Ep 160: Neuroplasticity: The Brain’s Power to Break Negative Patterns w/ Meaghan & Michael Longyear

Introduction and neuroplasticity overview 0:00

Hi, everybody. It's Dr. Laura with Connect My Brain. Thanks so much for tuning in. I have such a special time for you today. And their approach is incredible. I send patients to them because their work is really second to none. And I think you're really going to enjoy the information that they're going share with you today because, you know, there's there is a lot of new talk out there of I, I. Think a. Lot of people almost coming on board, realizing the importance of knowing how the body works.

how the brain works, how emotions work, and how it all plays together like an orchestra. And I just want to continue saying chiropractors have known this for a really long time. I've been practicing for 30 years and I'll let Dr. Mike and Meg tell you about their journey. But thank you so much for joining me today. And let me just say, take it from here and tell us about you and share with us some incredible insights about neuroplasticity. Yeah. Thank you for having us. It's always fun to hang out.

even virtually hanging out, right? Yeah. Neuroplasticity is one of my favorite terms. I think it was, in my opinion, maybe one the most groundbreaking discoveries about how the brain and nervous system works. And you know this better than anybody working in the pediatric space. For a long time, they just thought we had neuroplaticity or the ability to rewire and change the for like the first few years of life, right? They always said like, if you don't change it by age seven, your kid will never change.

And all of that stuff that we can kind of throw out with the bathwater now, but they actually realized that, we have this neuroplasticity or this ability to change the brain from cradle to brain. I always say the oldest patient I ever worked with in the office was 92 and she had really severe dementia. And when she came to us, her kids brought her in. and came with grandkids and they brought her in because her memory that she didn't remember them, all of that kind of stuff. She didn' remember who her kids were, she remembered them as her grand kids.

And she even know she had grand kid. So by the time she left she was telling us about the birth of her kid, the berth of grandkid, how she used to take everybody fishing and all sorts of fun stuff, so even at 92 you still have this incredible capacity for neuroplastic change or creating new pathways in the brain. So I've always thought, you know, I love the statement from cradle to grave, as opposed to the old thinking of, yeah, if your kid doesn't have it fixed by age seven, your kind of fried or you're not.

That never made sense to me with everything that I went through in my life and what I know Dr. Meg here did in her life as well. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what did happen to you? Yeah, so I think we both have two separate stories here, but so my intro into healthcare and I thank you, you get this too. I thinking healthcare, especially in what's traditionally called alternative healthcare which I should be primary healthcare but the weird stuff. in another profession, right? You might want to be a CPA to make money or be an author to do this.

I think in healthcare, you usually have a story, whether it was yourself or a family member that went through it. And for me, it when I was 15 years old, I'll give you the really quick version.I was paralyzed when i was from a football injury in my sophomore season. So playing JV football, i got hit really weird and taken down kind of oddly. And, um, I finished the football game. Actually I had some pain and I woke up, the game was on Thursday night, actually wokeup Saturday morning and couldn't feel or move anything from about the chest down.

Okay. And I screamed so loud. I will got my neighbor from two houses down who was going fishing at about five in the morning. was standing next to me in about 30 minutes because I screamed so loud. He thought somebody was dying in our house and came over, knocked on the door and was able to check me out. In addition to my mom and my stepdad standing there next me too. But originally when I got to the hospital, the doctors diagnosed me with a spinal stroke and the differential was MS and they told me I'd never walk again.

So Thankfully, the doctors didn't know that much and I walked out of the hospital about a month later, but obviously a lot more into that journey and things

Dr. Mike's injury and recovery story 4:54

like that. And the cool part about it, what changed my life was about year later. I had gone through all the neuro rehab and was walking again and doing that kind of stuff. About a year late, so this is my junior year in high school, I went to the chiropractor that all my friends were going to. that were football players and stuff, and then we'd go to him and get adjusted. And so I went in there and, you know, even though I was walking, I had a few deficits. I couldn't feel temperature, like hot and cold, below that line.

Uh, couldn t feel pain. It was actually, this is really interesting. When I would stub my toe, if I stepped on my leg, it would collapse under me. because I didn't have a pain sensation but my brain was still getting a signal that something wasn't right. So it didn t feel the pain per se but it wouldn't allow me to use that limb until what I would have assumed was the throbbing or the painful away and then I could get up and kind of walk it off. But when I went to this chiropractor, I got adjusted and He was an old school guy.

So he literally like, you know, those guys that pick you up. They rattle just about every bone in your body. If it has a connection, they adjust it. Right. He's adjusting my ear lobes and all of that other stuff and making everything pop and crack. And I thought it was cool. I felt better leaving. Like, wow, I can move like better than I ever have. But I got home that night and I was making making up a shower before going to bed. crap, that's too hot. And then I was like, wait a minute. Oh, crap.

That's to hot, like I would dip in my toe in and out like oh my god, I could feel this again. So you know, even you know, a year afterwards, he did some things and adjusted and all of that. And I now I have no idea at 16 years old what had happened, but, you now, I know exactly what happened. He created neuroplastic change by removing the interferences that were blocking the signals from my brain to my body. Very quickly created that neuro plastic change and opened up some new pathways. So, um, that's what led me down the rabbit hole of of functional neurology and now working with patients that have gone through things similar to mine.

That's just incredible. Wow. And I love, we're gonna talk about the book in a little while, but I loved the picture. It really like, it captivated me. So this is you as a football player. and then this one here, It's like the breaking free. I just, great. We'll talk, about his book, in little bit. Okay, Dr. Meg, what's your story? So my story a little different. I didn't have any big, huge, and that's why writing a book was like, why would I write a blog for, you know, what I went through? You know?

Like he had this big huge thing where he was paralyzed and now he's walking again, like wow. And he kept encouraging me to kind of talk about my stories at different events and, about what i've been through with depression and anxiety. and I thought, well, let's just stuff people go through and you just got to find your way. The more that I kind of started working, you know, getting worked on over the years and realizing that, I had this neuroplastic loop that i thought something was wrong with me.

I have low self-esteem, i felt worthless, like a failure. All these little stories that you have been telling myself in my mind. For my entire life and you know realizing that a lot of other people out there, you feel these kinds of things as well I had a great life growing up. I have two amazing parents and an awesome little brother come from a pretty big Irish family and every family's got their stuff. But from looking back at my life and working with the patients I've worked with and seeing, some people have been through some really hard stuff, but it's all relative when it is you going through what you're going though and what your experience is and emotional reality you are creating.

And so looking back at a lot of the stuff that I was going through, just the stories that i kind of had in my mind, not like anything really bad happened to me, but I just always felt this heaviness and the sadness inside. I always wished that, I hadn't been born. to be blunt that I could just die. That I didn't have to here. God made a mistake and I shouldn't be here." And I don't know as a young child that that's not something normal for somebody to, you know, like, I mean, it wasn't normal because nobody around me was talking about it.

But like I did realize that this was like such a neuroplastic thing. I understand any any of the stuff I know now, knowing about the brain. So I kept driving these patterns and every time I would do bad at something like not get good grades in school and I'd see my brother get great grades and i struggled and he just was just naturally bright. He just breezed through school. I just kept building this story up inside of how worthless I was. how much of a failure it was, not able to see the things that I was good at.

And then over time, you know, it just chips away at your self-esteem that you start getting into destructive patterns and, finding ways to kind of make those voices and those feelings just stop. and I found my way into drinking and now I'm a recovering alcoholic of 17 and a half years and thrilled. But a lot of these things that a a of people find their way to these coping mechanisms because they don't know what else to do. And I did therapy for decades after a lots of destructive patterns that I've found in high school and really losing myself in getting in with bad crowds and stuff like that.

I had gotten some trouble and it's all put in my book of what I went through and the thoughts that I have. And I realized that wasn't my true self. That was me calling out for help, but I didn't want to ask for health. But I did feel comfortable and I've talked to my parents since I wrote this book because a lot of stuff came out that they didn t even know that was going through. And of course, you know, I see this with the parents that I work with, and their kids, when they're trying to figure out, why is this behavior?

Why are they acting this way? And it's, a lot of times it is things they are picking up in their environment that they re creating these stories and it s not the parent's fault. It s the grandparents' fault, it' s their interpretation of what's going on in them. And they go so much deeper that with genetics and we could get into the studies about the mice and you know, generations of stress that we carry from other generations.

Dr. Meg's emotional health journey 11:39

So it's bigger than just your parents failed you. There's a lot more to it. And that's what I've been able to realize through going through the journey that I have gone through and doing chiropractic was what brought me to neuroemotional technique, which I claim to be the saving thing of my emotional world. I'm not the same person that I was when I started chiropractic school and then started working on neuro emotional technique and getting that done as well as working others and realizing just how many of these little stories I had in my deep subconscious mind or our limbic brain that were controlling how I was seeing my world and keeping me from doing things that I wanted to do.

I want to be able to these things, I felt this fire inside but then that voice would come in of you're a failure and you are going to screw up and so just don't even try. And I knew at the core of me that there was something else there but I couldn't get beyond those paralyzing feelings that are attached to those old memories that i had created to protect myself and my Yeah. So through doing, you know, chiropractic, I'm, especially with all the research my husband does and the awesome people at Life University and Dr.

Heidi Havik, knowing how much the adjustment empowers our brain and changes our brains, and then doing techniques like neuroemotional techniques just helped break me from those limbic loops that kept me paralyzed as that person that I didn't want to be. And now, you know, looking at my life in a whole different perspective that, yeah, I have fears and things I still need to work on, but it's not as debilitating and crippling as it was growing up where I just I found coping mechanisms to survive my like.

Now I feel like I can actually live and thrive in my because I don't have these things holding me back. So wow, that is just incredible. Would you guys touch a little bit for the audience on what is a limbic loop? I think that's a very powerful word. And I mean, even in my practice, I'm amazed at how many little people are already starting the stories. So can you touch on that a bit? Yeah, so the limbic brain for everybody out there that you've got kind of some hierarchies that are in your brain, right?

The prefrontal cortex is the part that makes us human. It's also the last part to develop. Your pre frontal cortex in males were a little slower than females. The male brain doesn't fully develop the pre-front cortex till about 25. Females usually right around 23. And that's the part that sees the big picture, realizes everything's going to be okay, connects us to others, all of that kind of stuff. Then you've got the cerebellum, which is the part that balances and coordinates everything out. And in between, you got this survival brain.

We typically refer to it as the limbic brain, and there's other parts. I'm simplifying this for this part, but you have got limbics brain and it's really responsible for survival. It's where you hear a lot about dopamine in the media and things like that. Dopamine really affects that limbict brain or the basal ganglia, it is responsible of your survival stuff. It doesn't worry about connecting you to something bigger than yourself or to others or seeing the big picture. It's only real concern is about making it to tomorrow.

So what it'll do is it if you have something happen and you do whatever your reaction is and it keeps you safe. It's going to make a little note of that and be like, OK, that kept me safe. It doesn't worry about the big picture, but it keeps you kind of almost withdrawn. So it's a lot safer to not be vulnerable. If you look at like Brene Brown stuff, I know she loves Brenee Brown. She talks a bit about vulnerability. Vulnerability or the ability to be a vulnerable comes from having a strong preterm cortex.

But if you looked at what the media is doing to us now or a It's a lot of fear driving, right? They want to keep you in fear mode because that's what clicks, you know, it's clickbait. You hear that term a lock, click bait, but that what it is activating is the limbic brain. So the Limbic Brain responsible for survival, a very specific part of it called the amygdala is what actually deals with your fear responses. When you have something that causes fear, and you react, keeps you alive, your going to be keep reacting in that way.

And when you look at it in the research or in literature, they actually call it amygdala hijacking because the amyglot will hijack blood and nutrition and resources from the front part of the brain that makes us human and connects us to others and from back part the burning that does balance and coordination and makes everything pretty. and it will drive into that limbic state or that survival mode, which keeps you more withdrawn and keeps in yourself. And that's what we refer to as the limbics loop.

So you start to create these movies, right? If you see somebody off talking in the corner, you automatically go, oh, they must be talking about me. And then you retreat within yourself. You don't become vulnerable and reach out to them because it keeps you safe and it made you get to tomorrow. But it doesn't necessarily make you a good human being or a neighbor or any of those things. And so that's what we refer to as the limbic loop because It will literally drive and repeat unless you actively do something to break that loop.

So you have to actively engage the prefrontal cortex, actively engaged in cerebellum to break that limbic loop and stop the, she always refers to it and you kind of alluded to to, to bring the whole movies that they're creating in their mind, right? Well, I love the whole concept behind helping people understand that what goes on in our brain is practiced. And if you want something different, you have to step off that hamster wheel and go another direction. And sometimes that's hard, but that is when we can step in and guide you, right?

And you can do it through different types of neurology approaches, like maybe it's eye movements, maybe has something to do with auditory, and maybe something with balance. responses, and then it can be this emotional release. And I think that's really important, especially in pediatrics. You know, sadness is more on that right side of the brain. What they're finding is that these kids that right side of the brain should be driving the development in the beginning. And if it's dampened, they don't have the power in their right-side of their brain.

It's like you've started out of a gate with a problem. That's why I think these little ones are just, I'm amazed at the trouble that they're really demonstrating. Dr. Meg, what do you think about Approaching, like, your technique of choice is NET, right? Yes. Okay. That's, yeah, my primary thing. All right. So you've got a kid that, you know, because we can work balance, we could work eye movements, but what are you going to do with that little one for they are either anxious, depressed, withdrawn?

I love that you use that word. I see a lot of that. What would you explain to them, explain, to the audience, what does that really look like for a chiropractor to approach the emotional part? Yes, so, and kids are fun to work with. Some, some don't really want to offer up their feelings and I tend to relate with those when I think back to me being a kid and maybe not feeling safe and, you know, being able to share, especially the oldest's. Sometimes we get the chatter boxes that want to share everything, but a lot of times it's, they want it kind of closed down, retreat, like Dr.

Mike was saying, you know, in those emotions. But it is so interesting how when we do the technique and with kids, obviously we have a little bit of a different way to work with them because, adults can use their language better. So we have little like an emoji sheet that shows all the different kinds of emotions so that the kids can kind of point to, you know, it made me feel like this. When we find kind what meridian system or what organ system holds the emotions because our organs are where our emotions are stored.

So like our stomach is responsible for worry. our liver for anger, our kidneys for fear, grief in the lungs. So when we find out whatever it is that we're working on, whether it's something in school or maybe disagreeing with our brother or sister or mom or dad, we work on that and focus on. Then what we'll end up doing is having the kid kind of point to what does that, if they can't use their words, tell me what that feels like. and then they can say, I felt sad. And then we'll go back to an original time in their life where they might have felt similar feelings.

Where did this stem from? Where does this limbic loop start? And it's so amazing how when we work with kids, how a lot of times when another sibling's been born, even if it is not just the oldest, and that's going to happen. It's not like we're not going not have more children, but it how that affected their little world. and changes how my role in this world now is different, because there's this other person that's stealing all my time, but I'm three. So I don't understand that, you know, the things that an adult would so we can look back at it from an adults perspective and say, Well, yeah, okay, I wasn't thrilled at a brother but watching these kids in the moment when you're talking to them about it and seeing, You know the reactions in their body and their bodies get tense and they kind of go into more of a flexion posture like They're remembering that like it happened yesterday.

And those feelings are real. There's nothing wrong with that. Every single person has reactions to things differently than the next person. But it's when those feeling don't get resolved, then we just keep building these patterns based on these feelings and move into our future. That's why we become the adults that have the feelings of abandonment or feelings insecurity. they start somewhere and usually at a time that, you know, we just didn't understand. We didn t have the logic to make sense of all of these things.

So we retreat, feel this, create our story and then that story builds into and, so with the kids it's great because let's get to it, let s let it go and these little fears that they have, being worried about we had a little boy that came in that was terrified of flying on planes.

Understanding the limbic loop 22:48

And but their family lives out of state, so they wanted to go back and be able to visit. But mom didn't want him having, you know, a meltdown every time because he was terrified that something was going to happen, even though logically nobody could figure out why was he so upset? We've never had an accident. We'd never seen anything bad. Why is he like that? Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be a one and one with the plane. Something's triggering his little nervous system to not feel safe and for fear to come up.

So we worked on it and it came up to something completely unrelated to planes. But as he was allowed to process that and think about that memory, feel that little emotion because it's a real emotion and that's what we're coaching them through. It's okay to feel, that we are going to breathe that out. We're going let that go. Then he got on the plane and he's fine. And now it's not an issue. So now he's going to be 40 years old, still having panic attacks when he gets on the plane because he was able to let that go as a little one and move forward being a bit more free and feeling safe in his environment.

So kids are fun to do this with. I love that, is that understanding that this stuff gets trapped inside of you. And sometimes it is as easy as will you validate it for me and then let it go and teach somebody how to let go. Who goes around teaching that part? I do this thing in the office with the kids. I don't know if you've ever seen this, but it was a little documentary that looked at polar bears and giving them an injection to make them go to sleep. And then when they woke up, all they did was shake it off.

and then went back to their cool groove move. And so when the kids get upset, I go, come on, let's be like the polar bears and just shake it off. Sometimes I think we have to give, we We have to give them the tools because their library is so small compared to our library, right? And we have give some tools. So to kind of circle back, we started off with neuroplasticity. Let's give a few examples of positive and let's explain the other half of the story of neuro plasticity, who wants that one? Yeah, so I love talking about negative and positive neuroplasticity.

She, every time it's a nerdy word, she throws it back at me. So, you know, the idea of neuro plasticity really came about for learning new things, right? If you have a part of the brain that's damaged or injured, even though you might lose that function for a while, we now know that other parts of brain can actually take up that option and be retrained. to restore that function that was lost, right? So I love the story of salamanders. This is how they found neuroplasticity. You have a nerve called the optic nerve, which runs the visual system.

So it takes the information from your eyes and it sends it to the occipital cortex, where you process vision. They took salamanters and they cut their optic nerves and instead of going to occiputal lobe where they process the vision, they ran it into the temporal lobes where we normally process sound. you would expect what happened, the salamanders lost vision, right? for a few weeks. And then a couple weeks later, what they noticed was amazing. The vision actually started to restore because the optic nerve was still intact.

So the brain actually, because vision is such an important conscious sense, it's your most important conscience sense. But it was so important to the salamanders' well-being and life, they re-appropriated the part of the brains that did sound into processing vision and they could start to see again. Not as clearly as they did before. but they were able to see danger. They were to able see lights and dark and those types of things. So that's what really opened the book on neuroplasticity. You can learn to do all sorts of thing.

We have brain injury patients all the time that can't walk when they come in. Even though it's two years later, which I know most of the medical doctors say after two year, you can restore any function. Again, maybe a fallacy, but two years later, we can still restore function post stroke or post brain injury. And so your brain can learn new tricks in a lot of different ways by creating that neuroplastic change or retraining the brain. But anything that can be used for good can also be use for bad.

So like negative neuroplasticity, neuro plasticity is, I love to explain it this way to patients. Your brain gets really good at doing whatever you tell it to do, right? And that's like to your point of you've got to practice this. Whatever you practice, your brain's going to get good. You know, in Dr. Meg's example of mental health, there's a negative If you start telling yourself negative things, wherever they come from originally, you'll start to believe them. And that then can become wound up and become neuroplastic chronic pain is another great example.

We have patients who had an injury and the injured part of the body heals, but they still have pain there. And that's a negative neuroplastic loop of your body learning to do pain so well that that becomes the default pattern. So you have to something and you can do something to break that loop and get through some of those chronic pain or mental health. Those are the two most common negative neural plastic loops that we see. Well, and I can remember too, I used to speak for foot levelers for a long, long time.

And for the audience, that's a company that makes custom-made orthotics for your shoes. It was one of the things that I would always talk about with the group of chiropractors was how many of you are working on somebody that has been in chronic pain for year? Raise your hand. Of course, almost every hand goes up. And then I go, how about five years? How about 10? 15? 20? And there's always at least two or three that are still left up. And you ask, what's the attitude of that individual? What's their disposition?

Are they running around clicking their heels? No.

Working with kids and emotional release 29:30

They're typically depressed. They're typically not looking at life with joy. And that chronic pain, they've actually found that you will lose 2.3 cubic centimeters of gray matter for every year that are in chronic paint. We have to break these patterns. That is just essential to try to, well, bring joy back to their life, right? So I had Dr. Meg, you want to add anything? Yeah, no, it's interesting. He just he did a conversation on social media not too long ago, because we see that a lot. And I'm sure you do as well.

Any health care provider does just the identifying with the diagnosis. I think you just said it so well about how that creates, again, that neuroplasticity, like I am this diagnosis, I and this problem. I looked at myself as I am the depressed girl. I'm the broken one. That was my story. And that's what I told myself. So, of course, everything that I did, that was the lens that i was looking at my life because I kept reinforcing that I didn't know any different and that's not to say that anybody's to blame for getting a label put on them for whatever it is, whether it's a diagnosis or it your family member said something to you growing up and you just took it and believed it.

It's it a story, but it doesn't have to be something that you have commit to. but knowing that there are things that you can do. And that's why I'm so passionate about emotional health and people breaking through the emotional stories that they're living. Because whatever that story is, if it's negative, it is not positive, It's holding you back. It is keeping you in a place that probably you don't want to be, but there's ways to get beyond that. And I'm not saying neuromotional technique is for everybody.

It worked for me. I did years of therapy and I only found that it was like bringing up an old wound, remembering how much it hurt, Remembering how worthless I felt, but I never got any resolution. So then I'd go to the bar and i would drink because now it felt terrible. i felt raw, I Felt uncomfortable. so how do I make this stop? How do i make This go away? So I found a coping mechanism. And that's what I've found through talking to a lot of people that struggle with, you know, addictions with drinking is I just want it to stop.

So it just need to quiet my mind. They just needed to turn those voices off. And I get it, I've been there. And therapy didn't help me. I have a lot of therapists that do NET that I refer patients to for patients, because I think therapy definitely plays a piece and can be very helpful to many. But it didn' help just talking about my problems with what I learned later on from you, that it's all your conscious brain that you're talking from, not your limbic, your subconscious mind that holds all those stories.

So when I was able to do something about breaking those patterns, breaking the memory, and the body holding onto that emotion and allow that to resolve so that it could extinguish, then I've started feeling like, oh, I don't have those triggers anymore. What used to upset me when somebody would say something and make me feel like that little scared child again, wait, where did that go? It wasn't there anymore because I allowed myself to let that story go. It happened and I can't change the past, but I of intensity attached to it anymore.

It's just something that happened and I can still move forward and still have my prefrontal cortex seeing the bigger picture, seeing that things are going to be okay. I get through the day. Yes, all wonderful things that I've learned from you along the journey. And it's real. You can feel it. Its palpable. Just not holding me back anymore, but you have to find ways to let that go. I used to I'll share one from me is I was a twin and my twin miscarried out and when they went to go clean my mom, they go, wait a minute, we can't, there's another heartbeat.

So they didn't even know that I was there. And that little tagline that i just said, nobody knew that. I. Was there that that has been a tag line for me a good part of my life. And when I would talk about it, I will cry. I do a lot in the brain as well and I knew that was like a PTSD moment when that emotion comes up as though it's still right there. It does. It's as if you are reliving it every single time. And now, look, I just talked about it on the podcast and didn't cry. Didn't shed a tear, right?

I feel very blessed that I have that experience. I think about my twin every day of my life. But I know I'll see them again. it's been released. And so I can even attest to that kind of a release to make sure you can move on and not live in something that one, I, can't change that outcome. But I can find joy, right? And so that's the part. And I just see so many little kids holding on to this stuff. I really hope the audience, like if you know of any family where the child is struggling, We're not trying to advocate, don't go to a counselor or something like that.

I do agree with Dr. Meg, I've tried counseling in the past. As I learned more about the brain, the more you talk about this stuff, you're just like burying it and making deeper grooves in the brain for it. And I want us to all get on the other side.

Positive and negative neuroplasticity 35:48

So looking at something like NET, reaching out to doctors Meg and Michael Longyear in Jacksonville, Florida, if this is resonating with you, I really encourage you to reach out. I think it's amazing all the different options that we actually have available to us, you know? Well, let's talk about your books. Okay, so they've got, well, go into the little piece about why did you write a book? I never wrote one on purpose, to be honest. So the title of mine is never accept your new normal. And that came from, I never wanted to be an author or do anything like that.

But to Megan's point around the emotions and to your point, around, the, emotions, they never really dealt with mine. Like you said, you, whenever you would talk about it, he would cry and I just never, wanted, to go there. So I, never talked about, it never cried until one night I woke up at four 30 in the morning and, images and visions of being in the hospital and a lot of the things that I went through and just tears streaming down my face. And the only thing that stopped it, that book actually started in a notes section on my iPhone.

I just had to start writing down like what I was seeing and what was going through emotionally and then the tears stopped. Then I woke up again the next night and the same thing happened and I wrote more. After going though that for a little while and consciously writing some things so that I looked down and I had like 10,000 words. And I thought, I'm like, you know, copy and pasted it into a word document. I was like wow, there's 10 thousand words here. Maybe I can help somebody with this. Uh, and then because I already working in the space of, working with, brain injuries and spinal cord injuries.

So I, uh, thought well what if I incorporated some of my patient stories of patients that have come to me and gone through what they've gone though. The never accept your new normal is, Because I, you know, my new normal was supposed to be in a wheelchair and I didn't accept that. And thankfully neither did the physical therapists they put me with because that's that a big reason why I got out of the hospital is, they originally put in PT to learn how to use my wheelchair. I told her I'm like, I am not rolling out here so you can either help me or find somebody else.

She helped me. So I did not accept my normal and have a lot of patients and you have had a and they bring in their grocery bag of medical bills. And they're like, my doctor said this is as good as I'm gonna get. Is there anything you can do for me? So that's where my mantra of never accept your new normal. There's always something that can be done to help. And so I incorporated some patient stories into the books to support what I've gone through. So you can see it's not just a one off, right? It wasn't just me doing that, that a lot of everybody has the capacity to beat what their diagnosis is or to be that that thing that they've been given.

And I do say given because, you know, and I talk about it in the book and Dr. Meg does too. I don't think things happen to us. They happen for us and looking back on my injury now, I wouldn't necessarily wish anybody going through what I had to go through. I also wouldn' change it for anything in the world because I really like where I'm at. And I think it showed me and put me on a path and my purpose. That's really what the book is about. It's about transforming those things that you go into fuel to drive you to your purpose and to you passion to be able to help others.

Beautiful. Alright, Dr. Meg, tell us about the sad heart behind the smile. Well, I'm going to credit a lot of this to this guy right here because I didn't think my story was worth anything. It was just, you know, OK, was depressed and now I am not cool. I love NET and I want everyone to do it. But I think I really had anything to share. Like, his story is just so powerful coming from what he did. you know, getting beyond that. But he kept having me come do little talks at events, like at our CE's, as chiropractors getting together, right?

And getting, he'd say, get up there for 30 minutes, how much you just tell about the emotional piece and tell a little bit about your story. And so I'd tell little about it. We have an event at Chiropractic school called Talk the Tick, Getting Up and Talking about Your Why to Chiropractic. Well, I got into chiropractic because NET made a difference for me and I wanted to learn it. And when I found out Life University had a club on campus, i got this crazy idea at 36 that maybe I should be a chirapractor.

Never had any, just never thought that I'd be doctor. I want to run his office and do what I thought I was good at, running offices, doing this stuff like that. So when I got up and I told my story, I started out the first part of it with, hi, my name's Megan, and i'm an alcoholic. And everybody laughed because, you know, yeah, like, we we joke about that, right? Like, everyone laughs. So uncomfortable. Yeah. and then I continued on with you, know after, a couple failed suicide attempts and stuff.

You just saw people looking like whoa, this person that's all smiley and happy. is a recovering alcoholic and tried to end her life. What are you talking about? And it was a very empowering thing because I couldn't hold it together, just like you were talking with your twin.

Books, healing, and where to learn more 41:18

I was sobbing and couldn' t pull myself back together. But after that talk, I had a couple people come up to me and talk to about their struggles with alcohol and how they didn't know how to handle it and who to talk too. And then he had me doing some other sessions. So it got a little easier the next time talking a bit about these vulnerable pieces. Next thing I know, he's like, you really should put this all down in a book because then more people can get that feeling of, I'm not alone. I am not broken.

It can be heard. There are things that can help me even though I've tried all these things like I have. And I swear I owned every single book, self-help book out there that anybody wrote. I did tapping. I do everything. My poor family with every book that I would buy and trying this stuff endlessly and just never feeling like I had that breakthrough. The book just came out of that as like, well, I'll try writing some things down and then things started pouring out. What I found was what a huge help it was for me realizing patterns I didn't even recognize because even in the 10 years that any teamwork done and I still continue and i will till the you know the day that i leave this earth there's always more layers but you may not be ready to go there yet you've got to peel that onion away gently so that you can gently let go of some of these things and then the deeper that You can go when it's safe for your body and your mind to do that some Of the big patterns that come up and can show their face really give you an awareness about where you've been stuck and you just would have never put that together as you're logically trying to find the answer, you know, right?

We're doctors. We want to fight the answers. You should be able to figure everything out. Sometimes it's not time yet and sometimes you're not ready for it. But when you do the releases and the changes, it is monumental. So it was definitely not an easy journey. There are multiple times that I thought, oh, I don't know that. I want to put this out there. You know, he's been super encouraging and I'm glad that I did because I've gotten a lot of feedback from people that again, just felt the same way that i did.

Just didn't know what to do and where to go and what else can I try? I tried everything and nothing's worked. So I am just hopeless and i don't believe anybody is hopeless. I believe everybody can heal. But like it's true to your mantra of never accept your new normal. I truly believe that behind every symptom, there's a story and it may take a while to peel those layers of the story away, but there is always healing that can be done when it comes to the emotional wellness or the motion well-being of our mind and our body and what we are holding on to in that story.

And when we can strip those layer away the body is being unburdened. And true deep healing can really happen when we are willing to look at that as slowly as you need to go, but don't neglect that piece of the emotions and how that's affecting your health. Well, I think the emotional piece is sometimes it's embarrassing and people, they feel ashamed. And then you just start adding more layers to what it is that you're feeling. It's kind of like the vaccine conversation. Everybody, oh, don't want to talk about vaccines when we should be able to talked about this stuff.

So how we feel is given to us and it's okay. Well, I'm super glad that you both wrote a story. And why don't you, as we close out our time together, why didn't tell everybody how they can go and find out more information about your books and your clinic? Yeah. So we've made the first chapter of our copy available for anybody who wants to read it and see if it resonates with them. We'll drop some links in the bio here right up for the talk. And if you click the link, it'll take you to our websites and you can actually learn a little bit about the book and read the 1st chapter right online.

If it's something that resonates, then there's a purchase page there that takes you Amazon to be able to buy it too. They're both available on Kindle. And that link will actually take you to our websites, which allows you kind of check our clinic out and see all the weird stuff that we do. Because we're a little bit of a blend of two different things. I'm very science heavy and Dr. Meg, I always call her the woo one. Oh yeah, tell them about your podcast. Yeah, so we have a podcast around that as well.

It's called the Woo and the Science Podcast. And it's because Dr. Meg is the feely one of the two of us. She feels everything and I'm the scientific one. You know, our approach in office maybe looks like they're complete opposites and they don't go together, but the reality is, is our brains and our bodies are a little bit of both. We need to have some science in our approaching. And as much as I hate to admit it, we need have to some emotions and some feels to the things that we do too. Science is catching up to my woo, isn't it?

Yeah, and that's the other part I was gonna say. I love that part in your podcast, I keep hearing Dr. Meg go, oh, this is recorded. It is! I keep giving her ammo to go against me. You are. And what's the name of your clinic and where are you? We're in Jacksonville, Florida, and the named of the clinic is the Brain Optimization Institute because we can optimize our brain to get through just about everything. Well, thank you so much for being with me today. This was a lot of fun and I'm sure the audience loved it and got some new information.

So thank for you being us. We really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks for having us! Okay, so we're gonna close it out. Remember, go check out connectmybrain.com. Make sure you're watching for the new things that are coming out on the website. We're very excited. And we also have an app, guess what it's called? Connect My Brain. Everything about us is called Connect my Brain Thanks for being with us today and be blessed.