They activating system likes that. They don't so much Okay, they want something else. New and exciting. Same thing Swimming pool. Can I come over and swim, dude? I just got done swimming, but I didn't have a pool. Yeah, so I could want to get in the pool as much as I could. Yes, new and novel until it's not anymore.
Speaker 1:So that explains why I'll listen to a song until it burns out. While yeah, while I'll consume content until it burns out. Scary is scary. That's my walnut story, that's your grandpa's story. And then the other is what we value. So if I value vitalism which I do the body being self-healing, self-regulating, self-maintaining I'm obsessed with it, you are. I won't stop talking about it. I don't stop thinking about it. I don't stop watching shows and trying to compare like oh, that's a vitalistic principle, or that's the opposite of a vitalistic principle, or how they have that thing twisted Like. I'm just obsessed with it because I value it. I also value I'll give another example excellence as one of our core values, being meticulous about every detail of everything. Which core values? Being meticulous about every detail of everything, which is why I'll come in here and I'm like oh, that little speck of dust on the floor or that in West is right there with me, which is amazing. I love it, yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So emotionally charged matters. If it's not emotionally charged, who cares? Okay, the brain doesn't care about it, it's not going to store memory, or it's harder to store memory. Right, does it make sense? I think so, okay. So then we have a whole bunch of stuff. Um, there's a molecular molecular mechanism to it to get our amygdala, which is the emotional center of the brain, to start to have these molecular mechanisms that take place to write the memory into the amygdala and I'm generalizing. But the reason for that is because if it's emotionally charged, I want to re, my brain wants to remember that emotion without me having to think about it again and go back to it and go let me see how I feel. Because if I have to think about how I feel, then that's going to completely mess up my ability to stay safe and protected if I was a caveman.
Speaker 2:Okay, can you give us an example for that then?
Speaker 1:Yes, if someone came up to me and pulled out a gun and said if you don't give me da-da-da-da-da right now, I'm going to shoot you in the face. If I had to pause and go, let me think about how I feel about that. Just real quick, probably not advantageous to me. Sure.
Speaker 1:Same thing if a bear was going to come to attack me and I'm like, let me just. Let me just categorize all my emotions on how I feel. Let me just figure this out real quick. Hang on one second, I'll be right there. The bear doesn't care, right. So to think about it and process it. We don't want that to happen.
Speaker 1:So this is why we have processes built within the brain. Specifically, we take in the senses that fires up the hypothalamus, that fires the HPA axis. The HPA axis can get wired to fire subcortical stress without us even thinking about it or having the threat there. That's why we can have a thought about an incident that happened in the past and we'll feel that exact same stress response immediately. Immediately, no threat in the room. You're chilling out with your friends, you're laying in bed at night and, boom, your heart starts racing again. You just triggered your own stress response no threat there.
Speaker 1:It's because it's wired into the brain. So minutes later we have this molecular mechanisms that happen. Basically, the hippocampus is going to store who, what, when, and then the amygdala is going to come in and remember the emotional piece of it Days to weeks later. This is what's interesting is other parts of the amygdala, start to come on and remember specific events about what happens, like what happened in that timeframe, like this was happening to my body. I was moving in this way more of the details, how I felt, how I saw it, what everything looked like.
Speaker 2:Like surroundings and okay.
Speaker 1:And those things can get messed up. And here's why is because you're going to start to reconcile the memory. So the more times that you think about it, the more times that your brain is going to pattern it in, as, if these things happen again, we need to fire stress response more quickly.
Speaker 2:So can I ask a question? So when Coco was like two years old, on Halloween she had a very traumatic event of falling off the bicycle and hitting her head and essentially having a concussion.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent had a concussion.
Speaker 2:Yes, through that, over the following few weeks to months, I felt very called to talk about the whole story with her over and over and over, to help her process what she experienced and have her tell me back the story to the best of her ability at that time me back the story as to the best of her ability at that time. And because she was so scared to get back on the bike those first several weeks to several months it was still very traumatic and in her memory right and like, by allowing us to talk about it, allowing her to reprocess the story in her mind, is that kind of like? And now she then she was totally fine on the bike several months later but like, is that kind of like what you're talking about there or no?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you did one thing that's critical, so sometimes talking about it can be a detriment. If I continue to tell the story of how bad it was and how scary it was and how worried I was and how awful it was, that I'm going to wire that more into my brain.
Speaker 2:Is that just because, like we subconsciously always create more heightened like stress within those stories when you're retelling it yourself?
Speaker 1:Well, no, it just creates more. It creates more of those what I say emotionally driven. So if it was bad and it was scary, my brain wants to remember it and it's going to solidify those details more and more. So how did you talk to Coco, though? You talked to Coco in the way that was like mom and dad were there to keep you safe. You were safe. It was just a freak accident. This thing happened, and we kind of gave her all the details. What happened right after? Daddy adjusted you multiple times.
Speaker 1:You were taken care of. It's not like we left you or abandoned you or forgot about you. So we're writing in the memory of her, the safety that she was safe, that yes it hurt and yes it was like awful experience, but that she was safe and we were there for her and gave her time to talk about it and process it out. So that's a difference, because now she's writing the story that I fell off my bike and I was safe. Not, I fell off my bike and I never want to do it again because I'm scared of it or I never want to have a relationship again because I saw how my mom treated my dad and how my dad treated me when my mom wasn't around or whatever the thing is Right example yeah, yeah, so every time you recall a memory, it's re-encoded in the brain.
Speaker 1:So again like and this is what's so crazy, If you think about eyewitnesses for court trials, they're not, they're like oftentimes not credible at all Sure, and they forget a lot of the details. It can't be like a hundred percent accurate because every time they think about it, if they think about the details differently, those get written into the brain differently. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, yeah, there's a book on it. I can't remember what the name of the book is. I'll have to go back, um, and find it, but there's a book that talks about this, about how the story, oftentimes the stories that we have, are actually not the true version of the story. This is why I'll give you a cool example of this. So I had a friend in high school who, uh, we were doing some things we should not have been doing for sure, and he remembers the story, the exact story. With me being there, I can tell every detail. He tells every detail of the story, except for he doesn't have the story with me in it. It was somebody else, but you were there, I was a hundred percent there. It was just me and him. Oh, so that all he has all the details correct, but a different person plugged into. Why is that, though? I would speculate because of how our relationship drifted over time.
Speaker 2:He wanted to, like subconsciously, block you out.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, not subconsciously block me out, but I'll just say it like this. So there it was a season of like super heavy drug use, sure, and with that, as I think I exited that timeframe but other people stayed around, it was hard to decipher the memory of like who was actually there. And since I wasn't around as much, because I kind of exited that season, and other people stayed. It was easier to implant somebody else in the memory. Wow. Yeah, that's wild, but I can vividly remember all of the details.
Speaker 2:So when people talk about like this is my truth, like is everybody's truth really truthful? No. Because of the memory that we create are constantly changing and adapting because of the stress.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Whoa.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's crazy to think about, right? So then the question I love that, and I think the question is in, like, what's the truth? Well, the Bible that I read says that you are loved, that you should not fear, that you're already enough, that you're perfect, that you're amazing, and I can give you a simple example of this. I just did this in a room full of like 40 guys and walk them through, and this is not for me. This is from somebody else, a guy named Jamie Winship, who I've listened to that podcast like a million times. He's so smart, it's really good and I'll botch it.
Speaker 1:His process is a little bit more in depth than what we did, but it's really simple. If you just sit and like I would put on a certain worship song for me, something that just like gives you that emotional charge, right, um, and like a feeling connection to God, and with that, what you're going to do is tell God out loud this is what I'm afraid of. Like these are all my fears. I'm scared that I'm not good enough. So for me, this is what it looked like I'm sitting in tears and men's group on Saturday morning and I just did this and I was like this I'm afraid that I'm not good enough, that I'm not going to fulfill on what you promised me, that like all, just all of these fears and worries and doubts and insecurities about myself. And then the next step of it is to just say God, I give that all to you. What do you think about me? What do you say? And just hear the words, and it'll probably be a word or a phrase.
Speaker 2:Just sit in silence and listen, and mine was amazing.
Speaker 1:You're amazing and just like in tears weeping tears dripping on the floor, and so that's how God looks at me. So that's the truth. All the other stuff, the traumas which are just wounds, the wounds are so interesting. This wasn't even supposed to be about trauma, it's crazy. It's supposed to be about memories, but if a wound is a trauma and a trauma is a memory and we can just wrap those all up together, which is basically what it is, and it's a writing of the system to release a subcortical stress response to remember it, to keep us safe and protected, then what's interesting about a wound is it like to me? I think of it as something that's open and that means it allows access to, so people can like pick at it, and that's how they can get you and get you, can get tricked into seeing something that's not really there. And I think, if you look at all the stuff that I kind of went on my rant on in the beginning of media and TV and Insta and not that those things are bad, they're tools.
Speaker 1:but a lot of people, I think, get hurt because they have these open wounds that they've never known how to heal. And it's really simple to heal them. It's just to realize that, like God loves you and you've always been loved, and even if that person didn't love you, they don't necessarily reflect how the true father sees you.
Speaker 2:That's so good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that like so. Then the question is, like, literally, why does all this matter, right? So I think what it boils down to is that when you understand that you have every person has subcortical stress, right? So, like, if you're a practitioner watching this, you're working with people who have subcortical stress. You probably have it yourself.
Speaker 2:Can their subcortical stress sorry side note can their subcortical stress, like they're working with, be expressed onto their clients?
Speaker 1:Yeah, always For sure, and that's why we have to have strategies to continue to get ourselves out of it. Yeah, like it's not just that. Oh, I dealt with all my stress. I'm good for the rest of my life. That's why it's ongoing. That's why we adjust cocoa on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's why our team, we take care of the way that we take care of. That's why we do things like express gratitude every morning and like anything worth doing is worth doing not just one time.
Speaker 2:Right. But continue like you know, building momentum in the system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and so you know it. Really, it matters for a couple of reasons, I think. Number one is because we're accessing higher levels of the brain, specifically the frontal cortex. So if you're aware that you have the subcortical stress, you can start to rewrite new memories and you can rewrite future memories. Oh, how do you do that? That's a whole other conversation, but we just get into myelination. So it has to do with visual visualization.
Speaker 1:Um, it has to do with if you could actually make a note for me to talk about that, like writing future memories, I think that would be a good episode. But if you're like, if you're a practitioner, realizing that people deal with this stuff, everyone deals with this stuff, and it just gives you a softer heart for people, yeah, and I think it allows you to serve people at a higher level. Um, and then, lastly, I think the most important thing is that we talked about this before, I believe, but the Lindy effect think the most important thing is that we talked about this before, I believe, but the Lindy effect. So the Lindy effect just says that the longer something has been around, the more likely to be around in the future. So when's the best time to start dealing with this stuff?
Speaker 2:Now or yesterday? Yesterday will be the best time we can't do that.
Speaker 1:So we're going to start today, because the longer that it hangs around, the longer that it's likely to be there and the harder it is to pull the roots of the weed. And anybody knows this, if you've ever pulled weeds yeah if you let it grow and grow and grow and grow, those roots get in the ground deeper, yep longer yeah and so we have a responsibility and awareness, and that's what we do. Anything else?
Speaker 2:no, I feel like that's powerful as a parent yeah to be able to, like, recognize your subcortical stress, these stressors that affect your subconscious, being able to process and eliminate them. Adapt to things much easier for the sake of like your children or in grandchildren.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, we just have to be aware. That's the main thing, and so this is how we change lives, this is how we change the world. Straight up, I love it. So yeah, that's awesome. Cool. Remember, your body's not broken. It knows how to heal itself. God gave you all the tools available and we'll come live again next week. Peace.
