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Tag: anxiety management

115. Choosing Supplements for Anxiety with Dan Chapman of Redd Remedies

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie explores the link between emotional health and gut health with Dan Chapman, founder of Red Remedies, emphasizing the role of high quality supplements in promoting overall well-being.

Episode Highlights:

  • The connection between emotional health and gut health, and how stress can impact digestion and overall well-being.
  • Christian perspective on stewardship over our bodies and emotional well-being
  • Understanding the role of herbs and natural remedies as part of God’s provision for health.
  • The benefits of using supplements, such as those offered by Redd Remedies, to support emotional health and overall well-being.
  • What to look for in a natural health brand and why transparency in sourcing and
    testing is crucial.

Take advantage of a 20% discount on any Redd Remedies product using code HOPE20 at checkout.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, episode 115! I’m Carrie Bock, your host and a licensed professional counselor based in Tennessee.

Today, I’m thrilled to welcome Dan Chapman, founder of Redd Remedies. We met after the AACC conference to discuss the benefits of supplements for managing anxiety.

In this episode, we cover:

  • Gut Health and Anxiety: We revisit the link between gut health and anxiety, a topic we explored in episode 44. Dan explains how stress can impact gut health and neurotransmitter production, creating a cycle that affects both physical and emotional health.
  • The Stress Response: Dan discusses how chronic stress impacts digestion and overall health. He emphasizes the importance of rest and recuperation, as God designed us to need both work and rest.
  • Natural Remedies: We explore the benefits of herbal supplements and how they can support stress management. Dan shares how Redd Remedies creates formulas to nourish the body rather than just stimulating it.
  • Supplement Quality: Dan highlights what sets Redd Remedies apart, including their commitment to quality and purity. He compares it to finding a top-notch restaurant versus a mediocre one, underscoring the importance of ingredient quality and effective formulation.
  • Consumer Choices: Dan addresses common questions about choosing supplements, such as the difference between high-quality and inferior products and the effectiveness of various forms of supplements.

I hope this episode brings you valuable insights and practical advice as you work towards better health. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review to help others find this resource.

Check out the latest episode:

44. How Can Improving Gut Health Help Your Mood? with Maggie Roney, MS, NCC, LPC

Transcript

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD episode 115. I am your host, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. We talk about a variety of different topics on this show with a goal of reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. We’re constantly talking about the overlap between our physical health, our mental health, emotional, and spiritual health, since this is a Christian podcast.

Today on the show, I have with me Dan Chapman, who is the founder of Redd Remedies. That’s two D’s in Redd for those who are listening and not looking at our show notes yet, but we’ll put that in there for you. I’m happy to have Dan here. We connected a little bit after the AACC conference to have a chat about supplements and their benefits for anxiety.

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Carrie: Welcome to the show.

Dan: I’m grateful to be here with you, Carrie. Thanks for having me today.

Carrie: We’ve talked in the past on our show about gut health and the connection to anxiety. I interviewed, I think it was a functional medicine doctor. It’s episode 44, if anybody wants to go back and look at it: How Can Improving Gut Health Help Your Mood? We talked about neurotransmitters like serotonin and things being affected. A lot of that is my understanding is formed in your gut. Maybe for people who haven’t heard that episode, kind of give us a review of that connection between anxiety and gut health.

Dan: Absolutely. Oftentimes, we look at the health of our gut being a determining factor on what the health of your body is going to be, and that would include emotional health and all kinds of other health issues as well.

One of the things that I think is important to look at, though, it is not just the gut, but what is it, especially with emotional health issues that might cause you to have an unhealthy gut, which is therefore going to cause you to have some issues with maybe neurotransmitter production and digestive issues and other things like that.

It ends up being a little bit of a spiral and what I mean by that, is stress is going to cause your digestive system to change. What comes first, the digestive issue or the stress issue? When we have both of them, it can be a little bit of a spiral. I do want to give a little bit of hope that we’re not just going to share the bad news here today, but hopefully, some things that your listeners can do helpfully and positively to make positive changes. I do think it’s really important to understand what happens in the body. I really like to help people understand what happens when we have a stress response because we also need to recognize that God gave us a stress response. It’s not all negative, but there are changes that happen in your body physically under stress.

If we allow ourselves the time and the space to rest and to heal and to recuperate after that stress response. We’re okay. Our bodies are designed to go through that process, and we do it really throughout our lifetime. The problem happens is when we have this internal stress response that fires off over and over and over again. That’s where we need to make some changes.

One of the things that we know about stress is that during that stress response, your body literally shuts down the digestive system. You stop producing enzymes to digest food. You don’t process carbohydrates the same way. Part of that process is because during stress, your body needs to reprioritize the use of its energy.

You only have so much energy to go around, so your body is going to say, “You know what? I don’t need the digestive system to work at this moment. I’m going to put that energy into my muscles and my brain so I could respond the way I need to for survival.” If we live in that stress response, we live in a constant state of digestive enzymes not being produced the way that we need to, to digest food well, which is going to cause a host of other issues.

I like to back up not just talking about digestion, but I want to back up at some point and talk about what can we do to protect your body from the negative impact of stress.

Carrie: A lot of people are familiar with the fight, flight, or freeze. Some people have added now fawn to that, but then the opposite of that is rest and digest.

A lot of times we don’t talk about the rest and digest piece. As you’ve said, if people are in chronic states of stress, maybe due to caring for a loved one, Maybe due to past trauma, so they’re constantly getting triggered back to that time where they had to be in that fight, flight, or freeze mode, or the stresses of day to day life that people have that, whether it’s job, work, family, we live with a lot of stress, probably more than we need to.

We can lower that stress. That’s great. But sometimes we’re in situations where for a season, at least even we don’t have an option. We have to keep doing the things that we’re doing. And so this is great to talk about. Our digestive system doesn’t get that balance. It’s constantly in the fight, flight or freeze and doesn’t get that balance of the rest and digest energy.

Dan: I got my start in the natural food world because of my mother. My mom struggled with anxiety, fatigue, depression in the 1950s, a long time ago. And it was a long process for her to change her health. By changing diet and integrating herbs and nutrition, and part of the thing that I recognize growing up with my mother is that she had the mindset of always wanting to care for and serve other people, and sometimes she did not take care of herself well and when she needed to take care of herself, she almost had a sense of guilt because she wanted to be outward focused and help all of those around her. One of the things I think is just really important to recognize is we look at the fact that we are whole people. We can’t just look at stress or just look at digestion or just look at our diet or whatever the thing is.

God created us as whole people. One of the things that I love about the way that the Lord cares for us is in creation, He created night and then day. It’s been such a really remarkable thing for me to appreciate. That, you know, my view of the day typically is that, oh, it’s going to start at 6 or 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning, and that’s not true. Our day starts at night. We need to sleep and we need to rest and it’s out of that rest that we can go about having a good day.

The other reflection on that, that I think is important, at least it was impactful for me is to understand that in the creation process, Our first day as human beings, our first full day was Sabbath. So my week doesn’t start on Monday through Friday, and when I’m tired at the end of the week, I’m going to take the weekend and I’m going to rest and then recuperate from that long week. No, my week starts on Sunday where I’m going to rest. And out of that strength of rest, I can actually go about having a week.

I realized even the knowledge of that, like some of us and myself included can feel like, well, I just can’t do that. My schedule doesn’t allow for that. I don’t know how I would possibly do that. But it starts with the knowing that we have to rest first and out of that rest, we can go about living our life the way God created us to live.

Carrie: That’s such a great concept. All of these things that you’re talking about play on each other. I’m so anxious. I can’t sleep and then I’m not sleeping well and maybe I’m just grabbing something quick and not really thinking about what I’m eating or I’m eating too many carbs to try to get the energy flowing or drinking too much caffeine because I’m exhausted.

It just people get end up in this really negative cycle of their physical and emotional health. It’s like I feel terrible. But then I continue to do things that cause me to feel worse instead of helping my physical and mental health. So how do we get off of this treadmill, I guess, or negative cycle.

Dan: That’s a great question.I think this is definitely the place where We have some amazing herbs and vitamins and minerals, amino acids and things. I believe the Lord gave us because he knew, he knew from the beginning of time where we would be. I believe he gave us these tools to help our body deal with the place that we’re at.

We can start to make these little steps forward each day. We just need a little bit of improvement over the day before. We don’t need transformation by Friday. We just need a little bit of improvement and progress every day. That’s part of the reason that I started Red Remedies is I wanted to create formulas so an individual in a situation did not have to figure out, okay, what herb do I use? How much do I use? Do I put that together with that vitamin that I heard about or that mineral that I heard about? There’s so much clutter to work through. We put these formulas together in a way that allows us to get the results that we want for that individual, but also working with the body. Our formulation philosophy is we’re going to nourish your body.

We’re not going to push or stimulate it. We’re going to nourish and feed it because I believe a well fed body is going to do what the Lord created the body to do in the first place. So we are simply feeding and nourishing the body. We are using some herbs known as adaptogens. These herbs are going to protect your brain and your body from the negative impact of stress, and I will tell you these herbs are wonderful because it goes through all of the things that we just talked about earlier on this episode of the impact of stress when we live in that stress response that fires off constantly throughout the day, there is a significant negative impact physically on your body and in your brain. These herbs, they’re safe. They’ve been used for thousands of years. There’s so many studies around them. And literally the way I summarize is they protect you from that negative impact of stress.

Carrie: That’s awesome. We’ve all heard people say, okay, we’ll be talking with friends or family and they’ll say, well, have you tried this? Have you tried adding B vitamins? Or have you tried adding a probiotic? Or have you tried adding this? And next thing you know, you’ve got this table full of supplements and you’re like, I don’t know who’s doing what and if any of this is working and how is it going? So What you’re talking about, your products are blends of all of these different vitamins and herbs to help people with specific issues like sleep or digestion or brain function and anxiety so that you have a supplement that I actually started taking called at ease, which has been really great to just managing overall stress level.

I feel like for me, it’s been helpful. I got one for my husband too. I got him on nerve shield because he has a neurological condition and he has a lot of nerve pain specifically at night, more often in neuropathy issues. I said, do you think that’s helping you? And he said, yeah, definitely. And I was like, okay, well let’s keep taking it then.

I’ve noticed just two at night, less complaints from him or less issues of him being in so much pain that he was before. So that’s really a game changer for us to be able to use something natural and also not have to rely on prescriptions. If people are on medications for anxiety and OCD that are working for them, we’re all for that.

I talk with a lot of clients too who struggle because they’ve tried medication, they’ve gotten a lot of side effects, or they haven’t gotten the effectiveness that they’ve wanted. I find a lot of clients are looking for more natural remedies. So I’m glad that we’re having this conversation and talking about these things.

Dan: Definitely. That is exactly why I started Redd Remedies and put these products together. It’s because I had been working with so many people for many, many years. And it was so challenging to give them a B complex and then take these couple of herbs over here and you end up with four or five or six bottles of product to use for a single problem, and it’s difficult to take that many pills. It’s difficult to follow the instructions for what you need to do with each one of those products, whereas we put it together in a formula and it just makes it so much easier for the individual to use. And we find that a well designed formula will actually have a many times better impact, and the result that we’re looking for, then using a whole bunch of single ingredients that fill up your cabinet.

Carrie: Yes. Honestly, when I first heard about Redd Remedies and we started communicating via email and I thought, okay, like it’s a supplement company. That’s nice. There’s about a thousand plus supplement companies out there.

I wanted you to talk with us a little bit, because I’m sure, like I’ve said, people who are listening have heard, “Hey, take this vitamin or that vitamin,” and then you go to the store, there’s this whole rows of vitamins. And you’re looking at what makes this brand A different from this brand B over here.

How do I know that I’m actually getting what I’m getting? That’s one piece. How do I know that I’m getting what the bottle even says I’m getting? Second piece is like, how do I even know that my body’s really absorbing that and using that? Can you talk with us about those things as we’re trying to make consumer decisions?

Dan: Yes, that’s a great question, and we could talk for a few more days about that specifically. Let me try to give you just a little bit of an image, and then I’ll tell you just some more details about who we are. Yes, there are thousands of supplement companies out there, and it may be it’s similar to the fact that there’s also thousands and thousands of restaurants. All of us can go through our town and we know different restaurants. We know some are really, really good quality. They have got the five star and they have got the chef that went to school for how many years and he’s a master chef. And the food at that restaurant is incredible. And then there’s other restaurants that maybe not the same quality.

We know that, but it’s all food and you might even be able to get chicken at both of those restaurants or steak at both of those restaurants or a salad at all of those restaurants, but the quality is absolutely different. That is very much also true in the dietary supplement world. And so at Redd Remedies, we were a small, I consider us a boutique company.

We make only about 40 different products. Where we make a product, we’re very specialized in that area, so we have a handful of products for emotional health issues, if you will, and because we know that we need slightly different formula for the issues that different people might be experiencing. I also have on our team, a master herbalist, and that’s 1 of the things that sets us apart. While I personally have a very long history, I grew up using herbs and eating healthy foods, mostly because of my mother.

I have a long experience with that. It’s like second nature to me on my team. I have a lady who has an undergrad degree in biology and a master’s degree in herbal medicine. I will tell you that in particular is really part of what’s significantly sets us apart, and it’s no different than that 5 star restaurant with that master chef who can make chicken noodle soup, if you will, no different than maybe I’ll make chicken noodle soup with all the same ingredients, but that soup by that master chef is very different. They might use the same spices, but they know where to get them. They know when they should be harvested. They know exactly how that spice should be used and prepared in the right amount, along with the other spices they use. And that’s what happens when we put a formula together, uh, using our master herbalist.

We have lots of resources beyond that, so it’s one of the things that really separates us is the choice of the herbs that we’re using, the part of that plant that we want used, the type of the extract that we want used, and the way we want that herb prepared. You might see an herb or even a mineral on the label of 20 different herbal supplements, but that same quote unquote ingredient can be wildly different.

On each 1 of those products, just because of the source, the way it’s prepared, the type of extract. That’s 1 piece is we’re very particular about the ingredients that we put in. The other thing that we do is while I believe very much in building relationships with the places that we buy and get our herbs and our vitamins and minerals.

We definitely believe in accountability. We have a purity promise that we have designed ourselves. It’s a testing protocol. The reason we’ve designed it ourselves is I have not seen a testing standard. I’ll say in the world, that is a standard that we believe is going to do the job that’s necessary to ensure purity.

With the variety of herbs and things that you see out there, our master herbalist has put that program together, and we have a 3rd party lab that then manages that purity promise for us. If any of your listeners want more detail on purity, I don’t want to spend too much time there, but then go to our website at reddremedies.com/purity. We have a nice summary there, but also for those that really want the detail, they can download a white paper. That’s about 23 pages long. That will tell you what we do for testing and purity. I can just tell you that it’s what we do is different. No different probably than that 5 star restaurant where that chef is just really engaged in what he or she is making and cooking and preparing for their clients.

Carrie: Yes, I think that’s awesome and I appreciate the transparency there because not all brands are willing to peel back and let you know the details of some of those things. If you really want to get down into the dirt and the weeds and everything like that.

I also think it’s cool that you can become a master herbalist. Put that on your list of career goals for anybody that’s looking and interested in this area. That’s pretty awesome. Studying herbs and acquiring and how to use them and I like what you said about there’s a difference probably in terms of how you’re using the extract or dried forms of things and all of that stuff. I’m sure that makes a huge difference. It’s kike when we put fresh parsley and something versus if we use dried parsley and something, it’s going to make a difference in the end result.

When we met via Zoom a little earlier and had chatted, we got on the subject of gummy vitamins, which is super funny because when you go into the store now, it’s like, we’re all adults, but somehow there are just like tons of gummy vitamins. I was looking for, I think, maybe like a multivitamin or something at one point, and I was really struggling to find one that wasn’t a gummy vitamin. Why are these things so popular? And are we just kidding ourselves here? Are we really just eating candy and pretending we’re getting vitamins? What’s going on with these gummy vitamins.

Dan: Oh my goodness. Yes. As human beings, do we not love to just satisfy ourselves? Yes. That’s probably the best definition of a gummy. I want to do something good for myself, but yet I want to be satisfied. So, yeah, gummies have kind of taken the supplement world by storm. I hate to generalize because no doubt there are some gummy products out there that I would say absolutely have value, but I would say that is the minority.

It would be the very select few. The majority of the gummies out there, in my opinion, are probably not going to be worth the money that you spend on them. I would encourage you, if you can’t swallow a capsule or tablet, like in the multivitamin example, I encourage you to go find a good tablet chewable, not a sugar filled gummy chewable.

The reason for that is vitamins, minerals, and herbs can and do degrade. We want them to be pure and potent. And one of the things that will degrade a vitamin especially is moisture. If you think about a gummy, gummies are soft. We don’t think about gummy as having moisture in there. Most of us probably don’t squeeze a gummy and water doesn’t come out. But there is a moisture content in a gummy significantly higher than a capsule or tablet. You’re going to have some issues with stability for sure and so you want to make sure that it is a brand that knows how to do appropriate testing to ensure that what’s on that label is on the label.

I will just tell you that most brands are not testing properly. The other issue that you have with a gummy is just a physical issue of space. You can only put a very small amount of active ingredients in a gummy. Part of the issue is if you have a gummy and you’re going to chew like two of those or even three of those a day of some multivitamin, you’re really not getting much of anything.

I would encourage you to go to the produce stand and eat some lettuce and an apple or something or some blueberries, and you probably get more benefit from that. Hopefully that’s helpful. Most of what we use at Redd Remedies is a capsule. We do some tablets. We’re going to get really good stability in that and really good efficacy in that. You know, for the most part, stay away from your gummies.

Carrie: Yes, that definitely makes sense. I appreciate you sharing all of the different wisdom that you had, just talking about how we can make decisions and investigate companies. Let’s talk about a couple products specifically that you have at Redd Remedies for emotional health.

Dan: Certainly. You mentioned that you were using at ease and that certainly is one of the flagships in the emotional health area for us. AtEase is a product that people would use when the stress that they experience is more like anxious, nervous, tension type stress. I also look at AtEase as my caregiver product.

If you’re one of those listeners and you’re caring for everybody around you, AtEase will actually help kind of balance the emotions of that out because when you care for others, You’re giving a part of yourselves away in that process. So AtEase is definitely one of the products I find that most people probably listening here would definitely benefit from.

There’s another product called InJoy. And InJoy is for people whose stress really shows up as kind of depressive, low, melancholy type stress, where we just need that lift of the spirit. We also have and most of us could probably benefit from that will help us get a good restful night’s sleep. And so that’s an important one to look at.

And I don’t want to ignore brain awakening here is because all of us, especially with. Any emotional health issue, if we can feed and nourish and help the brain to function healthy and the way that it’s designed to, brain awakening would probably be a great choice for us as

Carrie: What does brain awakening do for your brain?

Dan: Yes, great question. So brain awakening is going to do three primary things. It is going to restore density to the synapse. Right? So the synapse, of course, as we know, connect our brain cells and we need healthy, dense synapse for the messages to go back and forth between our brain cells appropriately.

There’s a form of magnesium that we use because it’s those minerals or electrolytes that are going to help with electrical connectivity. And some amazing research on this specific form of magnesium to restore density to synapse. And then I also use a mushroom known as lion’s mane, which will nourish the health and the strength of that brain cell itself.

We use another herb called amla, which is an antioxidant that will protect the brain against damage, stress, plaque buildup, and so forth. We’re focused on the brain cell, the synapse, and protecting that structure to keep it healthy and strong.

Carrie: Wow. Several different angles there that you’re hitting it at. I like that.

At Hope for Anxiety and OCD, I’ve really made a decision not to just kind of, I don’t have random ads on my show, advertising luggage and random things. We’ve made a decision here to be an affiliate partner with Red Remedies. They have been so gracious to give us a coupon code, so if you put in HOPE20, you can try any of their products, not just the ones that we’ve talked about today, and get 20 percent off, and you’ll also be Helping support the podcast.

I really believe in what you’re doing there. I think that adding supplements to just an overall picture of your health, like you said, you can’t just ignore diet, exercise and sleep and then take a supplement and expect your life to be great. But in the process of working on our overall health, if these are products that could benefit you, I would encourage people to definitely try them. Thank you for being on the show and sharing with us today.

Dan: It’s been my pleasure.

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Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling.

114. Vagal Nerve Stimulation for Anxiety with Dr. Hool

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Podcast Episode.

In this episode, Carrie interviews Dr. Nicholas Hool about his personal struggle with anxiety and how it led to the development of VeRelief™.

Episode Highlights:

  • How vagal nerve stimulation works and its effectiveness in relieving stress and anxiety.
  • Why VeRelief is a good option for managing anxiety
  • The evolution of the VeRelief product line, from its initial design to the upcoming third generation.
  • The differences between VeRelief and other anxiety relief devices on the market.

Explore VeRelief through our affiliate link.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to episode 114 of Christian Faith and OCD. I’m Carrie Bock, your host. Today’s episode features a unique guest, Dr. Nicholas Hool. With a PhD in biomedical engineering, Dr. Hool is here to share his personal journey with anxiety and the innovative product he developed to help others manage their anxiety.

In our conversation, Dr. Hool reveals how his experience with anxiety began in high school while pursuing a career in competitive golf. As he faced intense pressure and performance anxiety, he explored various methods to manage his stress, from sports psychology to medication. Despite some initial success with visualization techniques, he found long-term solutions challenging to maintain.

Dr. Hool’s quest for a more effective solution led him to study biomedical engineering. His research focused on the vagus nerve, a key player in regulating our stress response. He explains how vagus nerve stimulation can quickly balance the nervous system, offering a non-drug approach to anxiety relief.

Dr. Hool’s breakthrough came with the development of a handheld device that stimulates the auricular vagus nerve using gentle electrical impulses. This device aims to enhance heart rate variability, a measure of nervous system balance, helping users recover from stress and anxiety more effectively.

Tune in to discover how Dr. Hool’s innovative approach could provide relief for those struggling with anxiety and how his personal journey led to this groundbreaking solution.

Summary

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD episode 114. I am your host, Carrie Bock, and on the show, we’re all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. We have a unique interview today. Here I have with me Dr. Nicholas Hool who has a PhD in biomedical engineering, and he can explain a little bit more about that later. He’s going to talk about his own personal experience with anxiety that led him on a journey to develop a product that will help others with their anxiety as well. 

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Carrie: Welcome to the show.

Dr. Hool: Yes. Thanks for having me.

Carrie: What is your experience with anxiety being on a personal level?

Dr. Hool: I have some experience that’s going to be different than a lot of other people, but my kind of first taste of it was in high school.

I was a competitive golfer growing up, played golf since I could walk basically, but decided I wanted to really pursue golf as a career. Probably when I was, or maybe around 14 years old, I thought I want to do this. I want this to be my sport. It would be awesome to go pro someday like a lot of kids think when they play sports, they want to go pro.

And I was good. I won some tournaments, traveled the country in high school. And then for whatever reason, probably when I was 16, 17, maybe it was just suddenly like the thought of this is real. I got a couple of years left and then it’s like, it’s the real deal. Suddenly I started thinking about it more. I started contemplating the future.

I started contemplating my own performance and everyone’s watching you. Like now is the time you have to perform well. I never thought about the future before.  It was just exciting, right? When you’re a kid, you’re just having a good time, but then suddenly, I mean, I think that’s what anxiety is, right?

You’re thinking about the future in a negative way. You’re afraid, you’re worrying about things that you don’t either typically worry about, or I guess what they say is a typical person doesn’t really worry about it that much to the degree that you’re worrying about it. I just started worrying about the future all the time.

And I’m just like, “why am I worried so much about this?” It wasn’t so much the worry that affected me. I think everybody to some degree worries about their future, right? What if I fail? What if it doesn’t work out? It started manifesting as these. I want to call them panic attacks. They were just severe stress responses.

When I was on the golf course, I would be on the first tee and just heart beating out of my chest. I think it’s normal to be nervous, right? Like everyone gets nervous, but I’d been nervous before I dealt with that in every tournament. This was a lot more severe. Suddenly college coaches are watching, maybe they’re not even watching it.I’m just playing by myself. Suddenly I’m in my head. I’m going into that stress response again. I’m just like, what the heck is going on?

Carrie: It’s a lot of pressure in those sports arenas, the better you get, the more competition you encounter. All of sudden you’re playing around people that are as good as you are better. And there’s a lot going on there.

Dr. Hool: There is a lot going on, but when you think about it, you’re still just doing what you do. It’s me playing golf. That’s it. I’m not playing another person’s golf round. I’m playing my golf round. I’m the one that put all that pressure on myself by thinking about it, by worrying about it.

I think that’s what a lot of people do with just life in general. People are so worried about what if I fail or what is this person going to think of me if I say this or do that. And that causes the stress response that causes an anxiety.

Carrie: Almost like your body is responding as though there’s a bear or a lion in front of you instead of a gold tee.

Dr. Hool: Yes, exactly. And a lot of it, it’s just in your own head. I mean, it’s so hard to just get that out. It’s not like you can just say, “Oh, well, don’t think about it.” Obviously that’s not how it works. If left undealt with, it will have a major negative impact on the trajectory of your life. So for me, I kind of burned out and I didn’t pursue golf after I graduated high school.

I could have gone to play at a lot of different schools.  I was still good, but it was just knowing how good I was. At the time when I graduated, how much I was struggling, it was just like, “man, I don’t feel like this is going to work out. The guys that were going pro at the time were so good.”

And looking at that, I’m like, “man, I’m so far from that.” Even though I’m good,I  just kind of struggle with anxiety and the fear and all that just took a toll. It’s like, “yes, it’s probably best to do something different.”

Carrie: What did you try to manage it or get rid of it or deal with it?

Dr. Hool: When I was 16, I went to a sports psychologist and did the whole thing like lay on the couch, let’s go through progressive muscle relaxation. It lets get you a nice state of calm. And he would lead me through these visualizations of just being on the golf course and playing perfect golf. If I hit a bad shot, what does that look like to recover from that? And then even if I’m in a high pressure situation, trying to visualize my body responding in an ideal way compared to how I typically respond.

And just doing that over and over in the mind was sort of reprogramming my thought process. It worked incredibly well when I was practicing it. The key is that I did it for about a month, probably a few times a week, and it would take me about an hour to do this. I would lay on the couch. I go through my progressive muscle relaxation, get in that optimal state of visualization, and then I would actually do the visualization, which took time. And because it had an almost like a pretty immediate effect, I would do a visualization and I go and play golf. I’m really calm and focused. I thought like, Oh, I cured myself. I’m good. I don’t need to do this anymore. So I stopped doing it. And of course, once you stop doing it, the tendencies come back, especially if you’ve only done it a few times.

I kind of just lost discipline, I guess. I didn’t commit to it. It takes a lot of time and mental effort to do that visualization, to do that relaxation. You have to go find a quiet environment. I got to lay down. If I have racing thoughts, I have to first calm those down before I can even focus on the positive.

That’s hard to do. I was actually prescribed clonazepam for a month, which is a benzodiazepine anti-anxiety drug. Which is really powerful, and I have no idea why the guy prescribed it to me. I did not need that like it wasn’t so bad, but the protocol is you would take it about an hour or so before you go do something that is supposed to freak you out and cause a lot of anxiety, because it takes about an hour to kick in.

It worked really well to get off the first tee when I would take it an hour before taking off. But then it stayed in my system for four hours and I was sluggish. I wasn’t cognitively focused and I wasn’t performing my best mentally. And I was like, that’s not a good option. Like, I don’t want that in my system when I’m trying to play golf.

The available solutions that I tried just weren’t effective, really. They weren’t what I needed. The most effective was the visualization, but, it’s just so hard to commit to that long term because it takes so much time. And like in today’s modern world of just always on the go, who has an hour to just sit down in a quiet space and meditate and focus, even if you had the time to do it. You have to have the ability to do it.

Carrie: It’s a Yes. It’s a skill that you have to learn and train

Dr. Hool: It’s really hard. You can’t just download a meditation app and be like, “Alright, I’m going to do meditation now.” That’s not going to work. It’s a skill. It’s something you get to practice all the time. If you’re not disciplined, it’s just not really going to work out long term.

Carrie: How did this lead you into studying biomedical engineering and learning about the vagus nerve and vagus nerve stimulation?

Dr. Hool: I just had this thought of if I’m on the golf course and I’m fine, and then I fight or flight response can kick in in a matter of seconds. It just hits you out of note. I was thinking, I’m like, if it can just turn on like the flip of a switch, why can’t I turn it off like the flip of a switch doing these meditations and these progressive muscle relaxations and this breathwork stuff that wasn’t the off switch. It just wasn’t having that deep immediate effect that I needed. Neither were drugs, right? Drugs still take an hour to kick in. Those don’t even have very solid effects, but in those moments, it’s not gonna have any effect on me. I thought, let’s go study that response.

There’s going to be something out there that can shut it off fast. I always liked math and engineering, so I chose biomedical engineering because I literally just wanted to study that what is happening in your body physically when that fight or flight response flips on and ultimately to understand it. So I could turn it off.  I just turn it off on command. It was 8 straight years of biomedical engineering went into undergrad. So for four years, I learned all the basics, and then in my PhD program, that’s where I got really specific and started doing actual research with different technologies and ultimately arrived at the one we have today.

Carrie: Tell me about the vagus nerve and its role in that fight, flight, or freeze response. I was doing a little bit of mild Googling on the vagus nerve, and it turns out that the term vagus is Latin for wandering, which I found interesting. So this is a nerve that wanders in our body.

Dr. Hool: The vagus nerve, it’s one of the 12 cranial nerves in the body. It’s called the wandering nerve because it wanders throughout your entire upper body. It’s the largest and the longest of your cranial nerves. It plays a role in essentially maintaining what’s called homeostasis, keeping your body and your nervous system in a state of balance. There’s a lot of things that it covers, right?

It helps digestion. It helps with heart-related issues, cardiovascular things. It helps with mental health. It just keeps your overall nervous system in a state of balance. And the nervous system is made up of two separate components. You have the sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic. The sympathetic is your fight or flight response.

When your sympathetic is active, it sends a signal to your body saying it’s time to speed up and to tense up. That’s where you get that racing heart rate. Your hands are jittery. Blood pressure might go up. Breathing rate goes up. You’re familiar with it, right? It’s that fight or flight response. Not comfortable to be in unless you’re actually running for your life.

Carrie: And then it’s helpful and purposeful and useful at that point.

Dr. Hool: Parasympathetic is the opposite. It’s the rest and digest. It’s what helps you stay calm after you eat a nice big meal. Usually, you’re really sluggish, and you don’t want to move around because you’ve eaten a meal.

That’s the rest and digest state. Your body’s going into a state of just chill so that you can digest your food. You can recover from stress. You can rest. Those states are always fluctuating all the time, no matter what. And so what? The vagus nerve’s main job, it basically shifts you out of fight or flight.

So when your fight or flight is really active, the vagus nerve’s job is to help bring that down to rebalance the nervous system. In my research, I learned that it’s not so much that the vagus nerve increases parasympathetic, but instead, it decreases the sympathetic, and so that’s how it balances. That’s why it’s also really good if you’re in a fight or flight state where you’re having an anxiety attack or panic or just stress stimulating your vagus nerve is an almost instant way to bring that stress response down because that’s its main job. And I learned that in research, just reading all these research papers, learning about the vagus nerve. And to me, it was like, that’s what I needed right there. If I had something that could just stimulate my vagus nerve on the golf course, It would pull me out of that response, and I could focus again.

I could be calm and perform. I can fall asleep finally, or I’ll be less irritable around my loved ones after I’m stressed out or something that kind of became what I committed to was. Let’s dive into vagal nerve stimulation and see if we could develop this out for the high performing individuals like the athletes, but really the everyday person that just wants something safe, nondrug, and effective to calm them down quickly.

Carrie: Can you tell us a little bit more about how the product that you have is used for vagal nerve stimulation?

Dr. Hool: We developed a little handheld device. This is kind of what it looks like if people are watching the video, but what it is is it uses electricity, so gentle electrical impulses to directly activate a small branch of the nerve found just under your ear.

There’s two areas you can target the vagus nerve noninvasively.  That’s what’s called the auricular vagus nerve, which is around the ear, and then you have the cervical vagus nerve, which is on the front side of the neck. The cervical region of the vagus nerve is a little deeper in the neck, and it’s close to baroreceptors, which control blood pressure, and it also has direct projections to your heart.

It’s a higher risk location to stimulate because it can cause a sudden drop in heart rate and the pressure applied can also cause a sudden drop in blood pressure, which, if you deal with any type of heart condition or have a blood pressure condition, it can be dangerous to do that, whereas auricular is farther away from those regions. So there’s no risk in dropping blood pressure, and there’s no direct projections to the heart with the auricular. There’s no heart-related side effect. That was my first kind of focus was safety first. We know the vagus nerve can have this effect, but we need it to be safe. So, auricular was the obvious choice.

Now, the other benefit that we learned later in research was when you stimulate the auricular vagus nerve with electricity, You see an increase in, it’s called heart rate variability. Heart rate variability is just a way to measure your heart rate in such a way that it reveals the state of your nervous system.Heart rate is just measuring how many beats per minute your heart rate is beating at. Heart rate variability is a measure of the fluctuation of your heart rate over time. So, when you have a large fluctuation in your heart rate, that’s a good thing because it means your body is in a state where it can adapt to changes very easily, but if your heart rate is not changing over time, it’s like kind of stuck in the same heart rate over some period of time. That means your body’s not capable of adapting to change. If you go into that fight or flight state, you typically stay there for a long time. That’s why you can’t recover. If you have a low heart rate variability, what a regular vagal nerve stim does is literally in 60 seconds, we can see, we could double your heart rate variability, depending on what it is when you first start. That’s just an indicator that we’re shifting you out of that fight or flight state, literally within seconds versus cervical. We don’t see the same effects of heart rate variability.

Carrie: If you have a low heart rate variability, does that mean that you usually have a more elevated heart rate? You’re more anxious and it stays at that higher heart rate?

Dr. Hool: Not necessarily. If you think about a true fight or flight response, you’re walking in the woods and suddenly you see a bear start chasing you. Your heart rate is going to go up, but it’s going to stay up. It’s not going to come down and then go back up. It’s going to stay there. So the variability is tiny when your heart rate is beating really fast.

When you’re just chilling at home on the couch watching TV, if you monitor your heart rate, you’ll see that it might be 60, and then it might go up to 70, maybe 80, and then it might come back down to 60, and it’s going to do that over time. That’s just how it is, but if you’re chilling on the couch and your heart rate is just stuck at like 70, that’s not good. That means your nervous system is kind of in that fight or flight state, even though your heart rate may not be high. The variability is really low, which suggests your nervous system is not balanced. You’re not in a healthy state. Beyond just being stressed and anxious, an imbalanced nervous system affects your ability to heal from other conditions, from sickness.

You don’t digest things properly. You can’t recover if you have an injury. And so heart rate variability is just a great way to quickly take a snapshot of, “Is my body in a rest and digest state or am I in a state where it’s being resistant to healing and I’m more prone to getting stressed and anxious?”

Well, we’ve been able to demonstrate on almost all of our step patients and research was when you stimulate the auricular vagus nerve, you see an instant increase in the H.R V., which is why we always get people saying the device helps them fall asleep faster. They recover from a stressful experience faster.

We have a lot of patients with PTSD and panic disorder that use our product, pull them out of that panic attack. And then when used as part of a daily routine, it definitely helps decrease the effects of anxiety. And I say the effects of anxiety because it’s not going to eliminate your worries. If you’re someone who’s a lot and you’re always afraid of the future, you’re contemplating negative thoughts, it’s not going to drive those away.

However, it will lessen the impact on your body that those negative thoughts have, which is still a good thing for things like general anxiety. I highly recommend people learn meditation like the right way, but you can use verily to accelerate your meditation sessions because the problem that I was having was it takes me 30 minutes just to calm my mind, calm my body before I can actually do a real meditation. With the very late device, it does it. It does all the work for you. It’s literally pulling my body out of fight or flight and putting it into that ideal meditative state in a matter of minutes. And now I can meditate again. We have a lot of psychologists and counselors who will sit with their patients in a session. “Here use this for the first five minutes of our session, and then I’ll walk you through our counseling, and we’ll get to the core issue of your anxiety.” It’s a great supplement or something like that.

Carrie: I liked what you talk about in terms of chronic health conditions and our body having difficulty healing.

If our nervous system is out of balance, there are a lot of people out there that they’ve been to several doctors and the doctors are saying, “I don’t know how to help you anymore,” or “we’re not really sure where this is coming from.” Yes, we can say that you’re having these symptoms. I think there’s a lot that goes on in a day-to-day in our nervous system that we aren’t necessarily always cued into or aware of.

When people are having heightened levels of anxiety, sometimes they’re recognizing that because it’s coming in the form of an anxiety attack or a panic attack. Sometimes they’re not aware of that because they’re just living at a state of chronic stress and it’s now taking a toll and they’re having things like headaches or digestive issues or other chronic pain or health conditions.

I think that’s important for people to recognize that mental health piece in there. I like what you said about utilizing this to help wind down for sleep. You and I got connected some time ago, and you guys actually sent me a Verilief device, and when I started using it was before I went to bed, kind of to help, like, wind down my mind, like wind down my body.

Sometimes it can be hard depending on what you’re doing before you try to go to sleep to get yourself to a more wound down state. But I’ve also used it if I have a really difficult session with a client or we’ve just processed some really hard trauma and maybe that’s something that I still feel like I’m carrying around with me.

It’s nice for me to be able to release that stress and take those few minutes to just be able to breathe and let go. And so I have found it helpful and have recommended it to some of my clients. Now, I know that you guys are doing pre-orders for the third generation V Relief. So can you tell us about some of the changes that you’ve made over time to kind of tweak and make perfections to the product?

Dr. Hool: We’re a team of engineers and designers, core, which just means we are obsessed with building the best product. It hurts us to launch something that we’re like, “Oh, we can build something better.” Although we still have to ship a product. We can’t just sit in our lab all day and just keep making stuff. But the first product we launched was just a handheld device.

I want to say maybe late 2021, early 2022. That was just through word of mouth and connections we had with local doctors, but the usability of it was not great. It was a little bit big and bulky before we were ready to really launch this thing. Let’s redesign it. Let’s make it smaller.

We’re taking pre-orders for that. We weren’t expecting to take pre-orders this early, just because our gen twos sold out way faster than we thought they would over Christmas. We thought we’d have an easy transition into the next gen. But people are rushing to buy this because they’re starting to realize like, “Oh, man, this thing is legit.”

There’s not a lot of great options out there to take care of your nervous system, right? There are these really expensive machines that are good, but not affordable. And then the low-cost ones are ineffective. You’re just kind of getting these knockoff products that don’t have any major impact on your nervous system. It’s definitely a powerful, effective product. And for the price point, it’s kind of unbeatable.

Carrie: Yes. That’s awesome. You guys have it discounted right now for the presale and you’re expecting to ship around April. Is that right?

Dr. Hool: Yes, so right now we’re offering a $100 discount for those who pre-order. That discount will start to be reduced as we get closer to shipping.

We want to reward customers who wait the longest with the best deal, but yes, for now, you can just get it and save $100 to get it for $299 as opposed to $399. They’re being made right now, about 50 percent of the batch is complete. We just have to wait on some other manufacturing things to come through, but yes, they’re coming.

Carrie: This is one of the things I think that impressed me the most about your company and caused me to become an affiliate was your 60-day money-back guarantee. Tell us about that.

Dr. Hool: Basically, every product that we looked into for calming people down, helping the nervous system, they’re giving these 21 to 30-day warranties or money-back guarantees. I’m like, “That’s so small”. If you don’t have time to use it in every situation, right? People are traveling or doing stuff, so  we give people 60 days just because we know 30 days is not enough. Use it for two whole months. If you don’t get the improvements at some point within two months, probably not going to have an impact.

It’s like you’ve got plenty of time to try it. We talk to everybody that reaches out to us. If they have any challenges, any help at all with understanding how to apply this to their own lives. We’ll literally chat with you. We’ll say, tell us about your routine. What do you do currently? What’s your day-to-day look like? We’ll create protocols for you. We recommend using it. Combine it with this modality or that supplement and you’re going to see great results. We’re here to really make sure that this works for people and it does, right? As long as you just don’t give up trying, like we’ll make it work for you.

Everybody has a vagus nerve. Every vagus nerve responds to stimulation. You just have to work with it a little and get a feel for how to optimize it for each individual. And we work with people to do that.

Carrie: Also I wanted to mention to you when you’re talking about the electrical stimulation, it’s not like you’re getting zapped. For me, it feels like a little vibrating, like tingly feeling near your ear, so it’s not painful or anything of that nature if you’re using it properly. 

Dr. Hool: That was our big engineering feature that we came up with. At the time we were designing them, all these electrical stimulators were very sharp. For the auricular, there were all these ear clip electrodes and tiny little surface area electrodes that just shock your ears. It’s so uncomfortable. And we’re like, “We have to make it feel good.” We tested a bunch of different materials. I mean, we shot ourselves all day long, trying to find something that was comfortable, and we found a really good mixture of materials. We use a certain ingredient that kind of hydrates your skin, so when you’re using it, it’s actually got a skin hydration component to it, which is what makes it a lot more comfortable than a standard electrode that doesn’t have those properties.

Carrie: The high cost of being an entrepreneur, lots of electrical shocks to ear.

Dr. Hool: Yes, all kinds of stuff. I’m not as bold as my electrical engineers. He has done things. Hey, you have some scars that are going to last forever. That’s like, “Dude, you’re crazy, man.” Those people, they love doing stuff. 

Carrie: Gotcha. Are you familiar with the Apollo device?

Dr. Hool: Yes, very familiar. I see advertisements for it on Facebook. 

Carrie: I really know about zero about it, and I didn’t know if you wanted to say anything about that or just leave that out of it, but I’m curious, what does it do compared to what VeriLief does?

Dr. Hool: It’s a different value that they’re delivering. What Apollo does, at least what their technology does, skin vibration, it’s more of a mild calming effect for a long time. Think of it like an SSRI. An SSRI is something you take every day, has a long, mild effect, keeping you calm, but it’s not like a rescue drug. 

If you’re in the middle of a stress response, you don’t take an SSRI, you take a Benzodiazepine. The Benzos are strong. We’re going to get to it, calm you down fast, even though those still take time to kick in. That’s really the difference. 

Apollo is something you wear kind of all day, and if you’re not someone who has a lot of anxiety attacks, probably a fine thing, but if you’re someone who gets those moments where your body goes into that fight or flight state, VeRelief is that’s what it was designed for, but you can use both. That is the benefit of technology is there’s no side effects. You can stack as many as you can and just enhance the effect. I tell people that all the time. Wear your Apollo and do this at the same time.

Carrie: Well, thank you so much for sharing this information with us. I hope it’s valuable to some of our listeners. I know that I talk to all kinds of people all the time who are just looking for different options to help them manage their anxiety. Maybe they’ve tried medication or they’ve tried certain meditations, they’ve tried a variety of stuff, and they just feel like they’re not getting the relief that they’re wanting or they’re needing something, like you said, in the moment right before they go perform or speak in front of people, or even if it’s just a presentation to a few people at work.

If that really makes you nervous and this is something that’s going to help you before those types of situations.  If going into your job makes you anxious, I mean, there’s just so many different applications for this product. We’re going to put our affiliate link in the show notes for everybody and make sure that you can check out the product and take advantage of trying it out and get in the full 60 days. Hopefully you’ll love it. For some reason you don’t, you can contact the staff and they’ll help you troubleshoot with that.

Dr. Hool: And we’ll troubleshoot too. And. If it really, really doesn’t work, we do refunds as well. One thing to note is this is kind of a newer space. There’s not a lot of products like this on the market. There’s definitely a temptation for people to want to go to Amazon or buy some Chinese knockoff that is like an ear clip for 30 bucks. But those things will do nothing. They have no impact on your nervous system, unless you’re someone who’s extremely chronically imbalanced. It might have some effect, but our product is the real deal.

We spent years developing this. We tested everything out there. This thing is by far the most effective out of any other auricular vagal nerve stem you can try. So it’s worth the wait. Definitely worth it. And with that 60-day money-back guarantee, it’s as low risk as possible.

Carrie: Well, thank you so much and we’ll be in touch.

Dr. Hool: Thank you, Carrie. I appreciate the time.

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Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By the Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By the Well Counseling. Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.

107. Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) with Diana Rice, LMHC, CIMHP, CTP, QS

Written by Carrie Bock on . Posted in Anxiety, Counseling, Podcast Episode.

On today’s episode, Carrie sits down with Diana Rice, a licensed mental health counselor and certified integrative mental health professional. They delve into the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and their relevance to anxiety and OCD.

Episode Highlights:

  • The impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on mental health, with a focus on anxiety and OCD.
  • Diana Rice’s personal journey and her path to becoming a counselor.
  • The significance of the ACE study and its ten-question questionnaire for assessing childhood experiences.
  • The distinction between externalizers and internalizers in response to trauma.
  • Strategies for healing, including neuroplasticity and holistic well-being approaches.

Episode Summary:

Welcome to Christian Faith and OCD, episode 107. I’m Carrie, and today we’re diving into the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on anxiety and OCD with Diana Rice, a licensed mental health counselor from Through the Valley Therapy in South Florida. Diana, whose journey from a peer counselor in middle school to a seasoned mental health professional is inspiring, shares her deep insights into how early childhood experiences shape mental health.

In this episode, Diana explores how her upbringing as an immigrant child and her ACE score of six have profoundly influenced her therapeutic approach. She reflects on how these formative experiences led her to seek an integrative approach to therapy, highlighting the importance of understanding one’s past for effective mental health treatment.

We also discuss the ACE study’s significant findings, revealing the correlation between high ACE scores and increased risks for chronic health issues and mental health disorders. Diana explains how ACEs can contribute to conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, and addiction, emphasizing the need to address these early experiences for effective therapy. Diana’s insights into addressing underlying trauma, rather than just symptoms, provide crucial perspectives for managing anxiety and OCD effectively.

Related links and Resources

Transcript

Welcome to Hope for Anxiety and OCD, episode 107. For anyone new to our show, we are all about reducing shame, increasing hope, and developing healthier connections with God and others. I have with me today on the show a licensed mental health counselor and certified integrative mental health professional, Diana Rice of Through the Valley Therapy in Florida. 

Carrie: Are you in the Miami area? Is that right?

Diana: I’m in South Florida. 

Carrie: Okay. Today, we’re going to talk about adverse childhood experiences. People may have heard them referred to as ACEs. I’m talking about how these things impact us, which is really relevant for conversations surrounding anxiety and OCD.

Diana: I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your personal story in terms of just what led you to be the counselor that you are today.

Diana: Wow, I could say I could blame my middle school, my Broward County middle school that I went to. Honestly, my father’s family kind of kept me here. My mom is an immigrant from another country and my dad is as well.

I’m originally from New York, and when I came to visit one summer, they kept me, so I was in middle school and then I started middle school here. My mom ended up coming back, but at that time, she didn’t know her rights. It turned out for God’s glory, of course, because here I am now. But in seventh grade, I became a peer counselor.

I think that’s where my love of helping others plus, my mother’s only child and I have older siblings, but they’re from my dad’s side. I just wanted to help people. I could see now back in the past like I had to disentangle what was I trying to heal because of my background and what is actually my calling, how my personality is and what the Lord has given me to do in this place we call earth.

That’s where it all started, and in high school, I was a peer counselor. I remember they interviewed me in the yearbook and asked,, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” I’m like, “I want to be a psychologist.” That time, I was already doing the wrong thing. I wasn’t a Christian then. I was raised Catholic with Santeria, which is a religion. You guys could look it up, but be aware. It wasn’t as bad as you’ll see if you do look it up, but my grandma was a medium.

Carrie: Oh, okay. Wow, so that’s like two different worlds intermingled there.

Diana: Yes, so I had that kind of spiritual trauma along with other things. I know that we’re talking about ACE, adverse childhood experiences, and my score is a six. I did not know these things when they were happening because most of us when we’re growing up, we think that’s just the norm of what’s happening.  Everybody must be going through that plus our brains aren’t fully developed at that time.

Carrie: Right. I think a lot of people are just like, “Well, that’s just kind of how it was. That was the water we swim in. That’s what maybe all the neighbors were going through as well. Until we get outside of our box or bubble of how we grew up, we don’t really know that things can be different or are different for other children and teenagers out there.

Tell us a little bit about how you got interested in the ACE study because I think when you and I had chatted before, you said you felt like it was kind of a life’s work for you, just really understanding this and applying it in your counseling.

Diana: When I was in college, we have to do our practicum and our internship. I spent a year in a Broward County school that was cognitive-behavioral therapy-based. It is sort of an alternative school, but the students that were there, they were from other schools sort of got kicked out or they needed help and they had to be seeing a psychiatrist. At this school, that was my internship and I was basically for that year, the only intern, but there were like eight other therapists, a psychiatrist, and a couple of psychiatrists.

It was probably one of the best educational times of my life for that year. I learned a lot of what not to do as a therapist, the red tape and the understanding of insurance, sorta there. So basically I was just learning from a lot of different modalities of how people practice back then and that was in 2004. It was almost 20 years ago before social media and it was at school. I was mostly teens. I mean, we had middle school and I think there might have been an area of elementary, but most of my clientele that came to me were teenagers. I realized I was there and I’m not the psychiatrist and I was getting frustrated because it was basically they came to me and a fat file of the student or whatever it is that follows them along the whole system. I’m like, “I don’t want to read it. My supervisor would be like,”Yyou have to read it. That’s your job.  I’m your supervisor.”  I’m like, “I know, but then you’re giving me this.” I’m going in already kind of with a judgment on the student.  I’m from Broward County, so I was a product of the Broward County school system.

 I have that little bit of that sass. Basically though, I was seeing like, why aren’t we listening to these students? I’m seeing these things that are happening and they’re angry and they’re frustrated or they’re not being heard.  I ended up taking what Carl Rogers talks about unconditional positive regard and I was new. I was just new to the game. I just basically started listening and questioning and then I would go home and go to my library and research or go back to my college and ask my professors.  I was just always asking why, why, why would we do this back then? I think the DSM might’ve been three or TR or something like that. I’m like, “Why do you keep telling me this book my Bible?”  That’s what we’re taught in a public secular college when it comes to licensing and everything. And then I would open it up and see all the names and I’m like, no offense. Why are all these white people the ones that are telling me what to do?

Why are we not taking into consideration the cultures? Or the understanding of other people’s backgrounds. I was questioning and questioning. Some of my professors loved, that I was questioning things.

Carrie: And some hated it.

Diana: Oh, some of them were, but I was used to that already because that’s how I’ve learned most of my life, even in high school and stuff. Just like questioning why. That’s just how I still do that to this day.

Carrie: Right, and very valid questions. I think psychology was based off of a bunch of white men at the end of the day. It started, that’s not where it is now, you know, things have progressed, but there’s still a lot of that bias in a lot of the research materials and things of that nature in DSM.

Back in the 90s, just for anybody who’s not familiar with the ACE study, adverse childhood experiences. Kaiser Permanente, which is an insurance company that’s more on the west coast of the U. S., if you’re not familiar with them, they decided they’re going to do this study and try to figure out, we have these people that have chronic health issues that are obviously taking a lot of money to take care of.

People with addiction issues, people with high blood pressure, diabetes, all of those chronic conditions that we think about. They wanted to figure out what makes some connection points between their physical health and their mental health and what they found through questions. They had, I think, 10 questions on there. 

Diana: I have the questions in front of me and it’s basically simple and people don’t understand what it does. It makes you understand things that you never do. That’s the way I like it in a holistic practice because we really touch on some stuff and it does get utilized in my practice anyway. In a way that’s like, whoa, but they don’t ever see the correlation.

The 10 questions are like this, “Did a parent or another adult in the household often swear at you, insult you, put you down, humiliate you, act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt? And then it keeps going. “Did a parent, or other adult in the household often push, grab, slap, or throw something at you ever hit you so hard that you have marks or were injured?”

I don’t know, I know these could be trigger questions right now for your audience. I want to be careful because now I’ve realized like, okay, because I utilize it so much, every client has to fill this out when they come to me. I’m realizing now that I got to be careful because your listener might never have heard these and they’re going to be like, because if we end up saying all 10 questions and they say, “Oh, yeah.I have seven” then what do we do here as therapists?

Carrie: Yes, people can go look them up online and I’ll link them. Even something like the divorce of your parents is on there and that’s pretty common in today’s day and age.

Diana: Or drinking or alcohol. Anybody had a mental illness or was depressed in your household. “Did anybody go to prison?”  It is questions that are basic, but when you put all 10 of them together and you start seeing the scoring, anything higher than a four, I think is cause for a little bit of concern. The higher the score, of course, the more you going to have to be aware. It’s an awareness. It’s not like you’re doomed.

Carrie: Right. It’s just a look at how that connection is, and they found that people who had scores of four or more ACEs were more likely to have these chronic health issues, the high blood pressure, the diabetes, addiction issues, and it was very significant. It was kind of like the graph was small at 1, 2, 3, and then jumped when it got to 4 and above. It’s a very eye-opening, and it’s not a new study, but I think a lot of doctors don’t take these types of things into account. A lot of individuals who have chronic health issues or chronic anxiety or chronic insomnia don’t take these types of issues into consideration because, like we were talking about before, It was just kind of how they grew up.

It was the water they swim in and they don’t always identify with the word trauma or abuse. I think that’s why some of those questions get very specific. Because if you say, did you experience physical abuse in your household? Someone might just think, well, that was discipline, but yet they ended up with marks, or they ended up getting hit in ways that are clearly not disciplinary.

Diana: What I see in my practice for the last 20 years is that It is a cultural thing at times. I also understand because I use a lot of Myers Briggs too. I try to come up with free assessments so we can have a holistic picture. Say you have this young person who is an introvert and is nervous by nature, like, and that’s okay. All of a sudden the father comes home drunk and is yelling. It doesn’t even have to put hands on, but, your nervous system just gets turned on. All these layers of emotional wounds, that’s how I explain it to the teen or the young adult or the adult that’s come to me is that we have emotional wounds.

We all experience these emotional wounds. The intergenerational trauma. A lot of people want to call it intergenerational sin, generational sin or whatever it is that’s happened. But if we don’t deal with them, then this is why symptoms happen.

Carrie: Absolutely. Those types of things that affect our nervous system and get us into that fight, flight, or freeze energy on the regular basis, that’s almost like teaching our brain for that fire alarm to constantly go off when it’s really only meant to go off in high danger, high-stress situations so that we have that energy to fight, flight, or freeze.

When you’re in a chronic situation like that, and like you said before, your brain is still developing. Now we’re affecting kind of how the brain is developing in these processes with children and teens. Similar to you, I started out working with children and teens, not in a school setting, but in a home setting, trying to prevent them from out-of-home placement.

When I first went into it, I thought, what’s going on with these kids? What is the deal here? Why are they acting up so much? Was it something about how they were raised? I didn’t know. Do they just have no structure in their home or no discipline? But then you start to peel back the layers and you start to look at, we had a, oh, I’m trying to think of what the assessment was.

It wasn’t an ACE assessment, but it was a trauma inventory, and it’s got a really long acronym, but we would go through that with every client and ask about, have you ever experienced this, homelessness, times where you didn’t have enough food, all kinds of different experiences. Has anyone ever hit you? And then you find out all kinds of things that have happened – bullying, abuse that they’ve experienced, and then you go,  “Oh, these kids aren’t bad kids. They’re not behavior problems. They have been through an enormous amount, and their nervous system, like, does not know how to process or handle even day-to-day situations.”

Diana: On fire, that’s what I say. That’s inflammation and when we understand the science of the mind and the body all together, it’s places of yourself that are inflamed. If your gut is inflamed, you start feeling it in other places. The same with the brain. If your central nervous system is always protecting, I mean, think about back in the day, a long time ago, thousands of years ago, when you have a sabertooth tiger running after the caveman, that’s the alert.

Your adrenal glands are going squirt, squirt, squirt with chemical and it’s fight or flight or freeze or fawn. If you’re on, but the thing is with the chronic, like you’re saying, if it’s happening every day, your system just learns to stay on. And then people that have a safe environment or healthy foods, or they don’t have to worry about resources or gang life or abusive home settings.

They don’t have that understanding and then they’re judging it now. For us therapists, if you’re a therapist listening to this, this is something that can revolutionize your whole practice, understanding the holistic approach to mental health and especially with the ACE, understanding the neuroplasticity and the science behind that, I mean, the brain and the gut connection, things like that.

“If I did not learn these things, I think I would have been, I was a wreck. I mean, I was smoking pot. I was drinking alcohol all through my teen.”  And that’s why they’re like, they’re just teenagers, but if we get to understand the why, why are they taking it so personal? Why are they popping off? I think we’re going to talk about internalizers and externalizers.

Carrie: Yes, let’s go into that. Your externalizers are the poppin’ off kids.

Diana: Yes, the Poppin off kids. The ones that are  people see and they think that they have a chip on their shoulder, like, “What you lookin at”, or whatever it is. If you take those personal, if you’re working with adolescents, or you have one, and you’re taking it personal constantly and saying, well, they’re just teenagers, they suck, or whatever it is or instead of taking a step back and going, “Why are they poppin off? Why are they punching the teacher in the face?” And those are the students that I worked with. I worked from there, and then I worked in a non profit organization that went into the houses, too, into the inner city homes, so I was seeing things we are the richest country and we’re allowing people to live this way.

I don’t get it. I get it, but I don’t. It’s such a system. I’m not even gonna go there. But you have those that externalize, which they’re fighting. They’re angry. They’re the little kid who might be diagnosed with ADHD. They might be diagnosed with a thousand different things and on five different medications. We don’t realize at home they’re eating Captain Crunch and Mountain Dew for breakfast. We don’t see this whole picture because we have to, I get why in the system, if you’re responsible for thousands of kids in one school, you can’t do what we’re trying to do, individualizing therapy for each, so you have to come up with answers quickly so you could keep the fire down.

Carrie: Yes. Absolutely. 

Diana: Those are the externalizers, the ones that you see that are angry or cussing or upset or wanting to fight and you feel it. The internalizers, they’re usually the cutters. They’ll stay in their room all day long playing video games, or they’re doing other things that they shouldn’t be doing. They’re the shy ones, they’re the suicidal ones.

Carrie: Right, they just keep everything inside and bury it as much as possible and even occasionally they may blow up at some point, but it’s usually against themselves, like you were saying.

Diana: Some of them will do both, depending on what’s going on in their own system, like in their own body, their vessel. It depends on how much a human being can take. Each one of us only has a threshold. We only have a certain amount of bandwidth.

Carrie: I’m sure it drove you crazy like it drove me crazy that the trauma wasn’t taken into consideration, so then we were just looking at symptoms. We were trying to match people up with the DSM and trying to match people with medication.

Therefore, there was a turning of students who got diagnosed with ADHD and then bipolar disorder. That’s what we saw all the time. 

Diana: ADHD and bipolar borderline. I’m trying to think there was one more. I mean, when I had anxiety and depression that year. I came and I think I am quite fine, I’m in private practice now. After that, when I was working at the nonprofit, I took a little break because of a certain situation that happened personally in my family, and then I went into a different career. After the Parkland shooting, and the Stoneman Douglas shooting in 2018, I had a couple of parents ask, “Hey, are you still a therapist?”, and I’m like, “no, I’m not.” And then little by little, the Lord kept saying, “You’re going back.  I’m like, “no”, but I see now since 2018, everything. I’m like, Okay, I’m just going to be obedient. This is of service for you. It’s a calling. I’m grateful that I do get paid for it and I get to help others learn about it. When I went back, I ended up in a school being the crisis intervention counselor serving about 200 students and I was the only licensed therapist there.

Carrie: Wow, that’s a lot of students to take care of. What hope is there? Because this is hope for anxiety and OCD, what hope is there for individuals who’ve had these types of experiences?

Diana: There’s so much hope. Listen, I am one that had these types of experiences. Like I said before, I have an A score of 6. It’s reframing what has happened and understanding, but getting the help and doing the work. Because some people do the healing process, they get stuck in the victim. And they don’t know how to get out of it because it’s been their life for so long and they might be surrounded by other humans in their family or in their community.

That’s all they know as well, so it’s understanding there is hope and it starts with you understanding you being that curious observer of yourself watching YouTube videos on CPTSD. Reading books like Dr. Gabor Maté’s book, The Myth of Normal, or The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Vessel Van de Kock, or CPTSD, From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker.

There’s so much information out there. Or listening to podcasts like this, saying, Hey, no, there’s hope and understanding the science of your brain. Neuroplasticity is a real thing. They’re finding it out there in more and more information on the brain and how rewiring your system you can do it. I have done it.

It took a lot of hard work to grieve my childhood to learn to forgive those that hurt me and it’s not only my home. It’s understanding. We’re all raised in a village.

Carrie: Yes.

Diana: We’re all in a village now. If you’re hearing my voice, you’re part of a system. You’re part of a village, but we were also raised by one.

Some people might hurt you which can cause anxiety and depression, which are symptoms of numerous things. Finding out that you are not anxiety and you are not depression. These are just things you’re wrestling with or struggling with. I like wrestling better because wrestling means that you could get up on top of it.

When I use the word suffer, I don’t like that too much because it’s like, “Oh, I’m suffering. Oh, what was me?” To me,  I had to go through that part. I was grateful for EMDR. There are modalities that can help internal family systems, EMDR. I do cold plunges now. I do sauna work, infrared sauna, acupuncture, and things that have been around for thousands and thousands of years that are Westernized medicine. It doesn’t utilize because it’s either free or they can’t make money off of it.

Carrie: The cold plunge. How does that work?

Diana: I just started honestly last month and you go into like 40-degree water and I’m up in 90 seconds. I started off at 30 and I thought it, but it was the weirdest, craziest, most amazing feeling I ever had.

I do Wim Hof breathing. Wim Hof, you should look up his story. I started with the breathing techniques because these things are not taught in churches. They’re not taught our profession either much, and a lot of people see them as woo woo or new age, but I’m like, “No, the Lord made breath.”

Carrie: There are certain breaths that I know, like from yoga. There are certain ways to breathe where you can warm up your body or cool off your body. So are you trying to warm up your body like in those situations or no, you’re trying to take your temperature down?

Diana: Are you talking about breath work or with a cold plunge?

Carrie: With the cold plunge, are you trying to breathe a certain way while you’re in there?

Diana: It is actually trying to wake up my mitochondria to healing. It’s also understanding your mindset. We have a fixed mindset, many of us, especially if we wrestle with anxiety because I do, I wrestle with anxiety, honestly, like I can’t drink coffee. I have to do the work and I have to be okay. Kind of like an alcoholic shouldn’t be drinking alcohol. 

Carrie: Right, yes.

Diana: Someone like me that has anxiety and wrestles with it. I have to do the work and understand like, “No, I can’t touch that substance because that substance is going to make my anxiety worse or depression or whatever symptoms being exasperated by whatever’s around you. With the cold plunge, I am trying to, first of all, wake up myself and at the same time realize that I have the power in my mind to do this. Tthat is the rewiring of the brain that is creating new neurons to be able to connect.” Whatever fires together wires together.” That’s what Jim Quick says.

Carrie: Right. Yes.

Diana: I love to listen to and it’s true. If I would have stayed like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to be a pothead of all my life, or I’m going to be depressed, or I’m never going to be able to be around my family because they trigger me too much. I had to rewire my brain. I have also been diagnosed with SERS, Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome, but I also know it’s because of how high my ACE score.”

It’s an autoimmune, so I have to do the things to keep that fire down because it’s inflammation. And I do the work and it was trying to shrink the inner critic because you grow up in that kind of environment with a high A score. It’s constantly like, I’m not worth it. It’s attachment issues,

Carrie: Putting yourself down a lot from things that you’ve heard from other people and just kind of repeating those things to yourself.

Diana: Because it’s been chronically done constantly, you start believing and that is something I had to realize with my walk with the Lord. To me, guilt and shame, because that’s what most of us who have anxiety, a lot of these diagnoses come and they’re really in guilt and shame. Guilt and shame is from the world. Conviction comes from the Lord.

Carrie: Right. That’s good.

Diana: It’s different. If you’re going against God’s word, then of course you’re going to get convicted.

Carrie: That’s a good thing.

Diana: Yes. If you’re feeling guilt and shame constantly and you’re blaming God and you’re not understanding, like, where is that voice coming from?

Who said those things? And you start recognizing those voices, the inner critic, and then you just sit with it because a lot of people that have anxiety, that I’ve come to find out in this 20 years I’ve been doing this, is they’re storing these emotions in their bodies, so they’re either so depressed and sad about it, and they’re just giving up with no hope, or it is stored so deeply that it’s like when a deer gets hit by a truck, or any animal. 

Carrie: They’re sort of shaking.

Diana: That’s our nervous system, which causes the anxiety, or the OCD. I still struggle with that too, and I have to realize, I got bad news. This is an example that happened lately. My sister was put in hospice.  My husband, because he has done his work with me and understands he or she is starting to clean everything and make everything perfect. She took everything out of the gap because that’s what I did. Then he took me and was just like, “Honey, you’re going to have to go see your therapist. Please calm down. I could tell because it happens.”

Carrie: Fall back into those patterns. I really like what you’re saying on a spiritual sense of that there’s a verse that talks about work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it’s God that works within you and you’re talking about really partnering up with God and the Holy Spirit to do the work, not just kind of sitting back and being a passive observer and say, God, just come over me and just fix all the brain cells, just make them all like wired together the way they’re supposed to and heal up this yuck stuff that happened to me.

You’re like, “No, I’ve actually sought the Lord, but I’ve also gone to counseling and I’ve also done these other healing modalities and read a lot or watched a lot of videos and really absorb the Information because knowledge is really helpful in these types of things and it does help reduce some of the shame so that you’re not thinking why in the world am I responding in this way?

Why in the world am I acting like this? When you understand, you can peel that back and say, “Oh, okay, now I get it. Now that I get it, I can start to take a step towards change.”  If a lot of times we don’t understand what’s going on in the first place, it’s really hard to make changes into it. If we don’t sit with it and go, “Oh yeah, this is what happened to me. This is how it affected me. This is how my relationships have gotten so hijacked for the last 10 years.”

Diana: We have to remember as believers that Satan’s only reason is to steal, kill, and destroy every relationship that you have, including and especially the one with yourself.

When you notice that and you realize, like, this is why I really am a mind, body, spirit connecting therapist here. When people come to me, they understand my position in Christ. I do not force. I’m not a biblical counselo. People argue with me all the time and we all have our journey. To me, what has worked thus far with people. I have quite a few people with a lot of spiritual abuse from church where I have to disentangle because some people don’t understand they grew up and was forced into some kind of say religion or whatever it is. And then they come to me with this hatred towards God and they want to deconstruct. I’m there going, okay, I think you want to disentangle and understand your situation that happened in ACEs is not only in inner cities, I mean, there’s higher scores there because they have fewer resources. It’s just how our system in this society has been for so long. And this is. In the last three or four years, that’s the uprising that we’re feeling and people misunderstanding.

That’s why I encourage those to educate themselves, but it starts within ourselves. Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24, search me, Oh God, and know my anxious thoughts starts with us being responsible for us. Despite anything that has happened to us. That’s the power we have.

Carrie: Towards the end of the podcast, I like to ask every guest to share a story of hope, like a time where you received hope from God or another person.

Diana: Wow. I could actually talk about this morning. I had a client, mostly my clients gave me hope due to them doing the work and seeing the progress. I’m very grateful for that. Just like this morning, I had a client that came to me two months ago and she was in a very, very bad place. When I say very bad place, it was just, I don’t know if I could. It takes energy.   I think the listener needs to understand we’re humans with our struggles and we care about our clients, or we would not be in this. And we care about them, not just for the hour or 90 minutes we have them.

Carrie: True. Very true. 

Diana: We’re trying to find other ways to help them. I’m in a lot of prayer. If you come to see me, I’m praying for you before you come in. We pray together and then when they leave, I pray, “All right, Lord, what do I have to do for the next session? Or what do I do next?” This person came in and I’m just like, I don’t know if I can help them. I can’t after crying out to God for a while.

I’m like by this time, if I can’t help and she came in today and I was just blown away with how much progress it was amazing. It’s like every time I want to quit, I honestly want to retire or go back to the other career I was at because this is heavy work for us.

Carrie: It’s not easy.

Diana: It’s not easy. It is a calling because I’m sure that if you are a therapist listening, you did not get in this for the money. If you got in it for the money, then your heart is not in the right place to be a therapist. If you’re coming in thinking you’re going to make a lot of money, then you’re not seeing your client as the human that we should be seeing them as.

To me, I’m talking to my husband, “Shiver. I’m older now. I’ve done some time already.” The second I think that, a client comes in and boom, something out. I’m like, “All right, Lord. Okay. I hear you. All right.” He reminds me, it’s not about me. It’s not even about the client. All of that price and utilizing our gifts and talents, which each one of us have, and it’s just getting in tune with that. The only way to get in tune with who you are to heal is to sit alone and be still with the Lord.

Carrie: I love your office too. For those that are just listening, she has lots of plants all over her office and natural lighting is a very warm and inviting therapy space. I really like that. I’m still working on my office, I moved into it a few months ago, and it’s just not quite where I want it to be. There are still some tweaks that need to happen, but I’m going to get it settled, and it’s going to be great when it gets done.

Diana: You have to send me a picture of it.

Carrie: Okay, we’ll do. Thanks for being on the show today and sharing your wisdom with us.

Diana: Carrie, thank you for having me.

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Carrie: I loved interviewing Diana because it’s always great to find another therapist with a similar heartbeat about treating trauma and letting people know that is possible for them to have a better life moving forward, even if their background has been kind of rough.

As some of you know, I do EMDR intensives with clients who are looking to process trauma in a short, condensed amount of time, instead of having to spread that over weeks and weeks and open up issues and close them up. If you want more information on that, feel free to check out my counseling website at bythewellcounseling.com. I am also working on longer intensive packages specifically for clients who are dealing with the intersection of trauma, childhood wounding, and OCD. If any of that is of interest to you, definitely contact me and I would love to share more about it with you.

Christian Faith and OCD is a production of By The Well Counseling. Our show is hosted by me, Carrie Bock, a licensed professional counselor in Tennessee. Opinions given by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or By The Well Counseling.

Until next time, may you be comforted by God’s great love for you.