More Than Anxiety

Ep 103 - How Trauma Drives Anxiety and How to Heal With Dr. Cheryl Arutt

• Megan Devito • Episode 103

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In this episode, Dr. Cheryl Arutt joins me to discuss the deep connection between anxiety and unresolved trauma. She shares insights into how past experiences can manifest as ongoing anxiety, creating a cycle of stress and avoidance. Dr. Arutt challenges the belief that simply managing anxiety is enough, emphasizing the importance of understanding the body's role in this struggle and sharing hope through EMDR for a life that isn't consumed by constant anxiety and vigilance.

A key focus of the episode is on EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy. Dr. Arutt explains how this theraputic approach can help rewire the brain, allowing individuals to process traumatic memories and break free from the grip of anxiety without the need for traditional methods like exposure therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Chapter Markers: 

  • 0:04 - Understanding Trauma and Anxiety Management
  • 8:48 - Moving From Management to Healing
  • 14:48 - Navigating Response Flexibility in Trauma
  • 20:43 - Healing Trauma With EMDR Therapy
  • 33:19 - Processing Trauma With EMDR Therapy
  • 49:10 - Virtual EMDR Therapy Accessibilities


Dr. Cheryl Arutt's Information:
www.askdrcheryl.com , https://www.CreativeEMDR.com

https://www.thecreativeresilience.com/

*EMDR Institute website w Find A Therapist search: emdria.org

*EMDR Kids specialist is Christine Mark-Griffin based in San Francisco.
www.sparkallwellness.com
www.emdrforkids.com

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Thanks for listening!

You know you're overwhelmed, burned out, sick to death of work but also trying to do everyting for everyone at home. TAKE THIS QUIZ to find out why you're so overwhelmed and what to do about it.

Megan Devito:

Welcome to the More Than Anxiety Podcast. I'm Megan Devito and I help ambitious women break out of the anxiety cycle that keeps them frustrated and stuck. Get ready for a lighthearted approach that will change what you think, how you feel and what you believe about yourself. This podcast is full of simple steps, a lot of truth, talk and inspiration to take action. o you walk away feeling confident, calm, and inspiration to take action. So you walk away feeling confident, calm and ready to live. Let's get to it. Welcome to episode 103 of the More Than Anxiety podcast. I'm so excited to have you here with me this week for this interview with Dr Cheryl Errett.

Megan Devito:

Dr Cheryl is a trauma-informed psychologist offering intensive therapy for creative people wanting relief and results faster than traditional therapy allows. For two decades, Dr Cheryl has been helping creative artists enhance their resilience, confront obstacles to livinga full-access life and find sanctuary so that they can be emotionally courageous and fulfill their dreams. A passionate advocate for trauma survivors, she has worked extensively with victims of violent crime and sexual abuse. She regularly speaks nationally and internationally about trauma issues, creativity and post-traumatic growth, and she's often called the voice of reason by fans of CNN and Discovery ID for her on-point psychological analysis of high-profile cases and the news of the day. In addition to speaking on TV on workshops and podcasts about how to thrive after trauma, enhancing post-traumatic growth and overcoming anxiety, Dr Cheryl testifies as an expert witness, does psychological evaluations for court and teaches other therapists advanced trauma-informed skills. She is certified in EMDR therapy and an EMDRIA consultant based in Los Angeles, California. I am thrilled to be able to introduce you to Dr Cheryl Arutt today and I know you're going to love this episode. Enjoy.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Thank you for inviting me to join you.

Megan Devito:

Yes, I'm very excited to have you. I was watching your videos this morning

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

I'm so glad that you're helping so many people who you know, just to make this information so accessible.

Megan Devito:

My entire life I thought that I was the only person that felt the way that I felt. I was like 48. So at my age I was like I think I'm the only person in the world that feels this way,

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

And so many people feel that

Megan Devito:

Yeah, and now I'm hearing stories the people that I went to school with and they're like oh, I used to worry about this and this all the time and I'm still like you did? I thought I was the only person that thought that.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Isn't that a relief to know it's not just me.

Megan Devito:

I'm so excited to have you here. So tell me, tell me, let's. A lot of my listeners are women who are very I mean, very anxious, yes, but also very goal-driven or very forward-focused. But they notice they get stuck in that cycle of oh, but I feel so awful, or I'm thinking all of these things. So that's really most of the people who are listening to me. So when we get into that place and we know that these people who are very, trying to move forward and feeling stuck, sometimes they have past trauma, sometimes they don't. So how can past trauma experiences maybe make their anxiety worse? Or, for people, is that something that you see specifically in people who are more goal-driven as opposed to someone, maybe that's like, everything's fine, I'm just floating through?

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

There's so much to unpack in that question. That's a really, really good question. I'm hearing that you see a lot of people who are, when they have anxiety, they kind of think, okay, if I channel my anxiety to just get my stuff done, or when I achieve this, or when that happens, then I'll be able to rest, Then I'll be able to sit back and chill and relax, then I'm going to feel good about myself. And what I found in my practice with all these years is that people just keep kind of moving the goalposts and they'll achieve it. They'll get that great job, or the relationship or, you know, they want to have a baby. Then they have a baby, then they're stressed about the things that have to do with the baby. I refer to them as feeling states driving around looking for a place to park. It's kind of like I feel something and it's like, maybe it's because of this. Oh no, no. Maybe it's because of that. And you can just throw endless. You're nodding. You know what I mean. And so what I very often see because a lot of the people in my practice are, you know, actors and performers and people who have a platform, a lot of times people will think that when they achieve a certain level of success, that they're going to feel differently about themselves. They'll feel like, now I'll feel whole, I'll feel okay, I can relax, and what ends up happening instead is, why am I still me?

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

And like, why am I still struggling with this? So the the tools and things that we, that we can teach people about anxiety and how to relax, and all of that can do a lot and and it are really really helpful a lot and and it are really really helpful. But I find, with the trauma piece, that very often people will say, okay, I'm using these tools, I'm doing these things and I'm still getting really activated or I'm still getting dysregulated, and what can happen is that old, unprocessed traumas can back up on people so they they're doing better at managing, but it's kind of like; I like to think of it like a sort of like a landmine. The way the memory gets stored when it's a trauma memory is really different than regular memories. Like if you're, if you think about something that is not upsetting, that happened to you a long time ago, it feels far away, like it feels like a past event.

Megan Devito:

Right, right

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

You know, but if you think about something traumatic, it can feel like it's happening right now.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

It can bite you, it can jump up in your heart, can be pounding and you can break out in a sweat. And it's it's because it's stuck. It's like, imagine that your body just like, does like a ball of all the raw sensory information pictures, body sensations, feelings, all of that. And what do we do? We want to, like, avoid that at all costs, right, it's like who wants to touch that? So people start creating their lives in a way where they want to avoid bumping up against the thing that is going to be charged like that. What the trauma processing piece can really really help with is actually taking those memories and rewiring your brain so that they get stored correctly in your brain and they don't bite you anymore, they don't activate. You can press that button all day long and it just doesn't, it doesn't bother you.

Megan Devito:

Yeah, and I love that you mentioned the management anxiety management. I think that's one of those words that for me it's such a double edged or a double meaning, right? Yes, I'm managing it. You know I can go out. I do great.

Megan Devito:

I've talked very openly on this podcast about my history with health anxiety and how I was going to college classes. I was, you know, I'm graduating. I look like I'm having a great time inside. I'm dying. I'm like refusing to shake people's hands, I'm hiding in bed and crying. Like I have horrible memories of this. And it's funny when my kids were getting ready to go to my oldest for going to college and I would talk about them and I could like barely - I would go straight back into this place where I'm like it's going to be awful, like they're going to cry, they're going to be.

Megan Devito:

I mean, and it was just I would come right back to me. And I'm like, I know that I made all of these things up in my head. But it was just such an experience, the idea of it coming back where tears and these really intense feelings where I'm thinking, okay, but I'm in my kitchen right now. I'm not in my dorm room in West Lafayette, but it does. It does still come back, just like you said. With that, it is right there. It's a landmine just waiting every time.

Megan Devito:

So when you're working with people and we have to move from this place of management where it's like I can hide it, I can fake it until nobody sees anymore, don't you worry, I've got this and we're still crumbling inside. How can we stop managing and start healing and really getting to that place because there are some people out there will say well, that's just part of your nervous system and we just learn to feel it and do all that. And there's part of me that's like, you know, we can learn to deal with it, but there's another part where I'm like, oh, there has to be a better way.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Yes, there is a better way and it is part of our nervous system, but it's part of our nervous system that is designed for threat detection, for actual dangers, danger responses, not reading our bodies correctly and in part because it's so, there's so much noise coming in from things that are not actually dangerous right now. But we can psych ourselves out and pay the emotional price for something scary that is not happening, like when you're in your kitchen and in your mind you're in some worst case scenario. Your body pays the emotional price and you know your body can dump adrenaline and cortisol into your system and your heart can raise, you can get all ready to to defend your life, but nothing actually dangerous is happening right now and yet your body has so much wear and tear because it's constantly waging this battle. And a lot of times people think, you know, I have to stay in this mode because when I let my guard down, if I were to really relax, that would be when it would get me. Like then I'd be defenseless, but actually that threat detection, fight or flight and freeze and collapse. There's a whole bunch of states in Sympathetic which you probably covered on this podcast, but it creates so much wear and tear on our systems because we're not designed to be in threat detection mode except when we're actually in danger. And the other mode, when we feel safe enough, is the mode that does all the maintenance and health maintenance and reduces inflammation and does cell repair and good sleep and and also what we're learning it does social connection. You know the ventral vagal system. It's like people can be curious and play and connect with other people and so all those things become unavailable when we're in fight or flight.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

And I think that one of the things that people get into trouble with is that when we go into fight or flight, part of our brain that we do anxiety management with, or that we had historically been taught anxiety management with things like cognitive behavioral techniques. Used this, use the prefrontal cortex and use a part of our brain that the minute we get really dysregulated and scared it shuts down, it's not even there, and then people think, oh, it's me, I'm bad at using these skills, but it's not. It's that that part of your brain isn't there. So we have to learn the somatic, bottom up physiological ways to help ourselves feel safe first, and then we can go in and do those reprocessing things and do the other things to help heal whatever unprocessed trauma is for later. But I think that we really it did a real disservice for people. I think to have um, you know a lot of the the cbt and exposure therapy techniques and I don't know about you, but everybody I know who's anxious.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

You know, most people are not fans of going through exposure therapy because you kind of get bombarded with the thing that freaks you out and the idea is that eventually it desensitizes you and you stop reacting to it. So, A, that sounds really horrible, right, right, right, and and B, even if it does deaden your response. What we've also started to see is that it can deaden the joy responses, the pleasure responses. It can deaden like across the board. So now we're able, with some other techniques, to go in and really just get the stuff that's in the way so your brain can reconnect and think and feel at the same time. And then it's easier to be able to look around and go oh, you know, I'm actually safe right now and to be able to use your whole brain. But if people are thinking, you know I'm trying to change my irrational beliefs while I'm feeling like I'm having a panic attack, it's not just you, no one is good at this, you know.

Megan Devito:

Yeah, and we do, we, we try so hard, don't we? Were like I did, you know, I know it's not rational and I'm like, well, nobody said that was going to be rational, right. Like we do know, and I think that's so powerful for people to know that you can't think your way out of it. You, if you could, everything would have been fine to begin with. We just can't think our way out of it.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Right, it's like a shortcut.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

It's like if you were to put your hand on a stove that part of your brain that has the thought of oh, my hand seems to be sizzling.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Maybe I should move. It would take too long, right? So we have like a reflex like where we were out of there before that happens. And what people often don't recognize is that that anxiety response and trauma responses are like that too. You, you know, if you were to go, oh, there seems to be a life threat. What are my options? I could do this or that or the other thing. What do I want to pick? You might be dead before you picked one, right? So we react instead of respond. But when we're regulated and centered and in that window of tolerance, we can do this thing that, in that mode, is really really great, called response flexibility, where we can generate these different options and pick the best one. That's a great thing to be able to do when we're not standing in front of a tiger that's looking for dinner.

Megan Devito:

Yes, Right, it's perfect, and I want to know about that. As opposed to the maybe that I don't know, that I would call an anxiety reflex; is there a difference between when we know that the frontal lobe shuts off and we just go into fight or flight as choosing to be in that place, but then respond like how, what's the difference - that - like, how can you explain that to people who might not know what that is?

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Okay, um, one of my mentors was this, uh, amazing guy named Dan Siegel, who is, uh, um, a psychiatrist who created and sort of created this field called interpersonal neurobiology that combines like brain science and and attachment and, uh, you know, the limbic system and all all of these things. But he, he can talk about it in a very simple way, which is kind of amazing. But he's the guy who came up with the term window of tolerance. And the window of tolerance is like this sweet spot where we can both think and feel at the same time, where we're well regulated enough to feel calm, collected, connected, that that centered place, and we have our whole brain available but we also are in our bodies at the same time. This is the ideal thing.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

When we get dysregulated, we can either get hyperaroused, which is sort of like above that window, which is fight or flight, which is when those active kinds of responses to anxiety, where we, you know, we may want to self-medicate, we may get aggressive or angry, we may get, you know that revved up, escape or fight kind of mode. But we can also get hypo aroused and that is when people can't leave a situation they may leave in their brain. I'm not in my body. I'm floating in the corner kind of watching myself go through this experience or even collapse and completely shutting down. And there's a level at which people can shut down when something is too overwhelming, where their whole body system starts to slow down and their pain tolerance goes way, way, way up. And this is when there's no escape from what it is, from the bad thing. You have no, your body's assessed that you can't fight or run to survive, and this is the system that allows us to die with less pain. And so in very specific situations it might be an adaptive, evolutionary thing, but we are not designed to spend much time in that mode at all.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Multiple experiences of abuse or neglect or developmental trauma people who were in a lot of situations where they didn't have a lot of power and they couldn't get out of the situation they were in, are more likely to develop these shutdown and dissociative kinds of, I'll check out and just not be in my body and not be present ways of surviving rather than you know I'm going to rev up, and those are really important too, because then there's nobody home to heal in the body, and that becomes a go-to whenever something seems from 50 paces like, oh, this might be really not a good thing, I'm out of here before, I'm not sticking around to find out what it is basically. So you know, even people who have this very high-functioning presentation and can be really go-getters and can be achievers and they may excel at a sport or they may excel, you know, in other things, can also talk about periods where, like, I don't know how I got from a to b, or I'm not in my body or I'm not home, and understanding that as another very common way that the nervous system tries to protect us and keep us going, but then it can grow into a problem in and of itself too. That's part of the, if we look 360 degrees at how we react. So to get back to the question of how do we do that response flexibility and how do we do the choosing the best option, the problem is that if you're out of that window, whether it's above it or below it, it's very hard to generate those kinds of things, because the part of our brains that we need for that is very often offline.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

So the skills that we can learn to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, things to help us calm down things, to help our body recognize I'm actually safe right now, if we can even just know I'm starting to panic and I need to use my tools, just that, like a training ourselves, so we have that scaffolding that can get us to calm down enough that then the brain comes back online and it's like, oh, now I see all these things that I can pick from, but we have to do A before B becomes fully available.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

And that step you know the stuff that I've heard you talking about. You're sharing a lot of these really great tools that people can get, like their own personal backpack of anxiety management tools, so that they know if I'm getting anxious, let's reach for all these tools and try to get back in that window so I have my whole brain, you know. Then I'm smarter, I can take care of myself even better, and I'm doing this because the tiger isn't standing in front of me right now. Yeah, and then those people when they do have psychological trauma or a diagnosis or something that that would benefit from, from trauma therapy, when people come in with those skills already, they are so far ahead because we don't have to teach, we don't have to spend as much time teaching them and prepping with those tools because they're more resourced and they're better able to tolerate just for a few moments noticing the thing that that is frightening them. But we can really strengthen the, the supports that they have very quickly and then get the relief very quickly.

Megan Devito:

And I think there's something that, if I think of all the things that I learned, from the time you know where I started feeling anxious, to when I got to a point where I had this moment where I thought, wait a minute, that's what's been going on this entire time. That was all I needed to know. That was the most like liberating and frustrating moment of my life. I think, where I thought you've got to be kidding me, but. But when I realized that I could use the feeling and not have it be something where I thought, maybe all of my thoughts are premonitions, maybe this is something I should be you know more careful about, maybe this is something I should believe, and realizing that oh wait, that means I don't have to believe anything that I think.

Megan Devito:

I think that was a really big moment where I thought, oh, that's really what it is. And just letting yourself realize how that feeling it feels terrible, but it's not bad, it's not dangerous, it's not something, and I can actually use that to my benefit. And I think that is one of those things where I wouldn't even call it for me, and please correct me if I'm wrong here, not the, maybe that discomfort, it's a type of intolerance or a tolerance effect, I suppose, like where we're learning to feel those feelings and to be able to tolerate them, but not necessarily powering through. And what you said about powering through and thinking high functioning oh, that's good, I'm doing it, maybe not so great, maybe that's not what we want. And for me, I think I carried that around like this badge of power for so long, like I did all this stuff, and there were times where, ooh, I wasn't doing much of anything at all.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Yeah, but whatever you did, it got you here, so so, so it's. It's amazing. I mean you, you survived all the things that were hard. You got through a lot of really hard things and, yeah, when you look back now that life feels better than it did, you have feelings about all that time before you knew that you know what you know now and wishing maybe that you could have felt better sooner, which is a sign of healing. Felt better sooner, which is a sign of healing. Actually, when people start to grieve all the time up until now before they got the big aha and life changed, that is one of the biggest indicators for me that somebody's really, truly made a shift in their healing and that they're embarking on a completely different quality of life. And so I think it's even though that's another example of something that may not feel unambiguously great it's a really good sign.

Megan Devito:

It's a funny place to be and I talk with people so often that think that's going to be this like, I feel amazing and I'm like, oh no, it's not like that at all. There's a lot of really hard stuff that you have to realize, that you missed and that you're sad and angry about, and that you know you wonder what would I have done differently, what would have been different? And but here we are right, I wouldn't be where I am If I didn't do that. I wouldn't be able to help my kids, or I wouldn't be able to help my students or anyone else if I hadn't done that.

Megan Devito:

And it was. And it's funny that you said that's a healing moment, because I thought this was, you know, for the longest time when you're in that place and you think this is what I'm doing and I can't believe I can do this, and you look back and think, oh my gosh, that's what I did. It is a hard, it's a hard thing to reckon with that. That time has passed and now we are here.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

You did the best you could with what you knew at the time and that's enough. And the thing about that landmine I was talking about is that there's something else in the landmine too, that it's not just pictures and body sensations and feelings and all of that, but there's always a negative belief about the self in there.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

And it is an irrational, negative belief and it's something that you know and that's in there too, and it's kind of like, if this is happening, what does this say about me?

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

And it may be, you know, I can't handle it, or I'm powerless, or I'm, you know, defective, or you know, guilt, shame, like all these kinds of beliefs, and by you know what I, what I was describing in terms of a lot of the reprocessing, the landmine that reprograms and rewires your brain.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

There are a few different ways to reprocess trauma.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

One of my favorite ways is EMDR therapy, and one of the things

Megan Devito:

I was just going to ask you about that

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Yeah, and one of the things that I really love about EMDR therapy apart from the fact that people remain in control and they're very resourced and there is a very collaborative it's not something that gets done to you. It's something that that people do together and it's evidence-based and it's really effective, um, but it's really really good at getting those beliefs that you know the ones that you know in your head aren't really true know, but somehow in your gut you can't help but feel as if they were true anyway and it just doesn't match and doesn't line up. And no matter how many times you do affirmations or tell yourself or have somebody tell you, it doesn't shift the gut feeling. This shifts the gut feeling so that what you know in your head and what you feel in your gut line up and that is amazing. That's really cool.

Megan Devito:

That is amazing. So can you give like a nutshell explanation? I've had people say what do you know about EMDR therapy? And I'm like well one, I'm not a therapist, but I've heard it's great and I've heard it's amazing. And I've watched, you know you can Google as much as I can. So what do you love about it?

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Well, here's the thing I am trained in it, I'm certified in it and I'm an approved consultant in it, which means that I do consultation with EMDR therapists to help them get better at EMDR therapy and get more confident and be able to use it with - when you first get trained in it, you learn a standard protocol, which is good for certain things, but when somebody has more complex presentation, there are things that can help it work even better, and so those are some of the things that we that we do.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

I was a huge skeptic in the beginning. Yeah, and it is an evidence based treatment that's been around for over 30 years. Maybe we're going on almost 40 years, and there's this body of international research about how effective it is. But the thing is that when it came about, first of all, it sounded kind of weird, like people would like move their eyes and like what you know it didn't. It sounded A, it sounded too good to be true, and B, it just sounded kind of strange, right?

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

The other thing is that there there's a whole political aspect to this because, um, well, there were um, the, the, the treatments of choice at the time were prolonged exposure therapy, where you bombard you, which the military has been using forever, and a lot of what. A lot of university psychology programs would have people with certain theoretical perspectives that have a bunch of first year psychology college students come in and in order to get their intro psych credit they would have to participate in some kind of research thing that the university was doing and the prevalent way of of doing research at the you know, in a lot of universities was exposure and cognitive behavioral stuff.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

So you get these huge numbers of people doing those kinds of studies and also needing like credits and things like that, so it made them less likely to drop out of the study. Not always, I mean, sometimes that would still happen but what happened was that the effect of it was that those studies looked more rigorous and more scientific because they had these huge numbers and this was this very new form of treatment and it worked differently.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

But people liked it better and it was really effective, even though people couldn't really explain the exact mechanism of how it worked. But guess what? People can't explain the exact mechanism of how psychotherapy works in general. Like, yeah, like we, we just know we can, we can show that it works. But the thing is that there was a gigantic hostile political backlash from people who had made careers saying the way you treat anxiety and trauma is this, and so this other thing has got to be. You know, some fly-by-night, not real kind of treatment, and if you Google you will find things that still kind of say that about EMDR therapy, even though you will also find that it's an evidence-based treatment with research around the world for years and insurance covers it and all that stuff.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

But what has happened, politically, there were issues. I personally I I was in my first year of grad school and a bunch of my friends were like, oh, let's go to this big psychotherapy conference, this big international conference. We all went to Vegas where they where they had this thing, and I heard Francine Shapiro speak and present about EMDR therapy and she's the psychologist who discovered it and I thought this is the biggest load of like, this can't be a real thing. And I was super skeptical. And years went by and I actually had somebody walk in my office one day who I'd been working with for a while, who had been assaulted over the weekend.

Megan Devito:

Oh.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

And I, with what I had been seeing and learning, I was starting to realize that this was a really powerful tool, especially with acute trauma, that you could prevent PTSD, because the first month of symptoms after a trauma is acute stress disorder and it develops into PTSD if it continues. And so a lot of the memory storage problems that that happen with disturbing information coming in and creating this reliving, where we have flashbacks and things comes from the the raw sensory information being stuck. It's like if you ate something that was too awful to digest and it stayed like a lump in your system. This raw sensory information is stuck there and that's why it feels like it's happening now. There's some really interesting functional MRI brain scan studies where the part of the brain that that shows the past doesn't activate when someone is having a, an unprocessed trauma and after you do emdr therapy it goes into, you know, the hippocampus activates and they things memory gets stored and your brain experiences it as a past event and your body feels like, wow, that was really, you know, not a good thing that happened, but that's over and that is not happening now. And you can really deeply feel in your body that this is not a now event, this is this is a past event and that makes a huge event. This is a past event and that makes a huge, huge difference in terms of safety.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

So I ended up getting on a plane when this thing happened with the person that I was working with that weekend and got my first weekend training in EMDR therapy and was able to use it to really relieve a lot of very acute symptoms and I just kind of fell in love with it and realized, you know, I'd had all this other types of depth training and different ways of working that have been really helpful and have layered in in terms of my approach, but having this tool and being able to help people get relief so quickly has been a game changer.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

And so you know I like helping other people know about it and, you know, access it and work with it and, and you know, I've had coaches refer people to me to do just the trauma piece. I've had other therapists who, um, you know are are working really well with somebody in general, but there's like this trauma piece that won't shift even over time, and we do at this point I'm a lot of the time I'm like the specialist who will. I might work with somebody for a month or a month or two, where we do longer sessions and we just shift the trauma part and then they have access to themselves and they can continue on with their therapy or their coaching or whatever it is that they're doing and they get unstuck, basically, yeah and I think it's so great that we are hearing more about it.

Megan Devito:

I know that you shared the video of Prince Harry doing EMDR and I had seen that. I know there's lots of other athletes and celebrities that are talking about hey, this is a struggle. We've seen it from Selena Gomez and we've seen it from Michael Phelps and we've seen it from, you know, Simone Biles and all these people and just I appreciate, especially as someone who has younger kids who I'm like hey, you guys don't have to do this my way. That was, that was not the best way to do it. You have so many more people who are talking about it, but I do think that that's really helpful to know that it's not something, that it just you know it's, it's not specific to someone. There are people who you can have all of the influence and all of the money and all these things, and we're still all dealing with the same things.

Megan Devito:

And now that I can see, you know, we're,

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Yes, we're all human.

Megan Devito:

We're all human. We're all having the same, like similar, experience anyway, and but it is fun that you can see that, oh, wait a second. I had a client who I was just talking with last week, who her therapist did EMDR on her and she said it was, she goes, it's the one thing that helped me. It's the one thing that made a difference and I love it that it's not, you know, she can do it, Prince Harry can do it, you can do this, this is available. So is it something that you do?

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

And kids.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Oh, kids love it, and there are. I actually. I don't work with kids myself, but there are kid EMDR therapists there. Th ere's a woman, in California, Christine gosh what is her last name? Um, who, who just made this beautiful workbook for EMDR therapy with kids that just won an award, and she's just lovely. Um, I'll have to, I'll tell you. Maybe you can put her information in the notes too.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

She's doing cool things but.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

But this works great with kids. This works great with people who, um, either come from cultures or or whatever, for whatever reason, um, they don't want to talk about the thing. You don't actually have to really talk about it in detail. You map a target. You just have a person notice the event or a pic, like a picture of the event in their mind or, if that's too much, uh, like a black and white picture or a picture behind bulletproof glass or like like you can make it.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

There are ways to really distance the thing that you're just sort of touching this, this memory neural network. But you also have all of your resources around you of things like maybe your wisest self and your most nurturing figure and your most protective figure and all your tools, and you can stop at any time and go do a visualization of a place that makes you feel really calm. You just sort of touch this thing while you are stimulating the body, alternatingly off the midline of the body. Something about bilateral stimulation activates this thing that our brain knows how to do already and it's kind of like your brain goes oh yeah, I forgot to digest this one and you can feel it kind of going and people talk about like having this feeling like things getting put where they go, and the the time that we do this naturally is during REM sleep, which is one of the theories of how this works that our eyes go back and forth really rapidly while we're dreaming.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

And actually in the Prince Harry video, if you look really carefully, you can see, even though his eyes are closed and he's doing tapping he's doing what we call the butterfly hug. You can see his eyes, also behind his eyelids, moving back and forth really quickly. What happens during REM sleep while our eyes are moving like that? That seems to be connected to something in the brain that does memory consolidation and storage and it basically helps our brain figure out what do I need to keep in long-term memory and what's the extraneous stuff that doesn't serve me to hold on to and that I can let go of. And, like you know, when you make a big decision, what do people say before you decide? Sleep on it.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Are you sure. Sleep on it, yeah it, yeah right. Sleep on it, you'll have more clarity. And this is something that activates something in the brain that does this, but you can do it on purpose when you're awake and do it queuing up in a particular way some things that got stuck in there and didn't get consolidated correctly because the information was too disturbing when it came in originally and so your brain got overwhelmed. It went, I'm gonna make that a landmine and try to stay away from it as much as possible. Thank you very much.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

So this allows it to basically it's not charged anymore afterward. Like you can think about the same thing that was like a 10 out of 10 in terms of bothering you and afterward trying to stir it up. It might be a one and the negative belief that went with it doesn't feel true in your gut anymore and you have been able to install a positive belief that you'd like to believe instead, when you think about that and that starts, that can feel really true in your gut and then people are like I don't really need to keep thinking about this thing anymore because it's over. Like that, that's in the past. I'm busy with my life here and it just seems kind of irrelevant, instead of something that needs to be avoided or obsessed about. It's just like not on your plate anymore what a relief, right.

Megan Devito:

What a nice thing to have to think about during the day, right? I mean, it's so silly, but when you are spending hours, I mean hours and hours and hours a day stuck in that like thinking and thinking to try to protect yourself, and it's like I keep thinking, and if I'm not thinking that, I'm afraid because I'm not thinking and we just start thinking ourselves into exhaustion and it just and it is a stuck place, and it's a place I love that you said a knot. I always think of that scene in Christmas Vacation where he says a little knot here and he brings up this big ball of Christmas lights and you have to go through one at a time and just to know that that doesn't have to be part of every single day. Yes, trying to not I mean thinking of every single day. Yes, trying to not, I mean thinking and not trying to.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Yes, and that actually also makes me think of that.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

We also, our brains, are association making machines. So we also don't have to go in and individually target and reprocess every single event that's ever happened to you that was upsetting, because our brains can lump those into general categories that have the same theme or the same negative belief, or you know that go together and if you can clear the touchstone one or the key one or one that represents a group of experiences. You can do a whole lot of reprocessing and either clear the whole thing or you know you can clear most of it and then you go back in and check and it's way easier for the person to be able to think and talk and go. Oh, you know this has come down from like a, like an eight to a to a three or four, but I'm still having some feelings. I'm like oh, when was that? When do you remember feeling like that? And there may be another unprocessed memory that is still connected in there. You clear that one and the whole thing comes down and it's not charged anymore. So it's really fun to be able to get in there and kind of get this stuff out of people's way.

Megan Devito:

That is amazing. That is so fun and so amazing and just so hopeful, really, I mean, for the people who feel like this is never going to go away this has been. I mean, if you're like me and it was 30 years of trying to dodge things, that is hope and that, especially where we are right now, that's what we need I want people to have hope.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

I want, I want people to realize that this stuff is treatable and especially with anxiety, if we can treat it. First of all, to understand that, that the symptoms you're having is because your body is trying to protect you and keep you safe. But it kind of got off track in a way, and a lot of the stuff that we're reacting to it's like a harmless recording that keeps playing over and over again. But it feels really real because of the way it's stored in the nervous system and to be able to shift that makes people understand that it's like I'm not crazy, I'm not defective, I don't have to keep living like this.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

And anti-anxiety medications are not the first line treatment for this stuff, because we don't have good meds for, you know, chronic, ongoing anxious states, because they make people tired and they have trouble functioning and they can be habit forming and they we just don't have like medicating or self-medicating, are going to create and I'm not anti-medication, I don't mean to say that at all there are times when, you know, SSRI medications can be very helpful for both anxiety and depression. Um, but there is a way that we, if we only do those things and we don't get underneath and see what the natural body clearing ability is, and to be able to bring that in and activate it and let a person's own body and brain go. Oh, I get it. Um, then you know we've missed a really big opportunity, I think.

Megan Devito:

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think anxiety medication it has its place and I think sometimes it's great for us to be able to get to the place where we can maybe get to a point where we can even imagine letting it go,

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

And I'm not trying to push people to let it go, and and I'm realizing that what I was thinking about was less someone who's working with, actually a and this is a big thing for me.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

If people are taking medications, psychopharmacological medications, if their general practitioner is prescribing them, that person can, but it doesn't mean they should, because that person does not have the level of training to be able to fine tune in terms of the art and the science of getting the right medicine, the right dose, the right person. So it needs to be a psychiatrist. They have very specialized training and fine tuning it to optimize it for a person. And when they, when somebody does that, that's great. If their general practitioner was like, oh, somebody came by with some samples and here, try this, they really they don't know what they're doing.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

It's like it's like you don't go to a psychiatrist to get heart medication prescribed. You could, because they're MDs, but that's not their, that's not their area. Like you want everyone to kind of stay in their lane with that. What I meant when I said about medications is when people are like oh, I'm anxious all the time, I want Valium, or I just want something that'll just like numb me out and take the edge off, or they start smoking all the time or they start drinking all the time or they do things to try to shut that and dial that down because they're suffering. But what I'm saying is that when we get underneath it, to the source, and stop it from tormenting you, so you're freed up to kind of do all the things you want to do, that tends to work better.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

And sometimes people need that foundation also of of good medication, managed by somebody who knows what they're doing, to be available to themselves, to be able to do the work also. And then sometimes their system is such where you know the medication is an important key and support for their body chemistry and they optimize their life with it. And sometimes people find that you know they experiment with, let's see, I might not continue to need it. And the new neural pathways have been, you know, if they've been on it for a year or more and they've also developed these new neural connections that are getting stronger, they may not need that additional support after a certain time. And either way, it's all about finding what works best for a particular person. I think.

Megan Devito:

Yeah, absolutely Absolutely, and I've seen great things on both sides of that. So, yeah, it's been a joy to talk with you today. Thank you, you too, yes, do you work with people specifically in LA? Do you have clients that you work with virtually? How can people connect with you?

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

I work at the moment, I am working a hundred percent, virtually. Um since the pandemic. One of the things that we found was even EMDR therapy is profoundly effective through.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

We can do it on zoom, like we are right now there's all kinds of bilateral stimulation that we can do auditory, visual, tactile people can get their own um little, they have these little like vibrating eggs, like these little buzzers that alternate, that people can also use and plug into their computer. I had somebody who was actually staying in the country because they had wanted to move out of the country, but they were in the middle of their EMDR treatment and they didn't want to interrupt it. And then we learned like, oh my God, you know, like this is amazing, because I'm a therapist and I'm not a coach. There's a license issue also. I'm licensed in California. I am actually also in the process of becoming licensed in Nevada, and Nevada is a PSYPACT state and PSYPACT is an agreement for psychologists.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

These are stuff that you coaches don't have to worry about, which is like a whole different thing, and basically there's a reciprocity between states, between multiple states that are in PSYPACT but California is not, so at the moment in terms of therapy that are in PSYPACT, but California is not so at the moment in terms of therapy, I am only doing therapy with people who are either physically in California or because I do intensives. I also have people who fly in and do intensive work and we can do that, like, sometimes people will come in for a weekend and we'll do a block and, and you know, they'll fly back. Um, there are also I have a second company, creative resilience, where I do creative consultations that are more along the lines of the coaching, um, and that's not therapy but that's for creative people and, uh, workshops and classes and things like that. So that's a different offering that I also am, you know, for people who want to work with me in and aren't in California too.

Megan Devito:

That's awesome, and I'm actually in Indiana and I have this way of attracting creatives. It's funny I don't know what's happening, but I do Like I have a playwright and I have producers and I have these people who are doing these really fun creative things and it is so much fun to learn about what they do. So and I think that that's so great to know that you have opportunities for them and the people in California who are listening, that you are there and Nevada.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Yes, and for people everywhere, emdria. org emdrinternationalassociation. org has a find, a therapist feature where you can go in and search and see what level of training people have. Are they basic trained, are they certified, are they consultants and they have them in every state and information about them, and that's another way. If somebody is in a state and thinking I'd like to check out this EMDR therapy thing and you're somewhere else and you don't want to fly into California and work with me, that's a great way to do it too. So that's another resource for people who want EMDR, no matter where they are, and it's also available internationally. I've met with EMDR therapists all through Europe and Australia, new Zealand, a lot of places and so it's a popular way to shift this and, more than ever, the world really needs to be able to shift the trauma that we're carrying around in our bodies and to be able to get back in touch with feeling safe and whole and connected and joyful and and present. So thank you for the work you're doing, helping people get there.

Megan Devito:

Thank you and thank you being for being with me. This has been so much fun. I'm going to share all this information with my daughter. She's going back to start her master's in August. So we'll have to send her to go check out EMDR. So that would be a very great thing, I think, to be able to have to bring more people to Indiana. But, Dr. Arutt, thank you, what a joy.

Dr. Cheryl Arutt:

Oh, thank you so much. It was so much fun.

Megan Devito:

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the More Than Anxiety podcast. Before you go, be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. And, of course, if you're ready to feel calm, to stop overthinking and have a lot more fun, you can go to the show notes, click the link and talk to me about coaching. I'll talk to you soon.