48: Dr. Deborah Sandella, founder of RIM Institute, is on a Mission to Transform How We See Emotions
“The answer for all of our problems are in the same place as where the problem originates.” –Deborah Sandella
Humans are great at hiding what they really feel. Unknowingly, by restricting their emotions, they’re actually building a painful future. If you’re already in it, Dr. Deborah Sandella knows a way out. Dr. Sandella has received outstanding awards and has appeared on numerous shows for her works as a Psychotherapist, Professor and Author. Currently, she is on a mission to transform how we see emotions as the founder of RIM Institute.
Apparently, as the words above imply, all shudder-inducing experiences that everyone’s been running from holds the key to genuine healing. So if you’re already wondering what this RIM technique is all about, hit the play button and join in this information loaded conversation between our host, Jeff Jones and today’s guest, Dr. Deborah Sandella.
Highlights:
05:30 From Spontaneous Healing to Intentional Healing
11:35 The RIM Technique
20:44 The Actuary and the Visionary
25:56 Unblock an Emotional Memory
31:54 Reconnecting and Regenerate
38:44 Trust Again… Feel the Feelings
42:00 Before You Jump In to Conclusions
46:48 Unlocking Your Emotions
Resources:
Goodbye Hurt and Pain 7 Simple Steps for Health, Love, and Success by Deborah Sandella, PhD, RN
There are memories that the heart can remember that the mind cannot. Learn how this can channel healing as @TFRSolution interviews @drdebsandella in #RIM #imagination #memory #emotions #intentionalhealing Share on X
Connect With Debra
Website: https://www.riminstitute.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrDebSandella
Twitter: https://twitter.com/drdebsandella
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drdebsandella
Telephone: (303) 691-3457
Quotes:
07:49 “The power of imagination that is so underused, and so devalued as Child’s Play, has proven to me that we are so much more resourceful, that we have so much more ability to heal ourselves than what we think.” –Deborah Sandella
34:13 “To heal, we need to feel.” –Deborah Sandella
37:16 “When we allow our feelings to flow through like they’re meant to, like they’re designed to, it just comes and goes through, because we’re not blocking it.” –Deborah Sandella
38:18 “It’s painful to feel these things, (but) it’s more painful to resist them. But you have to learn that to trust it. You have to experience it to trust it.” –Deborah Sandella
38:44 “Trust is based on experience. So you have to keep having an experience of it.” –Deborah Sandella
38:46 “Just feel it. Just feel it as much as you can.” –Deborah Sandella
41:05 “The answer for all of our problems are in the same place as where the problem originates.” –Deborah Sandella
48:15 “We really have that resourcefulness within us. But we don’t know how to unlock it and use it yet.” –Deborah Sandella
48:23 “We’re much more resourced emotionally than we think we are.” –Deborah Sandella
Got ideas? Perhaps a future podcast? Schedule time with Jeff here: https://meetme.so/jeffjones
Transcriptions
JEFF: So welcome everyone. This is Jeff on the podcast, families navigating addiction and recovery. And today my guest is Doctor Deborah Sandella, and she is the founder of Rim Institute. And I am just meeting her and all my Gosh, she is an author and she has been featured in USA Today, CBS, CNN, etc., etc.
And the Rim Institute is regenerating images in memory. So what we’re going to be talking about is the emotional operating system. And what I understand of her mission is to transform how we see emotions. So I am very excited to have this conversation with her specifically with families who are at some stage of addiction or recovery. And one of the reasons why I’m so excited is because so often times healing seen as just get that one person in the treatment, just get them fixed, just get them into recovery and then every everything else is good and we can go back to normal and there is a lot more to it than that. And so when I started to learn a little bit about rim, I was, you know, really touched and I’ve had a tiny little bit of experience here. I was really touched with all my, gosh, now here is a healing process that in my mind can change the impact of the diction for family members, their impact. And so that’s how I’m thinking about it right now. But in this conversation… I know I’ll learn a whole lot more. So welcome Dr Deb.
DEBRA: Thank you Jeff. I’m delighted to be here.
JEFF: All right, so if we could start a little bit and if you can talk a little bit about yourself. You heard my intro fill in gaps, anything that I said that wasn’t quite accurate or that needs to be refined a little bit. And then like what led up to you kind of coming up with the rim institute in a little bit of what that’s about,
DEBRA: Right. Well, you know, we each have our journey as, as we know. And so mine started with over 20 years as a traditional mental health professional in pretty much every kind of role you can be in from intensive services all the way down to teaching and outpatient. And then there came a time where I had an experience of with my dad almost dying, where it changed my whole perspective on what’s really important. And I had this experience, or I had received a call that my dad was in ICU, that he had had a heart attack, that his blood pressure was not holding and they said there’s no way he’ll make it to morning. And they asked my family and I to sign a no resuscitate agreement. And I had this intuitive process that took over. That was
JEFF: –Wow.
DEBRA: Really out of the ordinary for me at the time I was teaching at CU, I had my doctorate, I done research, all of this. And so I went to hang up the phone and go back to bed. You know, knowing that I would fly back to Kansas the next morning to see my dad. And what happened was all of a sudden I had this spontaneous kind of imagery or vision or whatever you want to call it, in my own mind of my dad walking off toward the horizon with his back to me. And I’m there yelling and screaming how angry I am. And all of the sudden he paused and he turned and he looked at me and he looks totally different. He had, you know, a kind of peacefulness in his face. I had never seen, he is a feisty little Italian guy and you know, it just really got my attention and he said, “okay, I didn’t know you felt that way”. And then all of a sudden it was gone.
And I had, you know, all my anger with the nurses calling and wanting permission for no resuscitate just drained away. And I got up the next morning, flew to Kansas, walked into ICU and they said sometime in the middle of the night your dad splash blood pressure started to hold and we don’t know why, but it did. And so my dad survived that experience and it, it changed my whole attitude about healing, because how, you know, here I was in academia and I was so, you know, into all of the intellectual aspects of that in here, this emotional experience with imagery had totally, it felt like to me, He had saved my dad and that became more important to me then everything else that I had done up to that point in time. And so from that moment on, that was in 1995 from that moment on, I begin to refocus my attention on understanding this. And I would say I call it imagination. And that the power of imagination that is so underused and so devalued as child’s play has proven to me that we are so much more resourceful, that we have so much more ability to heal ourselves than what we think. And that thinking doesn’t do it.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: You know?
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: I mean, it’s good to have, it’s good to think in good ways that create positive feelings, but it doesn’t go to the very deep levels of the nervous system.
JEFF: Wow. What a story. So, I mean, one of the things that I heard you say is with this experience with your dad and what happened that he survived through it. You had this transformation in how you saw the potential for healing to happen and here you are a professor, a doctor teaching others, you know, with quite a bit of achievement. And then this thing happens to you and it’s like, I heard you say, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it was something like did this imagery somehow have an impact on my dad’s surviving?
DEBRA: Yes. That, no, it was not intentional imagery.
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: So it’s not what will we think of visualization? It wasn’t, it’s not that.
JEFF: –Yeah, okay.
DEBRA: It was spontaneous so you could call it more of a vision really. But it just arrived and it took me totally by surprise.
JEFF: And you got really, really curious.
DEBRA: Yes, yes. Completely curious and focused. I, I developed a one point focus on what is this and how do I harness it to actually create intentional healing because that was spontaneous. It just –
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: -To me, but how can we intentionally harness.
JEFF: So from spontaneous healing to intentional healing.
DEBRA: Yes, exactly. For ourselves. And also for others. So that’s where it eventually took me now that’s been, you know, since 1995 they spent a lot of years that this has been a real journey of learning for me because I didn’t know, you know, this was not psychotherapy that I hadn’t learned. It was not something I had been taught in graduate school. It wasn’t about that. And it has been such an amazing journey to really uncover and discover what’s possible that I would’ve thought wasn’t possible. And to set aside what I thought I knew to let clients show me what’s possible. The same way that experience showed me something was possible that I did not know anything about. I didn’t know how to do that. And so that has been this journey since 1995 that has now, you know resulted in actually the rim technique, a regenerating images in memory, a training program where I teach people how to do it for themselves and also how to do it with their clients. And so,
JEFF: So let me interrupt you.
DEBRA: –Yes, yes.
JEFF: For a moment right there. So this is something that people can learn. People who aren’t therapists, but people who are just lay people so to speak. This is something that they can learn and they can practice themself. Is, is
DEBRA: –Yes, that’s exactly right. Yes, that’s right. Because what a rim has ended up where I have been pulled, where I’ve been guided into is really understanding the organic emotional operating system and that it actually is very resourced. However, it is not hooked into a, it doesn’t start in the thinking intellectual or left brain part of our nervous system. It actually happens in the emotional creative, we could call it right brain part of the brain or the nervous system. So that is a completely different process because that part of the nervous system is nonverbal.
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: So the left brain, the thinking brain is verbal, but it doesn’t feel,
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: The creative right brain feels, but it doesn’t have words. So in Ram we actually are creating whole brain experience. However, the leader is the creative emotional part of the brain. That’s where we follow that unfolding rather
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: Than thinking about it.
JEFF: Yeah. Wow. Well, I, I mean in some ways it sounds really complicated to me and you know, because I mean in some ways it sounds complicated and in other ways I kind of take a big breath and a sigh of relief and going, oh my God, there’s some simplicity here. Like in some ways I’m hearing, you know, this is a natural process that we can harness. I use the word harness that may not be the right word, but, and it makes me think, you know, like the way that we have been using our brain, our thinking, what we’ve been like, how we’ve been trying to bring together our thinking and feeling and then taking action based on that. It seems like, you know, we, there’s a default that highly favors thanking and minimizes emotions.
DEBRA: Yes, I would say that it’s absolutely true. And you know, some of that comes historically, cause obviously the original peoples are very much more right brain oriented with their rituals that are evocative. However, when we became and industrialized, uh, you know, culture,
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: And we began to really bring in the philosophers who thought very deeply, you know, so when you think back about I think therefore I am, –
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: and a Socrates and Aristotle and all of the thinking that became valued because we didn’t, we worked into that. We developed our intellectual ability, which elevated our lives. However, any strength overdone, regardless of what it is, becomes a weakness,
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: so our intellectual ability is definitely a strength and it has become over done because now it really overshadows emotion. And what happened with those philosophers back then was the kind of a moral judgment that thinking is more elevated and superior to feeling. And —
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: -so feeling and emotion were devalued as being out of control.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: Like things that, you know, it’s kind of like there’s papers that they wrote about Euless stand, you know, various intense emotions, anger. And so these were judged as being a moral or, or a less moral person if you had those short. Well, the reality is, what I have sensed to learn through ram more than any of my previous experience or education is that… Emotional health means that we will have the full range of all emotion. That if you start shutting down your emotional system so that only certain emotions are okay
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: And you’re constricting the system and then now the system is no longer working effectively. So that emotions through interception come in as a subjective experience and also a body experience. They just flow through us. They’re very dynamic. They’re temporary states of awareness that come in and flows through constantly and –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: -they change moment to moment, to moment to moment. And –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: -the way I think about it is like the river of emotion that is constantly happening, whether we’re aware of it or not. So most of the time we’re not aware of it. We’re really doing are focused on other things. So we’re not really aware of what the river of emotion is bringing us in that moment.
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: So when there are feelings that we block, we restrict, we don’t want, uh, to have, we bury them. We put them in the drawer, we say I’ll deal with that later. Then it’s kind of like building a dam in that river of emotion. And so what happens is the feelings we want to get rid of the most, we actually stopped from flowing out the way they’re-
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: -meant to naturally.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: So instead now they’re in this ETI like in a dam, the water that’s in the Eddie and they go deep, they go deepen that bottom of the of the water so –
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: -that you actually don’t even realize they’re still there.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: However they can leak out unconsciously.
JEFF: –Yeah. So I, oh my Gosh Deb, I’ve had so many thoughts in just the last thing that you said. The first is the river metaphor is something that I use in my own work quite a bit. The river is like one of my biggest resources and I’ve taken my boat down the Grand Canyon five times. So I really understand, you know the river dynamics and the ETI and actually when you get pushed out of the main current of the river, you get over to the ETI and the water’s actually going upstream. And so this is a metaphor that I use with, you know, families with addiction to let them know they’re on a journey and they can learn skills and etc, etc. And it’s so easy to get into an ETI and go round and round and get stuck and see the same. Our experienced the same thing over and over again.
So that was one, I love your river of emotions thing. The other, when you were talking about thinking and kind of in our past, our culture and thinking was so highly valued and like this moralistic judgment about it and feelings being minimized. Then I think about like, you know, some of the history of addiction and a huge amount of moralistic judgment with behavior that comes out of, you know, someone who is significantly in that process of addiction. And then it’s like, oftentimes what I’ve seen is in families with addiction, the emotions that are expressed are really painful, are really hard. And it’s like they, they struggle, they can disassociate and actually cut their loved one off and they need to be resource just to handle kind of being in these intense, intense emotions. And so I’m, I’m talking a little bit all over the place here, but I’m just fascinated with, you know, what you’re saying and your transformation and discovery and curiosity about like, wow, that like I’ve put so much value on thinking and like you’ve achieved a lot. You’re, you’re a doctor, you’re a professor, you know, and you got that way through using your brain.
DEBRA: –Absolutely.
JEFF: And I, I wonder kind of like, so I wonder a number of different things, but like how does the thinking and emotions work together? And then like in like when there’s high emotions, like, hi, chaos and like what I described, can you speak a little bit to this process and kind of working with those?
DEBRA: Right. So what happens is that the left brain, and I, I, you know, I know that left and right brain are not actually quite so obvious a neurologically, but it helps us understand. And so the left brain really wants to control, wants to measure what it does well, it’s an administrator. It knows how to measure, analyze, how to compare the past to the present. It does not know how to project a future other than statistically like to be a, you know, one of those insurance actuaries. You know, that’s how the left brain projects, future behavior or what is a good direction to go where the right brain is the visionary.
JEFF: –Mm Hmm.
DEBRA: So, so many of us are now letting our left brain be the leader, you know, the CEO
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: Of our lives. So what that means is we are going to be operating in a way that eliminates the visionary, creative part of this that’s emotional. And so when these feelings that are so intense are seen by the left brain, the left brain kind of goes, oh, you know, FuFu that I don’t relate to that I don’t do that kind of thing.
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: I want logic, I want linear reality, you know? And so,
JEFF: –Absolutely.
DEBRA: Yes. So one of the values of how rim has evolved is we actually use body awareness,
JEFF: –Uh Huh.
DEBRA: To start giving emotion for, now once imagination and body awareness give emotion form, it’s not so elusive and uncontrollable or unpredictable. So now the left ranking come in and say, oh, now it’s a red heart ball in my belly that’s a four inches wide and it’s solid in the middle or it’s not. And so now the left brain goes, well yeah, I’ll be part of this cause this is not crazy. You know just the way the left brain is and it does a good job. It does a good job –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: -of what it does. However, we definitely need the emotional, imaginative abilities that are part of our resources and part of our emotional resource system to come in. And as we have that floor, then the left brain can give it words and understanding imagination gives it form. And then we start going to town. Because what I have found in the neuroscience word for it, I recently have gotten a great education, uh, with the, I’ve, it’s been going to some neuroscience labs over at CU and
JEFF: –Uh Huh.
DEBRA: learning of the latest technology and the latest terminology. And so embodiment is this newly developed area of understanding the relationship between emotion and how it’s embodied –
JEFF: –Uh Huh.
DEBRA: In the physical body, the physical experience. And so, and we know there’s some continuity even there’s like a, a topographical chart of where emotion tends to be focalized in different parts of the body, like a specific emotion. And that it’s been fan to hold consistent over even various cultures that this is the area. So now as we go into, so now we’re, we’re following an imaginary journey. So a lot of time people close their eyes. Most of the time people close their eyes for this process because you’re really imagining-
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: -it’s spontaneous imagination again, it’s not intentional imagination. So as we really access the emotion where it’s embodied in us and we start to bring the left brain in with the feeling, we get words that, so we start with the feeling and we get the feeling transformed into words and into meeting. And now we have been guided through this organic system to the root cause…of symptoms that we don’t even know about. We don’t even know about it.
JEFF: Oh, my Gosh that’s. We’ve been guided to the root cause. Can you give me an example?
DEBRA: — Absolutely. So actually this is in the book. So there was a woman who was, came in for some sessions because she was in her early thirties. She was very successful professionally, but she wanted to get married and have children. And she had never been very successful with men through high school, college she hardly dated. You could tell this was, she walked in very, very frumpy acting. And during her session when the emotion and the, uh, imagery took us back to fifth grade line in the cafeteria line, and she goes, I don’t even know why I’m here. She goes, why am I in this fifth grade cafeteria line? And I go, well, so just look around since what’s happening. And then all of a sudden one of the boys in her class walks up to her and says: “your ugly”. So at that moment, fifth grade girls are very, very sensitive about how they look.
JEFF: –Of course.
DEBRA: And fifth grade boys at that point in time are not very sensitive in general. I would say not all, but some. So she felt humiliated, she was holding back the tears. She wanted to cry. Uh, you know, she went to climb under one of the tables in high because she felt so humiliated.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: So in this moment, so we’ve now uncovered a root cause and in that, so now we get to regenerate it. So what we know with the neuroscience is we can unblock a previous emotional memory by being in it again. So we’ve now unlocked this memory , which means it’s now quivery, it’s shaky. It can be altered and changed.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: So how it got changed is we brought in what she needed to feel safe and she brought in her mother to be with her in that moment. And as her mother’s there, she has a voice now. So instead of retreating into humiliation in her body, she now, able to speak up for herself, and she says, that really hurt my feelings. Why did you say that? Why did you do that? And so first of all, there was empowerment just in that moment.
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: So then when she looks at of his eyes and senses what he wants to respond, guess what? He says, “you’re a man, you were a fifth grade boy once”. What do you think. She’s, he said.
JEFF: –Well, he could say something like, you know, well really I think you’re cute and I was teasing you.
DEBRA: Yes, that’s exactly. He said, I like you. And that’s why I did it cause, this is the way I interact with my guy friends
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: I thought it would work with you too. Well in that moment, that memory got regenerated in a way that imprinted in all of her body because she felt it.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: It was not talking about it. It was not-
JEFF: -Right.
DEBRA: trying to convince her of it, –
JEFF: –Sure.
DEBRA: -Uh, wasn’t talking about a possibility. She actually experienced his liking her.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: And so all of this –
JEFF: –She’s felt.
DEBRA: Yes, she felt it that he saw her as attractive.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: So now her, her body’s rewired to think of herself as attracted to men. So what happened is, uh, within a few months she met somebody she really liked. They started dating, they were engaged within a year. They now have two kids.
JEFF: –Wow.
DEBRA: Oh, her mother is the reason why, I know I keep up with what’s happening but at, so that’s an example. She had absolutely no idea about that memory.
JEFF: Thank you for that example. And I’m just kind of thinking, so from the standpoint of you know, families with an addicted loved one or loved one in some stage of recovery and then this process, like I’m from the standpoint of healing…I’m just wondering like where it might be most applicable, but then as soon as I say that I’m kind of thinking, you know, maybe where would it not be applicable?
Well, I would agree with the second choice because what happens is for instance, with the families when they are triggered by the behavior of their loved one,
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: And it’s not uncommon for them to have some experience. It sometimes is innocuous, but it’s a very strongly felt experience in their childhood that leaves them vulnerable to –
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: Suffering more. You know, it’s not exactly the same or it may be, it may be the same. It could be, but many times it’s not.
JEFF: Yeah, well they get triggered and oftentimes their nervous system, from my understanding and, and what I’ve seen, they’ve just live that an activated state for so long, the baseline of their nervous system has gone up and up and up and up kind of thing. And it’s like they’re constantly in this activated state, which means, you know, the smallest thing happens and it feels like a big thing.
DEBRA: –Right.
JEFF: They have less blood flow to the part of their brain where they can make the best decisions kind of thing. And I think like whatever habitual patterning they have…is, it’s harder to get out of.
DEBRA: Right, right. And I think that with rent, so what happens, what I’ve seen with rim is that people get emotionally resourced. Like they actually, you know, will regenerate. Let’s say something that felt traumatic regardless of what it was.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: And then they feel resource. They reconnect with the resilient, confident part of themselves become calm. So frequently by the end of his session, somebody is feeling calm and lighter. And so what happens is you start to have different kinds of experiences automatically.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: So that your resource now there is also though, you’re mentioning this, is not to be underestimated. There are habitual belief systems that are still present even after it’s kind of a, no matter what the thinking process, if you’re in a habit of thinking certain things, that also has to be broken. The thinking process does, and what happens is when people do the healing work, then they’re different physically. They’re physically, emotionally different. They present differently. And so when they go to the old habitual thinking, –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: Doesn’t work anymore, people don’t gonna be responding to it. Well, because they can’t feel it. That’s not, it’s in-congruence now –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: -the emotional feeling in the person.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: So that did it starts to feel more manipulative because it’s there just in a habit of belief,
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: That is no longer can grow with the embodiment, the emotional embodiment.
JEFF: Right. And so there probably in, in some stage of creating new patterns or creating –
DEBRA: –Exactly.
JEFF: -new beliefs or a new life and new understanding. But one of the things that I think, and it is kind of like to heal, we need to feel.
DEBRA: Absolutely you have to.
JEFF: And in families with addiction, so often times it’s not safe to feel and there’s one person in the family is like the emotional lightning rod and they feel all the feelings and like it’s crazy making, there’s all these things going on, it’s not making sense and they’re feeling all these feelings and a lot of times that person is a child who’s feeling all these feelings and they feel like it’s their fault and they feel like everything that’s happening in the family that’s chaotic is because of them.
DEBRA: Right. Absolutely. I totally agree. That is what I have seen as well. And so what happens then? Emotion becomes elusive and it is kind of invisible –
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: -and it shows, I’ve been directly here, there and everywhere. And particularly in the, what we could call the identified person in the family that’s going to be the lightning rod and then they’re going to overreact. I mean they’re gonna get themselves in trouble with too much emotion and so it’s really important to do the work at the feeling level.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: Talk about feelings is distant from the source and so then you’re overwriting. That’s where we try to control, –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: -try to control emotion. It just goes deeper. It just goes on,
JEFF: –Well the other, I mean the other thing that I witnessed is the not feeling one’s emotions kind of allows one to be more vulnerable to the stress disease kind of –
DEBRA: –Absolutely.
JEFF: -connection there. And there’s, you know, a number of different diagnosis that come under that umbrella. And so some of it is like, boy, if I can’t feel my emotions then I’m more vulnerable to no GI problems or all kinds of, you know, potential. I mean diagnosis is that where we don’t think anything about like an origination of not feeling our feelings or not being okay with our feelings are not trusting our feelings.
DEBRA: Right. And I think that what a, just because I was a traditionalist you know psychotherapist, a mental health professional for over 20 years, that what happens is we have had this association with feeling our feelings as being a torture, as long painful experience of talking about it again –
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: -and again and again and again. And that actually what I’ve learned is when we allow our feelings to flow through, like they’re meant to, like they’re –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: -designed to –
JEFF: –The river.
DEBRA: That yeah. The river. It’s like it just comes and goes through because we’re not blocking it. So when we stopped blocking our feelings and we allow ourselves momentarily in this moment just to feel it, –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: we just feel it. It’s amazing. I can remember doing a workshop one time and a man is really big Hulking man stood up and he said, “well, this is really making me feel like crying and I’m trying to stop it and control it. And it goes, it’s so hard”. And I go, “so Ryan, I just close your eyes and just feel whatever it is that’s their right. I just feel as much as you can in this moment”.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: And then he goes, “oh”, he goes, “well, I’m not feeling like I need to cry”. You know? It’s like we have over our mind resist. So we, there’s this story that it’s painful to feel these things.
JEFF: –Yeah, yeah.
DEBRA: It’s actually not, it’s more painful to resist them, but you have to learn that to trust it. You have to experience it to trust it.
JEFF: Yeah. So do you have some pointers right there for someone kind of to gradually be able to trust?
DEBRA: Well, I think that
JEFF: –or feel?
DEBRA: Yeah. Trust is based on experience. So you have to, you know, it’s like you just keep having experience of it. And like for instance, in, in my book, goodbye hurt in pain after each chapter there are activities that you can do yourself. And in chapter one there’s some very simple ones. They’re all simple. However, the first one is like so quick and easy. That is like just closing your eyes, sensing your heart and one word of what you’re feeling right now. We’ll just pop in and whatever that is, you just acknowledge it in your own mind and then just feel it. Just feel it as much as you can and they-
JEFF: –that, feel that one word.
DEBRA: Yes. That feeling that the one word, what a shared cause you, this is-
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: Coming to your imagination so you’re not thinking, what am I feeling
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: Is that one word pop in and whatever pops in. You just feel that as much as possible in this minute and then you go back to your heart and you repeat that three times and every time the word that pops in is different and it’s very dynamic so that if you start with a, let’s say a word like scared
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: And then you just feel it, you just set yourself feel so there’s no resistance, there’s absolutely no resistance and you just feel it. Then the next word comes of like relief or you know, I mean it’s like, it keeps changing and it keeps getting lighter and lighter and lighter. And I’ve done this with groups, you know, and it works every time. People are amazed
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: But it’s because we have talked ourselves into being afraid of emotion. And I do think Freud was a genius. He was a genius. He discovered the unconscious, but he really misrepresented the unconscious as being the monsters in the closet that we should be afraid of. And it makes us neurotic and makes us mentally ill and all of that. And so it really, again, created a fear –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: -of what is in the unconscious, the fear of feelings that are unknown. And the reality of what I’ve learned through rem is that the answer for all of our problems are in the same place as where the problem originates. So –
JEFF:: –Yeah.
DEBRA: -we let’s don’t go there… We won’t get it.
JEFF: So one of the questions that I’m struck with right now that’s going round and round is like, could someone do this who has a family member and like doing chaos kind of like, and they’re scared they not even be
JEFF: alive in-
DEBRA: –Right.
JEFF: -tonight or something. And there’s like, that happens so much that people have sleepless nights, they don’t know where their child is or where their spouses or something like that. And there’s some kind of history that allows their mind to kind of go zing, zing, zing, you know, round and round –
DEBRA: –Right.
JEFF: -and round with the worst case scenario.
DEBRA: Absolutely. Yes in fact, we have a rim facilitator who before she came to ram, before she had her first room session, her daughter was an addict, the heroin, you know, –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: -stuff going on up in Ohio. And so she actually, as she learned to be a rim facilitator, she’s a nurse originally. And uh, as you went into the master rim program, her project was to work with mothers of addicts from that organization. She advertised –
JEFF: –Wow.
DEBRA: For people who were willing –
JEFF: –Beautiful.
DEBRA: -to be involved in this study. And she gave this group of mothers three rim sessions and did pre and post testing on self-esteem and anxiety and depression.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: And what she found was, yeah, it’s, it really does make a difference because when we connect with our own resourcefulness again, then the ruminations are interrupted and we become very present in the moment when we’re present in the moment, we can respond in a much more effective way with our loved ones.
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: And we also can set boundaries other ways. Our whole being becomes obsessed with fear for this love one because we don’t have control over that, you know, which is totally understandable. We all can
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: Passionately understand, I mean, even having children that aren’t addicted, –
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: -it’s like you can feel that way with your loved ones. So, but the reality is we don’t have control over their behavior. So our boundary setting gets very wishy-washy and that encourages more of a problem because there’s not a clear message there is, we’re allowing more chaos in our lives. –
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: So, it’s very effective. I would say in helping the family member be able to have a better life, more wellbeing and just having that there is a role model. There is a, in the relationship with the loved one, there are differences then.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. Oh huge. I mean kind of what I’m hearing and I would like to hear more about this study and because kind of, I mean one thing that I think is that just being able to shift their attention from the round and round kind of worry to breathing, to calming themselves down there, the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in. They, they can calm them themselves down and then they have a place to focus their attention.-
DEBRA: –Hmm, Hmm exactly. –
JEFF: And allow something new to come up.
DEBRA: That’s right.
JEFF: –You know.
DEBRA: That’s right, exactly. Because otherwise what happens is the nervous system gets a habituated, waited when it’s out of control, it gets habituated to feeling like it’s life and death every moment. –
JEFF: –It is life and death every moment –
DEBRA: –You know, Uh-Huh, and so that is going to be a very destructive habit, –
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: -and for everybody. Because you know, with our loved ones, when they, this is how I think about it, is when our loved one looks in our eyes, when we’re with them, –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: -they’re getting a mirror or how we see them, and if we see them as about to die every moment –
JEFF: –Right.
DEBRA: they are going to feel like, oh my God, I better be more worried.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: You know, and so what happens is we’re giving them a mirror of themselves that’s not always very helpful to empower them to make changes, but we don’t even know we’re doing that.
JEFF: -Right.
DEBRA: It’s not intentional.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. It’s not intentional at all. Wow. This has been fascinating conversation and I really liked the language that you’re using, the emotional operating system, the river of emotion. There is a lot of things here that I, you know, really appreciate. And I’m curious about. So at this time, like before I ask you about like how people can get a hold of you and to say the name of your book again and things like that, is there anything that I haven’t asked about or that you haven’t said that you would like to?
DEBRA: Well, I think the main thing that I want to stress is that these are our normal emotional abilities that are present in everyone and that we just have not known how to unlock them, how to access the controls, how do you use them effectively because we’ve just been overwriting them with thinking, –
JEFF: –Hmm Mm.
DEBRA: -trying to control with thinking and so that it is, it is really a return to more of a natural way of being that is most effective. And I, you know, I just want to stress that too, for people to be reassured about that because uh, and you know, it takes repetition to trust. So is that when I teach people how to do rem for themselves or others, particularly when they’re doing it for others, then we need a lot of repetition where they see it in action, they see the results and they feel it when they’re the client.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: The results. Because then that had, creates trust in the system. And so we’re really creating trust in rim as a tool. Rim is just the tool. What –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: -the tool does is it unlocks abilities within us. So we’re really, it, we –
JEFF: –Wow. –
DEBRA: -really have that resourcefulness within us, but we don’t know how to unlock it in use it yet. But that’s –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: -What a, you know, that’s what I, in so that is my intention for the world is that we all learn how to do that.
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: We’re much more resourced emotionally than we think we are.
JEFF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. The mission to transform how we see emotions. Yeah. I love that. And I love what you’re doing. I’m going to have to learn more about it.
JEFF: Really. But so do you want to say the name of your book again and how people can learn more about you?
DEBRA: Absolutely. I would love to. So the book is good by hurt and pain, seven simple steps to health, love and success. It is full of personal, you know, a real life stories of clients, previous clients of the science behind it. And then also activities that they can practice with themselves or with a friend so that it’s an experience, not just a reading. So it’s a very experiential book –
JEFF: –Yeah.
DEBRA: I would say, which is very much bits was rim itself and a, yeah, and you can find it actually at any bookstore in on Amazon. It’s still, it’s still in print you know, so.
JEFF: –Great.
DEBRA: Yes, excellent. And, and the website, you can order it on the website. You can actually on the website you can download the first chapter for free. –
JEFF: –Ah.
DEBRA: -Yes. And that is rim institute.com or I think it also is good by hurt and pain.com still goes to the homepage. Yeah, any of that.
JEFF: Great. Great. Well Deb, Dr Deb, thank you very much. I appreciate it. This has been wonderful.
JEFF: Thanks for listening. If you’ve enjoyed the show, please rate it on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and pass it on to someone else who will find it useful. You will find resources and options for family’s best. Next Steps and the show notes for this episode@wwwdotthefamilyrecoverysolution.com.