Trauma, Homeopathy, EMDR, Gestalt, Family Constellations

Pi:  Hello. And welcome to trusting after trauma season three, transitioning to transformation after narcissistic abuse. I'm your host, Pi Venus-Winslow. 

Scroll down to get to Dr Ameet podcast and YouTube videos!  

Our focus this season is on making powerful decisions to create transformational life changes for those who have experienced childhood trauma and narcissistic abuse so they can reclaim their happiness and personal power. Our speakers specialize in supporting others through their unique expertise and offer valuable insights, tools and inspiration for viewers to find the courage and motivation to change their lives. 

I'm very excited to have Dr. Ameet Aggarwal here with us today. Voted one of the top 43 naturopathic doctors worldwide, Dr. Ameet has helped thousands of people around the world heal from trauma, anxiety, depression and chronic disease with herbs for anxiety and depression and by combining naturopathic and functional medicine, Gestalt psychotherapy, family constellations therapy, EMDR and homeopathy. His best-selling gut health book and Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online on drameet.com will help you heal your mind and body together with emotional release techniques and holistic medicine. When you get Dr. Ameet's Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online and book you help poor and vulnerable children in Kenya receive holistic medicine. 

Welcome, Dr. Ameet. I'm so happy to have you here today. 

Dr. Ameet:  Hey, Pi. Thanks for the beautiful introduction. And hey, folks, we're going to go on a journey to support your tender, vulnerable parts of you in a very safe manner, bring them all together so you can find your truth and resilience hopefully today. 

Pi:  Beautiful, beautiful. So Dr. Ameet, we were chatting a little bit before we started this interview and you were telling me a little bit about yourself and what you do. And I just want to invite you to share that with our viewers just a little bit about yourself and how you came to do the work that you're doing. 

Emotional Attachment issues

Dr. Ameet:  So Venus, I grew up in boarding school, it was a very tough time, bullying, and of course, there's authority there which you kind of project or mistake for your parents in a way because they take over a dominant role in your life, and if they're not so nice it harms your vulnerability and your perception of yourself, it makes you feel like you're doing things wrong or you're in the wrong if they get angry or if they're upset with you. And it could be their personality, their narcissistic or psychotic personality. 

And at that age you don't know what's right and wrong, so if they're wrong and they mistreat you - you think you're wrong. And it takes a lot of time to find your way back to your own truth and to positive support in your life. 

In addition, to boarding school, of course, I did a lot of different things in my life, different drugs, went through different breakups, so I went through a lot of trauma and unease in my life with different habits and practices, of course, right? We all ... many of us dabble in various things. 

So all of these things can destabilize your core or give you a different sense of who you are, bring in self-doubt, self-sabotage, lower your self-confidence and that can lead you to make wrong kinds of decisions for yourself, right? Either the wrong decision or decisions in a rush or have harder decisions or you make choices that are not for your best because you're willing to settle for what's just good enough rather than what's best for you based on the trauma that you're carrying. 

And I was lucky enough to study naturopathic medicine in Canada alongside with psychotherapy. So I had a lot of anxiety and depression (that's why I talk about natural remedies for anxiety and depression), intrusive thoughts, etcetera, and by healing my gut with home remedies for leaky gut, my leaky liver, really reducing inflammation in my body and using holistic medicine and going through psychotherapy school where we peeled away these traumas from childhood, shifted my belief systems and got feedback from other people in a safe environment of their experience of me, right? So I get feedback of how am I impacting another and seeing that, creating resonance between my heart and the heart of another person, that brought about healing to my internal mind. 

Because we walk around here believing our own thoughts of the truth, and when you get positive feedback or different feedback from different people in a safe way, in a therapeutic way and you release all the pain and you give yourself permission to really unburden yourself from dominant behaviors in childhood, whether it's your parents or teachers or other adults, you actually give yourself permission to unpeel those scoldings or those criticisms and find a place of love in your heart, then the holistic trauma healing begins. 

Pi:  Yeah, absolutely. I love everything you said. While you were talking I was thinking a lot of things I was thinking, I was like, "Oh, just like me. Just like me." And I'm sure a lot of our viewers can resonate with what you're saying, so thank you for sharing that. Can you tell us more about how you particularly heal trauma for other people or help other people facilitate healing trauma with other people? 

EMDR Trauma Therapy

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

Dr. Ameet:  Right, yeah. So I'm training Gestalt psychotherapy. EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization reprocessing, it's a brilliant way to release trauma. I'm training family constellations, which we'll talk about, that helps you heal ancestral trauma and give back, in a respectful way, back to your ancestors all the pains and burdens that they carry and that you've been carrying on their behalf that doesn't serve you anymore. I'll explain how all that works. I also practice homeopathy which is amazing, amazing to heal trauma from the past, not only existing mental state but really I've used remedies such as Ignatia and Aconite which we'll talk about more, to heal surprises, betrayals, shocks, accidents from even as far back as childhood that are still affecting your nervous system today because trauma gets lodged into your nervous system, right? 

Pi:  Yeah. 

Dr. Ameet:  And it triggers an adrenal response, the fight-or-flight response where you make adrenaline. And when trauma is ... if you don't resolve this trauma your nervous system is always programmed to be on watch or careful or unease, and that stimulates your adrenal glands to continuously produce adrenaline and cortisol, never giving you a break. This is how to reverse adrenal fatigue naturally. So over time you go into adrenal fatigue. So unresolved trauma as well as life stresses and daily life happenings burn out your adrenal glands, sending you into adrenal and cortisol imbalance, then affecting your mind because adrenal imbalance and cortisol imbalance suppresses serotonin, dopamine, melatonin and GABA, all your brain chemicals, sending you to anxiety, depression, OCD. 

So it's super important to, of course, release this trauma that's stored in your nervous system as well as heal some foundational pillars of your health physically like your liver, your gut, and we'll talk about that at this time. And I have Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online on my website which helps you heal your gut, your liver and some emotions in case you get lost with all the information on the biology about best herbs for liver repair. But it's important to release this trauma from your nervous system so that it gives your adrenal glands a break, your brain chemicals come more into balance, you make better decisions for yourself and you have more self-esteem, more belief in yourself, more confidence and you get into better relationships. 

So I use the Gestalt psychotherapy, the EMDR, the constellations and homeopathy to peel away these layers, to give you back your emotional resilience. 

Pi:  Uh, that's amazing. Oh, my goodness. So can you share a little bit more about your Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online? It covers a lot of homeopathic remedies to heal trauma, so can you tell us a little more about that, about like the constellations and all of that? 

What is EMDR therapy 

Dr. Ameet:  So EMDR, let's start with EMDR, eye movement desensitization reprocessing. That's a technique where I as a therapist, and you can do this online with a therapist as well or live, whatever suits you, I as a therapist will ask you to look at some of your memories and maybe the most painful one or something that you feel safe working with, a difficult memory. 

In that painful experience usually we create a negative thought about ourselves - either I'm not safe, I'm going to die, I'm not loved, I'm alone, I'm useless. We create negative thoughts. So I'll ask you to find that negative thought. 

And then I'll ask you to explore what feeling comes up in that experience - is it sadness? Is it fear? Is it panic? Is it anger? So we're really honing into the experience. So there's a negative thought, there's the image of the experience, there's the feeling of sadness, whatever, and then there's the physical feeling - I'll ask you to feel for the physical sensation in your body. It could be in your heart, your throat, your arms, wherever. 

And when you're connected to those four stimuli - the picture, the negative thought, the feeling as well as the physical sensation - I will ask you then to either follow my fingers, left, right, left, right with your eyes or tap left and right on your collarbones. And what happens is this, what we call bilateral stimulation, helps the frontal part of your brain process, all the stored emotions and trauma that's stored in your limbic brain, in your kind of primitive brain and in your nervous system, your reptilian nervous system. 

And the magical thing about EMDR is that as you continue doing this the volume and the magnitude of that memory starts to diminish, the colors change, you feel more distant from it. You, yourself, like you've grown up a bit and that trauma looks smaller. So you feel safer in your nervous system as well as your analytical mind. Because remember, even though you convince yourself logically that you're fine, your nervous system is still responding to that memory. And EMDR helps to shift the emotional experience around the memory so that your entire body feels safer, so you're less triggered into panic attacks, exhaustion, burnout, depression because you've truly overcome the experience rather than thinking your way out of it. 

Pi:  Yeah. 

Dr. Ameet:  And that's really important to do. Go ahead, sorry. 

Pi:  Oh, I was just going to say that that's awesome, like that's amazing. Because you can't really think your way out of ... you can't think your way out of something that's in your body, right? It's like you've got to work with your body. And I love that you do that because it's so important. I think a lot of people who've experienced trauma are not connected to their bodies, I know I wasn't for a long time. 

What is emotional trauma

Dr. Ameet:  Yeah, you don't know it's there, right? And what I do is I don't distinguish between mind and body anymore - they're one, the operating is one. And so CBT I'm not really a fan of even though it works really well for some people to help control their symptoms, CBT therapy I find is quite analytical or convinces your mind to think a different way but doesn't take you into catharsis and letting go and emoting and expressing which is why I like EMDR, I like Gestalt, I like somatic experiencing. And Gestalt therapy, I combine Gestalt's therapy and family constellations to heal ancestral trauma. 

Now ancestral trauma or family trauma is this concept that is exploding all over the world especially in Europe, it's a therapy called family constellations therapy where we notice that we as children as human beings are loyal to the pain and suffering of our parents, of our siblings, of our ancestors and we kind of take on the energetic imbalances in our family system. And what do I mean by we take on? When we take on these energetic imbalances symptoms manifest - it could be OCD, it could be depression, it could be anxiety, it could be skin issues, it could be migraines, it could be sexual issues. 

And why do we take on this loyalty? It's because we have a need to belong. Human beings have a need to belong to some sense of family, to some sense of structure, to some sense of order. 

And what we've seen in family constellations it happens completely unconsciously, but for example, if your mom was abandoned by your dad when you were young most children will take the side of the mother especially if she's been abused, so we take the side of the weaker one. And if there's no father around then we will partner with the mother, like we'll become closer to her. In a way becoming like a surrogate partner. So we're no longer in that innocent child position now, we are loyal to the needs of the mother, to suffering in the pain of the mother in many cases. And that removes you from your childhood innocence, one. So you have this over sense of responsibility from a very young age which doesn't give you room for any joy or really living your own life because you're obliged subconsciously, you have a contract now with your mom. 

The second thing what happens is that we become almost against or angry or arrogant against the father figure. So in a way we're denying one source of our lives, because both parents give you life, and that rejection of one of your parents no matter how sensible it seems to do actually creates confusion in your own life and in your inner soul. 

How to Heal emotional trauma

And in family constellations therapy we say healing sentences to bring back balance, to help you respectfully honor your mom's courage in her life without cutting off from your other source of life which might be your father or vice versa. And when you can really bring balance to your inner soul and honor both parents as equal biologically you suddenly sense a lot of peace and harmony in your own heart and you're more able to live your own life as your parents wanted you to with your own courage and with your own strength rather than your courage and strength disappearing because of being depressed for your mom. 

So all these subtle loyalties, all of us are doing them - we're all doing these subtle loyalties all the time. We don't even know it. And then we wonder why is our life not going well. So if you've been through therapy, constant therapy, and it's not changing anything I would highly suggest looking at family constellations therapy because it really gets to the root cause. Because those loyalties and imbalances are really the root, root cause. And no matter how much trauma release you do if you don't treat the root cause you'll be in therapy for a very long time. 

Pi:  Right. 

Dr. Ameet:  Another, I'll just give one more example in family constellation, something very interesting. If there's a miscarriage or an abortion in your family or if your mom had one, so that happened before you were born or even after. And you think you're like the first child in the system. What I've seen and what every practitioner is seeing is that if you do not acknowledge the other miscarriage or aborted child as part of the family system coming before you, so you're the second child not the first, for example, if you don't do that acknowledgement you will suffer with a lot of anxiety over sense of responsibility, not feeling in your place, not satisfied in life. 

What is Family Constellation therapy

And through healing sentences and through awareness I might ask you to say, "Okay, dear, sibling. Dear, brother or sister of mine, I see you, I feel my place second to you," if they came before you. And looking at your parents and saying, "This sibling came before me, I'm the second child here. Please see me that way." You will get your true position in the family and you'll get a lot of energy resources from the field, from the energetic field around you because you're acknowledging what's really true at an energetic sense. So it can be super, super healing. 

So those are some of the glimpses of family constellations therapy, and that you can do in a live session or even online. 

Pi:  That's awesome, that's wonderful. 

Dr. Ameet:  Yeah, very, very powerful, very powerful. 

Pi:  Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. So to wrap things up today, Dr. Ameet, what would you say is the most important thing that you want people to take away from our conversation today? 

Dr. Ameet:  Gosh, okay, we're out of time. So one thing I want to mention first is homeopathy as well because I practice homeopathy, you can use homeopathic remedies to heal trauma from the past as well. Aconite is fantastic for things that create a big shock in your system where there's lots of palpitations. I use Ignatia, for example, when there's a sense of betrayal or a breakup with a loved one. Depending on your response either Ignatia or Natro Muriaticum. 

How does Homeopathy works 

So all these homeopathic remedies I've mentioned in the Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online, different ones for different emotional states and different ones for different abuses or traumas, whether it's sexual abuse, whether it's an accident, your parents fighting, etcetera. So just be sure to check out those. There's a free introduction, of course, the Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online, how to heal your gut, your liver. There's a beautiful emotional healing exercise as well to release emotional blocks that are sabotaging your recovery because we often judge our own feelings, like we can feel this much jealousy or this much pain and we're trying to control it and that creates inner conflict, so that exercise, that free video helps you be comfortable with fully experiencing what your authentic self needs to experience in order to move on in life. 

So the most important thing I think is love. I'm reading a course in miracles and peace and love are very powerful messages from this gut health book, and I'm seeing that more and more in my life. If you can have the intention of finding more love and peace for yourself in every encounter then you might let go of other intentions that are not beneficial to you in life. So sometimes we have an intention that we think we want to be right, we want to get this done, da, da, da - that's an intention. That intention might be moving you away from source energy, from your true [no audio 19:53]. So reestablishing your intention. 

And having the intention also saying to yourself, "You know what? I belong even if I change this behavior, even if I'm not upset with my mom I still belong, even if I don't hate these kinds of people I still have a sense of belonging to somewhere." Because often we hold on to feelings because it gives us a sense of belonging to a community or to an experience or to the people who are surrounding us during that experience.

If people surrounded you when you're feeling very angry, in order to remain belonging we keep that anger. And when you can really say, "You know what? I still belong without this anger." And you feel that safety of belonging somewhere in the field or in your life you can easily let go of these harmful emotions. 

Pi:  Yeah. 

Dr. Ameet:  So enjoy the healing journey. 

Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online

Pi:  And it is a journey. It is a journey, absolutely. And I truly believe that we need our guides, our teachers, our mentors, we need a team, we need a team to help us move through what's holding us back from our past so we can really truly step into a big beautiful life that we all deserve. 

Dr. Ameet:  Absolutely, I fully agree. And just knowing that you can deserve that is half the healing as well. 

Pi:  Yes, knowing you deserve that, that's so important, so important. So you mentioned that you've got some free resources, can you tell our viewers just a little more about the free gift that you're offering so they can ... and we're going to provide the link with this interview so that they can click on that and get that from you. 

Dr. Ameet:  So there's a free e-book as part of my holistic medicine books and as well as a video course and that will walk you through healing your gut, your liver, emotional blockages as well as your adrenal glands which get burnt out during trauma and some great lifestyle tips on my website drameet.com, this whole free package is there for you. I've written a best-selling book called heal your body, cure your mind which has more emotional healing exercises you're welcome to check out. And then I support vulnerable communities or communities in need in Kenya with the sales of some of my Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online and my holistic medicine books, so please support it. I really appreciate it. 

And what else? There's homeopathic remedies, of course, in the Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online in a lot of detail, there's emotional healing exercises in the free videos in the book and more details in the Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online. If you really want to go deep then definitely take the Free Holistic Medicine Courses Online. And if you have any questions just pop me an email as well. 

Pi:  That's amazing and so generous, Dr. Ameet. Thank you so much. 

Dr. Ameet:  It's my pleasure. 

Pi:  Yes, we appreciate you sharing your expertise and that beautiful free gift with us. Thank you so much. 

Dr. Ameet:  Thank you as well. And good luck, everyone, to your heal. 

Pi:  Thank you. And thank you to everybody who is joining us today for trusting after trauma season three. We are going to continue to explore with our experts on how we can transition to transformation after narcissistic abuse and heal our body, mind and spirit to live joyful authentic lives. We'll see you soon. Bye. 

Listen to the full interview on Dr Ameet Podcast

Watch the full interview on Dr Ameet YouTube Channel

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