Latest / Radically Genuine / 168. Nature Doesn't Make Mistakes: A Functional Approach to Mental Health w/ Dr. Riz Ahmad

Transcript

168. Nature Doesn't Make Mistakes: A Functional Approach to Mental Health w/ Dr. Riz Ahmad · Radically Genuine

• Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (00:01.562) Welcome to the radically genuine podcast. am Dr. Roger McFillin. The human body and mind tell a story that modern medicine has fragmented into disconnected chapters. Today we're witnessing a health crisis of staggering proportions. Over 42 % of Americans are obese. I've seen numbers that are even higher. 88 % in some way are metabolically unhealthy. and roughly half of adults in the United States live with at least one chronic illness. Even more alarming, this crisis is not sparing our children. More than 40 % of American children now suffer from chronic health conditions. One in five, at least, is obese. Type 2 diabetes, once called adult onset diabetes, has increased by 95 % in children and teens over the last two decades. One in three children experience what we label as anxiety disorders, while one in five has been diagnosed with ADHD. We're nearing over 20 % of the American population on one psychiatric drugs. This crisis exists within a perfect storm of chronic stress, trauma, technological addiction, and food poisoning. not in the traditional sense, but with chemicals, processed food, and another a bunch of other environmental toxins. Prolonged psychological distress isn't just a mental health concern. It's known to dysregulate our immune system, disrupts hormones, damages metabolism. Trauma literally rewires our nervous system and alters our biological stress response system. Meanwhile, our addiction to screens, social media destroys our sleep patterns, can accelerate anxiety and fuels substance abuse and food addiction as people desperately seek relief from the withdrawal symptoms related to those type of addictions. Yet when these individuals, adults and children alike, Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (02:23.414) experience, mood, anxiety, or their mental health challenges. Our healthcare system often treats these as if they're isolated psychiatric conditions divorced from the body's complex web of biological processes. We fail to recognize how chronic stress leads to inflammation, how inflammation triggers depression. how depression then further compromises physical health in a very devastating cycle. Can we really separate the mental from the physical when chronic inflammation affects both mood and metabolism? When nutrient deficiencies impact both cognitive function and cellular health? When environmental toxins disrupt both our endocrine system and our emotion regulation? When trauma and technology addiction, dysregulate both our nervous system and sleep wake cycles. You see what I'm saying? There is a bi-directional relationship that exists with our body and our minds. They cannot be separated. And the rise of functional medicine has shown us there is a better way. One that seeks to understand root causes rather than merely suppressing symptoms. Today we'll explore how these principles could potentially revolutionize our approach to mental health through what I'm gonna call today functional psychology or functional psychiatry. I don't think that term has been coined yet, but we can approach the discussion with an understanding of some key principles. We'll challenge the notion that psychiatric diagnoses are discrete objective entities. rather than descriptions of complex human experiences, which are shaped by biology, by environment, one's lived experience, and potentially other aspects that exist outside of our fundamental understanding right now. So consider this, like when someone's depression lifts after adopting a ketogenic diet, have we discovered that depression is fundamentally a metabolic disorder? Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (04:47.578) Or are we just simply witnessing how profoundly our physical health influences our mental wellbeing? Potentially, we just solved one problem, one that is of lifestyle, that is of metabolic illness. And of course, that's going to have profound positive impacts on that person's wellbeing. I don't know if that's to say that depression then is a food issue entirely, a metabolic issue. These tend to be categorical errors. and oversimplified conclusions that we must carefully examine. The devastating toll of our collective physical and mental health demands that we ask harder questions and challenge deeply entrenched beliefs. Here's the reality. A medical establishment backed by pharmaceutical companies, insurance giants, and corporate interests profit immensely from maintaining the status quo. The financial ecosystem surrounding chronic illness management, psychiatric drugs, and symptom suppression represents trillions of dollars, creating powerful resistance to paradigm shifts. that might actually help people. But the human cost of clinging to failed models has become way too high to ignore. In today's discussion, we're going to challenge conventional thinking about mental health, explore uncomfortable truths, and really open our minds to both immediate and long-term possibilities for genuine healing. The question isn't whether change will come, it's whether we'll have the courage to embrace it before another generation is lost to those interconnected epidemics of physical and mental suffering. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (06:45.466) To join me in today's discussion, I want to welcome back to the Radically Genuine podcast, Dr. Riz Ahmad, who's a clinical psychologist and the clinical director at Center for Integrated Behavioral Health here in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Dr. Ahmad, welcome to the Radically Genuine podcast. Thanks, Roger. Good to talk to you. So let's set some ground rules for today. I want to approach this conversation to the best of our ability with a complete open mind. I want us to... ask critical questions and consider science that exists outside of the mainstream, as well as understandings that are not yet conventional. I think when it comes to group think, there's almost this automatic response based on what you've taught on what you were told to believe to be true. And we assume them and we use similar language. And so I might enter into part provocateur today, not necessarily saying I ascribe to these beliefs 100%, but rather to facilitate critical analysis, which I don't think occurs, you know, enough, certainly in our field, I think we're at a tipping point, there's no doubt we're at a tipping point in mental health, the statistics are overwhelming. And it's very difficult for us to separate the physical chronic epidemic disease epidemic that exists in the United States from the mental health crisis that has been burgeoning for, you know, I think you can go back 20 years now at this point, it's really been worsening. So I wanna challenge everything we know about our field, but also practically speaking, have important dialogue about, you know, what changes can be made immediately where we can provide safer and more effective care that... begins to produce positive outcomes. You because I think you and I both agree in a lot of respects entering into the system as it's constructed almost seems to guarantee that a person is going to be mentally unwell potentially for life. Like basically we're taking episodic conditions I think in turning them into chronic conditions. Yeah, we've put... Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (09:07.724) a model that seems like it was meant for acute care and dealing with problems where you can point to one cause of the problem and then eradicate that one cause of the problem, whether it's a bacteria or virus, and then apply that paradigm to things that do not fit that paradigm. You if we're talking about mood and depression, how many things can affect mood? How many things affect the mood we're in in one particular day? I can't put one finger on it. There's so many possibilities. It's, it's multiply derived. And so if it's going to be a system that looks at that, has to be willing to embrace the complexity of what could cause someone's experience to be the way it is. Yeah, there's a book called dopamine nation. I think it's Dr. Anna Lemke who's out of Stanford. She's a, an addiction psychiatrist whose lab studies dopamine addictions. behavior patterns and so forth. And what I think is interesting about human biology and see, like we almost started falling into, it's so easy to fall into this paradigm that if your mood is low or you feel anxious or there's relative discomfort or pain, that that is somehow representative of like a disorder, that there is something wrong with you. However, it is essentially what is human nature, that there is a polarity that exists with pain and pleasure that is actually necessary for human survival. And one can even argue transformation. let's look at the dopamine nation and some of the key aspects of some of the findings is that we have evolved to survive, right? And so dopamine, which is a neuro chemical, a transmitter. And again, I don't want to get too reductionist because, you know, then we'd be staying in the paradigm, right? All we know is there are a number of chemicals that are activated in terms of like motivation, mood, pleasure, and so forth. Dopamine being one of them, like there's spikes in dopamine when there's a drive for something pleasurable. So, but it starts with pain first, right? So like hunger would drive Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (11:34.33) us to seek out food. So think about our ancestors where there's food scarcity and there's periods of time where there's famine or at the very least you have to go hunt and forage for your food. The hunger, the pain drives the search for that. Once you receive it, you get pleasure. It's a dopamine spike and then it goes back down to, you know, these baseline levels, right? But what happens in a society when everything is kind of provided for you, where you can get food at the grocery store, but there's all these other artificial forms of pleasure that exist. Think about your phone or social media or entertainment or pornography or finding a mate can be instead of having like having to go out and meet people and form connections. It's like a left or a swipe right culture. The food that has been provided to us is like engineered in order to hijack our brain. This goes into the processed food and chemical problem. So it's like hijacking our brain. We get addicted to this feeling, but there's no work that's put into it. So which... has led to like a lower drop than what is traditionally baseline into almost like a painful emptiness of withdrawal. And what we know from the science of addictions, for example, is that after you're exposed to the drug long enough and you get the dopamine response, tolerance builds in. And then you no longer get that same high. Instead, you just need to get the drug to feel okay. And so we have an entire modern culture. that is seeking out pleasure without the work being put in, without the same struggle or pain. And we're actually even pathologizing and demonizing the struggle and pain. And almost the entire DSM is this. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (13:46.01) constructed narrative that if you feel these things for a period of time, it's representative of a mental illness. not only we're pathologizing normal, we're not even continuing it to be in context of everything that is happening in modern society. Like it's hard to feel okay in modern society. Hence, that's why we have this chronic disease epidemic and obesity because of the availability of all these drugs and in forms of food or stimulation. or sex previously needed to be worked for. Yes, it's a completely different way of looking at emotions, even that feeling of boredom or unmotivation or emptiness. It's a way of looking at it as a symptom to be mitigated in some way, numbed in some way, changed in some way. There's a lot of ways to change that temporarily in some way. That's our addictions. That's social media, whatever the small dopamine hits are. There's unlimited numbers of them. But I think it then is left with that emptiness because the signal hasn't really been listened to of what it's actually trying to say. You know, if someone's living a life where they're not challenging themselves to live by their values in some way, then that feeling may remain. That's one possible thing that that signal could mean. that signal could mean that the body is unwell. And if physically is unwell for various reasons, there's something toxic going on. There's a food system involved here that's making it feel that way. can numb that signal, you can do something else to make that feeling go away temporarily, but the feeling is still going to still going to remain until the root cause is found for what's bringing up that feeling. And that's where functional medicine comes in is what is the root cause? Why is that feeling there? Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (15:50.616) I love that word signal because it speaks to that things are happening to serve you, right? And so a provocative question here is does nature make mistakes? Have you ever thought about it that way? Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (16:11.394) nature make mistakes? Tell me more about what you're thinking. Well, let's say we've evolved at least millions of years. There's questions about that, about how long humans have existed on Earth and in what capacity and how, right? I think there's all interesting theories about that. But one thing that is not really that debatable is that there is an evolution that exists, right? I think there's one that exists biologically, like we're adapting to our environments. There's ones that happen, I think, spiritually, intellectually, mentally, through new experiences, in concert with nature, with our environment, we're adapting in order to thrive and survive. So the body, and I believe the body is divinely created, is really made to survive and thrive. And so is everything in nature. I mean, we can't even begin to try to understand the complexity of how everything on earth interacts with each other. for survival, the plants, the animals, everything in nature with humans. And one theory is the more we get disconnected from our planet, from nature in itself, the more sick we become because we're working in concert with our planet as a whole. I obviously like photosynthesis and oxygen and food sources and all those things that are really, really important. And so the body responds to toxins, viruses, in a way to survive, right? I guess a great example would be our temperature raises, we get a fever to kill off bacteria or a virus, right? But we're in this... Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (18:36.376) And it really is a very small slivet of period of time in our evolution that we are trying to intervene with nature, synthetically, chemically, experimentally, based on theories that if we are thinking empirically have created great harm. It's under this disguise of modern medicine. we're certainly we're told that it reflects innovation. And the reason that we speak of it that way is because there has been an extension of the lifespan. But I would argue that that has nothing to do with modern medicine, that that is a lie that's been collectively sold to support industry or get into that. But If we have a fundamental belief that nature doesn't make mistakes, it would shift the paradigm in which we look at health. That health would be about becoming aligned with our nature and our true nature. That disease in itself is when we are no longer in balance with that. And that could be through poison, that could be exposed to toxins. That could be, you we can become unhealthy, right? Our bodies are something we have to take care of. If we expand our idea of consciousness, even for example, that we are spirits inhabiting a body, the body is for survival. It's for this experience in the physical world and we need to take care of it. And there's a lots of ways where we can harm it and it will slowly die. But that's separate. Even when we're poisoning ourselves, which we are now, the body is trying to adapt in order to survive. And those things that we call symptoms are really the effect of that. Those, are the signals, the response to whatever that poison may be, or that prolonged stress response. And then we label that as disease instead of a whole paradigm shift. So I would do want to step outside how we think about health. Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (20:59.918) And to do that, I think there has to be a humility for the complexity of all the interconnectedness of it. That I think throughout time we've made big mistakes when we take something really complex, we distill it down to one thing, we intervene with that one thing, and then we're not aware of... or don't consider all the downstream effects that it would have. And then we've done this like environmentally over and over. can hear stories. I read a book about just a collection of some of these mistakes environmentally where to say we've tried to disrupt an ecosystem because we're trying to get rid of one predator and we introduce a poison to kill that predator. not realizing that that predator was keeping a delicate balance of prey and all the other animals and ecosystem that was there. And then all of a sudden, all these other effects that we did not predict that were even worse than the initial intended thing. came about from it. And in some ways I think we do the same thing when we distill things down to just one chemical, neurotransmitter, et cetera, and don't consider that paradigm that there's so much interconnectedness and complexity and the human body has this innate ability to respond to these subtle things in a very delicate balance that I think we've scratched the surface on fully understanding. How do people heal from things we didn't think they could heal from? How does the body do things like heal from cancers, heal from things that were declared chronic, unrecoverable? We should be studying a lot more of those and kind of relying on and supporting the body's ability to do so, understanding what's leading into that, rather than thinking we need to... Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (22:55.724) add something, remove something to completely change the body to fight something. Yeah. I mean, a great example of this is the serotonin hypothesis, right? There's one neurochemical that's part of probably like, thousands, you know, I mean, we have, we are chemical beings. I don't think we fully understood the complexity of the most mysterious organ that exists, which is the brain. I don't even necessarily believe that the brain emits consciousness. So if I challenge that, because I think we have experiences in science that challenge it, then how can we say one chemical is implicated in all these complex processes? So we start doing that with a SSRI, and we chemically try to manipulate the degree of serotonin in the nerve cell. That's messenger for all these other processes, right? And what we see is this what's called a down regulation effect, is it almost tricks the body, like saying, well, you don't need to naturally produce this chemical because it's been synthetically, chemically. artificially provided, which then like automatically decreases the amount of serotonin receptors and the amount of serotonin that's created, which is a complex system. mean, it starts in the gut, probably in an ecosystem there that exists. So it speaks to what we've done environmentally in an ecosystem, but our bodies are an ecosystem as well. And that's why we see that yes, there's a reaction to the substance and it's a foreign substance, like it's chemical Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (24:41.398) compound that's made in a factory. Now the body has to respond to that. And we see it varies greatly amongst the population. Some people might go numb and not feel anything. Other people might become activated, akathisia, mania, induced psychosis. So it's like altering a state of consciousness. It's perturbing normal functioning. And How do we determine whether that's a positive effect? Well, to the degree, it changes a few points on a carefully constructed outcome measure that is self-reported that... can be related to like a decrease or a change or a blunting of emotional states or a changing of consciousness. And then we've artificially created this idea of what is mental illness and what is not mental illness. And because of this down regulation process, then dependence ensues, of course, and you need more and more of the substance. you have to increase its potency by increasing its dosage. Now, whenever you do that, you see all these other problems that can occur, because we're then altering consciousness in an experimental way that affects the body in ways we cannot predict, or you add on another drug. So the brain's like, here's something new, right? So you're always trying to artificially stimulate and change your, your well being. you, this is a completely experimental, but it's been so packaged to us that people view this as medicine. And medicine is a, you know, medicinal, ultimately medicine is in nature, like plants are medicinal food is medicinal sun is medicinal breath. medicinal, like all these things that are necessary to seek out that balance or that homeostasis that allows our bodies to thrive. You know, we've flipped it by saying, Hey, I can create a chemical where someone can make billions or trillions a year on it. And this is what is medicine. And that's why I hate using, you know, that, that word even. if you want to see Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (26:48.186) proof of the interconnectedness, you just go to the list of contraindications and the list of adverse effects that can be experienced. if this is going to be something, first of all, I guess the paradigm of it being brain-based is something that I would also question, that we think of it as being something that is neurological, that it should be something that involves changing some chemical in the brain when I also wonder about things like, aren't there so many things of the heart when it comes to mood, emotions, values? Aren't we listening to intuition sometimes and we can't put it to rational thought? But we put rational thought on this pedestal. And in some ways, anything that involves mood, emotions, consciousness, experience, we just attribute to being brain-based. We just put the brain on this platform as if it's not connected to everything else. And yet when people feel powerful experiences like love or intense motivation and passion for something. They're not saying like I feel it in my brain. They're feeling like their whole body is in tune with something. So I think that we're just more sensitive than that and we devalue other senses in some way to look at that. But again, back to if we look at the adverse reactions, if you wanna see the interconnectedness and all the problems, if this is just a brain-based thing and this is a medicine for the brain, then what Why are the adverse reactions things like affecting sexual functioning, affecting your GI function, hyperlipidemia and metabolic issues? If we broke up these organ systems into what I believe is like seven different organ systems, respiratory, circulatory, et cetera, this is how it's taught in medical school, they're not distinct, they're not separate. You mess with one, you mess with all of them. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (28:49.502) And that's what the adverse reactions are. It's all of them being affected in some way that we can't predict. Yeah, such a good point. The interconnectedness of all things and human consciousness is something that I'm quite interested in right now as I've been exposed to what's called a post-materialist paradigm. And for those who've been listening to the podcast, I just recently posted a couple episodes that were reflecting Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell's work with non-speaking autistics. And that really piqued my interest and led me to look into other post-materialist science that exists. And of course, some of the things that are well known are near-death experiences, like the brain is no longer active, but yet consciousness continues. very well established, very well known. There's a scientific basis for telepathy. There's a scientific basis for other psychic phenomenon such as mediumship and like energy healing. And this was like fascinating. I was listening to a podcast yesterday and I'm going to try to get this study and included in the show notes is that there's a lab out of Columbia and unfortunately right now the researchers name escapes me but I'll try to recall it and included in the show notes but she's studying consciousness from a post materialist perspective. And what they did is they are interested in what happens to the brain when someone is spiritually connected or in meditation or attempting to heal, like energetically. So they did this interesting studies where they had a person in another building or in another room attached to an fMRI and they brought in Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (30:49.016) what can best described as like traditional healers or indigenous healers who would engage in some form of like energetic healing or consciousness, consciousness based healing or, you know, prayer combination of all of those. And then what they saw was that the healers, certain aspects of the brain became activated, that you see when there's a transcendental kind of connection to all greater things, when people are feeling like they are connected spiritually, or like in forms of meditation or prayer. And the interesting thing is that the other person who's in another room, who hasn't met this healer, isn't physically in contact with them. the same aspects of their brain became activated when the healer was engaging with them. And so this speaks to other things that I've spoken about on this podcast that I've tried to experiment with, cultivating internally compassion within you, the therapist, create an energy field? that is experienced by those around you. Does prayer for a person, does intention or blessing or cultivating of a love energy be felt and experienced? And can it even be a healing modality if there is quantum entanglement and an interconnected relationship amongst all things outside of the material? And I think that's where we're going. I think we're moving in a direction as a species on this planet that we are starting to understand our power outside the limitations of the material realm and the material world. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (32:51.57) And there's science to support it as technology and the scientific method moves beyond just the material and we find ways to be able to measure it, just like Diane Hennessy Powell's work with non-speaking autistics. I think there's places where we intuitively know some of these things to be true, or at least it brings a lot of optimism. You know, like people can, I think, think about experiences with music. and even the healing power of music or what you might physically feel with it and even studies that when we hear them, like that's wild but it makes some sense, that even relating to a plant in a certain way with positive energy or with music with intention. With thought. With thought. that you can affect the growth of that plant. There's just the level of interconnectedness that I think is beyond our current intellectual comprehension, although there's some felt sense of it at times. And like spiritual experiences, think carry that as well. That there's no rational thought, but there's some felt, you feel someone's presence. or I know this was coming from this place. can't, I don't know how or why, just was in some kind of way. mean. know, synchronicities are scientifically empirically established. Do know what synchronicities are? Coincidences. Well, that's a, like that's another word for it, right? I mean, that's probably the materialist paradigm's word for synchronicities is coincidence. It's like they would just randomly occur. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (34:42.75) but the idea like that two people are thinking about the same thing at the same time. Like, for example, I mean, you haven't spoken to, someone you knew from high school in like 20 years, you're thinking about them. And the next day you run into them in the grocery store, or you get exposed to them on social media somehow. Other synchronicities exist as like, the power of intention in asking for something or desiring something in the mind and then providing and then being provided that in another form. Right. So like, for example, you might have a question about something that you've been stressing about in your own life and you just ask for guidance and then, you know, a book is put in front of you that answers the question. You know, so it's It's a different way to think about the human experience and all of our potential and the power that existed. It goes back to... viewing the human experience outside of just the brain emitting consciousness. And then when one dies, you die, right? You no longer exist or your spirit or your soul no longer exists. The new evolving way to think about it is that your brain acts like an antenna. That it is connected to a greater field, greater consciousness. different words to describe this. Some people call it the universe, God, the interconnectedness of all things in a greater field. And so, there is a collective consciousness that exists that we've all created. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (36:41.754) Historically, we've had to make sense of everything the mind is meaning making and we've had to create this society in order to survive. And so everything has meaning to us. then we, without consciousness, without intention, without awareness, we just are automatically reacting to that collective field, that collective consciousness without much thought. I mean, you see it all the time. I think that's. Why we want to have conversations like this is because you almost want to step outside. What is the collective? What is the narrative? Because then you're not really thinking independently. You're just repeating reflexively what's been told to you, which is most of education, which, which is most learning. But when you learn potentially to quiet your mind, your survival mind, and we see this in meditation, for example. There could be access to that greater field, that consciousness. And there's a knowing, an inner standing, an experience that happens when you shut off your mind, a wisdom, which some institutes that are doing studies on this say that it is not just the mind, like there's the pineal gland, for example, that seems to potentially act as a antenna to a greater field, but so does the heart. And that we make a lot more decisions intuitively, and that exists in our heart and our gut. And they tend to probably be more accurate, and they're probably better decision-making. So it's almost like we have to learn how to detach from the survival mind that's collect that's. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (38:39.352) connected to a greater collective consciousness that has really been, I think, fear provoking in a lot of ways, that has kept us enslaved. And that slavery that exists by following the rules that have been provided to us, that keep us scared, that keep us, you know, separate from each other and divided, ultimately keeps one, a group of people in power. financially speaking, and really create systems that support their general power. And worse, almost people, generally speaking, are slave-like states until you wake up and you are no longer controlled by that matrix or that narrative. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (39:29.178) There, I mean this goes... I appreciate how the way you're saying it goes from the individual on out to looking at society and humanity as a large, like you can look at it at any one of those scales. And at the individual level, if we're slave to kind of like our mind prisons, when you start to pay attention to your thinking, it really is the same stuff over and over again. and call it automatic thoughts and cognitive behavior therapy. You can call it conditioned. You can call it whatever you want. It's repetitive, it's predictable, the same stuff. Usually it's coming from fear, it's coming just from some association to something. But living in that, there kind of is no space or opportunity for something new to exist, like new understandings or wisdoms to come up. Most automatic thoughts, at least when I think about my own meditation or reflecting. are not that important and not that useful. It's usually letting those quiet down. And then that wider field does seem to be like a deeper wisdom or consciousness. Often it's more like a gut level, it's more trusting the unfolding of things as it's occurring in the moment. It's like an openness to experience and then something new can arise. The conditions are there where you're receptive to it. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (41:07.674) That's not the normal way of being. Yeah. So now we can think differently about mental health. Mental health can then be the disconnection from our true nature. So when somebody is struggling with fear, depression, purpose in living, they are essentially disconnected from that greater source, that greater consciousness, which includes the interconnectedness of all things. So there's an isolation, there's a loneliness, there's a lack of purpose. This could include like what you're putting into your body, too. That's nature, too. Like real food that is nourishing. makes you feel good and provides you energy and lifts your frequency and energy, but also the service of others, creativity, movement, connection to nature. When you take the human being away from all those things, they get sick, mentally, spiritually unwell. And then we label them as mental illness. Although it's the body still searching to survive, the signals then come. Like they make you feel bad. They disconnect you from reality to drive a connection, to drive movement, to drive change on a mild or moderate level. could be get out of a relationship that is painful. Change a job, do something. that is more soul connecting. So when we get disconnected from that, it could be through drugs, could be through food, could be through lack of exercise, lack of conscious awareness to the present where you're now just being controlled by the matrix, all those things, they just make us sick. And so, Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (43:15.716) We wanna pay attention to them. We don't want to numb them. We don't want to fundamentally alter our humanness. We want to learn how to cultivate that for transformation. Yeah, I would argue I think that's more our natural in a way of being like it's almost like removing the crap so you can get back to attending to that deeper understanding and removing the crap seems like how our motto for what therapy can be in some ways. what it feels like sometimes doing with people. Sometimes that crap is chemical and physical and what's going in the body. Sometimes it's getting tangled up in some kind of thinking or belief that's not serving is more restricting and limiting and self-defeating in ways. So many possibilities, but it's... It's just removing that because I think everyone has that ability. There's a belief that is within functional medicine that I think would have to be a core belief within functional psychology if you're making this school, which is that the ability to heal the potential for wisdom is already inherently in every single individual. It's just getting rid of all the debris that's in the way. Yeah. I totally agree. And it's interesting from a practical standpoint then if you would merge. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (44:51.342) the principles of functional medicine with psychology and psychiatry is that we would acknowledge that what a person is experiencing are those signals and we have to understand what are the potential root causes of that disease state and then intervene there and solve those. And I think what is, you know, absolutely, I mean, what's the word? mean, I don't know if I can create a word that is represents how devastating it is for where psychiatry currently is. Because as a trained medical professional, they could have taken the route of where functional medicine practitioners are trained and are going now. They could have been on the forefront of understanding nutrient deficiencies. the science around like light exposure, for example, you know, we see circadian biology and its impact on mood and behavior. Right now we're sitting here with a computer in front of us or we have phones. And so what are the downstream consequences of blue light exposure? You know, how does that affect human behavior? Well, it does, it does impact human behavior. I mean, we see it in the, in the winter months and here in the Northern hemisphere is when you have less light available and you're outside less because of the harsh conditions of the cold weather that people choose the comfort of being inside is that there are more problems. There's a greater turning to comfort through substance, through food. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (46:35.694) There's more disconnection from each other. People feel unwell. And then we label it as like a seasonal depression. Like it's another disease. And instead of really targeting what needs to happen, which is the light exposure, the circadian biology being targeted, the removal of the blue light or all the technology and develop a plan that exists being exposed to the harsh weather conditions, being exposed to the light, removing your yourself from artificial light, all where we have very good science that could have been provided as a quote unquote mental health treatment, use of red light therapies, things of that nature. And they missed it because they became aligned with the pharmaceutical companies and they're still hanging on to it today. And so that's a travesty. And that's why we have the problems we do in mental health. So practically speaking, right, there's things that we can do right now by merging the two, right? Isn't it our response, but I don't know how you were trained graduate school, but I actually went to a medical school. I wasn't in medical school, but the psychology program, the clinical psychology program was housed in a medical school. And there was a lot of integration with primary care at that time. So one of the things I was at least blessed in being able to be emphasized is that you have to rule out these other medical conditions before you start treating it with cognitive behavioral therapy or considering it to be psychiatric, whether that be like endocrine disorders, thyroid conditions or so forth. There's a number of Lyme's disease, there's all these medical conditions that manifest themselves into symptoms of like anxiety or low mood or sleep difficulties or a number of things like you need to get that work up. Now, unfortunately, we're in a time where, you know, the allopathic medical environment has transformed to such an extent that we don't even get the root causes there. And that's why functional medicine has evolved to where it is. But like, I'm just afraid that people are using these DSM labels as if they're these discrete medical conditions. have ADHD, you have OCD, you have this without understanding other potential. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (48:44.578) legitimate medical conditions that need to be evaluated. So to me, like a functional understanding is integrating psychology and psychiatry is making sure that those aspects are certainly first identified, but also using our behavioral science to help motivate change, right? Because we know like behavioral activation is a very efficacious therapy for clinical depression. What is that getting your body moving and facing responsibilities for the most part, right? I mean, you know, going to break the cycle of depression, the maintaining factors of depression around isolation, probably attachment into that inner world and creating the stories that fuel depression. So there's so many ways that we could integrate within a functional medicine world where we can help people address root causes of health, but then also identify root causes of mental suffering and unhappiness. There's so much common sense in it. You know, it's just as simple as if there's a problem, the first question should be why is there this problem? If I feel depressed, if I feel anxious, if I feel fatigued, why? And nothing should happen until why is figured out to some extent. I think the trouble is that it goes beyond the mental health field where I can't even trust it because of the allopathic model that when I, for example, have someone who's complaining of fatigue and really difficulty paying attention and they're not sure why they're experiencing this. And one thing I want to do is send them for a medical workup, just as trained, right, to be able to rule out some things, see what else could be leading into it. That I don't even trust that if I send them to an allopathic doctor that they'll look into root causes of it enough. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (50:36.46) it'll likely be if it's fatigue or lack of concentration, it could be something that's like a sleeping medication to help them feel to deal with that. But why are they having difficulty sleeping? That's never addressed. Yeah, even the blood panels and I'm starting to understand more the economic ecosystem that exists with health insurance. Even the blood panels are limited and restricted that doctors are able to order. much different than what you would get privately if you worked with functional medicine. you're, I don't even see the value in it anymore. I mean, I never go to an allopathic. typical medical doctor in the hospital based systems that own them under these current models, unless it was an emergency or orthopedic in nature, right? You know, usually emergency medicine only like as far as like, lifestyle medicine or restoring my health or understanding factors that would contribute to disease. There's all this burgeoning technology that exists that allows even to use AI technology to be somewhat predictive of what could be down the line for you based on current like models of panels and investigative work. and that you can start doing things with lifestyle medicine to mitigate the potential damage down the line. I don't know if people realize how far behind the American healthcare system is from the science. Yeah. And I mean, first is if you're not going to look for root causes, you have an issue right away in what you're doing. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (52:26.616) you're relying on large studies with big groups of people to make decisions about what to do medically, which means that if it's something where it was effective for say like 60 % of people, 80 % of people, 30 % of people, which are real numbers for how effective different interventions could be that are being tried, which is why you try one drug, move to another drug kind of thing for interventions. that's not in any way customized to the person sitting in front of you. And so like most people actually won't respond well. Such a good point. And then you keep mixing it in. So. like the common sense things are answering the why. And to this point, I find in most allopathic medicine, when it's not crisis or acute situations, I just don't get satisfactory answers to the why. know, like I have. Cause they don't know. They don't even care. There's thyroid issues within my family. My mom and dad both hypothyroidism. They add levothyroxine to treat it. I have questions. I have questions like, did you ask your doctor why there is this thyroid condition? What are normal levels? What are optimal levels of thyroid? How do we know what's under, what's over, what's your optimal? They just don't know. There is no answer to those questions from allopathic medicine. Go deeper into functional medicine, and maybe we can look into what leads to hormone levels, what leads to different blood tests, what leads to them being low or high. How is this for this person, for what's their optimal well-being? Even when you get the results from the blood test and it has the bar and the spectrum of where your value should be. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (54:21.202) And there's kind of like the green in the middle. There's the yellow on the outsides where it's like at risk and the red on the edges. I don't think people talk about how those numbers have become manipulated and distorted too. So, for example, the declining health of the American population shifts the goalpost changes the averages. The last thing you want to do now, as if you heard in my opening, is to be average, right? But an allopathic medical doctor say you're within the average. So we see this like dramatic decline in testosterone for males, for example, over the course of like 40, 50 years. So a man goes in and gets a blood panel taken and gets testosterone levels taken and they say, you're fine. You're in the average. You're actually sick. That's a problem. You're within the typical levels of miserable and unwelcome. Yes, exactly. And that is what is actually being, you know, identified by the primary care doctors who are kind of like screening these things before you send them off to a specialist or something. It's just moved the goalpost. And this is probably another podcast episode, but you know, there's financial incentive in keeping people sick and then getting them on drugs and staying on drugs as long as possible. from both the pharmaceutical companies, also health insurance as well. And I didn't know this. I forward you that podcast because of what's called rebates or kickbacks. by pharmacy benefit managers. So it's just real complicated sick care system that exists. And so the rules have changed. Like we can't just say, hey, go see your primary care doctor. We want to get you screened for this condition. Oh, you're fine. Okay, then it's psychiatric. Let's do therapy and let's target these things. It's of the mind. That's all a lie. And it's got to change. It's got to change now. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (56:17.11) And the paradigm shift is you're less focused on this disease state of not having it be terrible being the baseline for health. It's how about the bar is your optimal health? What is your optimal well-being? And if we translate that over to functional psychology, then the goal is not you not being anxious, you not being depressed. It's all right, what's someone living optimally? And we should ask questions like what are the optimal conditions, optimal experiences when human beings are living their best? you know, values, meaning, purpose, interconnectedness, spiritual connection. Like it then goes deeper than what is typically assessed or quote unquote treated in therapy and psychology. Yeah. So let's use some case examples. I know that you specialize with working with teenagers. So I'm going to actually present a typical teenager to you, right? And then we can kind of compare and contrast what would be the standard approach versus something that would be more functional psychology. 16 year old comes to you presenting with depressed mood. You provide a standard measure. Let's say it's a depression inventory. It's actually in the severe range. Okay. They say that there's really no cause to it. They just feel horrible. Okay. And you do further investigation. Now, standard psychiatry therapist probably doesn't do this type of investigation. But we look at things functionally. We try to incorporate new science. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (58:13.69) Let's say that that person is on their phone 12 hours a day. Let's say they fall asleep with the phone at night during a typical school week. They maybe get six or seven hours when developmentally they need nine or 10. They talk a lot about poor self image. So there's been weight gain. So there's lack of exercise and a lot of doom scrolling, a lot of attention on social media and not a lot of connection to others. So they feel isolated. They don't feel close to like a friend group. They have ancillary groups. They have people they can sit at lunch with, but there's like a lack of real meaningful connection. Their parents both work jobs. So it's really busy. You kind of got to get up in the morning and everyone comes home like later at night. You're rushing to get dinner on the table and there's not really meaningful connection. People are on their phones. You explore further. There's not a lot of exercise or movement or exposure to sunlight. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (59:42.338) You as the functional doctor, try to get a sense of like how they nourish their body. And so you see a over-reliance on sugary foods, engineered foods to hijack the brain to make them more addictive. And they're just generally feeling unwell, which does impact their presentation at school, their focus. So that is typical teenager. Unfortunately, that I think is the standard. now they're into your office, and contrast what the work is going to look like. Standard psychiatry, standard therapy, to what functional psychiatry and psychology would look like. So if we look at standard, we'll start with psychiatry and the medical model of assessing it. Usually something like, I think six minutes is the average. Usually just meeting with that team to have them fill out a patient health questionnaire, about nine questions or so about mood, suicidality, fatigue, et cetera. Very poorly constructed questionnaire. Very often what I hear from families is little to no interaction with parents to understand any context. So they only know what they know, meaning you're told what the team will tell you for their experience of things. And if you don't ask, you also won't know. And if you do ask, you only know what you're being told. So you have a very limited sliver of information. Much of it may be dependent on the teen's mood that particular day, in that particular moment when you're doing that interview. So it'll be subject to some biases. And within that, if it checks enough boxes, categorically, Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:01:42.872) then a diagnosis is often provided within that meeting. Major depressive disorder would be the diagnosis in this case. That would be communicated as an illness that has been discovered that their teen has, will be communicated to the parents likely that way. Frontline intervention is likely starting an SSRI. beginning with that, starting with one dose, told that it will take six to eight weeks to kick in and should stick with it, and then follow up in likely increasing dose adding medication. And you should seek therapy, being mentioned as an adjunct to that treatment. within a therapist office, typically, I think standard is that there often is less attention to the medical and those lifestyle things because when we have a system that breaks things up into so many specialties, you go to your GI doctor, they look at it through a GI lens, you go through your neurologist, they look at everything through a neurological lens. And it's almost like that field because it's their bias and education is the predominant one and everything else is like all those other doctors aren't paying attention to the right thing, you know, it's just the bias that comes into it. So you go into the therapy office and everything might be looked at through a psychological lens in some way. So what does a purely psychological lens look like? Well, it... There's likely going to be an intake questionnaire that they complete that might hit some areas like their living situation, a little bit about medical, but not nearly to the depth of understanding what they eat on a day to day and how often they use screens and things like that. Those things might not typically be focused on during that initial evaluation. There might be a focus heavily on Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:03:33.124) childhood history, life experiences, social relationships and things. You'll likely get a little bit more breadth to it than you would get in the medical office and what's being looked at. But very often, I think most therapists are still in that paradigm of agreeing with it and looking at it as major depressive disorder, still seen as a condition that explains why the person is feeling the way they are feeling. And then if you have someone who ascribes to evidence-based medicine, it may be that the intervention is kind of just tailored to major depressive disorder. So everyone with major depressive disorder needs to look at their thought patterns and challenge irrational thoughts or thoughts leading to depression. It's all coping model, right? Like you became depressed because of events in your life and how you're coping and it's trying to change the way they cope. Yeah. And that's the psychological lens. Everything is looked at through that particular paradigm. Like a psychodynamic therapist or someone's who humanistic psychodynamic therapist continuum is unlikely to intervene at all in the diet, in the phone, in the exercise, in the movement, you know, all those things that are so interconnected. with their emotional wellbeing. Yeah. And in some ways I feel like the view on those is that they're more superficial and it has to be something deeper, more insightful, more interesting, maybe, I don't know, through that particular lens that someone who went to school to learn that way is maybe really interested in the psychological processes within people and less about what you eat today. Yeah. And what I think is fascinating is that in that space, Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:05:22.568) new problems can be created, right? The therapist and that client who's a very impressionable teenager, they're now like forming or shaping a reality in which to live in that makes sense of everything they're feeling. And I just find that so incredibly dangerous. Yeah. So let's think about what harms what harms do you think would have been done already to this point if that was the psychiatric encounter and if that was the, what was confirmed within the first therapeutic encounters? So first of all, the idea that if it's psychiatric in nature and you need this drug, that there is something inherently like deficient in fundamental brain chemicals, right? All of sudden, you're, or moat, you're just something broken about you. Like we're talking functional here. We're saying, no, I mean, it's a signal or something that's very right about you. Let's pay attention to it. And let's use this for change. They're automatically saying is you are disordered from a biological psychiatry sense. And then the therapist comes along and says, you know, the reason that you are feeling this way is probably a combination of that biological vulnerability. And then there's something like almost unconscious that's driving the way that you see yourself in the world and relate to it. There's this psychic conflict. There's this developing personality. And so you feel bad because of your state of being in the world in relationship to this friend group. or something that might have happened to you, which is expanding narrative of trauma informed care is now anything that the memory or the mind can reflect back historically as painful has now set into action a line of events that led you to this place today where you are now the depressed person. All of this is a narrative that is now created by the psychiatric establishment and the therapy industrial Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:07:32.972) complex. And I just shudder at the downstream consequences of how that influences that person's place in the world and their reality. And your example was a teenager coming in. let's say they're 14 years old. how much of their identity has been formed up to 14, how much of it is gonna be influenced by two adults with degrees, with parents agreeing or at least going along with this idea that there is something seriously wrong with them, that they're now separate, they are in the mentally ill population, and there's a population of people who are normal, there's a population of people who are quote unquote crazy, they are in that latter group. And add onto it, we could add other things like maybe certain experiences have been highlighted and now they look at those through traumas like you're saying. Maybe that they've had suicidal ideation from feeling this terrible. And the bar at which many in mental health, psychiatry or therapy might lead that person to go to a hospital and be committed is actually much lower than it should be. and the harms that can come with that as well. Now you have someone who, if you're talking about the nocebo or someone going the opposite way, believing the worst about themselves from intervention. to go to a psychiatric hospital and being there for a week, how does that change how you think about yourself, your future, your abilities? You're literally a mental health patient. You are mentally ill. You can't trust your emotions. You can't trust your reactions. And in fact, you may be more likely to react that way because there's a reason that's been given to it now. Yeah. I want to flip this a little bit here because I gave you a... Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:09:27.802) a situation purposely, which is, think how we're taking episodic conditions related to other factors and we're making them into chronic health conditions. You know, something that it was in the norm of what is, you know, part of the lifespan, right? And I think we're absolutely doing that. But let's, someone's going to say, well, what about the real legitimate things that happen? And then how would functional psychology and psychiatry then, you know, work with that? So I'm to give you the same case, but a little bit differently. Okay. 16 year old girl comes to you, similar symptoms of depression, similar lifestyle. However, her parents were divorced before she was two. She has no relationship with her biological father. And... This person was sexually abused by a mother's boyfriend. So a legitimate traumatic sexual trauma experience from age seven to 10. The impact of that trauma led to isolation, anxiety, difficulty relating to the world in a way with confidence and safety. Retreated inward into a world. that existed on the phone, you know, interacting with people around the world in a superficial internet-based way for some form of connection, but because of post-trauma, its impact on her, what we would call post-traumatic stress symptoms, and her own internal struggle with being abused and its effect on her developing self. has not been able to form those connections and approaches the world with trepidation and fear. And the same person enters into your office with similar presentations. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:11:41.422) Let's again compare and contrast the best that we can so people can understand. Yes, there are legitimate reasons why someone would benefit from a therapy that are emotional, psychological, or even trauma-based. Yeah, I mean, that's... a great example of how the same exact presentation can have such drastically different root causes. So if you know that whole story about the course of things and how it got to this point, then you know the way we're gonna address it is gonna be completely different. So we take that first case you mentioned, and maybe the interventions are more about lifestyle, are more about First of all, usually with any teen coming in who's experienced any part of the mental health system, the first part is rewriting and breaking apart that narrative that they've come in with because of the harms we discussed. So it's somewhere in that evaluation, having the conversation that I really want to understand the full story of how it got to be this way. And even if you can't explain now and it feels like it came out the blue, I believe there is a reason. We just don't understand it yet. So let's do the work to try to understand it. And we're collaborative detectives and trying to explore what this is. So we'll go through history. We'll do some self-monitoring, try to catch an understanding of in what way does this come up in their life, what are the contexts in which it comes up, what might be the reasons and explanations. And throughout that, you're breaking apart that paradigm, but you're also building an understanding that explains why it is this way. So then we can have the conversation that, no, there's actually nothing wrong with you inherently. It just sounds like if people are going to live this way, if anyone's going to live this way, they're going to feel depressed. That feels like a very depressive way to live. Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:13:29.302) And one could also understand in context how she responded to the world after the sexual abuse, right? Like you can understand. I wasn't even getting to the second one. That was just the first one so far. Yeah. I think I just want to make the connection that instead of looking everything through a pathological lens, you know, we're kind of looking through it as the response has some functional value that is protective in some way. Yeah, and it makes sense. And think when we're talking like motivation and commitment to change. That's something that can be uniquely offered, maybe not uniquely, but it's kind of built and set up to be offered in a functional therapy because you're meeting with that person regularly with a chance to evaluate and get to know the full story of things. And so you can... get to a place of what we call case conceptualization, but you get to a place where you can have a shared understanding of this is what's led to it being this way, and this makes sense that it is this way. And I think until someone is in that place with the person who's facilitating their health or a guide in this, there's not really gonna be an openness to doing anything new. I use the example of if a... If you were in Philly and you called me and you were like, Rez, I have no idea where I am in Philadelphia here. I'm completely lost. It looks a little bit dangerous. Nice coming down. How do I get out of here? And I just said, well, Roger, all you got to do is walk straight ahead 50 yards, turn left, and then keep going, keep going straight. And then you'll make a right. Like, what the hell you even talk about? I even tell you where I am. Yeah. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:15:13.049) you know, so how am going to take directions from you? And that's often what we do is we just see a basic thing, someone's lost. And then we just give this direction of this is the exact thing that you should do. You need to take this psychiatric drug regardless of the reasons are why you're lost, where you are, how you got there. None of that becomes relevant. So, but if we can do that in a functional therapy of understanding that full story, explain or get to a shared understanding of how it makes sense. I think there's more openness and receptivity because there's buy-in what you're saying makes sense. And if it makes sense how I got here, and I know that you know that, then of course, there's gonna be more belief in the possibility that something you're advising or that we're doing together can make something different. And in the greater healthcare system. that long prolonged relationship building and investigative approach that can take place in therapy is unique. It doesn't really exist anywhere else in our model. Yeah, and it's possible at 16 too. People often, I think 16 year olds often feel more misunderstood, partly because of that system, but partly because it is more challenging for adults in their life sometimes to understand them. And there is a tendency in our society for adults to be more the lecturing role, the school teacher role. Somehow parenting sometimes got mixed up with just lecturing or teaching in some way through words, words, words. And then there's less understanding, less of someone feeling like you even know what's going on to be helpful. So in this developing case conceptualization, you could have multiple targets that exist, right? You're almost mapping out a target. You can eventually know that in the safety of that relationship that's built between a therapist and that particular client, that trauma work is done, meaning you are, you know, in some way facing that painful memory and then sharing it with a trusted professional. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:17:19.086) which allows the both of you to think about it in different ways than what a young girl might think about it retrospectively looking back on what happened to them in the way that it defined them or themselves. as well as changing these lifestyle aspects and experimentally doing other things like, you know, risk taking in relationships, you know, developing connections and friendships or challenging yourself in certain areas that is outside of what that person might have learned from that early experience, right? All these things work together. You don't have to say, I'm just a therapist and we're just going to talk about the trauma. And then I'm going to outsource this to this, nutritionist. And then this person's going. the primary care and then for this person, they're going to see a psycho. All these things doesn't really make a lot of sense is that even as a functional psychologist, if we worked in concert with functional medicine, we know behaviorally like the ability to adhere to lifestyle medicine. You know, it's, hard, right? It's hard to regulate sleep. It's hard to decrease the amount of time you're going to be on your phone. It's really hard to eat really good food, especially when your body is used to that kind of poison that's being ingested. there's going to be this adaptation process, you have to set your life up a certain way. All these things can be done in concert with each other under a general belief system that, you know, that person's life is very, very meaningful and they feel taken care of and cared for and understood, which is also maybe challenging the narrative that they have in their mind post-trauma, that they're just, they don't really have value because they were used and harmed in that way. And you can do it in a way that's... very individualized and also doesn't isolate that kid from their family and parents. So, you know, if you're making a plan for how to recover from the state they're in and get back to a place of health. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:19:17.37) You know, maybe we're thinking about asking questions like in what order do we go at some of these things? Do I do I start with do we start with? Going after some of the beliefs related to the trauma that might be of relating to like shame and guilt like it You know, was my fault or I should have been able to prevent this from happening or other ideas that Therapy can be really helpful to work through Or is this someone who's just started avoiding so many things in their life that their life has gotten so narrow that really what you're trying to do is help someone push through to experience some of the hard emotions and difficult situations they've shrunk away from, understandably, but to kind of like widen their way of living. And really your focus then is more on experiencing more of life and challenging some of their fears. Is it the lifestyle things, how they're eating, how they're sleeping? I might hit those early on because those might be able to create some early benefit in how they might be feeling depending on how excessive it is. 12 hours per day on a phone, that's gonna lead anyone to feel like crap. I might hit that earlier on and wait till after doing trauma work to address that. If someone else is at like six hours, four hours, it's still high. Am I gonna really prioritize it as number one and talk to them in such a way like this seems really important like without this changing I can't see how you feel about no it's not going to come from the same approach so it has to be really individualized and then how can a parent be involved what's the parent bringing into that home that's even accessible to eat are there any guidelines around them having their phone at night how much they have it during the day around sleep you you might incorporate a parent who's looking out for their kids best health and you might empower them to be in a position to their kid as well with some of those lifestyle changes. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:21:15.604) It opens up so many more possibilities. Yeah. And just to throw in the provocateur aspect of this and to think about things outside of the Western medicine paradigm is that in the post-material world, in which way try to understand human potential as energetic beings, emotions themselves are energy in motion and that energy can actually, our emotions can be like repressed, suppressed. And we actually know through psych neuroimmunology research that when somebody is an avoidant coper or copes through suppression. those, those emotions actually become like stuck energy that is the potential for a disease state. So that's why there is this interconnected relationship with emotional wellbeing, emotional expression, and health. And so when you think of people say, well, what is trauma work? Well, sometimes it is just the allowance of that emotion to be, we use the word process, but it's to be allowed for, to be grieved. to be experienced for that to move in the way that it's supposed to move without judgment, with full allowance. And that's why we do see benefit to a person's ability to be able to even feel those intense emotions as if it's moving that energy. And I've kind of talked to some of my clients about seeing it in terms of like what is in the light heels, right? So. We know that avoidance maintains PTSD symptoms. And what do we mean by avoidance? Like not wanting to think about it, you know, or not wanting to be around reminders or any stimuli that exists that would provoke, you know, a memory. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:23:06.178) And then there's this judgment of the entire experience, right? And that keeps you sick. It doesn't make you well. And so people who are afraid to feel or to replay those memories because they think it's going to make them crazy, right? It's going to overwhelm them. It's actually the opposite. And so there's even like psych neuroimmunology research on immunity and cancer and emotions. Like we are still in the dark ages in a of this, right? So we don't know if there are forms of cancer that are just a reflection of repressed trauma or stuck energy or emotions. And a tumor is some protective form, you know, in the body. There are theories around that. And there have been people who've gotten better from facing something that they've really blocked out or chose not to ever face in their life, but it's impacted them. So that's just the other way to kind of challenge, you know, existing paradigms and just to see the integration of mind and body and a way of looking at things functionally. Right. think that's the takeaway from an episode like today is that we're starting to challenge that existing paradigm, it's in its reductionist form and see how it's related to really maintaining an ecosystem, an economic ecosystem, as well as potentially, you know, you know, keeping a lot of us enslaved automatically, without us being conscious beings. And now we move into understanding the interconnectedness of all things, our mind, our body, our spirit, as well as what we put into it how we move our body, most importantly, are probably our connection to nature. Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:25:00.922) And everything that happens when we're at, when we're no longer in balance, we're not at ease, the body is in disease, our signals, their symptoms to help us survive and to thrive. And so we have to pay attention to them and we have to correct what is the problem, the root cause, and then allow that to move us forward in this journey we call life. And with each step, a new challenge and an opportunity for growth. And so for us moving past this existing paradigm requires conversations like this, know, even more conversations, because I think we have to begin to integrate these principles in a healthcare system that serves people and doesn't harm people. And it's so interesting to see where we're going to go as a center with these conversations in trying to connect. with functional nutrition, functional medicine doctors, drug tapering, trying to restore health and then measuring that impact on wellbeing and knowing that's not it because to live is to experience struggle. And so how we view that and how we see our place in the world is so meaningful. So I'll give you the last word on this before we kind of close out. Yeah, what's, what's arising for me at the moment is just gratitude for being able to. to try to help people in this way without being restricted because I feel like most clinicians are good people who got into this for the right reasons to help people. within the medical profession, it seems obvious that there are many doctors that are burned out by the allopathic fast food model of treating people that they're, first of all, many of them don't know what to do with mental health have been put in this position to just go through this quick checklist without really knowing the person and providing a Roger K. McFillin, Psy.D, ABPP (01:27:04.556) intervention. And it's got to be demoralizing. You don't see the outcomes. You don't have a really good understanding. You don't get to do what healers do. You don't get to connect and understand and provide guided intervention. And so I feel like the high rates of burnout probably speak for themselves within a system like that. And how great and how empowering would it be for clinicians to take back the reins again, not have business people control the industry in a money profit driven and other motivations that have poisoned the system and be able to get back to what intuitively seems like very common sense principles that I'm not gonna treat something until I fully understand it. that to understand it, I'm going to acknowledge that it needs to be individualized to that person. That I'm going to be humble, that there are so many complex factors that can influence things, and that humility is going to drive curiosity in trying to understand all these different areas. So I'm not going to just make it oversimplified because then it's easier for me to put a label on. But I'm going to go deeper and admit that human experience is complicated. And then when I'm trying to help and intervene, I'm to do it in ways that are less risky, more natural, less invasive, rely on the body's abilities first before going into anything further that carries more risk and see what benefits can come from that first. Why not go to common sense? Well said. Dr. Riz Ahmad, I want to thank you for a radically genuine conversation. Appreciate it.