Emotional Detoxification for the Reversal of Autoimmune Disease

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Welcome back to the reverse autoimmune disease summit series everybody. Of course you’re joining us for the fourth iteration of the summit series, it’s the auto-immune detox. And today we’re gonna talk a little bit about emotional detoxification for the reversal of autoimmune disease and my guest is Dr. Eva Detko, who is a natural healthcare practitioner, author and speaker. She studied natural medicine and the human mind for 23 years. She’s successfully recovered from chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and reversed Hashimoto’s thyroiditis for herself. She now helps others recover their health in the same way. So, I am really excited to have you Dr. Eva to the summit series and to talk about this subject, this is something that a lot of people don’t really. They hear me talk a lot about it but they don’t hear others talk a great deal about it. So let’s set the groundwork as to how autoimmune disease is even affected by your emotions.

Dr. Eva Detko

Yes, it’s a really big topic, it’s still very much sort of unappreciated I would say and definitely in this community, we need to be speaking about the small, because emotions, our emotional health is absolutely critical, critical, this critical element to anything, any health issue that we’re talking about, we obviously talking about auto immunity here, but let’s be clear on this, our emotions connect to everything and therefore affect our health at every level and therefore, whatever manifestation we’re gonna get, whether it’s autoimmunity, cancer or whatever else, essentially, it’s still all the same thing, we still need to be addressing our health at the neurological level and emotional level and energetic level and emotions really feed into all of this because in my sort of model of healing that I talk a lot about, this triangle of healing. 

I just sort of break it down into obviously biochemical-physical and then I’m talking about the mind factors and then I’m talking about the psycho energetic factors. And really within that model, everything affects everything else, it’s not that we can just remove something and look at it separately. Conventional medicine’s still very much does that, just this kind of separatist, crazy approach of looking at different parts of the body in isolation, which is just. To me is complete madness really. And so and within the mind and within the, we’ve got the energy field as well to consider. All of those things, all of those factors affect each other, so and emotions are such a big part of that. But when people talk about chronic stress for example, they really just tend to focus, this is why I’m talking. 

Listen to people on summits and doing webinars and things like that and a lot of people do admit and do acknowledge that chronic stress affects our health, but when they talk about that, they talk about it from the point of view of the day-to-day type stress, financial stress, whatever pressures they may have, people may have on the kind of running around, attending to their kids or whatever. That obviously is part of this and it’s important to be able to manage those day-to-day pressures so that they don’t overload our nervous system and cause a lot of issues, I do want to mention why I’m talking about nervous system and the neurological aspect is because, we’re talking about the fight or flight versus the parasympathetic response, the rest digest detoxify response is primarily we’re talking about the ventral vagus nerve here and that links to inflammation via the cholinergic inflammatory pathway. 

So, really that’s the link direct link to autoimmunity right here and so this is why we cannot overlook that. And obviously a lot of things can affect whether the body is stressed or not stressed, chemicals can affect it, all sorts of other things, mechanical stress, you know when our spine is misaligned, that can put a pressure on the nervous system, but really let’s face it, the biggest aspect of this pressure that we put on our nervous system and therefore potentially we contribute to this chronic inflammation and flares that people have going on with autoimmunity, is through what goes on in our heads and a lot of it obviously is to do with how we process emotions and how we digest emotions. 

So, there are many, many of those connections, it can appear complicated, but the point is that emotions definitely do connect, whether it’s neurologically or even on the energy field level as well, we’ve got the connection there, so, all of that will affect whether we are able to heal quickly and whether we’re able to heal at all, because if somebody is in this either fight or flight or even freeze response all the time, which a lot of people with chronic illness are that’s unfortunately what happens, that people are chronically activated and they’re in fight or flight or a lot of people in fact, when they’re really, really sick, a lot of people with chronic fatigue, chronic Lyme, those sorts of things tend to actually put people in freeze response and they could spend a lot of time and many, many years in freeze response and nobody can heal in that state, we cannot heal in that state, in order to heal anything at any level, rest, digest, detoxify and heal response needs to be activated. 

And emotions and how we process them and what goes on in our heads, it’s obviously a massive contributing factor to that and this is why we cannot be just talking about,* obviously the day to day stresses that’s important to to resolve, but really we need to be talking about all the all the background stuff, all the emotional stuff that goes on for people in the back of their minds, where they’ve desensitized to it. They may have chronic anxieties, chronic fears, they may have chronic guilt, chronic shame, all sorts of things like that, poor self-worth and essentially a lot of emotional conflict inside, there is no peace inside the heads and what that means is that is a form of stress and again, we back to this fight or flight or freeze response because of that. 

So, I hope that I’m making sense of how this all connects together. And really, like I said, it’s really critical not to look at this superficially, but really look more about, what’s going on in the background, because if somebody’s got money issues, they know they have money issues, but it could be something like, they have have avoided the attachment style or anxious attachment style, well there is obviously early trauma will be involved in that, developmental trauma is connected to that and because they’ve been like that for most of their lives, they’re not necessarily identifying that as an issue, but we know it’s an issue from the point of view of the nervous system and therefore inflammation and therefore how the gut functions because the vagus nerve, the nervous system, sort of imbalance that I’m talking about here, will obviously affect the gut because of the brain-gut connection. So, that’s why we need to backtrack and we need to be looking like, right okay, well what’s the bigger picture here? What are the root causes of some of this emotional stuff that people are experiencing and may not necessarily identify as problematic, but from the point of view of healing, it’s problematic. Am I making sense?

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Oh yes, so, this is of course the. When I talk about the punch at koshas and solving the autoimmune puzzle, You know I’m talking about the physical, the emotional or the energetic body, the emotional body, the mental body and the spiritual body and that energetic body, the chakra system that has all of the 72,000 chakras and nerves, that actually connect this physical self to the emotional layer. So whatever your story is it’s activating those 72,000 channels through your nervous system which then are innervating every aspect of your physical life. And so these channels and stroked as they’re called in Ayurvedic medicine, you know, are are so important to understand what’s going on there because that’s affecting directly your hormonal balance. 

It’s affecting directly what your immune system’s doing what your cellular metabolism is doing and your ability to detox. All of it is right there and that emotional mental layer that’s connected through the energy body. So it’s important. We have to be able to detox that emotional and mental system if the physical plane is going to work well. And if you want access to that spiritual plane where there’s just complete joy and bliss, we don’t get access to that all the time. If we’re toxic in this other layer that comes between. So it’s, it’s important to make sure that we understand it goes beyond vagal nerve. It goes beyond, you know, 72,000 nerves, so important. So, yeah.

Dr. Eva Detko

Yes. And what’s interesting is that most people think that when they get a physical symptom that that’s the beginning of the health issue, but of course it’s not, it doesn’t start at the physical level. That’s that’s the end game is when the physical body breaks down is because it’s, you know, things happen in our energetic field and it’s, it’s sort of anchored itself in the emotional and mental, emotional body. And then it makes its way to the physical body. And then we’ve got the breakdown of the physical body. But it’s interesting that that’s not how people perceive it because they think, okay, well, I’ve got this physical symptom now, so I need to start paying attention now. And let’s, let’s treat the physical however, the root cause often isn’t physical

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Well, and again, 10,000 years ago in Ayurvedic medicine. They said there are these six layers to disease development. And we only find out about a disease in our culture the industrialized cultures at about level four but at levels one, two, three, you know before that everything’s very subtle. And so there are tiny little subtle imbalances that are occurring over here. That if you know the language you can pick it up like these very subtle pieces. Right, of, of like ping, ping. We’re telling you something’s going on here. And then at four or five and six, you now have an ICD 10 diagnostic code category, physical problem. You know, so it’s absolutely very interesting to think in terms of disease versus imbalance in any of our layers, right?

Dr. Eva Detko

Yeah, indeed. And you know, and that’s the issue with somewhat toxic Western culture is that there is really no emphasis on tuning in to what your body needs or what you need at the emotional level spiritual level. That just, we, not really the way we are kind of socially engineered and what goes on and what children are taught them. Listen, none of that is discussed or thought. So it’s not one wonder that people don’t really process things in this way because they’ve all language that when the body starts to break down, go to the doctor. So it’s not necessarily about, you know blaming or shaming or anything like that. It is a feature of the Western culture but we do need to appreciate that. That’s not really how the body works. That’s not right.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Right, and that, that piece about blaming and shaming is very important component to bring up because sometimes people will say, well, you’re telling me this is all my fault then, you know, and it’s like, well we’re moving outside of a fault paradigm, right? This isn’t, this isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s just consequences to actions. And so whatever those actions are, right? And, and, and with the undeveloped child brain you don’t even have a prefrontal cortex fully online until you’re 26, right? So all of the events you go through when you’re a child, you’re making up meanings and beliefs that go with that child brain, which is very much dominated by the primal system, right? The amygdala, am I safe? Am I doing okay? Am I good? And my bad? You know, and all that hypervigilant searching am I, am I turning out to be a good human? Are the adults in my life, keeping me safe? You know, are they telling me I’m a good human? All of that is programmed inside of us. So we take that into adulthood like, oh, I’m good on my diet or I’m bad, or right. Or my body is behaving in a good way versus a bad way.

Dr. Eva Detko

Yeah, right it’s actuality.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Information is all this duality. Right, exactly. Instead of just taking all of it as data and information that the body is trying to provide, you know and it doesn’t give you an emotional kick when it’s doing it. We do that for ourselves mentally, you know? So like, if you stand on the scale and you’ve gained 10 pounds, the scale’s not shaming you. It’s just giving you data. Right, so it’s the same blood pressure

Dr. Eva Detko

An interesting component of it all. And you mentioned the safety aspect. And I think that’s so critical to understand because some people are talking about trauma, we have to talk about trauma and people still have this understanding that trauma needs to be this big boom, big bang, you know this big T trauma happening for me to even take notice that maybe I did have some childhood trauma but essentially it’s all about the safety aspect. It’s all about how safe the child is feeling in their environment. And really it’s from the child’s perspective it’s not from any objective perspective of anybody else. Quite honestly, you looking at it as an adult thinking, ah I don’t think that was too big a deal. It does not matter because if your child self felt that it did matter, and it was a big deal, then really if you didn’t feel safe for whatever reason that that doesn’t mean parents were narcissistic or psychopaths. No, no, no, no, no. We really need to appreciate that a child can absolutely be traumatized just because their needs are not being consistently met for instance, by a loving parent, right.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Watching a Disney movie with Ursula the sea witch or something. You know was like trauma, having a nightmare overnight if a child is sensitive, right. Taking in information and synthesizing it then what does that become, right? And so that, it’s interesting because we as parents can’t control that for our child. This isn’t a matter of control. It’s a matter of giving your child tools to be able to unpack all of this right. To reorganize, to be able to then come into a 26 year old and beyond adulthood and say, oh, I need to reinvestigate that belief that I created when I was 10. Is it serving me right now? Am I really not safe right now? Right?

Dr. Eva Detko

Yes, absolutely. And absolutely a parent, let’s just face it. All parents will mess up their kids, you know no matter how hard you try to be the best parent that you can be, that’s all you can ever do. You just be your best, be your best. Being informed, being informed and be receptive to the child’s needs beyond that. You can’t really do much else. So just like you’re saying, it’s not about controlling ever, because if you do that you’ve got to create more problems. That’s for sure. And I introduce that environment of control. Then you’re going to have a lot of either the child is most likely going to end up with some form of control issues, which obviously is also not, you know it’s problematic and needs to be healed

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Another trauma.

Dr. Eva Detko

Further down the line. Right, so it’s about doing the best you can with the tools you have, but really staying informed. And particularly if you have a a child that is more sensitive, because that is, you know I’m sure you’re seeing that I’m seeing that. Most people who will come with chronic health issues that then we’ll when looking at those psycho-energetic genetic factors and what do we find? We find that most of the time

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

They’re very empathic.

Dr. Eva Detko

There’s a more sensitive individual someday.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Yep, they’re very empathic and they take on a lot of stuff here. And so yeah, a lot of the work that I do is people’s learning how to, you know, set good boundaries for yourself not about the outside world but the inside like setting good boundaries with you. Oh, I don’t have to take that on. Right, this has nothing to do with another person. This is actually me and my perception about where I get my worth. I don’t need to take that on. So that boundary is not what the other person it’s with me, you know and making sure that I’m still engaging in self care in that way. Cause leaky boundaries leads to leaky immune system, leaky gut.

Dr. Eva Detko

Yes, yes exactly. And the more we build awareness around perhaps what we need to focus on in terms of ourselves and where, you know, where we need to draw those lines. And there are so many different, fantastic tools. I know you’re a fan of the Enneagram. I’m a fan of the Enneagram. Then obviously I do recommend that people look at the attachment adaptations because that’s very revealing. That’s really important to do. And there’s obviously all sorts of other tools. I like transaction analysis a lot because that that can really give you a lot of information on what goes on inside your psyche. When you have those different parts of your psyche kind of like err, fighting together. And that feeds emotional conflict. And that obviously is toxic to the system. Whenever you have that emotional conflict inside your head and a lot of people let’s face it. They feel like this constant push and pull inside their heads. And they don’t have many moments where they can say they’re truly peaceful. That’s why we are going to have a problem because that’s going to be toxic to the body. Let’s talk, you know, if you had a toxic mind in that way it’s going to be toxic to the body, right?

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Let’s give people an example of that because I do this in my work with my patients too, as you know everyone has a judge and has a protector and a manager and several different parts of that go make up your ego. Your ego is not just this one, one aspect of protection of the psyche, right? And then you have all these parts inside that those parts are actually protecting the ones that you don’t want to even look at the weak, vulnerable, not very smart not very pretty ones that are in behind the heart cavern. Right, and so when we, when we’re like one day I’m good on my diet and one day I’m bad. It’s because two parts of that ego have come out and they’re at war with each other. 

And people don’t realize like how come one day I have really good coping skills for a certain aspect of life. And then the next day I don’t because a different part of your ego has just shown up, right? And it may have a different motivation than the other one did. And that conflict is exactly what autoimmune disease is. You’re at war with yourself. So I love that you brought that out because this is a really important aspect of healing those emotional styles. You have these different character styles.

Dr. Eva Detko

Yes, because ultimately as we, we didn’t say it in those exact words, but it’s basically what we were saying at the beginning. That if you, if you have that battle going on all the time and you, you can’t feel peaceful because it’s essentially what you need to feel peaceful. You need to feel calm in order to heal. And if you have all of that going on, then no you’re going to have this, you know, this background chatter all the time and that’s, that’s not not going to be conducive to healing. It’s just not conducive to healing

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

And that’s why an antidepressant or an anti-anxiety medication doesn’t work at that level because you’re not actually dealing with the parts that are in conflict with each other when you’re taking a pill.

Dr. Eva Detko

Yeah, well, it’s just it’s just covering things up and hoping for the best. That’s what it is.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Exactly. Which doesn’t work very well. You know, you eventually get bitten in the butt again as it comes out in a different way sideways, right?

Dr. Eva Detko

And then what’s interesting about obviously antidepressants too. You remember, I’m sure you remember the work of Dr. Kish who did a meta analysis on antidepressants and decided that, you know, whatever it was 70-80% of that is no more than a placebo.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Placebo, I know. Which is one part of you feeling like it’s getting cared for. Right, it’s one aspect of your ego inside of there. That’s like, oh, someone’s listening to me. Someone’s giving me something was caring for me. You know? And so it’s like this form of self-care that’s coming from outside of you. And it’s like, oh, it’s kind of like Dumbo and the flying elephant with the feather. Right, he can fly if he has the feather in his trunk. I don’t know if you know that story.

Dr. Eva Detko

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it’s really important to encourage people to be their own advocates in that respect. And I know that when you have a lot of chronic fears, chronic anxieties, current guilt chronic shame, poor self worth, blah, blah, blah. All of those things, I know that it may not feel to you like you ever could be sovereign in that respect. And you could be like, am I best, you know my best sort of advocate? And I’m the best judge of what I need? But we need to be going in that direction. I’d really, that’s what I want for humanity is for everybody to just be standing in their own sovereign field and saying I’m the expert on what I need. Hello? I’m the expert here. Right.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Right. Beautifully said, all right. Is there anything that we haven’t talked about as we’re signing off here that you would like to talk about when it comes to emotional detoxification, Dr. Eva?

Dr. Eva Detko

I would like to say that look beyond the symptoms of emotional toxicity. So if you suffer from chronic anxiety that’s not a thing in itself, it’s a symptom. Okay, and there will be a root cause. There’s always a root cause of what you’re feeling. You are not crazy. You are not weird. You are not any of those things. If you experiencing something, just know that there is a very good, valid reason whether it’s going to go back to childhood trauma or whether it’s going to go back to social engineering or whatever other thing that obviously usually it’s childhood related, there will be a good reason why you having a behavioral pattern or an emotional response that you may be experiencing at the moment. 

So just bear in mind that when you strip those things off and you really get to the bottom of it, you go like, oh yeah, okay. That’s what it is. And then there are perfectly good tools that can bring you out of it and kind of can help you heal. And the, you know, neurological energetic level, emotional level. And then that’s it. You don’t have to be stuck in it. You don’t have to be experiencing it, but do know that no matter what you are going to do at the physical biochemical level for healing of your auto immune situation you may find that you will get to a certain point and you get stuck because obviously yes normally people just had towards nutrition, gut, all of that. Great, you still need to do that. 

That’s fine. But if you ignore those factors that we are talking about here, you will not really reach your full potential in terms of healing. This, this just cannot be ignored and it cannot be biohacked. I, I can’t stand it when people say you can biohack. No you can’t biohack this. You know, you need to do this work properly. Right, you do need to consider this. You need to build self-awareness. You need to heal your traumas. You need to do with your limiting beliefs. Like you said, you need to say, well, okay is this still serving me? You know, this is a belief I inherited from my mom or dad when I was three years old, is this serving me? It’s not serving you. You change it. You replace it with something that is serving you. Those things can be done. We can heal at this level. It’s absolutely possible. And so we don’t have to be stuck in it. 

You don’t feel, you don’t have to be imprisoned by it. And you definitely don’t have it holding your health hostage because that’s, what’s going to happen if you completely ignore it and just try and chase around after the gut symptoms and whatever, you know people just go around and round in circles the CBO and this and that and the other. A lot of the time it’s because those really important root causes and those fundamental or critical elements that we’re talking about here they haven’t been addressed. So then unless you address them, you find that suddenly wow you can tolerate more foods. Suddenly, you’re not that sensitive to things. Suddenly, your supplements that you’ve been taking and spending a lot of money on. Suddenly, they’re working so much better for you.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

So coping strategy, right? The coping strategy and the resilience of your emotional and energetic being as it grows. So does your physical, they go together. Yeah.

Dr. Eva Detko

Yes. Yeah, as we look at that, that’s beautifully kind of like circle back to the beginning when we said you cannot separate those things. You just can’t. Right.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Right. Thank you so much for spending this time sharing even a fraction of your wisdom with us. And I know we have a vagus 101 guide that is your free gift for our viewers that we’ll have attached to this talk. Yes

Dr. Eva Detko

Yes, yeah. I’m happy to share that. Like I said, there’s a lot more to it, but I find that this just kind of focuses people’s attention and at least they can feel like they’ve got some tools and they can start somewhere. And so it’s a good starting point. It’s obviously not the ultimate, you know, plan of sale or anything like that, but it’s a good, really really good starting point. And if you make yourself a little bit more neurologically resilient for doing vagus nerve work, then that really builds a good platform for maybe doing an expanding for more trauma healing, more emotional work of whatever else you may decide to do. So I do recommend trying some of those strategies that I’m sharing in there and yeah, it’s been a pleasure to share.

Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP-FNP-C, AAP, IFM-C

Thank you. Beautiful. All right, everybody until next time, be well.