In This Episode

• Meet my client, Tess, and hear about her experience with MAP sessions.
• MAP for sensitivities, IBS, headaches, dizziness.
• The MAP for Self-Healing Program.

Show Notes

Join me for episode 73 where we hear from my client, Tess, about her experiences with the MAP Method over 4 months, and how MAP has helped her to overcome her sensitivities to smells, chronic headaches, IBS, repetitive negative thoughts and improved her bloodwork. Hear how she came to MAP already understanding the connection between trauma and chronic illness, and how MAP sessions proved more effective than other modalities she had tried including DNRS, EMDR, Safe and Sound, Somatics, and more.

In this episode we discuss:

• How she found the MAP method with a very focused Google search.
• Her experience with DNRS and how it helped, but wasn’t enough.
• What she was hoping to address in MAP sessions: multiple allergies and sensitivities (hearing, smell, touch, foods, environmental), IBS, chronic pain (headaches, neck, back, body aches), hypothyroid, mold, Lyme and coinfections.
• How she used the MAP for Self Healing to address negative thought loops, neck tension, and headaches.
• How she used the MAP for Sensitivities to resolve smell sensitivities.
• The improvements in her bloodwork: B12 levels, homocysteine, and white blood cell and red blood cell counts.
• The increased freedom she has in her life as a result of MAP:  to travel, socialize, be outside, cook, see the dentist, wear a necklace, and drive alone.
• The emotional level changes she has noted: more relaxed, able to enjoy the moment, less fixated on having to “do the right thing all the time.”
• How she understands trauma to be “something that happened that your brain has not processed properly.”
• How she deals with symptoms that come up – let it come and let it go–and how nothing hurts as much or as long as it used to.
• When you’ve been sick your whole thought process changes, and to make the leap back, it requires neural retraining.
• Why symptom patterns sometimes show up strongly right before they break down for good.
• Her experience of neutralizing a trauma memory during a MAP session and how the memory and her perspective changed.
• How anyone of any faith or religious background can feel comfortable working with MAP.
• How MAP programs offer a convenient and affordable way to have MAP sessions on your own.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy hearing Susan’s story in episode 69: MAP for Chronic Illness or a functional medicine practitioner’s discussion of MAP for Complex Chronic Conditions.

To learn more about the MAP Method, please visit  MAPforHealth.us for our free courses and our MAP Programs. To schedule an Introductory MAP session please book online at  TCNeuralRetraining.com.

Transcript

*Please note: Transcript generated by AI, accuracy not guaranteed.*

[Music]

Welcome to the Flourish with Neural Retraining Podcast. I'm your host, Madeleine Lowry, founder of Twin Cities Neural Retraining, and a certified MAP Method practitioner, specializing in anxiety, sensitivities, and chronic symptoms and conditions.

Join me for episode 73, where we hear from my client, Tess, about her experiences with the MAP Method over four months and how it helped her to overcome her sensitivities to smells, chronic headaches, IBS, repetitive negative thoughts, and improved her blood work.

Hear how she came to already understanding the connection between trauma and chronic illness, and how sessions proved more effective than other modalities she had tried, including DNRS, EMDR, Safe and Sound, Somatics, and others.

As always, we must disclaim that the information we share in the podcast is for educational purposes only. As MAP Method practitioners, we do not diagnose or treat disease. Instead, we work with the mind to optimize health.

Now let's hear from Tess.

Tess I am so excited to have you join me today on my podcast to share some of your experiences with the MAP Method. I'm just so pleased that you're willing to come and talk about how you benefited from a set of sessions. So welcome, Tess.

Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here because everybody needs to know about this. So I am just tickled, thrilled to be here.

Thank you. Thank you. So, gosh, maybe you can remind me, you know, let's go back to the beginning because I actually can't remember how you heard about the method and how you found me.

I had done DNRS, right? I had done DNRS, and I tried some other modalities as well. I can talk about those later, but I realized I had some trauma in my life.  And I was like, "Hey, okay, so how do I deal with that? How do I bring it all together?" So I did a Google search. I did a Google search, and I said, "Okay, I want to do brain retraining around sensitivities with trauma." And the MAP Method popped up.

So it was a very detailed Google search, but until I went to the MAP Coaching Institute, and then I started looking through all the different practitioners, and yours was specifically for sensitivities.

So food sensitivities, and everything. So I clicked on you and went to your TCNeuralRetraining, and I listened to a couple of your YouTube videos, and one of them was about, "If DNRS hadn't brought you the whole way, it could be because you had trauma."

So I was like, "I'm all-in," and that's when I just booked an appointment with you the first 15 minutes, so I could see if you could help me, because I had actually met with other people who are brain retrainers also who honestly told me they couldn't help.

So I was like, okay, well, you know, so when you said you could, deal with the trauma as well. That was the key for me.

Wow, okay, yeah, so thank you for recapping that. So, huh, yeah, that is interesting. It's interesting that detailed search took you to the MAP Coaching Institute, because I think I am the only MAP practitioner that specializes in sensitivities. So that's interesting.

You know, I always find it so inspiring when people come and they kind of started to put it together, right? You know, they've had an experience maybe with another kind of neural retraining or brain retraining method. And they get the feeling like, "Yes, this is the right direction for me, but maybe I need something more."

You know, maybe this doesn't, whatever it was that they started with doesn't take me all the way, and I think I need something more or different. And then they find, you know, the MAP method and maybe they find me. I think there isn't enough awareness of this, but I think it's starting to bubble up, right? Because of, because of programs like DNRS.

So I should just clarify for everyone that stands for Dynamic Neural Retraining System that is a system created by Annie Hopper in Canada, which I regard as a basic neural retraining method.

Basic in the sense that it's kind of the same, the same method, the same technique for everyone.

And it doesn't address underlying traumas. So while it is beneficial for many people, I do find that for people who have a more significant history of early life trauma or just really trauma, trauma standing for painful emotional experiences in their life, that they need something more advanced.

As someone who used to use DNRS and then taught people a simplified version of that in workshops and saw how it worked for some people, but not others, you know, and then I figured out that the people who are kind of failing the DNRS technique were people who had, you know, the more significant trauma histories.

And that is what sent me on the path that I am on today because I noticed that it didn't work for everyone. There's always this chunk, you know, 25 or 30% of the people that I taught couldn't do it with DNRS alone.

I thought we needed something more. I didn't know what that was, but I wished that I could help people retrain their brain in a session with me or a set of sessions instead of sending them home with these scripts and these instructions to practice for an hour a day, for a month, after month, after month, only to find after six months, 12 months, 18 months, right, that it's, it's not enough. They need something more, you know, that's a big investment of time and energy.

And I wanted to be able to help people recover faster. So that's what sent me looking for something. I didn't even know what I was looking for. And it turned out to be the MAP Method.

Thank you. Yeah, I did DNR S for two years, thankfully for two years. And I did have some success. I mean, I love it. I mean, I really want to shout out because I did have some success, especially with my nervous system, my equilibrium, you know, it didn't come fully online, but it helped me tremendously.

I started DNRS being so dizzy that I had to wake up every morning before my husband left home, to make sure I wasn't dizzy because if I was dizzy, he would stay home from work. I went from that to now I'll wake up and I don't even think about being dizzy. DNRS brought me to a certain point.

I could even furthered my recovery because I could drive again after after doing DNRS, but I couldn't drive alone.

Now I drive alone when I go places. It's like it's just given me this confidence that I didn't have from DNRS or that I didn't have from all the time that I had gotten dizzy while driving, you know.

Yeah, the MAP Method just pushed just really pushed me over that as wonderfully, just wonderful.

Yeah, so you mentioned that you did DNRS for two years and we've done eight sessions, right? Since August, so it's September, October November, December. So now it's January, so that's six months eight sessions over six months. Is that right?

No, no, no, no, no.

Not even four, right? The first time we talked on the phone was August, but we didn't start until September. Right. Yes. Okay. So just over four months. All right. Yes. Thank you. So, yeah.

I think that it's helpful for people to understand what kind of time spans we are talking about.

Yeah. So when you found me and you decided to try this thing called the MAP Method, which, you know, you'd never heard of before. What were you hoping to address?

So I've had sensitivities my whole life, right? I'm had them so long. I'm not going to bore you with it. I had a food supplements, med, sensitivities, hearing sensitivities, mold sensitivities, environmental sensitivities, like just, I mean, I still don't go outside for long periods of time, but I found that I can go outside for a period of time and not be hurting when I come inside. I used to couldn't even be outside for five minutes.

So I had hit, you know, allergies, just all my sensitivities, just narrowed my life so much. I was on 10 foods. And I'm still not introduced those yet because I hadn't done my work around that sensitivity yet, but that's what I'm hoping to resolve. My food issues, my, my smell issues are so much better. I did, you know, I did some MAP sessions around it through through your online sessions and just, I mean, that was what my husband was saying today is that, "You cooked for Christmas," like things that I hadn't cooked in years, like his sweets with brown sugar. I haven't even been able to be around brown sugar in probably seven or eight years.

I was cooking with it and just doing, I just couldn't even believe how my smell, how there's so much less reactive. I'm so much less reactive to them now. The smell since doing, you know, since doing it. And my head, I did the Self, the Self Healing Program. And since then, girl, I mean, I've had months where I've gone 30 days without a headache. I've not gotten rid of all my headaches, but I maybe have one a week. And then that's just if that. And it's incredible. It's ah, it's life changing truly life changing.

So you did a month. If I remember correctly, you signed up for the Sensitivities Program, which is... So I created these MAP online programs for certain topics, just so that people can do more of the work on their own and it's more affordable and more convenient.

And so you signed up for I think a month of a Sensitivities program and a month of the Self Healing program at different times during the same four month period, right? So I think what you're describing is that you were able to use the Sensitivities program to help you with the smell aversions and the smell sensitivities, but you haven't yet applied it to other categories of sensitivities, which you would like to do in the future.

And you found that the Self Healing program was helpful for your headaches.

Yeah, my headaches and other just like trauma thoughts are like, you know, your loops, your trauma loops that you you're in a lot of times, you know, your brain will just go back to these trauma loops.

I love what Joe Dispenza says about that. He says, you know, your body is just telling your mind what to do and your mind just races through all these things every day. It's the same thoughts, same thoughts, same habits.

I don't have those anymore. I'm not having those same thoughts anymore. And I believe that was from the Self Healing and the MAP sessions with you. I mean, there's nothing like the sessions with you, but these the other ones really have helped me with those thoughts just running and running and running and I really run those thoughts and more.

And I also been diagnosed with Lyme and Bartonella, which is a co-infection of Lyme and mold and this was after I had already started the DNRS. This was like a year into the DNRS. And I was diagnosed with that and that also was looking to through the session, maybe not have to address those molds in Bartonella now, you know, because I was having such a hard time trying to introduce everything that they wanted me to do with those.

The sensitivities that I was having with all the supplements they wanted me to take was off the charts. So I'm hoping to really just kind of address those as well and blood work, my blood work is so much better. I mean, there's just so much.

Yeah, so tell us some of the things you noticed around your blood work because I think that's, you know, some of the clearest indications that something is happening for my clients is when they come and they tell me my thyroid levels are changing, like I've cut my meds in half. You know, my fertility numbers are getting better, my different markers, I don't know, in their blood work show that there's less inflammation in the body. You know, they people are getting tested for different kinds of things and I don't know all these tests, but they come and they tell me, you know, this is what I'm noticing this is what I'm noticing and my white blood counts changing or my iron level going up.

That's when they really, you know, they feel like they're better, but then when their practitioner shows them a test black and white, you know, that's when they really know. Oh my gosh, you know, something has changed here and I have been waiting for this to happen for a long time.

My, my, so my doctor's when COVID hit my doctor's like, don't go anywhere, just don't go anywhere. So I stayed home until April of this year my husband and I quarantined. So that was last year, I guess, we're in 2024 now, we were a good three years, just stuck at home, he and I together. So during that time, my blood work did not get better. It just, I mean, there were some things we tried made it worse, made it better.

Then we started on the B12. I was able to start taking just this, I mean, it is such a tiny dose of B12.

It's two 100th of a CC and it's of not the normal kind is it, but anyway, so my B12 was coming starting to come up before I started with, with MAP. But now it's in the normal range.

My white blood cell count, which has not been in a normal range since I can remember ever is normal. The last blood test and I had just been doing MAP for two months when I had this blood with them. And my red count was almost in range and it's normally not in range either.

I'm usually in the making everything and in my homocysteine levels, which have been off the charts, which means inflammation, right that your body has inflammation in it. It was only like 0.5 high, whereas it's been double what it's supposed to be.

So I just have to believe that is my body just deciding, oh, we can just be calm now. We can just be, you know, be calm now. So, yeah, I mean, I'm just, I told my doctor, and that has let me be able to go see my family again. I went home from my mother-in-law's party, you know, her birthday party and we went for Christmas. And I wouldn't have been able to do those things because the doctors wanted my blood to be in certain places before I could do that. And so my blood was back in two months, so I was very excited.

Yeah. That is exciting. Yeah, it's wonderful to see your life get bigger instead of, you know, what happened happening getting smaller.

So you're describing benefits at different levels, right? You were talking about the mental level of like that, the ruminating thoughts that have slowed or have dissipated. And then what you've noticed physically as a result of doing sessions, have you noticed emotional shifts as well?

Okay, yes. I'm much more relaxed than I've ever been in my life. I've finally realized how tense my body has been my entire life. And it's all about just letting myself relax and not think about all the things that I need to be doing or all the things that I have to get done are all those, you know,

those Enneagram type one thoughts, but if you don't know that Enneagram, you don't understand. But it's like I've got to be doing the right thing all the time, you know, I've got to be doing the right thing all the time.

And I've just told my husband, you say, I think I'm just, this morning, I think it was, he said, I think I'm going to get lazy because I don't feel, you know, I'm just letting myself relax for the first time in my life. And that is huge. And I think that's so important to my recovery, just realizing it if nothing else. And also, I can just turn the thoughts down and enjoy the moment I've never done that in my life.

Truly, honestly, deeply, it was always, what was I working toward or what needed to happen afterward so I can really shut that down. That's awesome. Even when I do go to fight or flight, I come out of it really fast. I don't stay there any more, you know, my thought is, oh, it's fine.

Just the other day I was driving, you know, I'm just now driving by myself again and I was going to go into another lane in this car just came whizzing by me real fast. And I was like, oh, you know, you almost hit me. And so that normally would have freaked me out, right? I would have froze and I didn't. I just thought, "Well, well, that was not very nice."

And then I just went along my way. It's kind of what I do when I get dizzy now. I got real dizzy the other day in the store. And I was like, "Well, there you are again." Hello, you know, and just you just let it come and you let it go.

I've learned because when it comes and you try and fight it, it's kind of that's when it really takes hold in those old trauma waves. You get back stuck in them. That's been just a beautiful thing.

Also, I've been able to go to the dentist for the first time in years, in years and years. So I'm very excited about that. I get a lot of teeth work done. Nothing hurts as much or as long as it used to. I'll still get body aches, especially from sitting at my desk. If I said, I don't mind, that's a lot. I get body aches from that, but they're not as long and they're not as bad. And sometimes I don't have the body aches at all.

It's really incredible. It's really incredible. I didn't mention the IBS earlier, but I have IBS. And since the first time we work on a session around that, it's been different. It's been much better and much easier, much it's kind of just calm a bit down, which is tremendous because I've had it in a whole lot had it one way or another, my whole life.

So that [program] online has really, really helped me tremendously.

Wow, that's that's a lot. I really like what you said about the emotional shifts that you've noticed in yourself too, because I do think that that is really instrumental to your healing.

You know, I was trained as Nutritional Therapy Practitioner first, before the MAP Method, and in that modality, the philosophy behind that is that, you know, your body is designed to heal itself.

And so in that modality, you're using nutrition and supplements and lifestyle changes to help a person get to a place where there are functions of the body, the restorative functions of the body can come back online. And the person can gain some traction in their recovery where they've been kind of stuck or kind of circling before.

And I guess I bring that same sensibility to the work I do with MAP , you know, I believe that every person has the ability to heal that their body is designed to do this. When they are not, you know, when they are stuck in some kind of chronic health condition or symptom, that is a sign that there are blocks and barriers.

And as you were describing before, habits of thoughts or conditioning that in some ways working against us for most of us that can feel like I'm stuck in a fighter flight response too much of the time. And we know that when you're in fighter flight, the sympathetic mode of the autonomic nervous system, you cannot also be in the rest digest and heal mode or the parasympathetic mode of the autonomic nervous system.

And that is where we need to be most of the day for your body to not just maintain, but get ahead, right? Because recovery is about doing more than just maintaining. And so when when the racing thoughts start to come, you know, when we have more emotional resilience like you were describing. That's a sign that we are we are able to be in that relaxed state, the parasympathetic state, we're all healing functions of the body are active, you know, can can take place.

Many people wonder is this method going to work for me? And they do they try a few sessions and they're all only feeling emotional level improvements. Don't give up, right, because that's the foundation those emotional level shifts are the foundation. That is the beginning of your, you know, allowing your body to achieve what it what it can achieve, which is your recovery from chronic health issues.

You know, it can take a little patience for us to move from the emotional to the mental to the physical.

It does and I would say the emotional comes first even even just the other day I told you about the time when I was over head right now was to me and I couldn't move my neck right. So the other day I sneezed and I felt my neck want to lock up and I thought, you know what? It's not it's that's not going to happen now. And now I don't even think about it when I sneeze like if I sneeze and you know I want to feel it or something.

No, that's that's not going to happen now, is just like I calm. I can calm everything so much easier in my body besides. I mean because let's be honest about it when you're sick when I was in my worst days in the bed three days a week so dizzy I couldn't get up and nauseated and everything. When you're that sick you're life narrows so much that you'll do anything to get out of that where you are you'll do just about anything to get out of where you are right.

So your whole thought process is trying to get out of that place. Your thought process is only about surviving that day, that moment, that minute, that hour, that's all. That's all your focus is.

And when you stay there so long and you're stuck in that so long when you finally find a light away out of it. It is so life changing. I mean it's just kind of like so life changing even from you know my doctor with the very early early early days.

You know it was it was a med that he gave me, like an antiviral, and it got me out of bed every day. My modalities have changed so much over the years, you know, I didn't even know about functional medicine right then. I didn't hear about functional medicine for four or five years ago at all. Being able to do something to help yourself without up in a pill or anything like that is not that you don't need to pop a pill sometimes but you know just being able to look at it a different way.

You know your dizziness, my dizziness, you know being able to look at it a different way instead of ... just so hard against it and just saying I guess we're going to be there today. That's a that's a long way for you thought process to have to go. It's just a giant way for your thought process. And I don't know how people get there unless they do some sort of neural retraining. I don't think I'd ever gotten there ever.

Yeah so, yeah so, thank you for reminding me about that. So I think you know this is this is a piece of the Self Healing program that you worked with where we talk about resistance, right. And we talk about how resisting what is, you know, your symptom or how you're feeling that day is part of the problem because as you said, when a person has been sick for so long and the world has gotten so so restricted and limited there is that constant fight against not wanting to to be there to get worse or to have these symptoms.

But of course the more that we resist the symptom the more fear we have about it and the more desperation to like get rid of it, push it away, you know, make it bad or wrong. You know, why is this happening to me? You know those kind of thoughts. You know, what did I do to deserve this? You know, I'm running out of time, don't  help...

Catastrophysing thoughts that are very common for someone who's been through that experience and very understandable, but they are working against you, right. So part of, you know, the work that we've done, part of what you've learned through this neural retraining adventure, I guess is like learning how to recognize of those thoughts are not helping.

And it almost sounds like you are able to change your default response to noticing, Oh I have a headache today, or, Oh here comes that feeling again-- the dizziness or the tightness in the neck, that you of course don't like, right? Who likes that right? But it sounds like there's less of an internal struggle around the appearance of these symptoms and a little more acceptance, maybe even surrender to them. And just trusting that it doesn't have to be this way.

Right right my very first experience of that was right after we started. Now my husband and I were out shopping and it was by a real busy street and there's a car going by with a real heavy bass in their in their music. The music was real loud with a real heavy bass. Normally I would have run from that because that would just set my equilibrium off. It used to be it would set it off within when I heard it and I would be nauseated and sick and dizzy. Well I heard it and my first initial reaction was to run, and then I said, "No I was just going to be here with it." You know it's going to pass it's going to be fine.

And it was. And that was really my defining moment. That I'm like okay.  I'd already been doing the, Hey dizzyness, you know. Hello, you know, you might be with me today, a little while I'd already done that.

But I would like to share when I was going through the dizzy... and this was towards right before I started with you. There were a few that there was one day I'll sit in my desk and the dizzyness hit me like really bad. And I was like, Oh wow this isn't good you know. I haven't and it kept hitting me every minute I sat here for 30 minutes just completely dizzy thinking I needed to call my husband.

Thinking, Oh I don't want to take these steps back right. Why am I dizzy? But I just held on. I was like Okay, I'm just going to sit here for a minute and see.

And then I got up and I went in the kitchen. I started cooking and I only say that because a lot of times people think your progress is incremental. And it's not at all. Since that day I've never had that happen again and they'll say like right before  your trauma changes its path, you'll have this complete resistance to whatever you're doing, you know, or whatever is going on, right? And that I do believe that I'm going to be in the way I'm going to do it.

I do believe that was my complete resistance to it. You know I was just sat here just: What do I do? You know I didn't want to go back and have to call my husband to go get my meds and get you to bed. Because we had do that when I would get dizzy. It'd be like, "Baby you got it, you got to come help me to bed. You got to get my meds and I got to go to sleep for the rest of the day."

And so being able not to do that and knowing after that,  I think it was the next day, I thought they kept telling me that you're going to you might have all this resistance to it, you know. And so I just want to encourage people that if you do have that resistance, that doesn't mean you're going backwards it might mean you're going forward, and you just got to get through it.

Yes, yes, yes. That so that's a very good point because this happens also with MAP sessions, right?Just like any other modality, any modality can, you know, engender a healing crisis. This kind of setback that you're describing I would call like an "extinction burst." You know so you've been working on breaking down a pattern mentally but at some point before your brain allows a pattern to break down for good, it says, Hey are you sure you don't want this anymore? You know and it can, and suddenly this thing you thought you had under control, can come back very strongly. It really challenges you. And you know you have to have that equanimity that you're describing, right?

Like you have to sort of be okay with the fact that it's here and it's feeling really strong to you and not let it kind of overwhelm you, and put you back to where you you know where you started from. And when you can do that, you know, when you can be with it with a feeling of acceptance, then often that pattern will break down all together.

In the Self Healing program when you talk about it a lot, that's really helped me. In the Self Healing program, because you talk about all that in that particular program. Yeah I just found that program to be extremely helpful.

It was the first one I had done without you, right. And every video just made sense to me. The whole thing where it's body mind and spirit-- I think I told you this. You know it's like I always knew it was body and mind. I never knew how much the body talks to the mind before, right? I learned that before, but when you said it's the spirit, it's the spirit within you. It's whatever spirit that you have...

That video to me just kind of changed my whole thinking of my process. I was like I have to bring that into my healing. My spirit. And I was already doing meditation at this time I've been doing meditation for a year, two years, since before since right around when I started the .... I've been doing that so it was like what am I what am I missing, you know, what what is missing from my and it was that spirit, just knowing that you need it.

You need that to also help you heal. You need to embrace that and and love that part of you, and give it what it's due. Honestly give that part of yourself what it's good. It's important to your mind and your body, you just don't think about it, you know.

Yes, I feel like a lot of what we are doing in sessions is that we are trying to unify mind, body, and spirit again. Or spirit, soul, whatever it is, you know, however you want to think about that part of yourself that is more than your body and your mind.

Because I want to feel right, that quantum field.

Yes, yes your connection to that quantum field.  Because I think that, you know, particularly for people who have a history of traumatic experiences but also for people who have a history of chronic health issues. Because those are traumatic experiences. You know, procedures, results from lab tests, conversations with practitioners, setbacks, you know, the people who believe you, don't believe you, you know. Whatever the situation is that you find yourself in at work, or you know what you are doing when you are at work, with friends, or family. I mean all of these things,  it's like a series of small, medium, and large traumas.

And so my my perception of the impact on mind, body, and spirit is that going through these painful emotional experiences causes a kind of rift, or a splitting of mind and body and spirit. And each of these experiences further divides mind from body to the point where you've been in this situation for many years, we frequently find people have like an internal very critical voice, or a fearful voice, that's directed against their body and what they are experiencing physically. And that's kind of what I mean. It's like there's a there's a conflict within you.

So it is not just that you are a person undergoing chronic health issues, but it has led to a kind of internal war between mind and body and spirit, right. So that sense of unity, of wholeness, right, has been lost in some way. And I feel like the process of recovery requires a reconnection. A bringing together of these parts of yourself: mind, body, spirit. In a way that feels whole and healthy and harmonious.

Yeah and even like you said just now and before when you said, you know, what have I done wrong? I think that's a common thing for me when I'm coming into my MAP sessions every time we talked about a trauma or something from my past, it's like: What did I do wrong? You know it's so self critical.

And as a type one Enneagram, you know, you're more critical of yourself than you are other people. You judge yourself constantly. I do believe that's part of what's kept me in this fight or flight as long as it did. You know just thinking those thoughts and again thinking you know I gotta do everything right. I gotta do everything now. I gotta you know make sure everything's perfect. You know that's there's a lot behind that.

Yeah I'm glad we're talking about this because I think often people wonder... I think most people wonder how is it possible that you could work with someone's mind. And the MAP Method is really focused on working with subconscious mind, but as a practitioner I work at both levels, you know, I work with the conscious mind and subconscious mind because I find that it's more effective. But how, you know, how is it possible you can work with someone's mind and have someone's physical symptoms start to resolve, right?

That for many people that is just something they, a concept that they cannot grasp. And I think that just comes out of our Western culture and our evidence-based medicine which though it is wonderful for many things, it is often not that effective for people with chronic health issues. But we are taught, right, we are trained to think, like, if there's a physical symptom we must address this in a physical way.

Yeah it is often hard for people to understand how the mind is involved but in my work I mean I feel the mind is very involved. It is the basis of our experience of life. The subconscious mind runs all the systems of the body and always has, so if we aren't looking at the subconscious mind we are missing, you know, a big opportunity to make some really impactful changes at a very foundational level.

Completely agree! I mean I had... I'll share this. I had an experience in therapy where she was asking me a bunch of questions and I had this memory. I'll just I call it a memory explosion. I had this memory explosion and I don't know if it was from what I had heard what happened to me as a child or if it was an actual memory that I remembered, but it it really scared me. Because then when I tried to EMDR with her I would get this other experience that I had never known about.

And when I came over to MAP, you and I worked on that memory and that memory doesn't tear for me, I don't even think about it anymore. It's like and I came to you pretty scared of that memory. I mean we didn't do it the first few times, because I was like, I know I got to do it, but we just waited a little while.

And I finally did it. And now you just talking at the first when it happened sure you know it was you know just thinking of the memory right. It's so strange how MAP works with your subconscious because you think you're in this memory, because you say: Think of the memory, the worst time of the memory that you can remember.

And then all of a sudden you're talking to my mind, and my visualizations, my everything is just getting better and better and better as you speak. It gets a different perspective on what's happening. It gets a different perspective on maybe what was happening to someone else at that time. It's not all about me, is the point.

And I think you know when you're chronically ill, it's all about you. You know, you're just trying to get well. It's never been all about me, so that's a that's a great thing about you talking to the subconscious. And I'm not even really listening to you right when you're doing this. I'm not listening to what you're telling the subconscious. I'm in my memory and the memory's changing as you're going.

Not that I don't remember what actually happened, because I do remember what actually the memory was I know that I had, but now I have a whole different spin and a whole different perspective on it. Whatever that is, you know, that happened at that time that this memory explosion came. It was just so simple to do. You're just sitting here just in the memory. it's just changing as you're sitting.  It's tremendous, because I can't I can't explain it. I mean it's just tremendous

And it happens in just a few minutes, right? We don't spend 90 minutes on one memory like that. No, we maybe spent I think we had to go into that memory twice, and by the second time I was like I'm done. I'm through it. I'm good you know. The memory changed for me, you know. Every time I think about it, sure I know what was but then, I'm like Nope this is the spin on putting on it. This is the spin I'm putting. Which I think is probably the key to a lot of stuff and I didn't know that before I started meditating, but your perspective on life can really change, and like you say I think that's what drives us to getting better.

Yeah definitely definitely. So you mentioned EMDR and how you use EMDR. Can you compare and contrast for us a little bit? I've never had an EMDR session but I know that that is a much much more popular modality than MAP. Like no one has heard of MAP but plenty of people have heard of EMDR. Can you kind of help us to understand you know how that's similar or different to what we do in MAP sessions?

So it's it's very similar. I would say you know they want you to meditate and you know go into a little meditative state but they also want you to tap or to use the lights with it and I could never do the lights with my equilibrium issues so I would tap. Like I would tap my arms while she did it I would tap on my arms while she would bring me through what I had told her that I remembered of the happening.

Now the difference is she would want the whole thing: Okay what exactly happened? You know, what do you remember about this memory? And she would say it to me the whole time I was in the memory. When I was tapping and kind of meditating and she would you know bring me through the memory.  With MAP you just say, you don't even, you're just like: Well what do you want to work on? And I'm like, Well this or that. And you're like, Okay well just think of the worst little spot in that.

You're not asking me everything that happened. You don't need to play out what is going on about it all. And that for me, and I think I tell you just about everything that happened, you know, I try to give you a good a good sense of it, but I don't feel like I have to go back there. For some reason with EMDR I've got to do it.

And I had a really good experience with the EMDR. I did one on one of my memories about an anaphylactic shock and I had a, you know, really good outcome through it. But when I tried it again and she brought me through the memory that I was doing, I had this other memory come out of the blue that I never even thought of before.

And that kind of terrified me again, right. It was different from the other memory. And I'm like Oh how many of these boxes do I have to open? It was like I'm okay with things that I know, but these thoughts that I'm having that I don't know if they happened to me or somebody else. If I saw if I just heard of them you know the mind the subconscious remembers everything so what is you know what was it trying to pull out of me?

MAP doesn't do that at all. All they do, all you do is address me while I'm thinking of little piece of what happened. And then I just keep going back to the very beginning of it whenever I like okay it's getting better and then I'll go back to the first of the memory again with you when you doing that.

Oh it always gets better the feelings that I have, the tightness in my chest, that happiness that I feel around that memory it just eases the whole time we're in that. It just eases it, and it's not like it's a gradual thing it's very gentle.

I found EMDR a bit more hard hitting, I would say. It wasn't as a gentle. MAP is just so gentle which I love about it.

Yeah so thank you for that. I do think, you know, well the MAP Method for people who don't know the MAP Method is a pretty new method and it is the next generation on those energy psychology methods like EMDR and tapping or EFT from the 1980s. So these are methods that have been around for 40 years but it took quite a while for them to become well accepted.

I think that's a good thing to say about EMDR and I wasn't trying to say anything bad about it for sure because I know it's helped a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot of people. I just found these random memories that come up kind of traumatized me a little bit because I didn't know where they were coming from or why.

So I think I had a you know just a different experience than than most people that have just had success success success with the EMDR. I didn't find that. I found myself dreading going to therapy, going to the EMDR and that's really another reason that I looked, that's one of the big reasons I looked for another method.

Now you also once told me that you had tried some other programs or techniques to address your chronic health issues and maybe like the limbic dysregulation. Can you talk a little bit about what you tried and how you see it fitting in with the MAP Method?

Sure sure for the pandemic I would say it was mostly just my neurosurgeon and anything he is tremendous he's he's always on the cutting edge of meds and supplements. He doesn't even like meds so much, it's supplements.

Then the  chelation for toxic metals before and that kind of made me sicker. I did the DNRS of course and had so much success with it, but just couldn't still couldn't add foods, except apples. That was the only food I could add. Any other ones that I tried out always had a reaction to.

The therapy and the EMDR. I'm really glad I went to therapy because I never realized I had trauma. If I hadn't have gone to therapy I would never would have known I had trauma at all. I never would have found you because I would never thought that trauma was involved.

I also was a patient of Dr. Neil Nathan, a mold specialist, which that led me on some other paths.

The only problem I had was all the supplements they want to me to take. My body wouldn't accept them and it sent me into more chronic problems.

I've also tried with them a bit of Safe and Sound protocol. It's just like listening to music and it's supposed to help but it caused this jiggling in my neck, which MAP has now gotten rid of. I did not experience that jiggle in the neck since we were done which is tremendous!

I also went to an osteopath on Dr. Neil Nathan's suggestion and the osteopath really you know I had a vagal nerve problem obviously and I've never felt that pain that I had before that again. So the osteopath I still see her maybe once every two three months right now.

So in the end I also tried Somatics and I'm going to give shout out to Sarah Jackson. She's great. I'm a lot of the... I did her program for a few months. I just I never found that ...some of the Somatics made my body hurt worse and found the same thing with Dr. Rosenberg, the one who wrote Assessing the Healing of the Power of the Vagal Nerve. He... vagus nerve he you know tried his modalities and it put my body into more crisis than I was before.

I tried meditation I tried the meditation with Dr. Dispensa. I've also tried the ones from doctor a man...he's got a podcast I have to hear Jim Sheddy talk about how he healed themselves from meditation from acne when he was a boy and it was just an incredible story. And so then I started sending to some of his others and Dispensa you know Dr. Amen you really got into that whole your brain is really important. We're really along with the analysis really starting meditate that I think that helps me.

So those yeah I can't really think.  I've also done a little bit of Miguel he does like I want to say Miguel is more for people with chronic fatigue syndrome and I don't really have chronic fatigue syndrome. But some of his like... breathing techniques and just let the pain come you know and then really you know so I did a few I did that as well.

 And of course I always go back to my prayer. I you know I always keep my prayer and I think that's a modality ...definitely a big part of my life. I've tried quite a bit besides all the meds I tried for all the different things that I have.

What about Primal Trust? You mentioned that program once.

I did I'm listening to the girl of primal trust and I did. I did a couple of her meditations and I found that some of the words you use she uses also during the meditation and I thought oh this is way connected right because hers is all brain retraining as well. But I didn't find them as helpful as I do MAP.

So, Tess, you mentioned that prayer is part of your practice. Have you... You know this is this is a thing that comes up sometimes when people are in 15 minute consult free consultation with me on the phone. They have a strong faith background they want to know if is going to interfere or be in conflict with that and can you have anything that you want to say about that?

Sure. For me it aligns with my faith. You don't say anything that is one way or another. Like you're not preaching at all. It's that's not it at all you. You're just opening the like you opened me to be able to invite that into my deal right? I think that's ... what I was telling you about before you know the host, the soul, the spirit, whatever.

I never invited that in but you say in that in that video it was like I can invite this part into my healing. And I mean you should do it with my visualizations with DNRS, don't get me wrong I did in my visualizations there as well. But now I can just I can feel it more. It's a beautiful, I mean yeah, you don't push either way. Because I know some people aren't going to want that as well right? Some people are not religious and that's fine.

That's great. This is your way, the MAP way and I don't know if your way is the MAP way because you have your own way. Just wonderful. But your way is is so open for that. It's like it just opens that world it's like it's not, there's nothing from the method that you use whatever modalities or whatever things that help you is what you have to pull into it. I may have learned that before I got to you because there's so much that I tried that you know because there is one thing on your thing if you think this isn't going to work you know.

Everybody's a little skeptical of everything. I think I know I I am. You know because you've tried so many things it's like, Is this going to work? This certainly has worked for me so far and I just can't wait to see how much more it does for me. You know I mean I've only been doing this a short while.

Thank you for that perspective because it is one of the things that's a big concern for people: Is this going to be something that is going to push up against my my belief system or my faith? And you know though we do talk about beliefs in the MAP method it's not those kinds of beliefs.

Yeah, you know beliefs about not feeling good enough, or beliefs like it has to be perfect, or you know it's those kinds of beliefs that we-- limiting beliefs-- that we that we work with in sessions. I do feel like it is pretty open and you bring whatever it is: your background, your your history, your experience, and yeah we work with each person where they are.  And if your faith is really important to you and you want to frame your intentions in some way or you know around God or Jesus or you know whatever you believe in is being the force that brings you healing that's perfectly fine.

The MAP method is very accepting of whatever you bring to the session as your background. You're not required to believe in anything.

Right. Yeah you don't have to believe in anything so the method is very open in that way also.

I guess my last question for you today, Tess, is you know would you recommend the MAP method to others and why? What do you think is good for?

Well, honestly saying everybody's got trauma. I mean my definition of trauma is just something that's happened where your brain can't process it properly.

No matter what it was right. Because it could be something you saw on TV. I'm certain one of my traumas is something I saw on TV. I'm in just certain of it, you know. But I was a little girl and I didn't know how to process it. You know and I know that's one of my traumas, you know. So, I do I believe we all have trauma whether we remember it or not. The MAP method, you don't have to remember it, because the ones that you do, once that you do work through, are going to clear the others. You don't have to go back and remember what all these terrible things are.

They might not have even been terrible things. Just things you couldn't process. I don't think there's a person on the earth that hasn't had that happen whether they know it or not. So I do believe that it is a process that everyone could benefit from especially people who tried like me, so many modalities, just tried so many ways to get well. So many you know wonderful ways.

I would have loved it if Safe and Sound would have worked for me. It just didn't work for me. i'm so glad it works for other people. That's a beautiful wonderful thing... You're you're hearing all these success stories and you're going again you've to go on with that question: What's wrong with me? Why isn't doing this for me? Have I not done it long enough?

With MAP it's like it cuts all that time down and it's like it cuts all of your, I want to say resources. That's the wrong word but it does. I mean you're spending money, you're spending time, those are your resources. I mean your energy, right, your energy, as well. So where if you can put that into something that is going to help you.

I mean I just I think everyone can benefit from it even just from the smallest phobia. Just you know having a phobia of birds or something I think one of the videos that has is a woman who's afraid of flying right that's the big video. Right yeah so they ask her, What you know where is your rating of anxiety? You know at the very beginning where she's like, "I'm at a hundred!" It's awful you know it's a hundred and she says about ten it's at the end of the first... and you know all of us are going we go from one to 10. But from one hundred and down to ten, you know you got to say she's doing great! So I do believe that everybody can benefit and I don't have to experience it like she did to know that. I can experience it in my own way.

Man it's those critical thoughts right? It's those critical.. Why is this happening? What have I done for this to happen? And I realize and it's one of my little things that you gave me one of my intentions. I didn't do anything to to get this. It's not my fault. So many people want to make it their fault. What do I need to do differently? I'm doing something wrong?  If I could just do something different, I would be better.

It's not how it is not how it is.

So I think what you're saying is that you do recommend it for others, and that it's very helpful for healing trauma experiences, and you know of course by healing certain trauma experiences it can engender other kinds of healing at the emotional, mental, and physical level. Which is really the reason that we do MAP sessions-- those are the wonderful side benefits, I guess.

You could say that working through a set of sessions... each time I do a session for someone and you know we watch those numbers come down usually from a seven eight nine 10, to a two three maybe even you know one or zero. I mean every time I see that I wonder what else they will observe as a result of the session? I never know.

But that is what you are telling me at the beginning of your next session. When I ask: What shifts have you noticed as a result of our last session? And some people say, Well I noticed this or that but I only noticed it for a few hours or a few days. Well that's still that's still evidence that we're getting somewhere. It may mean that there's still more roots to this pattern. That's okay. That's why we need to do more than one session on a given topic or issue. It is you know it's evidence of something changing.

 for sure for sure I will say that the sessions with you are a little more impactful, but the other ones on the on the recorded are no less. How would I put that? They're very impactful as well. Like Icame to a lot of decisions through those.

And that came to me while I was doing the Self Healing, and while I was doing the Sensitivities programs. Especially the Sensitivities right. Every time I would smell something I just want to escape --got to get out of here, got to get out of here. And so just being able to go: I don't really have to get out of here. To just realize it's your thoughts. Your whole thought process just starts to change and get less reactive, less like you say catastrophe. Everything's just so much more calm.

Well thank you so much Tess for taking the time to talk with me today.

I loved it. I love to just shout it from the rooftops! So we can do another one after I've tried the foods, girl. Hoping that it will bring me all the way.

Yeah yes definitely. So we'll have a follow up with Tess and so in a few months when you've had a chance to to do more with the programs. And I appreciate what you had to say about the programs. I do think you know I've designed those to be impactful of course, but they can never be as impactful as a live one on one session, right. Because we are all very individual and what comes up for us, our individual feedback and having the opportunity to have a session customized for you of course-- it's the gold standard.

But to make things more efficient and more affordable it is also beneficial to work with programs when they exist around the specific topic that you want to work on, because you can be doing a lot of the ground work on your own.

And another great thing with that I didn't even mention this to you but I haven't worn a necklace in 20 years. Probably from my first anaphylactic shock, and I can wear a necklace now. And that's after doing the Self Healing and working with you of course. And I did that one during the Self Healing. I was because you know symptoms right well I'm telling my throat my throat is fine. So let me try the necklace and I did it or it I just couldn't believe it. So little things also you know tell you about the big things but there's little things in there as well. I'm just tickled.

Thank you Tess and again I appreciate everything you shared with us today and spending the time.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for joining us for the Flourish with Neural Retraining podcast. Please listen again and remember to follow us and leave a review on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music or Pandora.

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Content of this podcast copyright 2024 by Twin Cities Neural Retraining music by Barbara Benn.

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