← The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
652. I Healed More in Six Hours Than in Decades: The Healing Conversation Everyone With a Pulse Needs to Hear.
00:50:36
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- [00:00]
Dr. Amy
So if you've been listening to me for a while, or hey, even if you're new, you will soon learn that I am just brutally honest and very, very straightforward. So here goes. Are you ready for this? If you are struggling with your doctor, if you can't get your doctor to order the labs, much less even listen to you, about the fact that you now know that your thyroid needs T3, you now know that you have to look at the master gland. Because the thyroid literally determines what? Whether or not you're going to lose weight or lose your hair or gain weight or have energy or even be able to use your brain on a day to day basis. That's the thyroid. It's not your gut, it's not your adrenals. You don't need another detox. You need to fix the mass, your gland. And oh, by the way, those beautiful hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, yeah, they play in the same sandbox as the thyroid. So if you ignore those and you say, well, I'm just going to age gracefully, then you're just going to get disease sooner. When your thyroid is low and your hormones are low, the bottom line is not only are you more set up for weight gain, constipation, fatigue, hair loss, brain fog, but you're also set up for a greater risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's cancer and heart disease. You can prevent all that and live an amazing life at the same time. So what are you exactly waiting for? I'm just curious. Are you waiting for next year to feel better maybe two years from now? Why don't you just do something about it right now? We prescribe to all 50 states. We do it the right way. We are specialists. Trust true, honest to God functional medicine. Specialist in thyroid and hormones. You don't just go to functional medicine practitioner who's a jack of all trades and masters of none and is going to sprinkle adrenal fairy dust on you. You're going to be highly disappointed and you're going to be out of money. Go to Dr. Amy.com, click the big button at the top that says become a patient and just book a free call to find out what you can actually do to get better. We can do it for you. We do it every single day. We have helped tens of thousands of people live their best life ever. And oh yeah, that's right, prevent diseases that will kill them. Don't wait another day. We don't know how long we have on this planet. We better take life by the reins and live it and live it to its fullest. And we can't do that when we're sick. So it is your choice. Continue being sick and be set up for disease or make a call to literally change your life. Now, stop waiting.
- [02:57]
Mike Zeller
A core dimension of our psyche is we want to make progress. And these medicines both have the capacity to, with proper therapeutic peak performance, psychedelic support, we'll call it man, we can heal our deepest layers of stuff, heal our lineage. And then secondly, we can step into our highest and best self. And so I think their biggest breakthrough for mental health and biggest breakthrough for peak performance when used properly.
- [03:24]
Dr. Amy
I just want to say thank you. The fact that you're here means that you have trusted me with something so valuable these days, your time. And I do not take that lightly at all. So if you're listening because you're exhausted, you're gaining weight for no reason, losing your hair, getting really frustrated, or you've been told that everything looks normal when you know deep down something isn't right, I want you to know that I see you. I've been where you are. And that's exactly why I created this podcast. My mission is super simple, to give you the information, the hope, and the tools that I wish someone had given me years ago. So my goal is you get to stop wondering what's wrong with your body and finally start getting your life back. So if these episodes have helped you at all, would you do me one small favor? Take just a few seconds to follow the show, the little button in the upper corner, and then leave a review. Every follow and every review helps this podcast reach another person who's lying there awake at night, wondering why they don't even recognize themselves anymore when they look in the mirror wondering what's happened to this amazing, energized, full of life person they used to be. You're helping them. And not only that, when you follow the show, you'll be notified about the hottest episodes everyone is listening to and everyone's downloading, along with any bonus episodes I drop throughout the month. Think of it as your insider pass. So thank you for letting me be part of your journey and thank you for your time. Now, let's get into today's episode. We're going to talk about something today that truly is mind blowing. And in my opinion, in my opinion, I truly believe that every single person with breath and a pulse needs to dive into this and fully experience it because it is life changing. What am I talking about? I'm actually talking about psychedelics, plant medicine, journeys. Now, I Might not even be calling it the right thing, but that's what's known in the space, that's what's known in the world. That's. Those are the terminologies that we use when we're talking about things like the use of mushrooms. Has that come into your world yet? Have you heard about that yet? Have you been intrigued by that yet? Like I have been for years. So I finally did my very first psychedelic journey, plant medicine journey, back in February with my guest today guiding me, Mike Zeller. And after that experience, I so badly wanted to bring this information to all of you because I know how transformative it can be and we're going to talk about that today. And I know how it can, I don't know, this is a bold statement, but wipe out years, if not decades of ptsd, trauma, addiction in a short amount of time. We're not talking talk therapy every single week for 10 years. We're talking about a couple six hour sessions of your life. It could be that simple. And that's why I want you to listen today. Because the connection of stress, of trauma, of ptsd, of subconscious programming that we have from years and years and years of thought patterns and exposure and stress and trauma can affect our health too. But you can do something about it. So this is going to be so crazy. This is going to be raw, it's going to be real. I want to share my experience and Mike is going to share things about my plant medicine journey because he was there with me for six hours, guiding me a couple different times and what came out of that. So, Mike, I love you. Thank you so much for being on here, sharing your expertise and sharing this story with my people.
- [07:25]
Mike Zeller
Thanks for having me, Amy. And you're a gym, and it's been such a joy to watch you lean in so courageously and explore the deeper recesses of the subconscious, what you've been holding on to patterns, emotions, pain, suffering, and to bring it to the surface in this work, I like to think what is coming up is coming out and we want to lovingly create a great environment and container for what we've been holding on to that no longer belongs to us or maybe never belong to us, to bubble up to the surface. So I would also add, I mean, that was a beautiful intro. And I would say many would say, like Dr. Bessel, Vayner Cook, some would call him the Sigmund Freud or the Carl Young Navar era of like one of those seminal figures that changes our understanding of human psychology. Your body keeps the Score. And he would say this is the biggest breakthrough in mental health in human history, is at work with psychedelics, with trauma informed therapy and men beyond. So anyway, I'm excited to be here.
- [08:24]
Dr. Amy
Yeah, no, this is amazing. And even in my mind, I have nothing planned for today because I wanted it to be raw and real. I don't have preconceived, pre written down questions, just you and I talking. But as we were just talking right now, I thought to myself, okay, here's what I think I want to do first. I want to unpack what it is, what my thought process was going into it and my experience. And then I'm going to turn the table at the end and I'm going to ask you questions that my husband asked me because he doesn't get it. He can't wrap his mind around it. So for the skeptic, for the naysayer, for the listener, the there's no way in hell I'm going to do that. We're going to address those blocks in someone's mind that might be preventing them from taking that next step that could literally change their life. So let's first start off because I know in everyone's minds, like psychedelics, isn't that like so hippie? That's like from the 60s 70s, right, where people are doing it and just, you know, dancing to, to, to, you know, crazy colors and seeing things and. But that's not it. That might be where it started, but that's not the point of a true plant medicine journey. Can you kind of unpack that? Because I know you've heard that before.
- [09:39]
Mike Zeller
Yeah. So, you know, we kind of associate the, the hippie movement in, in many regards, rightfully so, with a lot of the psychedelics. But at the same time, LSD in the 1960s was heavily researched to the point of we thought it was like the miracle drug for mental health. And then what happened? Nixon in the early 70s, he kibosh everything and basically made everything a class one substance because he was trying to squash the anti Vietnam War protest and which we know there was so much cover up and so much bogus aspects of our national government where we were hiding the atrocities of what was happening and trying to sugarcoat the truth. And these hippies were actually right about that and they were right about human consciousness and how these medicines, when used properly and safely, can lead to such deeper levels of awareness of recognizing the oneness and also help us process both our own pain and inherited ancestral pain. So, you know, since then we've taken a Big leap forward. In the 90s, 2000s, we started research, kind of got galvanized again. And MDMA, MDMA, although it's not technically a true psychedelic, it's an empathogen, psilocybin, lsd. Those have all picked up in significant ways, showing massive implications for obviously healing deeper levels of trauma, including cptsd. I consider complex PTSD curable. You won't find that in the DSM 5, but I see way too many massive shifts in client after client. I don't feel like anyone is. Any level of trauma is unfixable, that you're just doomed to manage it and medicate it. In most cases like now maybe schizophrenia and things like that, they can be a little more rigorous. But if you look at how things have started to shift, we are now like Bessel Vayner Cook called MDMA assisted therapy the biggest breakthrough in mental health in human history. He added up the $163 million FDA clinical stage 3 clinical trial. If it was a normal drug, it would have been easily. It would have been all over Times magazine and all over, you know, covers biggest breakthrough in mental health history. But is this a generic drug that big pharma cannot patent? And people veterans with, quote, incurable PTSD were getting cured in three sessions and with therapy in between and support and integration. But it was actually very light guidance. It's kind of the opposite of what I do. It was light, reflective guidance in the sessions, but they were still 71% of them had full remission of PTSD symptoms a year later, which would have been unheard of. All right. And anything else. So I think it's when done safely and properly, like, if we look at the biggest drug safety study ever done at 2010, Lancelot study, alcohol was the most dangerous substance, most dangerous drug in terms of measuring harm to users, harm to others. MDMA was about one ninth of that, mushrooms and LSD about one tenth of as dangerous in terms of actual harm. But again, they are powerful and you have to use them within a wise, controlled setting and then also recognize that they're not safe for everybody too.
- [12:51]
Dr. Amy
Right. Well, and that's where working with someone like you did a thorough intake with me. What are the medications that I'm on you? You met with me for an hour before we did anything. You know, just talking through my history and talking through, you know, my intentions and what I was looking for in going into these sessions. So I think that's important to note that we're not talking about doing this on your own in your Basement. Like, we're talking about actually working with a practitioner that knows what they're doing and can dose you properly. Now, I find that really interesting that this was literally curing PTSD in three sessions. And I know that my very, very first introduction to any kind of plant medicine journey was a few years ago. I want to say maybe six, seven, eight years ago. We had a friend that's a Navy SEAL and he was in SEAL Team 6. He saw everything and obviously has PTSD, has TBIs as well, because he's blown up a few times.
- [13:51]
Mike Zeller
Yep.
- [13:51]
Dr. Amy
And I understand that this also helps with tbis. And he. Unfortunately, back then, as you know, pretty much everything was illegal and underground here. He went to Mexico. Yeah. To do a full journey. And he came back, and I remember talking to him and he's like, I want to say I'm like 80% better. Like, literally 80% of the PTSD is wiped out and gone, and I'm that much better. And that floored me. How does that even work?
- [14:18]
Mike Zeller
Yeah, it's part of the reason I call my process rewired, because we're rewiring core parts of the nervous system. And when you look at the nervous system, it's. It's your default operating system, or, you know, human operating system. And it's made up of a whole different part, bunch of parts, but we can get frozen and basically activated in a certain way where we can't. We can't think like a normal human. Like, you go through severe childhood trauma or ptsd. CPTSD is where you've had repeated exposure to the same sort of trauma over and over and over to where your nervous system just state that becomes the new default, like, on guard, hyper vigilant, stressed, afraid, whatever. And basically what happens is you do the medicine. When done in the right container again, it gives you a new path. It's like, oh, this is your state. But there's actually another option. I think of it as like, we're opening up a new option off the interstate. You're going down the highway and stress and anxiety. Exit ramp has a whole lot of development. It's got a super mall. It's got a hundred restaurants. It's got hotels, it's got gas stations. But peace and bliss, or peace and love. That exit ramp is barricaded. It's not permanently obsolete or destroyed. It's just barricaded. And some people, it's been barricaded for decades. And now you do an experience like this. Now you're. It's like, that is unbarricated and might not have a whole lot of development at the beginning, but you now recognize, oh, I have another option. And the more you take that new exit ramp, the more your nervous system starts saying, oh, I can trust this. This can be a new normal. Like, with the work we've done, I've seen you soften in and trust more and more. Your body, your go, go, go intensity, high achiever part has softened. So you can also be in your feminine and lead from your feminine more, too. So it's like, see that? All the time, where we can get past these old patterns in a tiny fraction of the time. It's like 1 100th of the time. If you could ever even do it in the other ways. Like, talk therapy doesn't hold a candle to what we can do in this work, for example.
- [16:26]
Dr. Amy
Exactly. And I'll say, I'll start diving into my experience. The biggest component of this that blew my mind was that everything that we got into with me, even physical pain, which we're going to talk about, that was diminished from a 10 that I've been living with for the past down to like a 4 or 5, which I didn't even know there was a connection. Like you said, softening. My high achiever, ladies, you know who you are, you drivers, you're operating in masculine all the time. So on a conscious level, I could say to you, like, right now, as we are right now, I could say to you, mike, you know, I know that I have back pain. I know that I, you know, went through some as a child. I know that. Oh, gosh, I know that I have some PTSD from certain things, but what are you gonna do? You know, that's in the past. It's. It's whatever. It's not affecting me now. I can say that in a logical state. And then when you administer the medication in the right way, in the right container with the right person, it's almost like someone is chipping away and opening something up inside you, and you're looking in and going, oh, there's more. There's more to. There's more connections. And now I'm seeing them. And that was the wildest thing because I was fully conscious. It's not like you. You lose where you are. It's not like you're drugged out and you're unconscious or you're blacked out. But, you know, like I said to you on multiple occasions, I know this is the medicine working, but this is so wild that it's like my brain is opening up And I can see inside. And that was the craziest thing. Can you, like how, what are the medication, what are the, the plants, what are they doing to break our mind open, to dig deeper?
- [18:19]
Mike Zeller
Yeah. So simplest way to think of it like the two main medicines I work with and that we've worked with MDMA and psilocybin, though I love LSD too. So the mdma, it kind of floods you with neuropepenine, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin. So it basically floods you with these feel good chemicals that basically allow your amygdala to shut off. And most of us, if you're in a little bit of fight or flight, a lot of us type A high achiever drive, drive, drive, where we're so busy, not enough time, running out of time, don't have, I got so much to do. Then we're basically operating in default fear state. And the fear state actually shrinks our access to our prefrontal cortex, which is our decision making. And so it's like if you think, oh, reality is, let's say I have 14 different options, a normal human might see 10. Well, if you're in your heightened amygdala state, you might see two or three. And you're so pressured to get things done or move forward or make decisions. And what happens is the, the amygdala is like your tiny almond part shape of your brain which takes over. It's a reptilian brain structure, part of your reptilian brain structure which takes over. If you're hunted by a saber toothed tiger, you better run, you got a marshal. Like your digestive system kind of shuts down a little bit. That's why men and women who are constantly in fight or flight, their digestive system has issues. Right, right. But you're running hard and you don't see these other options. And many of us can get locked in. Like the amygdala can actually double in size if it's on too much. And many people in our world are over busy, Americanized, westernized world, it's on, it's just on. And when you're on MDMA with guided breath work, meditation, working towards a sense of safety, you got good trust and rapport with your guide and they know what they're doing. They're able to help you soften in your nervous system. Then what happens is that amygdala realizes, oh, I can take a vacation for a moment and I can set this aside, I'm gonna be okay. Let me step in, let me Let the other parts of me bubble up. And so then we get more access to your subconscious mind. But you're so conscious and you're still aware. And MDMA does not take you out, it kind of takes you in to your heart and body. That's why it's so good for a lot of that. The psilocybin, big dose of psilocybin or LSD is going to take you out, meaning you're going to leave your body to some extent or you're just going to see colors and visuals and be less connected to yourself physically. All of them are beautiful medicines for different purposes. But the goal is to help your nervous system. I look at it, my goal is to help a client's nervous system reset back to a more powerful state, which means ultimately you're in a deeper state and more consistent state of rest and digest or parasympathetic so that you can step into being on when you need to be on, but then you can come back to this calmer state when you're ready to be calm. You need to be able to modulate and step in and out. It's kind of like an athlete, pro basketball player needs to, when they're, you know, on the court, they gotta be on, but then they need to rest the day after. They need to get their ice bath, their cryotherapy, their massage, their acupuncture, whatever you need to renew. And if we're always throttling it, revving it, 10 out of 10, you're, you're gonna burn out.
- [21:37]
Dr. Amy
Yeah, no, no doubt, no doubt you are. And so if you've been listening to me for a while, or hey, even if you're new, you will soon learn that I am just brutally honest and very, very straightforward. So here goes. Are you ready for this? If you are struggling with your doctor, if you can't get your doctor to order the labs, much less even listen to you, about the fact that you now know that your thyroid needs T3, you now know that you have to look at the master gland because the thyroid literally determines whether or not you're going to lose weight or lose your hair or gain weight or have energy or even be able to use your brain on a day to day basis. That's the thyroid. You, not your gut, it's not your adrenals. You don't need another detox. You need to fix the master gland. And oh, by the way, those beautiful hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, yeah, they play in the same sandbox as the thyroid. So if you ignore those and you say, well, I'm just going to age gracefully. Then you're just going to get disease sooner. When your thyroid is low and your hormones are low. The bottom line is not only are you more set up for weight gain, constipation, fatigue, hair loss, brain fog, but you're also set up for a greater risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's cancer and heart disease. You can prevent all that and live an amazing life at the same time. So what are you exactly waiting for? I'm just curious. Are you waiting for next year to feel better maybe two years from now? Why don't you just do something about it right now? We prescribe to all 50 states. We do it the right way. We are specialists, true, honest to God, functional medicine specialists in thyroid and hormones. You don't just go to functional medicine practitioner who's a jack of all trades and masters of none and is going to sprinkle adrenal fairy dust on you. You're going to be highly disappointed and you're going to be out of money. Go to dramy.com, click the big button at the top that says become a patient and just book a free call to find out what you can actually do to get better. We can do it for you. We do it every single day. We have helped tens of thousands of people live their best life ever and, oh yeah, that's right, prevent diseases that will kill them. Don't wait another day. We don't know how long we have on this planet. We better take life by the reins and live it and live it to its fullest. And we can't do that when we're sick. So it is your choice. Continue being sick and be set up for disease or make a call to literally change your life now. Stop waiting. Going to start affecting your health. Just like carrying around stress, trauma, ptsd, or these subconscious programs can be almost running underneath the surface affecting someone's health. So we're going to come back to my story, but I want to pick your brain a little bit around that. Have you had clients that you've worked with who might initially come to you for xyz, better performance, alleviation of stress, dealing with a trauma. And then all of a sudden they circle back and they go, yeah, Mike. So, you know, turns out I lost weight or my cholesterol, different health things improve that they were like, what? What happened there?
- [25:21]
Mike Zeller
Yeah, I've had a lot of them. And in fact, a lot of medical doctors that are kind of surprised, like, I have a naturopathic doctor up in Portland. I've worked with 49 MDs or indies, mostly MDs. And one of them, she shared in one of her sessions that her shoulder, her right shoulder was turned inward as well as her sister. She looked at her wedding photos. Her sisters, hers and her mom's all had their right shoulder kind of moving forward a little bit.
- [25:48]
Dr. Amy
Yeah.
- [25:48]
Mike Zeller
Well, as we did our second session, and then she noticed her body kind of reorganized and relaxed after her first session. But after her second full session, it's like her bot. Her shoulders started going back and more balanced. Like where her left shoulder. She and her mom and her sister obviously haven't fully changed that. But her body, her pains, different pain that she has struggled with for years. I've seen men and women with various pains. Like, if your nervous system is always on, always bracing, always stressed, then your muscles are contracting in a different way, you're releasing different chemicals. You could speak a ton about this, I'm sure, with, you know, your work and thyroids and hormones, but it's like you're releasing cortisol and your DHA and your testosterone is all going down typically. Like, I just had another client, been working with her for two years. We've been doing a lot of peak performance and trauma stuff, but she, she said her DHA levels were shot, her cortisol level is shot. She's in her early 40s. And it makes sense because she's basically been in fight or flight anxiety of like, when's the other shoe going to drop? Since she was a little girl.
- [26:55]
Dr. Amy
Right.
- [26:55]
Mike Zeller
And through our work, it's basically we've been able to recalibrate parts of her nervous system in a pretty significant way where she can not be afraid of that as much.
- [27:03]
Dr. Amy
That's amazing. Now, how many people have you had that you had mentioned this earlier, the use of antidepressants? I mean, we know that that's the, I think, the third most prescribed drug right now in the United States. So I'm surprised it's not number one. What have you seen in your practice with individuals being able. Because th. Those are some heavy side effect meds. I mean, antidepressants. Yeah, they're handed out like candy, but wow, they carry a boatload of side effects. How many of your clients have been able to discontinue use?
- [27:35]
Mike Zeller
I'd say about 80% of clients that came in with significant. Probably closer to 90%. Realistically, I can only think of a couple that haven't fully discontinued. And really they. Both of them, One of them, he Got unfortunately he got on Ozempic and Ozempic. He was on eight medications when I started with him battle alcoholism for 33 years. Long story short, was feeling fantastic off all his meds for about two and a half months. His doctor talked to me again on Ozempic and unknown side effect. If you battle like significant depression or mental health issues. It spiraled him and like he had to get back on a bunch of meds and he's still been on them. So that was this unfortunate one. And then one other that I can think of currently that hasn't. She didn't do enough nervous system work like on self regulation and owning that. And that was the only other one I can think of offhand. And I've worked with about 250 clients in this work. Mostly, you know, business owners, high achievers, but also spouses, friends, relatives, all that jazz. And then I'd say probably about a third of them have been on some sort of medication. And obviously if they're on thyroid medication, different hormone medication, we're not. I'm not focused on that at all. But the Proacs and the Wellbutrin, most of the time they can get off and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but most of the time they can get off. If you taper it effectively, do it safely, ramp up. Some of the other things that can support mental health, like nad optimization is a big one. I have a lot of clients take Saffron or Happy Drops from Organifi is another thing that I have clients take. Magnesium, Super Omega, 3s, things like that.
- [29:21]
Dr. Amy
Beautiful. Okay, now let's circle back to pain because that was one of my experiences that I, I did not go into our session telling you, hey, let's really focus on this pain that I've had for a year because I think there's a mind body connection. Now I had read John Sarno's work about the mind body connection and I had been looking into that over the. The course of the last year, of course, because you search for anything when you're in pain. But it was surprising to me that my pain level dropped and legit. I was fully out of pain for a good month or so, literally living my best life. Now it still comes and goes because there's a structural issue. There's still, there's a scoliosis structural issue that I have that is it's naturally going to flare pain because of the tension on the muscle. But the mind body connection, I had no idea that there was one connected with pain. And the fact that it diminished and we didn't even. It's not like in the session you were dealing with my pain. We were just going deep in a variety of different directions, but the pain responded. How, how often have you seen that in your practice?
- [30:34]
Mike Zeller
Very common.
- [30:35]
Dr. Amy
Yeah.
- [30:36]
Mike Zeller
If, if people are dealing with some lingering pain, it may not always, like, dissipate entirely, like 100. But I do see some clients where their pain is basically evaporated because there's such a psychosomatic connection. And we, the body is made up of different systems. Like, you think there's like an emotional system, there's a mental system, there's blood, blood system, you know, there's structural systems, there's soft tissue systems. And one of the big mistakes of Western medicine is like, it's isolated symptoms and not looked at the systematic linkage between it all and how much emotions play a part. There's a couple, like Gabor Monte's book Myth Normal, talks about how most breast cancer survivors, they've done research where most breast cancer survivors have repressed anger. They were people pleasers then. Similar data with most men. This is clinical, you know, data published in medical journals. And then Dr. Amy Appagan's book Biology Normal talks a lot about, like, the psych, the biological connection to trauma, to our emotions, to all that. And you see, there's a bunch of, bunch of material out there that we're just now kind of learning and going back to. Seen the whole human experience as interrelated and interconnected systems. And the more we see that, I think the wiser we will be for our own transformation and healing.
- [31:58]
Dr. Amy
It's just it, it. It's so crazy because you don't even realize and, and I know there are people out there right now listening to this, that they're not even conscious of their pain because they've lived with it for so long. Like you said, the new norm. That's what made me think of it. Or, or this is my normal. They've accepted almost on a subconscious programming level that this is just me. This is just the pain that I'm. I need, I'm going to live in for the rest of my life, or even taking it one step further and really talking to my audience out there, I'm never going to get better. Nobody's going to be able to figure me out. I bet I've been to 10 doctors and five naturopaths, and nobody can quite do this. So, you know, this is just how I'm going to feel for the rest of my Life, I'm just going to have to deal with it. And that's a program. They're not going to say that out loud to you. They're like, no, I don't want to feel this way the rest of my life. But their subconscious is telling them that it's normal.
- [32:50]
Mike Zeller
Yeah, exactly. And there's things that we can get to that just may not. It kind of defies them. I see ancestral trauma pieces come up all the time. Inherited trauma pieces. I had like my dad experienced some sexual trauma. He was molested by a priest in Germany. I had sexual shame that I entered into my relationship with my wife with that I carried in. I was unconscious of. I had also some defensiveness and energy of judgment and critical energy that I got from my mom. Because, you know, the human being zero to seven is a hypnotic sponge. We're in a wide open neuroplastic state where we're passively absorbing things and absorbing energies, worldviews, emotions. Then another major window, 1624 is another big opening. And then you, after this, you're kind of like a cooked turkey where you can still change, but it's like skiing uphill where you're changing a little bit. And it takes a lot of effort to make a little bit of change versus when we're younger or we do a psychedelic experience, we can do a lot of change fast because we have a portal or an opening. So like it's surprising if we stuff kind of comes to the surface that our nervous system has been holding on to, that it sometimes isn't ours and can be our mom's anxiety. One of the clients on meds, 54 years old, she'd been on, I think, two different anti anxiety meds for, for 35 years. And her mom had been on it on those same meds. Her mom's in her 80s for probably 50 years. Well, I worked with this client a month and a half still. It's about a month and a half now since our session. She's completely free. The medicine like has been off and her anxiety is essentially just gone. She doesn't need them now. She have other clients with high OCD medication that takes longer time periods to taper down. One of them that I'm working with, I was referred by her psychologist. So everyone's a little different. But we can get. Our bodies are holding on to stuff. Body keeps the score for a reason.
- [34:51]
Dr. Amy
It does. It really does. So that leads beautifully into my next question, which ties both my experience and my husband's skepticism into this one question. And I know people out there are thinking this, well, I don't have trauma. I don't have a big team. Like, I don't know what are we even going to work on. So I went into this work not with anything planned, not with anything that I wanted to do. I didn't want to get anything out of it. I wanted to experience it because I had so many colleagues that had gone through it and had life changing experiences. You and I talked multiple times. So I just really wanted to try it to see what it was all about, not knowing that I had trauma. So my thing to you and my husband's words to you would be the same. I don't have trauma. I mean, what are we gonna. What are we gonna deal with? And you know, even if I do have some trauma, I don't, I don't want to talk about it. Like, I don't want to be in there like vomiting up all this stuff that happened in the past.
- [35:47]
Mike Zeller
Go, yeah, well, let's simplify trauma and just think of it as a moment where you were overwhelmed and you have overwhelming emotion. And I know enough about you and your husband that I know that you guys have had some moments of overwhelm dealing with his kids and different dynamics that have been hard. Right? Different dynamics for you that have been hard. And like, while it may not be big T trauma, if you are navigating any elements of a realm where your body's holding onto it, then it is eating up space, valuable space. It's like an energy suck. It's sucking off the power grid of your life. And like, I'd say about a third of my clients were mostly working on peak performance. So maybe there's an element of his best self that might be accessible as we kind of clear out and open up. And I know for me, I got way more heart connected with this work. I could not feel until I did this work. My wife used to tease me and say I was like, it was like hugging a tree. She thought it was a kind human, but that I just couldn't. Had zero empathy. I could not feel. And it was of course, a childhood pattern where feelings weren't really safe in my family to express other than anger. So this work really can open up a deeper awareness, deeper connection, and also the oneness. I'll add another big thing. I did a ayahuasca ceremony with Maestro Hamilton, or Hamilton Southern is his name in Peru. And he said something that struck me. He said, we are not on earth. We are part of Earth. So much like you and I have 37 trillion cells operating in our body. If they were at war with one another, our bodies would not function very well. But look at this globe. Look at this planet. Look at these silly wars that we're in, this ego, where there's the illusion of separateness, that maybe we are like cells on planet Earth. And so I think there's a element of raising human consciousness to see the oneness of life, of love, and that if we're going to continue in hate, we're going to continue in just disconnection. Like, there's another gift for this of, like, connection as a couple. Like you and your husband, you both want to be even more intimately connected. And I know from this work, it's already benefited you guys, but it's like, man, there can be another level. What is the untapped potential of your life and love and work and purpose and business and impact that maybe this medicine work can help you unlock some layers of that.
- [38:23]
Dr. Amy
Yeah. And that's exactly. That's exactly what it does. And that is exactly why I say I believe everyone with a pulse needs to do it. Because just like you said, Mike, we all have ancestors. We all have parents. We all have parents that have gone through things, and we all have little T's. It doesn't have to be a big T. There doesn't have to be death, divorce, molestation. It doesn't have to be something that big. It can be the. The little things that add up over time that almost build blockades in our mind and in our body. And, you know, it's just interesting when you say that zero to seven window where we're being shaped, it makes me. It actually makes me think about my scoliosis. So I was diagnosed at the age of 11. There's no scoliosis in my family anywhere. Wow. So what happened during. You know, I'm just making this connection. What happened during those younger years that kind of shifted me that, you know, in a metaphorical way that kind of jolted my spine to. Then when it started to grow, it grew.
- [39:37]
Mike Zeller
Yeah.
- [39:37]
Dr. Amy
In an S shape.
- [39:39]
Mike Zeller
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
- [39:41]
Dr. Amy
It's possible. It's. I mean, because we now know the. The correlation between mental and physical. We've been talking about that in terms of pain, but that can also be correlated in terms of any kind of congenital issues or health issues that start to appear in a person's teens, 20s, 30s.
- [40:00]
Mike Zeller
Yeah, spot on. And so much happens in our childhood development age. It's like the Oprah and I forgot the other guy's name, but he's an expert in ptsd. They wrote a book called what happened to you? And it's really looking through the lens of our nervous systems organize intentionally around, especially our early development. Not just childhood, but you know, teenager, young adulthood. Our nervous system start reorganizing to support and protect in those dynamics. And I can for myself, for my wife. Like my wife grew up in extreme trauma, very abusive mom, stepfather. Her nervous system just was on guard. She was the most hyper, vigilant person I've ever met. My nervous system grew up around loving, caring parents, but emotionally disconnected parents. And I could feel that, I could see that. And so I was in many regards looking for validation and emotional connection with the feminine. But I was also so disconnected that I couldn't get to my own heart, my own feelings until I did mdma. Then that allowed me access to my feelings and then it was a performance based culture. So then I was like, all right. My nervous system is organized around effort to be doing something, got to produce, got to get good grades, got to get whatever or I'm not going to get the love I crave or I'm going to lose security. Like I have a small five year old and so she's like very little, a little extra clingy sometimes, but her whole life is dependent on being securely attached to me and her mom.
- [41:37]
Dr. Amy
Right.
- [41:38]
Mike Zeller
If that doesn't happen, she is on an island all by herself to some extent. So it makes sense. And that's why we gotta be, if we're parents, we've gotta be hyper intentional. And if we suffered through some significant traumas as a child or just disconnection, we'll say lack of emotional safety, then we might want to go back and revisit and re pattern some of those rewire core parts of that so that we can show up. So we're not basically acting out of little wounded boy energy, a little wounded girl, girl energy as a 47 year old or whatever.
- [42:12]
Dr. Amy
Yeah. Oh, this is just, it's, it's just so beautiful. Just I get tingles when I talk about it because I, I not only think about obviously my husband, my close friends, but my patients. And you know, I'm thinking about a couple of them that I know this work would break them to a new level of health, would break them to a new level of happiness, would bring, break them from a plateau that they're on. And I'm actually seeing all these connections tying together with health. So I'm going to open up a little bit more to the audience and talk about the Work that we did. I got the message in. In our very first session. Oh, crap, I'm gonna start crying. Okay, I got the message. By the way, you can cry during these things. I am very defensive. So anybody in the Facebook group, you'll know that if you. If you poo poo my team at all, I'm coming in to defend them to my death. And if you come after anyone I love, I will defend them to the death. That's not always necessarily good. So that defensiveness has been built up. God knows when it started, but we found it, and I named her Sue. Sorry all the Sues out there, but my defensive Persona is now named Sue. And sue was driving the car for a while. She was driving my life. She was pretty much front and center and running the show. And I got the message that the cancer comes back if I don't drop this defensiveness. And that was strong, and that was powerful. And that let me see that connection between our emotions and our health just so clearly. You hear about it all the time. Yeah. You can read the book Body Keeps the Score. You can hear a podcast. You can hear people talk about it. Oh, stress and cortisol is detrimental to your health. But damn, when you get that message and it is loud and clear, and it is like you're seeing it on a screen going, oh, my God, there it is. That's when it hits you. And that's where it lands. And that's where it lands in your heart as well as your mind to go. That's. That's. It's not more supplements. It's not more hyperbaric oxygen. It's not more coffee enemas. It's that I need to get rid of this. I need to put sue in the backseat. She can come up every once in a while when I really need to defend my loved ones from a true threat. But she doesn't have to be there every day.
- [44:36]
Mike Zeller
That's right. Yeah. And beautiful. Share. And it's allowing. So here's a pretty cool. This was the best illustration I can think of, but you illustrated perfectly by working through, like, allowing Sue's feelings to be felt, allowing them to be expressed. And it discharges. Discharges the stuck energy. So 1984, National Geographic does a study on polar bears. And you can go find an old, like, video on YouTube about it. But they would chase polar bears down with a helicopter and shoot them with a tranquilizer gun. They would carry these polar bears back to the research base, tag them, check their vitals, put a little orange Tag in their ear, and then eventually let them back out in the wild a couple days later or a day later. But for years, researchers were confused. Why are these polar bears making all this frantic movement as the tranquilizer wears off a couple hours later? Well, one day, a researcher plays a video of the polar bear in the cage in slow motion. And what do they see? They see that his legs are still running. The last time I was conscious, what was it doing? It was running from a giant, loud metal bird. It was being hunted. It was the prey. But what does the polar bear naturally do that leads it not to get ptsd for it to go back into that parasympathetic state? It looks around and notices, oh, I'm not under attack anymore. I'm not being hunted by a loud metal bird. And you see his breath go and soften in and go back to normal as its legs slow down. What do we do as humans? You're a little girl. Like, I'm very intentional with my little girl when she gets dysregulated. When she's upset emotionally, I come and make sure age. Like right before I left this morning. So I need a hug. I need a huggy. And I ran over and gave her a good long hug, and she needed some extra snuggles. And then I brought her, helped her nervous system come back down. Because up to age 7, their prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed, so they're still learning to regulate through the pain. Parents now, obviously kids still do throughout their lifetime. But what we got to think of is how do I get like. You brought yourself out of that defensiveness, which is a fear state, which is on guard. I'm going to get somebody right and into that calm. I'm defensive. Part of you can be in the back seat. So another dynamic I like to think of is we're one team with many players. Do we have the right player, the right parts of Mike, or right parts of Amy in the right position, the right time? Or if a wounded part is showing up, what is his or her good intent? Right. And how are they trying to serve so we can validate and not discard? We don't want to disintegrate. We want to create integration or integrity from the whole, where all the parts are working together for the collective good of you? So anyway, I went on a little rabbit trail there, but I love it.
- [47:26]
Dr. Amy
I absolutely love it. No, thank you for unpacking that, because it's important to tie it together because I know people resonate with that, especially with the health piece and. And especially anyone out there which, you know, the cancer rates are high. So I know there's a lot of people that have it or have had it. And you naturally have that fear. It's in your mind, it coming back. And sometimes that fear can stem not just from, oh, I'm scared of cancer coming back. Obviously that's a logical fear, but it can be driven even deeper into your subconscious and into your body through those. Those programs that are running underneath the surface all the time. All the time. So I want to end with a skepticism question from my husband that I also know might be on people's minds. And. And I want to, you know, end this way so that people can leave, think about it. And I'm going to encourage them to reach out to you to do this work. And we'll put all of Mike's information in the show. Notes, downloads, how to connect with them, how to follow him, everything. But the big thing is it's kind of two pronged. Number one, I've never taken drugs before. Mike. Drugs. I mean, my husband was an ATF agent. He couldn't do any. He couldn't even do weed. So never taken drugs before. I don't want to take a drug that alters me where I don't have control. A. I'm going to let you answer that and then follow it up with B. Well, then I'm gonna have to do this for the rest of my life, right? I'm gonna have to do this over and over and over and over again and keep going.
- [49:01]
Mike Zeller
Yeah, good questions. So, A, if you have had a cup of coffee, you've had a drug that's probably killed more people than lsd. Caffeine. Legitimately, people have overdose on caffeine. Like in Kentucky, where I grew up, there's ala this soft drink that people working on railroads and stuff and in coal mines would drink like eight or nine of them, which is like, you know, 10, 11 cups of coffee or more. And people would die. Right. So if you've had alcohol, alcohol is arguably 10 times more dangerous than MDMA or psilocybin or LSD. It is an altered state. Caffeine is an altered state. So. So that's. Usually I go right there. If. If you've had one or two drinks of alcohol, like my experiences, our goal is not to get you really high. It's to help you get into an altered state so we get access to the subconscious. Kind of like having two glasses of wine, you know, you're not gonna die. You're still in control, you're still aware if you have two glasses of wine but you're softened and that's what we want. Okay. And secondly, they're non addictive. They all these substances I don't want to. Ketamine is addictive. I do not work with ketamine. Anything that is addictive I want to avoid because of the side the dangers of addiction. And I love helping people get free of addictions, not struggle with addictions. And this experience is not like regular therapy. I my longest Packages generally are six months, but most of my longest packages are three months, 100 days because I find people get to where they want to go. Sometimes people want to keep going for more of the peak performance side because we keep leveling up, we keep working through stuff, we keep gaining deeper access. So I love those as well. But in terms of like always working on regurgitating your pain and same core patterns, I would be effing bored. Yeah, I'm, I'm. My patience is not there to be talking about the same. Like when I first got into coaching 15 years ago, I did it for like a month and a half and I somehow got two women and two gay guys that were all hung up on ex boyfriends. And after a month of this, of working with each client for about a month, I'm like, these guys are too stuck on their ex boyfriends. They would go back to them, they would do this and they. I was like, God, I do not like this. So I quit that if this did not work and help create giant leaps of forward progress. Like I tell clients when they work with me, I'll give you a guarantee, a money back guarantee. If it's not a big leap in progress, I'm not going to say I'm going to cure. We're going to cure everything. You are actually doing the healing, I'm creating the environment, the container, helping guide you to soften, clear out stuff. But in our work, we're going to clear out stuff. But if, if, if it's not a big leap forward, then I give you money back. So far, knock on wood, I've not had anyone ask for the money back. Right in 250 plus sessions, I don't even know how many I've done. I've probably done more than that because I average 16 to 20 sessions a month typically. So who knows? I look at the human being, we long for progress. A core dimension of our psyche is we want to make progress. And these medicines both have the capacity with proper therapeutic peak performance, psychedelic support we'll call it man. We can heal our deepest layers of stuff, heal our lineage. And then secondly, we can step into our highest and best self. And so I think their biggest breakthrough for mental health and biggest breakthrough for peak performance when used properly. I'm gonna add a third caveat. Biggest breakthrough in helping heal relational patterns and stuck energy and relational patterns. Because I see about a third of my work is with couples that wanna get unstuck. They're in crisis, or they wanna go deeper and loving connection. They might not be in crisis, but they're like, hey, we've been at a plateau for a decade or whatever. How do we get past this?
- [52:56]
Dr. Amy
So, yeah, it's amazing work. It is. It's lifechanging. I'll go back to what I said in the very beginning. I truly believe that every single person walking this earth needs to experience this. If not once more, multiple times as you continue to work on it. But do it one time and you'll see what I see. And you'll experience that just overwhelming peace and overwhelming clarity. And you'll experience the shifts that you know are possible after you do it. That's all I can say. It's so hard to describe. It's so hard to put in the words. It's hard to put in the words how amazing this work is. So, like I said, we're going to put all of your information down in the show notes for people to work with you. But you are taking new clients. Yes.
- [53:36]
Mike Zeller
Yeah. Yes. Always taking new clients. I do have a good team on my support as well of three amazing facilitators besides me that help support. One's a very gifted somatic and IFS therapist who was my wife's original trauma therapist. She's amazing. A couple others that have trained and developed as well. And I work or my team and I works with people of all budgets and ranges. We do virtual work. I would also add big distinction. About 95 to 98% of psychedelic guides do traditional light guidance, which means they let the medicine do the work. And they ask you gentle, reflective questions while you're on the medicine. Like, hey, what are you feeling? You know, that type deal. And they're just taking notes for whatever's coming up, bubbling up from your subconscious, whatever you want to talk about. So it's light guidance. I'm kind of the opposite. I think of myself more as a neurosurgeon. Subconscious mind. I'm going to go in. It still feels very gentle. Like we've done a lot of work together virtually, and you know, together on the full sessions. And it's gentle because I want to be congruent with what your nervous system, what your heart, what your body wants to share. But at the end of the day, I want to go in with precision, hunting for the stuck energy and bring it to the surface lovingly, gently. And I look at healing as four dimensions, psychological, which is where most therapy and coaching falls. Second layer is much deeper, which is emotional. Third layer is somatic, or in the body issues in the tissues. And the fourth layer is the spiritual, which is the meaning and the purpose that we attach to the hard stuff that we've been through. And you look at Viktor Frankl who went through a holocaust with psychiatrists and went through that. If we can reattach meaning, and because we're all meaning making machines, we can recalibrate our whole nervous system, our whole belief structure around some of the hardest things that we've been through to become much greater humans and show up with a deeper level of love and presence in our lives.
- [55:32]
Dr. Amy
Beautiful. So well said. So well said. Well, thank you so much, Mike, for your time today and thank you all for listening. I hope you take action and if you do, let me know, shoot me a dm, send me a message on Facebook. I want to know. I want to know what your experience is. And if you do a session with Mike, we'll bring you on the show to talk about it. So I want to unpack it and share these stories. So, Mike, I love you to death. Thank you for the work that you do in this world. It's amazing. And everyone check the show notes.
- [55:58]
Mike Zeller
And I guess, should I mention we'll have the links for the application if you want to work with me.
- [56:03]
Dr. Amy
Yes.
- [56:03]
Mike Zeller
And then also neurorewiring.com or mike zeller.com VIP Rewired VIP I think it is. So I have those down there below.
- [56:12]
Dr. Amy
We'll clarify with it and they can check it below. Yeah, sounds good. And we'll put the links to YouTube. Mike has a killer YouTube channel and he's on LinkedIn as well. So we'll put all of that in the show notes as well. So until next time, thank you for listening. The information shared on the Thyroid Fixer podcast is intended solely for informational and educational purposes. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition treatment or before making changes to your healthcare regimen, including medications, supplements or other therapies. Use of the information provided in this podcast does not establish a doctor, patient, or client provide a relationship between you and the host, or between you and any other healthcare professionals featured on the show. Any medical opinions or statements made by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or affiliated parties. Statements regarding dietary supplements or health related products mentioned in this podcast have not been evaluated by the fda. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Some episodes of the Thyroid Fixer podcast may include sponsorships or affiliate links. The host may receive compensation for discussing or promoting certain products or services. Any such sponsorships or affiliations will be clearly disclosed during the episode. All opinions expressed are those of the host or guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of any sponsors. The inclusion of a product or service does not imply endorsement by any healthcare professional featured on this podcast.