How to Use EMDR Therapy for Emotional Resilience at Midlife – with Kambria Evans

Dr. Mindy  

On this episode of The resetter podcast, I bring you Kambria Evans. Now, let me tell you a little bit about what you’re about to hear because I have been doing personal EMDR work with Kambria, and she not only has an extensive psychotherapy background, not only is she a trained EMDR clinician, but she actually trains other practitioners how to do EMDR. So in my book, she is a specialist in the topic of EMDR. Now you mix that with a huge heart, and a woman that sees the mission that I’m on, which is helping women through the menopausal journey helping women with hormones. And I think what you’re going to find in this episode is a real resource for where you may be going mentally, at this moment in time. So EMDR, if you’re not familiar with it, is a form of therapy that really has a way of getting to the root of our traumas very, very quickly. And what I learned in my own EMDR experience with Kambria is that it can actually rewire the way my brains thinks in all the wonderful ways in all the ways of looking at trying to find more hope and possibility in this world, trying to undo looping thoughts, trying to overcome adaptations that maybe hold us back that I have found an incredible tool in EMDR and Kambria as an expert in it. So I wanted to bring her to you all. And as you will hear throughout this conversation, I share a little bit about my journey, some of the work that I’ve done on with her, but I also wanted to bring you some real time resources. So there’s really three things I want you to get out of this podcast. First is I want you to feel heard, please, please, please, those of you that may be struggling women that are going through menopause, that are finding that the emotional ups and downs are really difficult, I want you to know that I hear you, Kambria hears you, you’re not alone. And you’re going to hopefully hear this throughout the whole thread of this conversation. Second, you are not out to answers. And what you’re about to hear are a lot of answers that don’t cost money. That don’t mean you have to go find an EMDR specialist that you can do right now. And she she actually some of them are just being aware of certain things, which she she talks about. And then others are actually real EMDR techniques that you can use immediately. And then the third thing I want you to know and I’ve asked Kambria to do is to create a resource list. So we are a worldwide community. So if you are listening to this episode, you’re resonating with this conversation, you’re needing some support, please know that we are putting together a resource list for you that we will link in the notes. So this is a real personal one for me. I bring a lot of people on this podcast, and I adore this woman and she has helped me greatly. And I can’t wait for you to witness her brilliance. But more importantly, I can’t wait for you to see what’s possible for your own mental health. So Kambria Evans EMDR. I am from the bottom of my heart from the deepest place of love. I offer you an incredible conversation on what’s possible for your brain. Enjoy a Dr. Mindy hare and Welcome to season four of the resetter podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself. Again, if you have a passion for learning, if you’re looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy. As you already know, I’m a very informal kind of gal. So I’m just going to start by welcoming you to my podcast. I’m so excited to have you here.

 

Kambria Evans  

Well, thank you so much for having me. I really am excited to talk to you about EMDR in therapy and whatever is helpful to your audience.

 

Dr. Mindy  

You know, it’s there’s so much so many avenues that I want to go down but I really want to highlight EMDR because it seems to be this this version of therapy that is like standing out on its own and I and you know my brain it’s like I can’t quite figure out why it’s an every conversation that I’m in. So I definitely want to start there. But I also have to tell you that I just realized in talking to you in this setting it because we’ve talked so much that your voice is like it’s like a therapeutic tool for me on to itself too. people tell you that like when they hear your voice, I’m like, oh, okay, now I’m like cluing in and like listening, because I always take your advice. So is that is that like a part of the repetition that happens when you listen to somebody over and over again, their voice becomes therapy on to itself?

 

Kambria Evans  

Well, first of all, thank you. And second of all, I think this is just how our brains link, right? Because if your brain has an association with my voice about certain feelings, or experiences that we’ve had together, right, it would make sense that just my voice would trigger you into a space of a certain emotional state. Right? And that really is what EMDR utilizes to help people process information.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Wow. So this way, like when you get on a call with your mom, and she says, Hello, and you don’t even you don’t even know, you know, the tone, you know, like, what kind of comment where this conversations going, you know, what kind of mood she’s in. And and all she does say said, Hello, is that the way our brain holds on to that and categorizes it?

 

Kambria Evans  

Our brain is so amazing. And what’s amazing about the example you just gave is that when we hear a caregivers voice from childhood, right, our brain goes into this, like time travel mode, so we stay in our adult body. But like all the parts of us from childhood, and all the younger parts are kind of called into the conversation, which is why I think it can be so nourishing and also so complex, and we talk to our parents as adults.

 

Dr. Mindy  

And you have to bring all those parts with you. You can’t Can you only bring some certain parts with you.

 

Kambria Evans  

Another great part about EMDR is that you get to kind of learn what’s there, we kind of do like a time travel inventory, almost to see what parts are there. Sometimes we can choose what parts to bring in. And sometimes we can’t. And I like to believe that all the parts of us that are coming in have a good positive intention to help us.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, that you do always take the high road like that. Well done. Right. Well done. Okay. Well, let me let me start that, you know, the beginning of this conversation, just now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, your voice out of the way for my brain. So for people listening, we just did that for my entertainment. Sorry. But, you know, as I was diving into understanding the brain as I went through menopause, and just trying to understand my thoughts, and really decide, did I like my thoughts? Did I not like them, where were some new thoughts coming from, I kept searching for tools to be able to help the new brain patterns that I was having. And as you know, one of the major tools that I found or kept hearing about was EMDR. And here’s the way it was marketed to me, let’s just, let’s just put it this way, and we’re gonna hear how you would market it. But it was marketed to me as it’s a quicker version of therapy, you only have to go six, seven times, because it repattern your brain, and you get through things a lot, a lot faster. And again, as you know, I like to move fast. So talk a little bit about why EMDR is, is coming to the surface. Is it really a quicker version of therapy? And if so, why?

 

Kambria Evans  

I love these questions. And I will join you in in kind of the the urgency to understand something that urgency to understand ourselves, right, I think is something that is a positive thing about you. And then something that’s the reason why I only do EMDR is because I’m a very impatient person, I’m a very impatient therapist, and I want people to feel better as fast as possible. And when I heard about EMDR, I heard it was you know, for trauma, there’s all this research behind it, I got the whole rundown of how the brain works around it. And the way that I understand it now, having done like, you know, 10,000 EMDR sessions. And the way that I like to describe it is that it’s really based around how the brain and like your nervous system learns things, right. And so I think that what EMDR has done is it’s kind of taken all of these wonderful therapies and found a way for them to all work together. So it’s taken CBT, right around positive and negative beliefs and incorporated it. It’s taken Somatic Experiencing around how you know, things are stored in the body, how the body learns things, right. And it’s taken just things about emotions, and psychology has put all these things together to kind of create this very efficient, effective modality. And when I think about how we learn, when we learn as kids, right, we’re learning something typically for the first time. And so that learning really informs a lot of how we see ourselves how we see the world. Right? And what’s interesting is that we keep learning as we become adults, I mean, keep getting different curriculums. Right, and I think what Yeah.

 

Dr. Mindy  

I’d like to drop out if I get to,

 

Kambria Evans  

yes, you do. And that’s what’s so cool about him People come to EMDR they realize I was given these different curriculums. I don’t agree with that curriculum, right? That curriculum is bullshit. And I want to now re reconfigure the curriculum, and I’m going to write it myself. And so I think what’s amazing is that, you know, talk therapy is so wonderful, it does so much for so many people. But it leaves out the body. Right. And I think we feel a lot of incongruence between what we’re supposed to think or what we’re trying to think like mindset stuff, right. And like, our body has a completely different response and feeling. So I think EMDR is done a beautiful job of combining all these things together. And by doing bilateral stimulation, by taxing the working memory, we really can desensitize a lot of disturbing things. And it’s just, it’s amazing. And I will also share, I’m a client of EMDR, I do my own EMDR work, and it’s great for trauma work, it’s great for just realizing I have some incongruency isn’t this different curriculums, I’m gonna tweak this, I’m gonna tweak this. It’s incredible. It’s enjoyable.

 

Dr. Mindy  

It’s, that’s such a refreshing way to look at thoughts as I need to refine that curriculum. That’s not how I normally think about thoughts. It’s more like the way I would save the old version of before I started working with you like, the way my brain started was think would be like, where did that thought come from? Like, and, you know, is there a different version of that thought that I can think so as opposed to like, let me just take that thought and put it I don’t want to think it anymore? And how can I choose a new curriculum that I’m going to enroll in and not enroll in that one that keeps beating myself up? Like, it’s almost like I analyze the thought so much of the thought and started gain more power? That was? Yeah, what I what I’ve learned in doing EMDR, is the thought seemed to soften. And then the thoughts that were important before an EMDR session, all of a sudden seemed strangely not be important anymore. Yeah, can you explain to me why that happens, because that is the trippiest thing. And I’ve done a lot of mindset work in my life. And that trips me out how I could come in with one thought that’s agitating the heck out of me. And then like, after a session with you, it’s like, I don’t know, the next couple of days, like the thoughts just gone. It’s like not even there. It’s not it has no charge.

 

Kambria Evans  

This is the coolest part, I think about EMDR is getting to hear people say afterwards, what you describe, which is that, that doesn’t feel as powerful or as intense or as disturbing, doesn’t take up as much space. And it’s because when we have a disturbance, whether it’s in the current time, whether it’s in the past, we even have disturbances about things that are maybe going to happen in the future, right. So all across time, we have these things that are bothering us, right? Thoughts about self thoughts about the world in terms of safety control, am I enough? And what’s so cool with EMDR is that with the bilateral stimulation we’re creating, right either with eye movements or with buzzers, we’re creating kind of this very soothing sensation. It’s just kind of neutralizing disturbances. And then what’s happening, I believe, is that your brain is accelerated to link to every part of your brain to gather information, almost kind of like a scientist to say, where did they learn that and what else do I know? Right? And then when that when that curriculum integrates in our minds, it also takes our body with us. So we know EMDR is completed, and that the desensitization is done because our body is calm. Like our body does interesting more.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, let on that note, though, when you’re dealing with a menopausal body, it, it’s not like it always feels calm. Let’s just, let’s just highlight that for a moment. Without progesterone calm body. It can be, you know, a thing of the past. So what what I’m curious about is, if you are going through life trying to fix your problems from your head, and you’re not bringing the body into the conversation. Can you actually get over traumas in your life? Or is the new awareness around the brain that we have to involve the body and did that come from the Body Keeps the Score book? Like what like, is this this is this new to us are just new to me.

 

Kambria Evans  

It’s good questions. Man. I think that there has been so much conversation in the mental health field about how the Body Keeps the Score and how the body stores trauma, and the body also stores positive experiences to

 

Dr. Mindy  

this is a true, win write that enough?

 

Kambria Evans  

Don’t. So when we have somebody coming into therapy, who has a different experience of their body because of hormones, or because of, you know, different chemicals or wiring, we want to think about not just how we desensitize disturbances with EMDR. But also how do we expand positive resources and positive experiences in the body? Right, because just like, I might have a trigger around, you know, a certain color car because of an experience in that kind of a car. And that feels negative, I also might have a really positive experience around thinking about going to the beach, or thinking about picking out a Christmas tree, right. And so we really are mapping the positive and negative associations in our brain, dropping them into our body and expanding those.

 

Dr. Mindy  

I’m just laughing because we haven’t talked yet about my Christmas tree. By Christmas

 

Kambria Evans  

positively or negatively recall it. Oh, no. I just heard you on your podcast.

 

Dr. Mindy  

And anybody that knows me is like, Did she just say Christmas tree, like, my closest friends are gonna be like, Oh, my God. You know, it’s but this is, let’s use this as an example. We as a family can never decide on the right Christmas tree. And so we the four of us argue, and then we finally somebody has to give in, we get the Christmas tree, we bring it home, and then we put it in the stand, and it never stands up, right. And it literally is like becomes a family fight. So like, now we know this, yes, now we know it. And it’s become a joke. It’s like, okay, it’s gonna take two hours to go get the Christmas tree, we’re gonna have to spend 30 minutes arguing over which one and then we’re gonna all come home. And then, you know, everybody’s gonna try to get it to stand up, right? Well, you know, we make dinner. And it’s just like part of the part of the process. So

 

Kambria Evans  

yes, but you but you make a great point that there’s traumatic associations with things that other people find to be positively linked in their brain. Right. And so one of the one of the things that are really skilled EMDR clinician will do for you or for people is that they will understand what has a positive link and what has a negative link, right? To help you understand how to desensitize the negative and expand the positive.

 

Dr. Mindy  

So how would I have situation like that and make it pop? I mean, it’s Christmas. I think, like, how would I make that positive? Because it is a little bit like, we’re going to get the tree today. And there’s like, is that where you were EMDR would actually take you back through? Like, where else in your life? Have you felt totally out of control? And like, frustrated? Because nothing was working?

 

Kambria Evans  

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if the circumstance you described is hard, it’s stressful. And if we have kind of a disproportionate response to that, because it’s linking to other things, like feeling out of control, or associations with holidays that maybe came earlier, right, then we could go back and process those with EMDR, decrease those disturbances, I kind of think about it, like, since I know we’re both parents, I kind of think about it, like, when you do EMDR, you need to have a time traveler with you, it’s gonna go back and and go to all the places in time, need to have a scientist that’s gonna go like pick the data to see the different curriculum, and then you’re gonna have to have like a good enough parent to kind of go back and help these younger parts of us get re parented and kind of bring them into now. Right. So I think that yeah, you know, if there’s someone that has a trigger around Christmas, we would go back into the past prong, look at that. Look at the current prong and say, What resources can we actually create around Christmas so that it feels positive? Maybe we skip the job? I don’t know. Right?

 

Dr. Mindy  

Just kept your mom’s days? Oh, yeah. Yeah, so then, and just so be for people who haven’t done EMDR the way that would feel to me just using the Christmas tree as an example, it and this is the way it has felt to me is that then I’m in that situation again. And I’m strangely not triggered. Like in that, like, like, here, I can sort of laugh about the situation, because it’s July. And I’ve still got six months to prepare for the Christmas tree. But, but I also would say that there becomes sort of this, like, the situation shows up and you’re like, well, that’s interesting. Why is that not triggering me? And is that because we brought the body into it? And we integrated the brain and the body together and then we tied it to past memories that were beyond just that event that I you may have been bringing in to the Christmas tree moment. Is that how it works?

 

Kambria Evans  

So yeah, so basically with EMDR we pick a target to process right so let’s say the most disturbing part of the Christmas Extravaganza is the image of the tree falling over. Right, that represents the greatest. That’s

 

Dr. Mindy  

the worst part. downers part. Yeah, yes.

 

Kambria Evans  

And then we would want to be curious about we have that image. Okay, now, what’s the negative belief that goes with it? And it could be something like, mean, people come up with all sorts of negative beliefs, like, I’m not good enough, right? Or I don’t have control or I don’t have choices, or I feel trapped. I can be around so many different things. And then we want to get curious around, okay, well, we have this negative belief, what’s the positive belief you want to go towards? If you had a magic wand? And you had this image of the of the tree? Right? What would you want it to be instead? Typically, it’s the opposite of the negative belief.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, I’d like it to stand up straight on the first go.

 

Kambria Evans  

Yeah. And if it didn’t, I would still have a positive belief of, I can figure things out, or I am good enough, or I have choices, I can throw the damn tree outside, whatever, right. And then we want to be curious about the emotion and the body sensations that go with that target image. And that negative belief, because what we’re doing is we’re identifying four pieces for the four variables of memory, right? The picture, the belief, the body sensation, the emotion, right, this is the blend of all the therapies I was talking about in the beginning, coming together, kind of bundle them.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, so you’re bringing in other senses.

 

Kambria Evans  

All the senses, hopefully,

 

Dr. Mindy  

in interesting, okay. So that’s what makes it different from like, talk therapy that I used to do. So when I was when I was a teenager, I don’t even know if you know, this, I was struggling in school. And I was taken to a therapist at 16. And I really liked the guy like he was, he like, totally got me like, it was really cool. And it became this place that I would just sit and chat with him. And so I learned, hey, chatting with somebody like, that feels really good. But I’m not sure I ever really made progress other than I had a really, you know, an adult that was listening to me probably for the first time, which felt really good. So what I’m hearing is, what you’re saying is, is that we’re doing that, and we’re bringing in other parts with EMDR, so that we can have a deeper healing experience.

 

Kambria Evans  

Yes, talk therapy has so much value, because it creates a lot of the new curriculum, the narratives, the resources, the sense of self, how do I see myself and so when people come in, and they say to me, I’ve done talk therapy for 20 years, but I’m still disturbed by XYZ. I know that they have all those resources already in their brain, which is awesome, because we can link to all those things when we process, right, because the brain is always looking for adaptive material. Our brains want us to feel better, they want us to heal, right. And so when we identify in the target those four variables of memory, like around the disturbance around Christmas trees, right, we then have this cluster that we’re going to, you know, process through with bilateral stimulation, eye movements or tactile buzzers, right. Okay. And so we’re desensitizing, that disturbance of the memory and we’re actually rewriting it.

 

Dr. Mindy  

So okay, so So talk about the buzzers talk about the hat. The when people do like whatever this thing is back and forth. You haven’t done that to me. But and then I saw something that I don’t know, like six months ago, where Prince Harry was, was taught from an EMDR specialist to like, do like tap on other sides of his shoulder. What what is going on when we’re doing this bilateral stimulation? Yes.

 

Kambria Evans  

Oh, you’re asking a juicy question. This is this is kind of the hot topic right now in the EMDR. community. So, seven, Francine Shapiro discovered EMDR in the 80s. The story kind of the fable is like she was on a walk. And she noticed that if she looked at the right and left side, and thought about something disturbing. She’d noticed a decrease in disturbance. And so EMDR was born around I’m movements, right. What we now understand is that the right side, left side, the bilateral stimulation can be done by tapping, right, the call a butterfly hug. It can be done with the tactile buzzers that buzz back and forth in your hand. Right. And then some therapists still do eye movements back and forth, and they have a light bar and other things like that. But the and then what’s really, really cool is that there’s a new research coming out around this theory of taxing the working memory and so some clinicians are noticing and there’s research behind this, that you don’t actually need eye movements. You don’t even need bilateral stimulation if you give your working memory a task, like walking around and counting numbers are coloring. Like if you give yourself multiple working memory tasks, doing those neutral tasks actually decrease the disturbance as well.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, we talk about this because I’m, I’m a walker and talker. Like I can’t, and I can’t sit and like, chat with somebody, I have to get up and move around.

 

Kambria Evans  

Yeah. And maybe you’re maybe our bodies aren’t meant to sit and think, right? If we know that I mean, think about it. People say if you’re upset, go for a walk around the block, then come back. Yep, right, there is something are exercising when we’re pushing on a bike, right, right side, left side, when we’re giving our body a task, it does decrease disturbance typically, or, and or expands a positive resource.

 

Dr. Mindy  

So when you get up and you move around the, the brain has something else to think about. It has to act, even though walking feels very, like natural, the brain still has to coordinate that movement. And so it has another task, which calms it from obsessing on the thing that either the problem or calms it from being what I would call, like, hyper vigilant is that would that be a way to look at it?

 

Kambria Evans  

It takes away the intensity of what is disturbing you? Absolutely. Absolutely. And so I think that it makes sense, right? I mean, that’s kind of a more neutral thing to do. On top of the the activity itself of walking, you’re also allowing your brain to have like a fulfillment of movement, right. So typically, when we have a disturbance or body, our bodies have an urge, our bodies might have an urge to fight, or flee or freeze, right. And so if we’re sitting still with disturbance, that can kind of re ignite a freeze response that we might have had as a kid. If we’re moving like I actually will sometimes go in my parking lot with buzzers with a client and we will walk around the parking lot because they’re able to move in a way they couldn’t move before, which is part of I think, the healing process.

 

Dr. Mindy  

So you’d be a good hiking partners. What I just heard, I love

 

Kambria Evans  

to move. I can’t sit still.

 

Dr. Mindy  

I struggled to believe me, as well. I like my hands start moving when I when I guess it’s Yeah, because it’s like something’s got to move. So Okay, explain this part. So the other interesting thing that I found with EMDR is the above the availability of my brain to sort of reveal what may not be working for it anymore. And and about two years ago, I had Bruce Lipton on my podcast. And we were talking about subconscious patterning. And he got into like, when you go to sleep, you have to remember your brain goes into this theta wave state as you’re going to sleep. And it’s a great time to listen to affirmations. Because you can reprogram your brain when you go to sleep and when you come out asleep. And I really took that to heart and I am I protect that time of the like the going to sleep in the coming out asleep is like I really careful about what I think and how I want to what thoughts I want to ruminate on with with EMDR with the tappers, you and I have done where I stick them under my legs and like then just shit comes out of my brain. And I’m like, where did that come from? How did that and I’ve even said you I’m like, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It’s like true serum. Like all of a sudden, just like I’m just we’re gonna go down this path. Okay, explain to me what that is and why that happened.

 

Kambria Evans  

Oh, so from from watching my EMDR clients from doing my own EMDR something about the bilateral stimulation with the tappers. I feel like that accelerates linkages in the brain, I feel like it is the fuel for the time traveler for the scientists, right for the parent like it gives it gives the fuel to the linkages. Right. And so I think that people will often say like, I don’t know why my brain is linking to this right now, this isn’t this isn’t connected to this. But how do we know? How do we know in this moment? Right that I’ve landed on that it’s unrelated because maybe the body sensation is linked? Maybe the negative belief or positive belief is linked? Maybe the smell is the same? It doesn’t matter, right? I mean, it really, it’s, it’s interesting, I I finished my own EMDR targets. And I’m like, What the hell just happened? Like, where did we just go and like, you know, I want to make sense of it. I want to understand it. And, you know, sometimes there’ll even be things we land on that don’t have that they’re pre verbal, they don’t have a clear narrative or clear memory. It could just be a body sensation. Right? But but we can always trust our bodies to link it’s amazing.

 

Dr. Mindy  

So So is that how memories are always linked to other memories like, like, you can’t you can’t just have a memory and isolation has to be linked to something else like your brain Rain has to make sense of it. Like even, you know, we can use this moment for me like I’m here in Sausalito, looking out at a beautiful view. Is my brain linking to other times I’ve been in situations like this and like forming a network of memories together?

 

Kambria Evans  

Yeah, it is, it is. And I will just say a caveat, which is that sometimes our brain chooses to not cluster memories together and chooses to take something and put it somewhere else. So that it we are protected from it. Right. So oftentimes, people will do EMDR. And they’ll link to something that they forgotten about. On purpose, like a part of them decided this is gonna go over here, right? And we’ll kind of get this part like re integrated with us in different ways that feels safe to us. So if everything’s integrated, we have a sense of self, our brains linking linking linking, where people can sometimes get stuck with EMDR, as when something has been intentionally subconsciously protected from them. Where does

 

Dr. Mindy  

it where does the brain put? So now I have a question for my book right now, because I’m deep in studying all the different parts of the brain. Where’s the brain put that where does the most traumatic things go? Well, part of the brain I

 

Kambria Evans  

don’t know, where the brain puts parts of self that are not integrated. I don’t know that we’ve found a way like where that is mapped, because that’s, that’s really a spectrum, right? I mean, there’s people that have di D, yeah, multiple personalities, and they really have fragmented sense of self. And then there’s people who just kind of like, forget things, because it’s too hard to integrate. Right? Yeah.

 

Dr. Mindy  

So okay, so let’s, let’s put it in context of the menopausal brain because I’m mildly fast, fascinated with the menopause of right, not just because I have one. But but because I watched so many women suffer through this. And so here’s, here’s the way that my understanding of this is right now. The amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex are often working, I would call it against each other, I am sure you have a reframe for me on that one. But this is the way I would say it is like the amygdala wants to keep me safe. And so the amygdala is constantly scanning my environment for safety. And when something comes into my environment, that I don’t feel safe with it, it makes highlights that it makes it a priority to your alarm system. It’s my alarm system. Okay. So the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that’s like, Hey, we should do this, this, this and this, there’s so many that I call it the place of hope and possibility, like, hey, we could go do this, I could be that I could do that, like life is very possible. But the to always feel like they’re working. Like the amygdala is like, you know, like the the parent that’s like, Hey, chill out. It’s not that great. And the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex is like the part of the brain that’s like, no, it could be great, it could be really, really good. And like the two of them are constantly going at each other. And from a hormonal standpoint, there are estrogen and progesterone receptors in both parts of those of the brain. And actually the amygdala has more receptors for GABA, which progesterone is is a is a precursor for GABA. And I think that’s to calm the brain down. But then once we go into menopause, we don’t have access to GABA, do you see where I’m going with this, and the amygdala wins. And then we end up walking around looking at everything that we need to control, everything could potentially go wrong. We are, you know, mothering teenage children, which will get your amygdala flight fine. There are so many things that allow that that whole limbic system just to come to the surface. Yeah. So my question to you is, am I right? Like, is that how it works? And then be like, what can you do to integrate those two parts of the brain? Because it’s like a battle sometimes in my brain between for real estate of am I going to choose hope and possibility? Or am I going to be fearful of this moment and really think through and not go into action for fear that the amygdala is right, and something bad could happen to me?

 

Kambria Evans  

This is such a good question. So what I’ll say is that when we have gotten disturbing curriculum, we can call it traumatic, right, that’s disturbing to us now. We have basically had our alarm system customized. Probably not by choice, right? Yeah. So we have a customized alarm system that’s going to try to help us stay safe from whatever that thing or things we’re going forward. Right. I think what’s so confusing, especially for women is that when our hormones are changing, right Now, our alarm system is going off. But there might not be a trauma history, there might not be old curriculum that needs to be modified and to be curious about. And so I think what’s so important that and why I’m such a champion of what you’re doing is that you are giving women a narrative about what’s happening with their bodies now that they can incorporate in real time to understand, right, I might be feeling like my alarm systems going off at two o’clock in the morning, as I’m sweating. And I know I’m safe, because I have a way to understand my body sensations.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, so let’s talk about that second thing, how what gives you the safety, then is that, like at two in the morning, the You’re sweating? You’re You’re ruminating, you don’t feel safe. Is that then understanding? Okay, well, could you add? Like, let’s give some people some if you don’t have an EMDR, specialist near yo, could you start doing the shoulder tapping? And could you ask yourself like, okay, it’s clear, I don’t feel safe right now. I don’t seem to have enough gap GABA? Well, that makes sense. Because I don’t have I don’t have as this is literally via two in the morning. I don’t have enough progesterone to help me with GABA. So I don’t have to believe this thought that I’m not safe. But it’s two in the morning. What the hell do I do with that thought?

 

Kambria Evans  

So So I think what you just created in real time is a resource for people. I mean, wouldn’t it be amazing if they could listen to you give them a calming narrative about what’s happening with their body hormonally, while they tapped it in, in real time to understand, I am safe, this is what’s happening to my body, I understand myself by body doesn’t feel good right now. And it’s hot, and my heart is racing. And I have a cadence that at at, at, at, at, at AT AT AT, it doesn’t feel good. But it’s I can have the understanding that I am safe now. And I can hear my nice voice tapping that in, right because I’m going through perimenopause or menopause. Right, then that takes away the intensity of the alarm system.

 

Dr. Mindy  

The tapping does and the and the naming it the acknowledged narrative,

 

Kambria Evans  

the narrative. I mean, I mean, think about how many people I mean, I’ll just say this, I mean, just the ladies on my street, we’ll have it together, you know, once a month, and it’s like, I’ve heard them tell me so many times that I I’ve lost join what I’m doing, I’m having hot flashes, I’m anxious all the time. And they, you know, talk to me as the kind of the neighborhood therapist, like, should I be it? Do I have trauma? Like what the hell is going on with me? And sometimes that’s, that’s the case. And sometimes it’s not, and just them being able to understand what’s happening to their own body, because no one taught them that like growing up, they didn’t get a curriculum around. This is what’s going to happen to you. Yeah, you know, later in life. So it feels like a shock. It does feel traumatizing, because there’s no framework to put it into. Yeah.

 

Dr. Mindy  

So just Biden, labeling it naming it understanding that the healing has already happened in that moment. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s not that’s what’s not happening for menopausal women right now. Because we’re being shamed or being medicated. We’re like the, you know, you and I’ve talked about this, like, the debate is around HRT, BHRT. No, yes. Like, there’s so much to think about just to navigate your hormones dropping, it’s gotten ridiculous now. And so but what I IX have experienced, and I call it the neuro chemical armor, that when we’re younger, because all these receptor sites are being stimulated by these hormones, we actually have more neuro chemical resources to handle the traumas, or maybe even to hide the traumas. And so but once that goes away, and you run this past ladies on the street, once that goes away, the next month, it’s like you’re standing on the street, totally naked.

 

Kambria Evans  

Yes.

 

Dr. Mindy  

And you’re like, I’m, like, I’m not well, there’s Yeah, something’s not well. And, and that, if you’re listening to this, and that you I again, please know, I’m, I’m highlighting this. I’m writing about this. I’m educating people on this because I am you. It is part of the menopausal experience that is not being highlighted enough.

 

Kambria Evans  

And as a trauma therapist, I thank you for that. Because what is traumatizing to anybody is that they’re having a very real experience, and no one is reflecting back to them. What’s happening to them? Right? And so I think that I mean, I’ve seen this too with women and like, I’m having this experience in my body and in my emotions, but I’m gaslighting myself that I’m not or that I should be, who I was or how I felt. Before this, like just just the gas lighting around this is really toxic for people. And I do think that that is toxic that is abusive, I think. So I think for you to be able to clearly name for people what’s happening to their bodies, right, is creating an experience for them where they can experience their own body and in an unnatural state, you know, as, as we age, where it doesn’t have to be so traumatic, right? We don’t have to gaslight ourselves, we don’t have to be shocked this is happening, or confused about why it’s happening, we can talk about it.

 

Dr. Mindy  

And then we have a healthcare system that has this patriarchal approach to it. And so we give our power away to it when we step in there, and then we are gaslighted once again, and there and that, that that’s another whole issue. So let’s speak to that 48 year old woman, and who is exposed who’s resonating to the with this is their eye. Let’s go back to some of the things she can do to self soothe herself. Like can she do the bilateral tapping? Or is that? Like, is that dangerous? You always say when I love those tappers, you’re like just don’t process anything big with that. Which I don’t really know what that means. I should probably tell you that right? Like, huh, huh? Okay. Oh, no, it’s too big. What out what often said I’m a hot mess, and I ended up in your office. But what how? What tools can we give her if she’s feeling emotionally naked, very vulnerable. The traumas are coming to the surface. That’s the woman I want to help because that’s the woman as you I’ve shared with you. That’s the woman that’s killing herself. That’s the woman who’s leaving her marriage because she doesn’t understand what is happening to her in this neurochemical moment. How do we help her?

 

Kambria Evans  

Yes. So naming it right. Just Just the fact that you’re giving education to people about this is what it feels like, this is what’s happening to you for you. And you’re not alone. That in itself, right is decreasing the traumatic experience, because then they don’t have the negative beliefs of something’s wrong with me. I’m alone, right? They don’t have this feeling of like, permanence around like, you know, disorientation and shock. And then I would say that, yes, I mean, whether you’re doing EMDR, or talk therapy, I don’t think anyone should be with traumatic material by themselves, ideally, right. And so I don’t want people to do EMDR traumatic processing. By themselves. There is a ton of research that shows that we can do resourcing on our own all day, every day. And I would encourage people to identify kind of do an inventory of what does light me up? Right? What are my positive triggers? Right, what expands me and we always talk about triggers and like this negatively triggered and this is what’s triggering me, but but we’re triggered into the positive, right? If you maybe you walk into the house and someone’s cooking lasagna, and it’s like, Whoa, my whole body is. So noticing what your positive triggers are. And then expanding those with butterfly hugs and taps, right is a really quick way to regulate yourself.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, so let me just make sure I don’t want anybody to fall asleep to what you just said. So hopefully, you’re not falling asleep. But so you could have you can be in the middle of a positive memory and go, Okay, this feels so good. I want to integrate this into my system. Yes, actually. And you can do the tapping. And those of you that can’t see what we’re doing this interview will be on the recenter podcast, YouTube, you can go watch it there. But you can just you’re just doing that bilateral tapping to the butterfly, like the butterfly tap, to get it ingrained into your into your brain. In a positive, your basic,

 

Kambria Evans  

you’re basically doing the same target the four variables of memory, but what if on the positive, so like, let’s say that I am at the beach with my twins, and we’re having a total blast, right? I literally do this, I might stop. Notice I’m having an absolute blast, right? I have this picture of them in the water. And that’s the target positive image. What’s the positive belief? Right? You know, I am safe or all as well or I’m a good mom, whatever it is, what’s my emotion? I’m elated. I can feel in my chest is expansive, right? I have like, strengthened my arms. And I just noticed those four things. And I tap that in, it’s happening in real time, because then I can pull it up later if they wake up in the middle of night and I’m full of anxiety.

 

Dr. Mindy  

So if you wake up at two in the morning, and you just two weeks prior, maybe even two months, maybe even two years prior, you had this amazing moment at the beach with your kids. You can anchor yourself back to it. The tapping is the physical way to stimulate the body to help the brain remember, hey, remember when we had this meme this going on?

 

Kambria Evans  

Yeah, you just need like a little piece of string that you can pull into this like Wellness Portal, right? So maybe I pull up that image of my kids on the beach. And maybe I say that belief, right? I’m a good mom. And then I just start tapping and then my body because everything’s linking, my body starts to feel that expansive chest, those strong arms, that feeling of safety.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Amazing. Okay, so let me say, yeah, like, now I have 20 more questions on that. So let’s say you’re in the middle of what you could could potentially be a traumatic moment, you’re having a situation and you’re like, Okay, this is not where and again, this is where for the menopausal woman, the neurochemical armor is not there. So we’re eating, we’re easy to agitate. And, and so when those you see it being a potential further, you know, trauma that could could stay in you for a while. Can you? Is there like a pattern interrupt you can do in that moment? Could you walk out of that situation? And then go do something different? Like, how do you make sure that situation doesn’t get integrated into the brain? And now you’re gonna have to go do more EMDR?

 

Kambria Evans  

So, I love this question, because what you’re asking is kind of like the pinnacle. Kind of more advanced levels of EMDR work, which is, how do I actually get to choose in real time? What curriculum I’m integrating? Yes, yes. Like, I am the master of my life. I am choosing the curriculum. When something’s happening to me that feels negative. How can I as close as I can to that moment that it’s happening? Choose how to store this?

 

Dr. Mindy  

Yes. Yeah, I can.

 

Kambria Evans  

I do this with my kids all the time, if I can catch it. Right, because anything under five, we’re gonna store as like, I am bad. I’m not enough, right, all these concepts of self. And so we have multiple pairs of buzzers that are

 

Dr. Mindy  

oh my god, I love

 

Kambria Evans  

Yeah, and people can buy tappers. I mean, they’re not expensive, they can buy that the buzzers right? Even just having them on kind of feels like a rocking sensation and regulates you. But if you notice something upsetting as is happening, and let’s say you want to kind of go back to the beach, right? Let’s say I’m something bad’s happening for me. And I’m upset. Let’s say I get a disturbing phone call or I get in a fender bender on the way home, I might stop. And I might bring that resource in, right just to kind of desensitize what’s happening now. And then if I have the resources to be able to say to myself, that fender bender happened, it’s okay. Right? I’m safe. Now. That positive belief of I can figure things out because it’s really the kind of the, the medicine for a lot of women’s default, which is like, oh, I should have that that dot right. taking on so much responsibility

 

Dr. Mindy  

turn on ourselves, we turn on ourselves so much. It’s it’s, I don’t know if he’s from your clinical experience, if you think women turn on themselves more than men, but

 

Kambria Evans  

we’re trained to do that from the beginning. Yeah. Yeah, we’re trained. We are given that curriculum from the beginning.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah. So so true. So Okay. In that other example, when I, if I had something negative happened to me, and I want to tap it out, what do I need to think of when I’m actually doing the bilateral shoulder? Would you call it shoulder tap?

 

Kambria Evans  

The butterfly attack? Yeah, yeah, the butterfly. But do

 

Dr. Mindy  

I have to think about anything? Or do I just can I just be like, Okay, close my eyes and just be like, Okay, that was really hard. Like, that was really, that was an issue that was something like, let me think of something else like, or do you just kind of let the the emotion of that moment process through you?

 

Kambria Evans  

So there’s like a three pronged answer to your question. So the first thing we can do when we’re having a net negative experience is to call it a positive resource, right? Maybe it’s maybe it’s my kids at the beach with me. Okay. The other thing we can do, right is just to tap. Because just doing this gives our body so much regulation and comfort. It’s also feels like a hug. It feels really good. It does. It feels really good. Yes, yeah. And so we can we can regulate with tapping, right, we can call in a positive memory that we’ve already installed. Or we can call in like a figure, right? I mean, just just the words, you said like everything’s okay. I mean, we might call that a nurturing parent figure coming in, to talk you through the disturbance, right. And so a lot of my people that I work with, they’ll identify figures that are real like grandmother’s or teachers from elementary school that they kind of call in to comfort them when they need that nurturing and protection. Some people because the brain doesn’t care if something’s real or imaginary, it has the same response. We’ll call in imaginary TV characters, right? Or people from movies or people from books to come in and sue them. Yeah,

 

Dr. Mindy  

that’s, that’s a really so so just somebody that gives you that sort of warm, fuzzy, you feel safe, and then you tap it out and it and it’s, it takes it neutralizes that traumatic situation that you may have just been under. And again, my more my brain then goes and then is it erased from your brain? Like, does that mean it’s gone from your brain? Or is it just lessens its intensity?

 

Kambria Evans  

It’s stored in your brain in a more ideal way than it could have been? Had you not resourced yourself? Got it?

 

Dr. Mindy  

Okay. And do you? Do you think that the brain is obsessed with fixing problems?

 

Kambria Evans  

Oh, I think the brain and the body want to heal itself all the time. And I think we can see that physically, right. I mean, one of my kids get a boo boo, and I’m like, look at how your body wants to heal itself, look at your body’s healing. I want people to understand that that your body wants that on the inside too. And so when we do EMDR, what I’ve noticed is the brain doesn’t typically go to negative material, or kind of maladaptive material that goes towards adaptive material. Right? So in EMDR, we had this adaptive information processing system that believes and we can see this, your brain is always trying to link towards helping, healing, fixing. Right, right. It’s always trying to help you.

 

Dr. Mindy  

So So one of the things that I find really interesting about my brain, and I’m thinking it’s not unique to my brain, I’m thinking that it is that’s why I asked that question is that it does like to obsess on challenges, I’m not gonna call them problems. And sometimes it’s like, it just wants to figure out like, I’m just gonna really be transparent. Like last night, we’re sitting here in Sausalito. There’s like this beautiful fog coming in. And all of a sudden, this thought hits in my head. Do we control our own reality? Like, do we like I was thinking about the waving fog? And I was like, do we control like, what if everything in life was like predetermined? Like, do I believe like, the kind of Destiny idea? And so now for like, two hours, my brains like do I think but what do I think a destiny? Do? I think I have any control? Do I have any control. And it was like a dog on a bone, I could not stop thinking about if I had control or not. Or if my life was The Truman Show or not. Or if it was, it was like it, all it wanted to do is chew on that. And then, and I think in working with the patients that I’ve worked with, when they’re in pain, and when they’re in a chronic health crisis, the brain becomes like a record that gets can get start skipping. Or if you we start playing the same song over and over and over and over again. Is that a natural state of the brain? Or is it healthy? Like I gave you a positive example of my brain, but as you know, there’s plenty of negative ones that have shown up for me as well. And I think I’m not I call myself out because I don’t think I’m unique in this. I think that a lot of people grab on to one thing, and they just a thought, and they just keep playing it and playing it and playing it and playing it and playing it. And they can’t put it down.

 

Kambria Evans  

Yes, I think our brains are designed to be curious. And something that I appreciate about you is that you have a passion for understanding yourself and understanding others. And you have a an you have a fire to help people see themselves. Right. And so it makes sense to me that your brain would want to play with that. Now, I think I think to answer your question, is this healthy? Is this normal? Whatever I asked is, like, what’s the what’s the fuel? What’s the emotion of it? Because if it’s like, oh, this is interesting, and I’m curious, and this is like I’m playing with Plato, and this is creative, right? Then we might say that’s healthy and interesting to you, right? But there are some people who can kind of ruminate and get stuck on something. And that that they kind of had this observer part that’s like, Oh, this feels bad. I can’t unstick myself from this. This feels, you know, like a darker kind of emotion or like, anxiety feeling. Right?

 

Dr. Mindy  

Okay. So we’re back at hormones again. So when you want how

 

Kambria Evans  

could we leave everything? How could we leave hormones? Powerful

 

Dr. Mindy  

they are they control like, they control this whole thing in our head. Which is why I’m like, Okay, hello. Is anybody pointing out what what do we do when they’re gone? Those of us that are left around to like deal with this, this this control center totally changing and now our brain is like wide open. But But here’s here’s one of the things that I think the amygdala does because this is my theory on this is that it wants to keep you safe. And when it doesn’t have GABA because it doesn’t have progesterone. It it gets OCD. and it is constantly constantly it’s like, okay, yeah, I know you, you think you’re safe over there, but let me tell you, You’re not safe here, and you’re not safe there and you’re not safe there. And it constantly is yakking at me, trying to tell me what I need to fix. And, and that I think I don’t think I’m unusual to that. So, I mean, maybe, but you correct me if I’m wrong. But I think a lot of women, we’re fixers, we’re, we’re, we were worried about our kids, we worry about our jobs. We’re constantly worrying, worrying, worrying, which is why you always hear that put your own oxygen mask on first. But then we go into menopause. And now we’re OCD about our worries. And we don’t have the neurochemical armor to be able to help ourselves. So how do we stop those looping thoughts? That’s what I what I’m getting at. I just gave you a positive example of it.

 

Kambria Evans  

Yeah. I think if we want to unstick ourselves from a thought, right, the first thing to do is move your body, right, I get up do any, do any working memory task, right? Whether it’s tapping or moving, change the temperature of where you are, go outside and get air right, like change, change what your brain is linking to, to see if you can kind of shake up the linkages. In therapy, we talk about OCD, kind of like a sprinkler brain, like a sprinkler to kind of get stuck in the same place and it can’t get unstuck. Right. Now, some people have created an adaptation, and a younger age, where if something’s wrong, and I’m not safe, I will fix it. Right. And so sometimes we will reach for these adaptations or these strategies, if we don’t feel good, right? It could be I’m going to drink I mean, we saw this during COVID, like, I’m going to drink a lot, I’m going to eat a lot, I’m going to shop a lot, I’m going to you know, how, what is what is the adaptation to soothe myself, right. And so when you’re describing women going through this hormonal change, and they don’t have these resources available to them in terms of the hormonal chemistry they had before, I would say change up the environment and change up your body in terms of movement as soon as possible.

 

Dr. Mindy  

And it’ll it breaks. It’s like, it breaks the the looping thought it’s like a pattern and

 

Kambria Evans  

it’s gonna link to something different. I mean, it has to write

 

Dr. Mindy  

the fabric go find a different thing to to your brains,

 

Kambria Evans  

like always looking to link to something. I mean, that’s what it’s, that’s what it’s doing for you, right. So change what’s available for it to link to even even just going in water, I think can be a complete reset for people in terms of linking. Yeah, and soothing and resourcing

 

Dr. Mindy  

that the I feel like we’re in therapy now. You just gave me

 

Kambria Evans  

I just got asking some

 

Dr. Mindy  

good, I got a huge jaw. That was okay, go ahead. What is it?

 

Kambria Evans  

Well, you’re you’re asking some really important questions. And I’m not going to pretend I have all the answers, you know, in terms of like, what do we tell someone that is, you know, stuck on something because they’re home. I mean, this is why as a therapist, I say to people, we will work on things happening in your nervous system and in your mind. And also you need to go work with your medical team to get your blood work and get although because we needed to see what the sources are. Right. And kind of our differential diagnosis list here. Yeah, right. Yeah,

 

Dr. Mindy  

we needed to I mean, that team approach in general, like, the fact that we do help in a silo is part of the suffering for menopausal women like it, you know, I always think that whenever I give a big speech, I always tell the audience like I’m you see one person up here, but if you could see the lens in which I have been able to see millions of women cry out through, you would realize a you’re not alone. And and be that your strat were stronger if we come together and talk about these things, because I just think we’re not it’s not it’s not being highlighted enough. So, again, why I hope that people listening to this are connecting dots for themselves. One one thought I want to, I want to make sure I don’t walk away from because this is a thought you taught me you actually you’ve taught me a lot. I think hopefully you know that. But that concept of adaptation. So I’m gonna use myself as as an example. I have adapted in many ways, because of how my sister showed up in my life and the relationship with her. And it, it created for me some really positive traits, and maybe some not so positive traits. So how do we know what might be A personality trait that was actually formulated because of an a way to, from a loved one or a situation because what I didn’t even realize and all the work I’ve done on my own self, I never realized that I am showing up today at 53, with adaptations that my 16 year old self decided I needed to be different, and may no longer actually serve me until you actually brought that word. Oh, that’s an adaptation to my brain. Can you talk a little bit about that?

 

Kambria Evans  

This is this is, I think, one of the more powerful pieces of how we have kind of mapped the brain with EMDR. And, you know, I get I get concerned when therapists talk and focus a lot about trauma therapy, because it’s not so much of like the event of what happened. It’s what did I decide from this experience about myself and others? What are the rules, and then the adaptation that we create from that, right? So let’s say that I grew up with a dad who’s always always yelling at me, right? And I decide, I am bad. And then I create an adaptation to be perfect. Right, so that I stay safe, and I stay connected to my caregiver, right. So that adaptation serves me at that time. And also, I created that adaptation when I was four, right? And I’m taking it through every decade of my life and to every relationship over develop,

 

Dr. Mindy  

to have good adaptation. I’ve mastered many of those. Yes.

 

Kambria Evans  

And so and so what’s so powerful, I think, for us is to understand that once we understand what our adaptations are, and by the way, every one has that, like no one is immune from having them. Once we understand that we can create our adaptations, and that we can modify the ones we created at age four, and seven, and 12 and 16, then we start to feel the real power, I think of how our mind links and maps to thing, right? Yeah, how do we really feel like the master of our own curriculum?

 

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, I know, I love this word curriculum. I actually am like, Okay, I’m gonna write my own curriculum. How do I write my own mental curriculum? Has anybody ever there’s a tool, you need to write that? How do you? How do you? If I’m writing enough, you need to write that one? How do we how do we, how do we create our own our own curriculum?

 

Kambria Evans  

So and I will say I use this language because I have an education background. And so I actually appreciated about you that you can take the different silos of your experience, right? Medically, and combine them use them together. And so I use a lot of educational terminology when it comes to therapy, because that’s how I understand how people learn. Right? We’re just learning all the time, we kind of assign like, positive, negative neutral. But I think, you know, just as an EMDR client, myself, I noticed that when my brain starts to link things together, right, from younger experiences, and my adult self as the observer, collecting this data, re parenting these parts, that’s the integration. That’s the new curriculum forming, right? Where we land on that positive belief. And that’s what I think is, is so disorienting for people after they finish their EMDR targets, because there’s this kind of like, okay, that that feels neutral now, and and now this feels true. And there is this snow globe analogy I use where it’s like, we take a snow globe, we shake it up, when we do EMDR. We’re rewiring associations, narratives, and then it takes some time for it to settle in as real as the new curriculum as the new narrative that we’re in. It’s just, it’s just so cool to be able to see.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, I’ve been I would say disorienting is a little bit of some of the experiences I’ve just had, as I’ve dove into all the what we’re talking about, and a little bit of like, well, what’s going on, but then, as things settle more, I love the snowglobe analogy, because as things settle more, you start to see it’s like, like, I mean, the the word I use is it’s like you’re in a different reality.

 

Kambria Evans  

You are, you are, you are

 

Dr. Mindy  

in a different reality, which is weird because then you go if I ever get stuck again, I just need to change that. I just need to go back through and change that reality because all like pain and suffering can stem from just an altered reality.

 

Kambria Evans  

And having choices to write I mean, because I think that our mind is powerful. We can rewrite what has happened to us we can in terms of who we are our goodness SAR badness, right? And what I think is cool with EMDR is that people are in really toxic abusive work situations or relationships, and they get clarity and congruence about what’s actually happening. Right? And then they’re like, I’m out of here, I have choices, right? So, so there’s actually so there’s actual changes, and then there’s internal changes as well. And those things, you know, go together. But I want women listening to this to feel like they are powerful. Yeah, I want them to be able to understand themselves in their bodies. That’s really important. Yeah. And I want them to know that EMDR is not just for trauma therapy, it’s just like, for anything you’ve learned. That’s incongruent. Right? Right, you can create that congruence and clarity for yourself. And if hormones are kind of coming in and creating different body sensations, right, that they know that they can turn your podcast on, and listen to you explain to them what’s happening, and have a narrative so that they don’t have to create all these crazy adaptations, or they don’t have to go back to adaptations from childhood. Right.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly that’s where you are hearts unite. I absolutely agree with that is like helping just bring what what hasn’t been talked about enough to the surface. So I think is really important. So thank you for that. What last couple of thoughts what you’ve mentioned a couple of times, when I finished my targets, are you are you ever finished with an EMDR?

 

Kambria Evans  

Oh, so this is this is what trips me up so. So I’ve worked with EMDR on you know, more kind of complex trauma, single incident trauma, relational trauma, I’ve worked on it to just get congruent about the gaslighting that society gives me around who I can be as a mom, as a woman, my relationship with my power, my enoughness, right. I mean, EMDR has helped me with all of those things. Are you ever done with a target? Yes, you can complete a target memory and target image. Absolutely. Are you ever done with EMDR? I think what happens is that people try it. And they’re like, Oh, my God more, please have this. And then they want to do more targets and more integration. Oh, yeah. Because it’s just like so amazing.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Talk about relabeling, you know, what happens to me now is like, if I get stuck on it, what a negative thought. I’m like, Oh, I don’t want to think that anymore. Hmm. You know, and I mean, and then I, you know, I’m blessed to have you to come to, but it also allows me, it’s empowering to go, I don’t have to own that thought anymore. I may not be able to unstick it on this particular day. But I’m aware that it’s a thought that no longer serves me. And there’s a there’s a strategy to that I can use, whether it’s it’s the butterfly, tapping or coming to see you or are going to see, you know, for people listening, going to an EMDR specialist, just the hope of knowing that there’s something I can do so I can just stop thinking that damn thought. Yep. That alone is is incredible. And I honestly feel like that alone will save lives. Because when we go into and you’ve talked about this with suicide, like when we go into these thoughts, like I can’t live in my brain anymore, which is a thought that a lot of women in menopause go through because we don’t have the neurochemical armor, I, myself included, have gone into this place of I can’t live in this brain anymore. And she she has to stop talking to me the way she’s talking to me. Yes, to know that I have a resource to unwind that thinking that’s pretty damn quick hack that alone could save so many lives, don’t you think?

 

Kambria Evans  

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because there’s nothing worse than feeling like, I can’t tolerate this darkness anymore. And and then to think, and there’s nothing I can do about it, I can do. So I’m out just the permanence of that, right. And when I have people say to me, I don’t want to live anymore. What they usually mean is I don’t want to live like this anymore, right? Because this is unbearable. And talking about alarm systems. There is actually a value that we have in our body to not just go off with anxiety as an alarm with safety, but there’s also an alarm system within us to say, Ah, this is this is misery like there’s that’s a different kind of an alarm. Right. And so I think that, you know, it is comforting for me to as a client of EMDR to know that if I have a Crazy nightmare, or I kind of feel like I’m in a dark place. I know that I can figure that out like this belief of I can figure things out, I have choices, this generalizes as we do EMDR to lots of different areas.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Could you even in that moment, say, I’m just linking to some memories that are not working for me right now? It just is it I just need to unlink my brain is linking to stuff that’s no longer serving me. Would that be an accurate? Like statement? If you needed a quick statement to yourself?

 

Kambria Evans  

Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes in the present, our brain goes back to the past prong of time, and links things right into a dark place. Sometimes we’re just in a dark place in life. I mean, sometimes that’s just the experience we’re having. And sometimes there is no linking to the past. Right? Maybe there is no adaptation from the past that feels like it’s working anymore. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

 

Dr. Mindy  

So how do we help people find an EMDR? Specialist? I know that that you train practitioners? What do we what would we be looking for? Is there anything in particular that you need to look for if you’re gonna go find this type of therapy?

 

Kambria Evans  

Hmm. So most search directories allow you to search by EMDR, for an EMDR therapist, and I would invite your listeners to ask the EMDR therapist some key questions because I would want them to interview this person, right to make sure that it’s a good fit. You know, most EMDR clinicians are basic trained, it’s great if they’re certified. I’m a consultant, which is the kind of higher more advanced level of training. And just to get a sense of how many EMDR sessions have you done?

 

Dr. Mindy  

Right, when you ask them like find out house? Yeah, I didn’t ask you that. How many of you?

 

Kambria Evans  

Over 10,000, it’s all a winner, winner chicken dinner. But no, asking somebody? How many have you done because some people get trained and never use it? Right? asking somebody, you know, when we choose what to process, right? How are we going to do like the first and worst memories? Or can we kind of ease into ease into this? I want you to ask them about resourcing, making sure that they know how to resource you with kind of installing, again, the protective or nurturing figures, using those positive memories and expanding them before we start to go do really intense trauma work? Let’s make sure so, so kind of some safety questions, just to get a sense of how that person works. are important. Yeah. And

 

Dr. Mindy  

is there a directory of EMDR? Like, because I know, we have listeners all over the world? So

 

Kambria Evans  

yeah, yeah. So So emdria is the kind of, you know, global association that, you know, Francine Shapiro was connected with. And, you know, there’s other search directories for therapists, and you can search and see, you know, EMDR, and there’s lots of different training programs that are teaching EMDR that are not emdria. And so And there’s lots of kinds of EMDR, EMDR informed modalities, like brain spotting, and art that, you know, have the same result. So I would say that if you can’t find an EMDR therapist, things like, you know, brain spotting and art are great alternatives as well. Okay,

 

Dr. Mindy  

awesome. And we’ll put links in there just so people for everything that you just said, so I, you know, I, I think you know this about me, but like, I never want to present a problem without a solution. And I never want to give a solution that’s untouchable to people. This is probably why I love fasting so much is because everybody can do it. So I will leave the links. And then maybe if you even have, I don’t know you have a podcast. And if you have any other information showing the different ways people can tap, I’d love to link that in here too. So people have resources. So that’d be Yeah,

 

Kambria Evans  

I’m happy to I’m happy to create those resources. And yeah, on my podcast, zero disturbance. We talked about EMDR all the time. And I had been speaking to clinicians, but now I’m trying to open up the conversation to other people as well, so that the general public can understand what it is and utilize it. Yeah,

 

Dr. Mindy  

please do that. Because I, I you know, as you and I have talked, I sit on the side of seeing so much suffering, and how do we help? How do we help so many people? So, I mean, this is one of the reasons I extended outside my clinic because I felt like it doesn’t make sense that I would I had this knowledge and this ability to help people and I was staying within my clinic walls, like something hit me like Why wouldn’t I take this to the world and I think fasting just became that, that that thing that I could amplify and I could really bring to the masses to be able to let them heal themselves. So I’m an avid a tasked you with the same thing like you know What is it that we can do to highlight EMDR? What can we do to help the person that might not have the financial resources to do it? Like, how do we have it, we have to stop making health, both mental and physical. Only for people who have financial resources, we have to find a way to be able to help people who don’t have those financial resources. So

 

Kambria Evans  

absolutely,

 

Dr. Mindy  

create a way whatever you can create, I’ll keep sharing it. So figure

 

Kambria Evans  

it out together. And I appreciate how you are really just innovating and leading this charge to keep integrating what we know from different areas of health. Because we talked about this before, these things aren’t separate. They shouldn’t be siloed. No, right. I mean, these are all connected, we can’t look at one part and not the rest. So I appreciate you having comprehensive conversations about this for people to listen to.

 

Dr. Mindy  

It’s the only way my my brain likes to go. Okay, I have to we have to finish on this question. This is I asked everybody a couple of questions every season. So this is my fourth season of the reseller podcast. And I really wanted to emphasize self love, because I felt like we just weren’t highlighting self love enough. So do you have a daily self love practice? And if so, what is it? And what do you think your superpower is that you bring to the world? Because to me, part of self love is owning your superpower. And so what do you think your superpower is that you bring to the world?

 

Kambria Evans  

I love his questions. I think my daily, I know my daily self care, self love practice, is choosing to trust myself. Because we talked earlier, I think as women, there’s so many invitations for us to not trust ourselves and to disconnect from ourselves. And so it’s really important for me, for myself into model to my kids and my clients to like, the default is I trust myself. Right. So I try to practice that. And then in terms of a superpower, I mean, I think it’s I think it’s the last couple years during the pandemic, it was kind of developed more than ever, which was being able to notice that I can create positive adaptive material, if I can just slow down and catch it. Right. And so if I’m having an experience, where my body feels safe and calm or happy, or if I’m having a positive belief, I do this a lot at concerts because the music you can feel in your body. I will I will be the crazy person just installing with butterfly towel. That’s

 

Dr. Mindy  

a great idea. Yeah, yeah.

 

Kambria Evans  

Because I know that’s adaptive material for me to use later when things feel hard.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Oh my gosh, I’m always learning from you. That was amazing. Your others your other superpower is you’re clear, you’re clear and certain communicator. Thank you. Like you come in, you don’t mince words, and I don’t I mean, I get I get like in your profession, you can’t. But you’re very clear. And how you you and thoughtful and how you say your words. And it makes it easy to hook on to and understand. And I think that’s yeah, I think that’s a big thing that we struggle with in just the health care system is that we make things too evasive. And in order for people to jump on and be able to heal, there has to be clarity, there has to be a clear path. And then and then once we’re on the path, we can bring in more pieces. And you’re really good at that. So I appreciate that.

 

Kambria Evans  

Thank you. I appreciate that I was I was the kid that was excited to like go teach the other kids long division. Because that because the feeling I got from getting it and learning it was the best feeling ever. And I want everyone to feel like they can access information to understand themselves. So I appreciate that.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah. Well, this was a joy. And again, I have to remind myself, we’re not in therapy. But just Yeah, I just really appreciate you. I really, yeah, for so many reasons. You just you’re present. You’re clear, you’re loving, you’re smart. And it really shows up. And I’m sure people are hearing this as well. And thank you for now joining me on trying to serve the masses because women need this. So appreciate you. Thank you. Oh,

 

Kambria Evans  

thank you. I feel the same about you. I think that what you’re doing for women is so huge. It’s so necessary. And I know it takes a lot of energy and a lot of thoughtfulness to do all of this. And so I just thank you for being you.

 

Dr. Mindy  

Thank you so much for joining me in today’s episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we’d love to know about Got it so please leave us a review share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is