Interview with Andre Zitzer on somatic experiencing

question. It's a fair question. It's a fair question. I'm Vic Cohen, and it's a fair question. It's a fair, it's a fair, it's a fair, it's a fair question. I'm Vic Cohen, and it's a fair, it's a fair, it's a fair, it's a fair quest, quest, question. Hello, this is Vic Cohen broadcasting live from Skid Row Studios in stunning, just gorgeous downtown Los Angeles, and it is beautiful. The name of the show is It's a Fair Question, because on this show, there is no such thing as a bad question. Anything and everything is open for discussion, and I have lots of questions for our guests tonight. Now, if you're a regular listener, which I'm sure you are, and when I say regular, I don't mean like you take Raisin Bran and you regularly use the bathroom. I mean, you regularly listen. Then, you know, I bring all kinds of people on this show, people who are, you know, a lot of times we have entertainment people because those are the people that I often work with, and they're my close friends, but I also bring other friends on the show who just interest me and who I think are going to interest you, and one of those people is a guy who I've always admired. He's got an absolutely interesting, I say, I'll go farther than that. I will use the word fascinating story, and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm really looking forward to it. I can't wait, actually, and his name is, and I love screwing up the name of the guest. It's always great. You build it up, and then you totally ruin it. Andre Zitzer. Hello. Hello. Yes, he just came out of prison. Hello. That's a nice voice. Actually, he has this fake British accent that's gotten him very far in life, I'm sure. Yes. No, let's hear you speak for real. He laughs like a Brit, but if you were to hear him speak, it's quite, I like practical jokes, but there's no way you can go this whole hour and talk like that. Just like that. Like a Neanderthal. I don't think I, hello. Yeah, it doesn't really work. Just like that. It doesn't work. Now, the reason you're here is not only because I find you interesting, and it's a great opportunity to spend an hour with you, but your story is interesting because of what you do, partially, and where you've come from. Is this like, what's that TV show where you guest, where the wife guests, guesses what the husband, no, the dating game. This is not the dating game. This is not. I am taken. And so is Jeremy. He's got a lady that usually works here. She's not here today. Did you guys break up, Jeremy? No. We're good. Jeremy, I got an email from a lady, and I couldn't remember. Is that your girlfriend? Yeah. Oh, so now she's working on the payroll. You got her on the payroll. You know how it works. I told you eventually she's going to be running this place, owning it. That's unbelievable. Okay. Well, that's another show. Andre, how would you describe your profession, what you do? Because there's so many different hyphenates. Okay. What I do is I'm an acupuncturist is my license, and I actually include other things. I've been practicing for about 14 years, and I've been practicing yoga and teaching yoga for about, ooh. Actually, it's 20 years. It's 20 years since I started taking yoga. And if you're not seeing the show, because we also broadcast this by video, he is actually in the downward dog position, as we speak. And the way you keep your composure is amazing. It's practice. Yeah. I can not sweat or sweat. And speak with that fake British accent. That's right. So now, you are a trained yoga instructor. I am a trained yoga instructor. I've been practicing kundalini yoga for 20 years. That sounds dirty. It is. It's completely dirty. The way you do it. Yeah. If it's done properly, it's very dirty. I think I've been practicing that yoga since I was a sophomore in high school. Actually, I didn't know it was called yoga, but I knew the kundalini part. Okay. So, that means you have that expertise, but does it work in your practice of what you do professionally? Yes. Well, what you do is, and also, the other thing that I do actually a lot of is a thing called somatic experiencing. Which is a way of, it was developed by a man called Peter Levine, who wrote a very interesting book on it called Waking the Tiger. And he spent many years studying animals in the wild and noticed that they're all about fight or flight, running away or being- That's, if you couldn't understand what he said, that was fight or flight. Fight or flight. Fight or flight. Yes. Okay. So, basically, it's a way of discharging trauma from the body. And I work with veterans. Yeah. Women have been attacked, people in car crashes, plane crashes. And what happens is that the trauma is no longer in the event, it gets stored in the nervous system. And people kind of step outside their own bodies. They're not fully present and it can result in all kinds of pathology. And it's a technique, it's a very gentle technique. One question. I want to hear about the technique. When you said it shows up in different pathology, that's very technical sounding to people who don't know what that means. What does that mean? People become depressed, neurotic. There's pathology, meaning there are psychological symptoms. Are there symptoms that show up that can disrupt someone's life? Yes, they're both psychological and physical symptoms. So, people can manifest with all kinds of ailments, you know, pain, fibromyalgia is one of those things that can happen. A lot of autoimmune diseases can appear because of long-term stress, long-term anxiety. Okay. And it's a way of actually discharging this energy that gets stuck in the body. What is? This technique. This technique. It's a therapy. It's a form of therapy. There's different versions of doing it, different ways. The person who, whatever it is you bring to it is your way of doing it. When you say what you bring to it, are you talking about you, the doctor, or are you talking about me, the patient, or both? No, it's what I bring to it. So, the story that you come with, the story that you bring to me is what I work with. And it's not just the story, it's how you tell the story. So, what I'll do is I'll listen to the voice someone has as they're telling a story. Does it go up? Does it change? Does the color of their skin change as they tell the story? Does the pitch of their voice, do their eyes dilate? I listen to all these things. In any conversation, these are signals you can tell when something's going on. And I'm just trained to listen to it more, to have a sharper ear for it. So, for example, like now, I'm a little nervous and I'm aware that I'm speaking quite fast. So, I've got to catch my breath. And the idea is... Okay. This is just to be present and notice, really be present and notice what's going on. Now, when you say the idea is to be present, you mean me as the patient through working with you, I will develop a certain amount of attention to my own symptoms that I can acknowledge and then treat in the moment? You say that really well, yes. What happens is that we start building a language of sensation. So, I'll help somebody get present, just to notice. So, the trauma is no longer in the event that happened. And if somebody is unable to discharge this energy, what happens is that the fight or flight, the ego takes over, basically. I'm kind of being quite basic about it. That's good. The ego takes over and says, okay, I'm in charge now, because you weren't able to take care of yourself. So, whenever it comes to relaxing, sitting down, or meditating even, it's very difficult for a person with a lot of trauma, because the ego steps in and says, okay, you can't sit down and meditate, because something might happen. So, it's always on guard. It's always ready for something to happen. Now, in broad strokes, you got a guy or lady comes from war, comes, been in the battlefield, wakes up with terror, dreams, sweating, loud noises startle them. Those are very obvious symptoms. Now, my assumption is that as a human being, every single person on the planet has had trauma. Is my assumption right? People might have had trauma, but we don't all react in the same way. We don't all hold it the same way. Some people are able to discharge it, or some people are able to, if you have resources, if you have ways of calming your nervous system down. Like what, exercise? It can be exercise. It can be going for a run. That is exercise. It can be exercise. So, the experience you have, your ability to deal with trauma, everyone's ability to deal with stress and trauma is going to be different. There are different kinds of trauma. There's developmental trauma and there's shock trauma. Developmental meaning when you were growing up as a child? Yes. Okay. Shock trauma would be the kind of thing like a car accident. Yes. That kind of thing. Exactly. Okay. And there are different ways of dealing with them, but fundamentally they're the same. What you want to do is create a safe space so the nervous system, so the person can actually feel safe where they are, that they can feel safe in the room they're in. Yeah. They can feel safe with me. And by doing this, what I'll do is I'll ask someone, an example is there were two women actually I worked with at different times and the only safe place in the world for both of them was actually in their car with the doors locked. That's it. It's the only place they could feel safe. And with one of them, what I did was I actually went down to her car and I didn't get in it, but I got her to go in it and actually really explore the car. Explore the holding the steering wheel, listening to the music, the stations that she likes, listening to the sound of the door locking, feeling her back against the chair being supported. This is an exercise you did with her? Yes. Okay. So that she could start actually building a language of sensation so she became aware of her body in the car feeling safe. And once she has that, then we can actually start working with the trauma. So I'll do it in a very gentle way. And this is one of the reasons, one of the things that I'll bring in actually, acupuncture, I'll bring in yoga, I'll bring in different techniques that I've learned if it's appropriate for the person. As part of the somatic experience? Yes. Okay. So somatic experiencing is really, you're experiencing the inner sensations of your body. And it has a kind of as a language of its own. You'll see sometimes people with a tick, you'll see sometimes, you know, they can turn to the right, fine, but you know, when they turn to the left, the shoulders tense up. Well, here's one for me. I've noticed that I've been getting like, oh, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I've been getting like a twitch in my left eye. And I don't know where it's coming from. Now, could that just be a twitch? It doesn't mean I need to sit with you and go over the somatic experience stuff? Yes, it could just be a twitch. Right. But how does one know? Before you answer that, let's finish with the car. Where does that go from you? She becomes, the patient becomes familiar with the sensations in the car of feeling safe. So she's feeling safe. So really, I want to get, so what happens in trauma is, when you get dissociated from your body, oftentimes you'll get dissociated. So being in your body isn't safe. What I'm trying to do with people is have them re-experience their body so they feel safe in their body, they feel more congruent. What starts happening is you'll be able to build a capacity to tolerate experience and bigger experiences than before. And then the trauma itself, eventually, the trauma itself becomes the story, part of your story that brought you to this place. And you have a just much wider experience. So if you're living in a fight or flight, there's actually an older response called the freeze response, which is even older than fight or flight. When we were little amoebas just floating around the ocean, we'd respond really to light. And so when light came on, you'd live in darkness and all of a sudden the light comes on and you just freeze. You don't move. Now this is sounding a bit complicated at this point. Ah, okay. I mean, I get sitting in the car. Think of a lizard. Being a light. When you see a lizard. Amoeba, whatever, yeah. When you see a lizard just, and it just sees you and it stops. Right. That's a freeze response. Okay. When you play possums, they have the, you know, playing possum is a freeze response. Okay. And the idea of it is that if something's going to attack you and you freeze, in the animal kingdom, if someone's down and not moving, they're not going to jump on them and beat them up. They just go, okay, they're down. So I don't have to jump on it and kill it. It's already down. Oftentimes animals will sniff it. They might punch it, not punch it, they'll poke it to see if it moves. And if it doesn't move, they might think, well, there's something wrong. Okay. With it. Because part of the chase is part of the. So how does that relate to what we're talking about when it comes to your experience with a patient? So the patient is, will often go into a freeze response. They'll freeze, something bad happens. They're unable to run away from it. They're unable to fight it. There are some, I mean, tragic examples of in the tsunami that happened in Indonesia in 2005, I think it was. There are some terrible photographs, but I mean, they illustrate. The point of this of people just standing there, staring at this huge wave coming at them, unable to move. And there are people above, you know, yelling at them, run, run, run. And they're just unable to move because this thing is so big. It's so out of their paradigm of experience. They don't know how to react to it. They can't fight it. And it's so big, they can't run away. It's almost hypnotic. So somatic, this type of therapy. Mm-hmm. It would treat someone who finds. They're freezing up in life under different circumstances. Yes. What about like financial insecurity? Someone feels they're in debt and they, instead of looking for work and being in a motivated, they freeze up and stop looking. So. Is that another example or a woman who's been or a man in love, you know, they freeze, they stop dating after a bad experience. That's a really good question. But what's underneath that is going to be something else. I mean, this is layers and layers deep and the financial insecurity might absolutely come out of a feeling of sadness. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Stuckness. Stuckness. Stuckness. in their life in a way that they didn't even possibly know doesn't we all know about of course if there's a car accident or a plane crash we know that's obvious but it sounds like you also you have to do a little digging sometimes and there was a there was a man i treated um he was a what i'm sorry a man a vet from vietnam okay and a really lovely man and um he would tell me he had the worst job i'd ever heard of in vietnam and um um he his job i don't know if i can his job was to um pack the bodies of servicemen who died and that was his job he had two tours two nine-month tours of doing that and the way he told me when he told me he just had such a flat affect about it there was just no energy around it he's told it so many times that there's there was no point in me talking about it because there was nothing there um but the way that i was able to connect to him or to get under that was he started telling me about his family and that he has a light on at home that is a he has a house uh his home and there's one room in his home where he always keeps the light on and uh um i kind of clicked that and i let it go a little bit and then i came back to and i said why do you always leave the light on in that in that room and he just stopped talking and stared at me and he started crying and what had happened to him was his um his uh one of his daughters had been killed and he left the light on in case she ever came home so she'd always have a light on at home it kind of brings it up for me when i when i when i think about that um and as he was started to talk about it he started to just feel what was going on in his body for the first time and in the energy the trauma doesn't think the adrenaline i'm kind of really making quite basic here the adrenaline there's an adrenaline rush you know when people uh you hear stories of women being able to lift these you know three thousand pound cars it's adrenaline you know they don't think oh i've got to lift the car up they just go and do it and it's this huge adrenaline rush what what happens is if you're not able to discharge that adrenaline completely uh get rid of it it's going to get stuck in the body so this comes back to the animals so when animals hold on one sec before i just want to put a little bow around that last story so i understand it completely veteran talks very flatly about packing these soldiers who've passed away in combat. Right. An obviously traumatic experience. Yeah. Talks about it without emotion. Yeah. Then talks about how he leaves a light on. You remember that. Now, is that any, how does that connect? How does the light on with the daughter connect with the Vietnam vet stuff? With the corpses or do they not? They do. The way it connects is that it's him. This is all part of his, he had a lot more going on. Okay. Really to illustrate the point he had, it was a way into his emotion, into him feeling what was going on in his body. So that's how he was able to tap into feelings was through the story with the light. Yes. And as we're doing that, I don't, I never want someone to re-experience their own trauma. So I'll stop him right there. And as he's crying, I'll just have him, there's some elements of safety that he had. I won't go into that. I won't go into that. I won't go into that. Now where he felt resourced and safe. So we'd pendulate backwards and forwards. What starts happening is he starts sighing. He starts being able to just let go. And then eventually that taps into the Vietnam experience. Yeah. And he's able to actually then start talking about it with a bit more affect and just, just bit by bit. It's a very titrated, gentle way of doing it. I'll give you another example. There's a gentleman I worked with who had a car crash and he had, he was unable to talk about, the crash and he wouldn't talk about it with me. But what he did was we were talking away and he, he was talking about people and he brought his arms up and he did this big movement. He was quite angry and he did this big movement pushing away and he went, I wish people would just go away. And he's this big push, go away. And so I got him to slow that down and just, and, and, and connect to his breathing and he would go, go away, go away. And he would push every time. And, and, uh, uh, what started happening is first of all, he thought it was a bit crazy, asking him to do this, but what started happening is the energy in his body actually started, he started just staring at his hands and his hands started moving across his body as if he was being, as if you're about to be hit by something in front of you. And he had his head then came forward and rested in his arms and he just started crying for about 45 minutes. And after that, and in complete release, deep, deep tears. And after that, he was then able to say what had actually happened, the crash that had happened. That he had, that he had, that he had, that he had, that he had, that he had, that he had, that he had been hit head on by something. And he, his arms had this involuntary, you know, uh, um, sympathetic response to, to defend himself. Uh, um, his arms come up and then the airbag hits him. So he was unable to complete that trauma response. So this, his shoulders, when he came into me, his shoulders were really tight. He couldn't, his hands were always in front of him and his shoulders were tight. He had all these other symptoms, cars, couldn't talk about what happened. And after this one session, all of this, he was able to talk about it. His shoulders released. Um, um, he was able to, he reported later that, uh, nightmares stopped, um, his insomnia, uh, he was able to sleep. Um, um, and that was, yeah, that was one session. It was quite fantastic. Now I noticed that you seem to get choked up talking about this and you did a bit, you know, your eyes got a little teary. It looked to me, what's the emotion about? Um, yes, I mean, these are, these are real people. An important thing for me is it's, it's, uh, these are real people. These are real stories. Um, my spirit, the sort of the spiritual practice I have is that I see, well, the emotion is my empathy. You know, that these are real people. And a lot of the stories I hear are really sad stories, really painful stories. Um, if I, if I can get compassion fatigue, it's quite easy, you know, just hear too many stories. And there was a story, I don't know if you've heard it, but there was a story about a man who was I heard recently, which was just, I was just like, okay, I've, I've had enough stories, but what was, what was, what was really helpful was the spiritual aspect, the yoga side of it. And, and a friend of mine actually reflected back and said, look, we're spiritual beings having a human experience. And part of our experience is to experience life and what we want to do. And our stories become a starting point for us to not just experience life, but become more congruent and be able to share the joy, be able to share the experience. Um, so when I see people as whole, I look at people as nowadays, I try and look at people as completely whole and perfect and talk to them and listen to them from that perspective. And the story is a story and I have an empathy for their story, but I don't buy into it. Um, it doesn't, I don't, I won't, you know, I won't treat them as a victim. I won't talk to them as a victim. Um, I talk to them as whole people. But there's an element for me where they're people and I have empathy for them. So the, the, the teariness in your eyes is because you can feel their pain. I can't feel their pain. I can feel my pain in relation to them. Right. That's well put. Yeah. They're, they're, uh, you know, I mean, in Buddhism, they talk about it beautifully that human nature is suffering and then, then there's a way out of suffering. Um. Which is? Which is to feel through feeling. Uh, a lot of what's going on now is, is, which is beautiful. The sort of the age of Aquarius, the sort of the free love that started in the sixties, the, you know, the idea of it was about people no longer looking for other people to teach, to guide them out, but really to be able to, to, to, to find it within ourselves, within community. Um, um, the unfortunate thing I was having a discussion with a friend of mine, uh, uh, today about, uh, um, a mediated experience. So mediated connections. So with family, with connect, with, with. Mediated meaning what? Uh, like a, like a biological connection? No, a mediated experience would be say through, uh, Facebook, Facebook, Twitter, that you get to hear about all your friends through the radio. You get to hear about how they're doing in a short, brief sentence on a, on a, uh. An impersonal. It's impersonal. Um, and you have to have rules around it because you, you know, on Twitter, well, do you mean this? Do you mean that? What do you actually mean? So, so you, and it's, um, I've worked with some, some, um, um, um, kids with Asperger's and they have a lot of social difficulty. And, and, uh, this one kid had a, uh, he was a good guy and he came in one day and I said, he was always stuck in his computer. And I said, how was your weekend? And he said, it was great. I had some friends over. I was like, oh, fantastic. I said, how many friends? He's like, oh, there were five, five of us. I said, oh, they came over. Fantastic. He just hung out, played games. What happened? He goes, oh no, no, they all brought their computers over. I went, oh, okay. So you hung out in the living room and all played games. He goes, no, no, no, no, no. We went into separate rooms with our computers. And I said, what, what'd you do? And he said, well, we all played games. I said, separately? He goes, no, we all played games together, but in the separate rooms. And, and it's, it's a different generation. Um, it's a, uh, it's a way of connecting, but not connecting. Um, and there's a sadness in that. I mean, it's, it's modern technology. It's not going to go anywhere, but how do we overcome that? How can we use this? And at the same time, connect to people. What's really, really important is connection. Um, there's a fantastic man named Gabor Mate. How do you spell that name? G-A-B-O-R. Uh, and his last name is Mate, M-A-T-E. He wrote a book called, uh, The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, which is a reference to, to sort of a Buddhist, uh, um, way of explaining life. And, um, he is a doctor up in, uh, uh, Vancouver and excuse me for, for, I'm probably gonna, completely mis-paraphrase him and mistalk about him, but he's a, And he listens by the way. He does. Yeah, he calls in all the time. Um, he started a, a place up in, uh, Vancouver, which is a, a drug and treatment rehab center. And it was actually government funded. And what he would do is he was giving out free needles and free heroin and a bed to slay. And he would, he would, so these are for addicts. And, um, they were treating them. And what started happening is the, uh, um, people started getting, you know, people started getting well. So rather than getting dirty needles and dirty heroin, he was giving out clean things so that people could, so, so that they wouldn't die from the using, because they were going to use anyway. Okay. And he would give people a bed. And he tells this fantastic story about this one man who was living there for a while. And, uh, they had a talent show and everyone came up and did their talent, did their, did their, you know, did their talent thing. And this one man came up and he said, you know, I don't have a talent, but I want to earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn it. I earn to help people with stress and to allow people to feel a sense of self power, to feel powerful in some way is going to be a profound healing. So just because I wanna tie this in with our whole kind of, I wanna weave this together. Have I been meandering? No, but I wanna make sure I understand all the connections. Okay. We started with somatic experience. Right. And about experiencing, I'm gonna kind of butcher the idea here a bit, but what I got out of it is tapping into the ability to recognize, you have the ability as the doctor to with your patient to recognize certain symptom physical and the signs that you're tapping into finally the person be able to feel certain things. Yeah. And when you're talking about the boys, the boy with Asperger and the five kids and his friends in separate rooms, and this last story, I mean, the idea is that through your work, you're able to help people. I'm trying to connect it. Am I missing something or is there a bigger picture that I'm not hitting? That's a really good question. Cause it's, I don't, yeah, I wanna hear how that connects if it does. And if it doesn't, that's okay. To me, it's all about healing. I can put needles in someone and get rid of pain. I can help them with, you know, I can help them with, you know, help their moods and doctors can do lots of different things. There are a lot of wonderful practitioners doing amazing things. To me, you know, I think I make up, we've all been around people who are so calm that when we're around them, we just feel good. Or they just exude life and we enjoy being around them. Cause when we're around them, we just calm down and feel good. Now there's some people who have that naturally in spades and, but you can also work at it. So if you meditate, if you meditate, if you meditate, if you meditate a lot, or if you really work at being of service and helping other people, you can do this. And you can do this sort of, there are different ways of doing it. You can do it in big groups. So in other words, you don't have to be a doctor like you. I'm actually not a doctor. You are, aren't you a doctor of? Oriental medicine. Okay. Okay. But not an MD. Not an MD. But when it comes to the acupuncture, you have a degree of that would, isn't that called a doctor in that world? I'm actually working on my doctorate. Okay. I'm a licensed acupuncturist. Okay. Well, I'm just looking ahead a little bit. That's all. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. You're singing to the future. That's right. So what you were saying to bring it back. Healing, healing takes many forms. Okay. To me, what's the fundamental, how do you get to the core of healing? And it's connecting to people. It's having people feel good about themselves. So they start making good choices for themselves. There are many stories. There's a lot of people nowadays want to be taken care of. They want to keep doing the same thing they've always been doing and yet not having consequences. And what I'm asking you to do is to take the consequences into account and to start changing your life so that, and what starts happening is if you're taking care of yourself, if you're making choices, you know, if you have a juice a day, if you try and eat some greens, you exercise a bit more, and you do these things, you're not going to get better. You're not going to get better. You're not going to get better. You're going to have to learn new things to take, to try and, you know, make a conscious choice. There'll be fewer doctor's visits. They'll be saving money in the long run. Because it's a holistic, this is what we're talking like holistic approach, correct? It's a holistic approach. I want to take a little pause here for one moment. If you'd like to give us a call, the number's 800-893-9562. It's 800-893-9562. Regarding the somatic experience that we were talking about that type of therapeutic experience. I wanted to talk to you about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. get some kind of just technical information because I'm just curious how many sessions in general does a patient need a range for them to kind of resolve what what's been going on with them also how long are the sessions and are they conducted kind of similarly to therapy it's a thought it's a okay um I'll answer number one first okay yeah the the it how long does it take the sessions are an hour long okay um I've gotten results with people after one session and uh this uh a gentleman I'm working with after two years we're still working together um hopefully it doesn't say much it doesn't say that is he the guy under the desk that's right they crawled in here yeah he's not quite doing very well but I guess we should have seen him before right it's it's really what um you can't a few you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't most things take a few sessions it can be several sessions it depends on how deep the trauma is um how uh um safe the person can feel um uh there was a there was a man I I would uh I could tell you stories basically it can take you know a few sessions will will do a world of good um um and you know if if if somebody there was a woman actually I met today who uh had been abused by men and um she asked me the question you know is it an issue and I said well you know it's obviously an issue for her because she brought it up to me so I referred her to someone else I referred to a female colleague um who she'd obviously feel much safer with and the idea for me is always safety you can see results pretty quickly let me ask you this um well let's first turn to Jeremy um Jeremy do you have um any did you have any trauma or something that you think like uh you might need some help working through yeah yeah definitely like what can you give us a few ideas the whole New York New York City experience I went through this uh what it's a year ago now what happened well you know going out there with a girl that uh that I thought uh we were in love and she told me we were in love and spending a unbelievable amount of money to move us to New York City and and uh going through that whole experience and just having it not work out and and having it in fact you know crumble down yeah but I I see you've got a girlfriend as we talked about earlier she owns the place now yeah well I mean that's true I mean it seemed like you've kind of gotten over it well I I've gotten over her but the experience uh the the pain that was caused during that experience is still something that uh kind of lingers okay now Andre to me being being the non-professional here in your field. I see Jeremy as a guy who was heartbroken and it was traumatic in the sense that a relationship ended. But he seems to be functioning well. He's got a new girlfriend. I've met her. She's very sweet. Nice, nice person as far as I could tell. Is he really someone that could use your help? I mean, it seems very light what he, I mean. So, I mean, I don't know if you can use my help. What I would say is, what I did hear is, as you're telling me the story, there's a heaviness that I hear. Yeah, absolutely. He was. He was speaking in a heavy, his chest felt heavy. Is that what you were? When I hear you say that, your chest might have felt heavy in relation to what was going on with him. Did you not see it? I felt it. But you felt it too. What I saw was a closing up. You were kind of closing up there. So, yeah, I mean, I'll agree with you there. Okay. You were kind of closing up. Closing up a bit. And to comment on what you're saying, Vic, is, yeah, I do have a new girlfriend. She's great. But I think that the thing that I'm experiencing is that some of the residuals from that experience that I went through is carrying over into this relationship. And I don't want that to happen. So, that's something that I think I do need help with, is how do I learn from that experience or how do I prevent that experience from affecting me? And how do I prevent that from affecting future relationships? Andre? So, as you have that awareness of what's going on with you, the story, what do you notice going on in your body right now? I definitely feel more tense. You know, memories of that experience are coming up and making me feel uneasy. And, you know, there's a spectrum of feeling from anger to, you know, disappointment. And there's a spectrum of sorrow that comes up when I relive those moments in my mind. And reliving the moments in your mind, the sensations of anger, how do you experience that in your body right now? Just a tightness. I can feel it in my stomach. Tightness in your stomach? Yeah. What else? Shortness of breath a bit in an odd way. I feel... I just feel an overall kind of... Things are tightening up within me as I think about those things. So, as you stay with that, and so rather than... Notice the thoughts because we'll have thoughts. And also we can have sensations. And what I'm going to ask you to do is to notice the sensations that are going on. So, just notice your breathing right now. Right. Okay. And if you just stay with the breath, tell me what you notice. It might be dead air space. But tell me what you notice as you just stay with your breath. Okay. Well, I feel that physical reaction to the anxiety. You know, and I become conscious of my breath. When you ask me to think about it or to stay with my breath, I become conscious of how I'm breathing. And I can recognize that it is not a normal breathing pattern. Okay. So, just stay with it. Okay. And then just stay with the breath. And I'm actually going to talk to... I'm going to let you just stay with that. Okay. And if you notice, the one thing I can guarantee about sensations is that they'll change. They might get worse. They might get better. But they'll change. There's a difference between being with emotions because you can say, oh, I feel really angry. And you can kind of have that label of something. And it'll kind of just stay there. And we kind of have an idea what angry feels like, the emotion of anger. Okay. Explore what the sensations of feeling angry feel like. They'll change. Do you mean by recognize them, that kind of pulls the cover off it? And it will start to change? Yeah. You're literally, you know, knocking on the door. You're literally just putting your finger on this and calling it. You're just noticing the sensations. And as you notice them, they'll get a bit louder. And we start... I want to help people. Some people have a very difficult time connecting to their body and being able to identify things. So, I help them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'll give them a sheet, you know, what sensations are and how to experience them. I give them words to use. And again, it's about building a vocabulary of sensations so you just notice what's going on. And as this is going on, I just notice in my breath, I kind of have a deep sigh and I just feel a bit calmer again, actually. Yeah, me too. Yeah. And so, I want to just come back and see how you're doing. Well, I hear what you're saying and it is helpful. And just to kind of put it... I mean, I think that we're all in this together, I guess, the way that I see it is, are you suggesting to... that the... understanding the physical reaction to your thoughts is a way to control it, in a way? It's not trying to understand the physical reaction. It's just observing the reaction. Because if you try and understand it, you're in your head again. Okay. And just by observing it, you'll stay... you'll just observe without judgment. But what we do is we'll judge them. Okay. And as we're working together, I'd ask you to be able to voice what's going on, to notice. And as you notice, things will change. Sometimes your thoughts will come in about them. And then there'll be a thought about the X and how you might tense up. And then, because I kind of... I didn't go to the safety, first of all, because I kind of get a sense that you feel quite safe. You're quite comfortable in this studio. You're used to it. It's a place where you're comfortable. Sure. So, there's a sense of safety in here that you already have. And in this sense of safety, we can then talk about the difficulty you have in experiencing what's going on in your body and just noticing what changes. Is it comfortable? Is it uncomfortable? Is it neutral? And with you at the moment, when I look at you and I listen to your voice, I get that it can be uncomfortable, but it's bearable. And that we can then... we can go a little deeper and I can let you just experience it and just see what the sensations are. Because the sensations often connect to it. There might be emotion. There might be tears. And what will start happening is there might be tingling. There might be a deeper breath, a sigh. There might be shaking. There was a woman I had just yesterday who was just laying on the bed and just shaking a lot. And it's, again, it's the nervous system repairing itself. Tears, an aha moment come up. You might have a realization. Heat, oftentimes heat. And all these things happen in animals. You'll see animals shaking. You'll see an animal, you know, after it's run away from being attacked and it's gotten away and it knows it's gotten away, it'll continue running. Even though the chaser has stopped running, it'll continue. It might bounce really high. It might flap its wings as a bird does or bark, growl as a dog does, shake like a dog. Pant really deeply. And it's a way of discharging this adrenaline. And then they just go back to the herd as if nothing happened. And they've healed. Yeah, they've gotten rid of their, they've kind of instantly, they've gotten rid of it. I'd like to find, I'm kind of curious about it. My personal experience I've had. Can I discuss that with you briefly? Sure. Are you okay, Jeremy? He's in the studio. Thank you. Okay. But that was great. We got a sense of, and of course, that's such an abbreviated version of what you do. And that would just be the first few minutes of, of a session. I mean, these are like little highlights. These aren't to give us a flavor. It's, thank you. Yeah. Now for myself, one of the most traumatic, I've had several, but one that really sticks out is I have Crohn's disease. It's an intestinal illness. And when I was 24, I found out I needed surgery. It was major surgery. And I went in with the idea, I was told that I was going to have a small portion of my intestine removed, which was traumatic, but I didn't think it was going to be as horrible as it turned out. Because when I woke up out of the surgery, the first thing the surgeon said was we had to give you a colostomy. Temporary. It's gone now, just to be clear. But to wake up with a colostomy is terrifying. So I want to just stop you right there and just, how are you doing right now? I'm healthy. How are you doing right now as you tell me the story? Well, I noticed my hand is out. I noticed my eyes are wide open. Yes. Like terror. Yes. I'm holding onto this desk hard, like going to go through a ride, like a roller coaster. It's warm in here, but I definitely feel hot. Yeah. But my hand's just locked out, like, you know, my fingers spread. This is the worst experience when I've ever been in a hospital. This is the worst experience, one of them, in my whole life. So I'm going to, you've told me enough. I mean, we're doing this on air. So you've told me enough already that I don't need to go further just yet. Okay. Because you're having a response. Your body is reliving the experience. I definitely had the shrugged shoulders, I noticed. Yeah. So everything was going on with your hands, your eyes, everything was going on. You noticed the eyes wide open? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you had the heat that was coming up and there was a tightness. Your voice changed. Yeah. Your face actually got a, there was an expression of, you know, deer in the headlights. Yeah. Tightening in my throat, I noticed. But noticing it was enough. So the trauma is no longer, you know, this happened, when did it happen? A long time ago. Yeah. But the trauma is no longer there. The trauma is in your body. And you're just experiencing that. Yes. So by just noticing it and bringing awareness to it, what I'd want to do is just, is exactly what we're doing. I don't want you to go further into it just yet. I'd want you to just notice it and notice that you can be back here, that you can take a breath, nothing bad's happening. You can look around this beautiful studio that you know you've been here for a while. Yes. And just notice. Tell me 10 things you see in the room. Well, I see you. You see me. I see the phone number. The phone number. What's the phone number? I see this black 800-893-9562. Okay. I see these curtains. You know, we have curtains over the windows, the chaser lights. I see the white... The chaser lights. I guess that's what they're called. I don't know. Christmas lights, the door, the door handle. The door. We've got a monitor here, my computer, my hat. And slow down a bit. Yeah. The door handle. Yeah. The monitor. Right. My hat. Your hat. My phone, my computer, my watch. Your phone. This microphone. Okay. I want you to pick one of them. Okay. I just picked that red button. The red button. I want you to describe it to me. It's shiny. It's shiny. About the size of a dime. Size of a dime. Reflects the lights in the room. Reflects the lights. The fluorescence. It's a rich red, like a blood red. A rich blood red. Mm-hmm. And as you notice that... Smooth. Yeah. As you notice that, what do you notice going on in your body right now? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. What's going on in your body right now? You know, I'd like to say I noticed myself relaxing, but I kind of didn't really. Okay. You know, my shoulders are still tight. Your shoulders are still tight? I do feel like I'm cooling off. Yeah. And my hands are no longer holding onto the desk. My hand is now relaxed, as opposed to my fingers being stretched, outstretched... Right. ...and stiff. Those are some differences. Yeah. So what we're looking at doing is just... And that breath. And there's a deeper breath. There's a sigh. You just took a sigh. That was me. Yeah. Right. So these are all... So as you approach the edge of, I'll call it the trauma, we come back a bit. And I bring you back, you know, orient to the room. It's a familiar room. You picked several items. You went to the button, described it. And what you're doing is just getting present. And in the present moment, nothing bad's happening. Right. There's no surgeon. There's no story. There's just the present moment. Right. And I'm very healthy right now. And God willing, I will be forever. But that disease, it can come back. You can have recurrences. Sure. So it's not like a car... I mean, someone had one car crash, never have a crash again. I mean, you could also with Crohn's, but it could come back. But what I'm looking at here is not... My eyes opened wide again. Yeah. I said could come back. Because what happens, that's exactly... What happens is that you'll pendulate. You'll pendulate into the trauma. There's something seductive about it. There's something magnetic about trauma. That we feel it, we know it. There's something very... So when I'm working with someone, I'll be watching, noticing. My senses get a lot sharper. It's just really through training. You just listen, you watch. I feel I'm scanning myself. How am I doing at the moment? Am I bored? Am I... Whatever's going on, I just own it. Yeah. Yeah. And as I notice what's going on with you, and you notice what's going on with you, you'll pendulate. And then you'll get to a place where you feel safe enough that you'll actually discharge a bit more and relax a little bit more. But you'll be pulled back by the story. How does one not get pulled back by the story? Well in session, I'll stop it. I'll have you notice that that's what you're doing. And so you just become... It's planting a seed in the first sessions. You're planting a seed. It's a little complicated to get my head around a bit, because it sounds so simple and I know it's not. I mean, the headline would be, as one notices their symptoms as they go through the story, that helps eliminate the symptoms by just observing. That's what I'm getting out of that. Am I incorrect? There's a Buddhist meditation technique called Vipassana where you go off and it's quite an amazing technique. It's a tough one. You go for 10 days and they teach you how to meditate. I've heard of this. And eventually you'll be meditating for 10 hours of the day. They ask you not to look anyone in the eye, not to speak to anyone. And they ask you to sit when they teach you Vipassana. They ask you to sit and not move and scan your body and just notice. And the pain will come up. The itching will come up and they ask you don't move and just notice your aversion to pain and your craving for pleasure. And you're not moving. You're not moving. You're not moving. And you'll notice that they'll just change. They change. That's what they do. If you can work through it. It's quite powerful stuff. In the same way, there are ways of, you know, dancing. There are ways of moving. So right now I'm kind of rocking back and forward in the chair side to side. And there's something very soothing and relaxing about doing this. I'm sitting on my foot and I just feel as I'm doing this, I'm really aware of my body. I've noticed my voice calm down. And I'm able to really relax doing this. It just feels good doing it. And as I'm listening to you and watching you, part of this is about helping you to see yourself. You know, because our session is going to be an hour long. So I'll always end it. So you're feeling relaxed. So you notice that you're okay, that you're safe. Okay. And then stuff will come up during the week and I'm always available to talk to you. And then the next week, we'll bring it back and we'll go deeper. But again, we're never going to re-traumatize yourself. So I'm going to encourage you whenever that awareness of the trauma comes in, whenever the story comes up, whenever the next person who wants to know about the story asks you and you start telling them, you'll notice I'm getting really activated right now. And I'm actually going to stop the story because, you know, my therapist said, hey, stop the story. You're going to get really stressed at this point. Because what you're doing is you're numbing yourself, you're reactivating yourself. Or notice also the difficulty you have in stopping the story. So the more we do this, the more self-awareness we have, the more it's also about giving ourselves permission to take care of ourselves, nurturing. Yeah, I wouldn't advise doing this on your own. You know, I've seen a lot of people have panic attacks. And a way of stopping panic attacks is, you know, you grab someone's hand and just say their name. And you just say your name. Just tell me your name. And just say, what's my name? Can you feel me holding your hand? You bring them back into the present moment. I dissociate very, very easily. What do you mean by you disassociate very easily? I can go off into fantasy. When I was a kid, I had a lot of trauma. My family came out of the Holocaust and from Europe. And it's a long story. I don't have enough time for that. But I dissociate. It was a way for me to feel okay about things by just not being present. Cutting off. Compartmentalizing. Yes, yes. Thank you. And it doesn't serve me right now. And I've got enough tools now that when I'm driving in the car and I'm dissociating, you know, I'm driving along and you're stuck in traffic on the 405 and it can be boring. What I do now is I bring myself back. I'll literally, I'll look at the car in front of me and I'll describe exactly what I see. Is disassociating also daydreaming? Yeah. Isn't it also like for me, sometimes daydreaming is healthy because I'm creative and... Yeah. No, no, it can be absolutely, it can be fine. Absolutely. You shouldn't stop doing that. Unless you know that it's not what you're, unless you know that you're taking it away from yourself. Okay. It can be constructive. It can also be destructive. Now we are, we're really, it's amazing how quick the hour has gone by. Wow. If people want to know more about you. You know, I don't, I never wanted this to sound like an infomercial because that's not what this is. This is really about learning and also about getting to know you a bit. And there's so much more we really didn't get to know about you personally, your journey. And that really, I wish we had the time for that. But for people who do want to learn more about you or they did want to get in touch with you, it's, how would they do that? My email is Andre, A-N-D-R-E 4300 at gmail.com. Okay. And if you wanted to leave a phone number, a message for me on the phone, it's 310-405-3353. And as we kind of wrap things up, you know, I was reading about you and that you deal with, I'm curious how addiction plays into your, your practice. Cause I know that you deal with addiction in your clients. Can you tell me how all of this wraps into addiction treatment? Well. I'm in recovery and I've been in recovery for a while. Can you share what that is about? I mean, or you want to leave it at just that, which I totally understand. Yeah. No, I'm not going to share that on the radio. Okay. But the, the recovery that you're in, you've, have you used these treatments on yourself or with some? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And how does that work when it comes to recovery? It calms the nervous system down. Acupuncture is very, very good at calming the nervous system down, helping organs work smoothly. Somatic experiencing is a way of feeling a sense of power in oneself. So again, I'm going to come back to those three things. One is a feeling of when you feel powerless, when you feel stressed, when you feel emotionally isolated, those are all causes of those, those are, there are other causes, but those are big causes of addiction. I certainly went through that. And so what I can do to counter that, antidotes to those. Okay. And finding things that feel powerful about finding ways of nurturing oneself, finding a spiritual practice. Excuse me. And you find, yeah, go on. And finding ways to combat stress. And somatic experiencing with someone like yourself would help obviously. I mean, that's what it sounds like. I'm great. Right. So, so yoga, you know, go out and do yoga, go for a walk on the beach, find things that bring you joy. I ask all my clients, what brings you joy? And some of them have a lot of difficulty in defining it, but going for, you know, going for a walk on the beach, looking after yourself, being of service to people. These are all ways of engaging in life in a much bigger way and connecting to other people really. And that's what we want to do is connect and share our experience and hear others know that we're not alone. Well, I want to thank you for coming here and connecting with me and helping me and, uh, experience. I've had, you know, a traumatic experience and Jeremy, did you get something, some help from that? Yeah. It was interesting. Wasn't it? Yeah. It was very interesting. Um, and again, it's Andre Zitzer and, um, I wish that we had more time and hopefully maybe we'll have you come back. You know, we didn't even get into acupuncture. I asked him to bring his needles, but we got so into the somatic experience, which I think is actually very helpful. I really enjoyed that. That was fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. I mean. connection with someone, go with them. You know, if they speak words that you relate to, go with them. Yeah. Well, thank you again. And thank you so much. Yeah, I loved having you. It was really fun and very interesting. And I want to thank you also for listening right here. Again, I'm Vic Cohen and you've been listening to Vic Cohen's It's a Fair Question. It is a fair question. I'm Vic Cohen and it's a fair question. It's a fair question. It's a fair question. I'm Vic Cohen and it's a fair question. It's a fair. It's a fair. It's a fair. It's a fair question. I'm Vic Cohen and it's a fair. It's a fair. It's a fair. It's a fair. It's a fair. It's a fair. It's a fair. It's a fair.