July 16, 2024 • 27 mins
Have you ever felt like your emotions were taking control, making it hard to balance daily life? Join me, Dr. DeWayne Baugus, as I share my personal journey from the battlegrounds of combat to the battles within my mind. As a combat veteran, I've faced the deep-seated challenges of PTSD, anxiety, and depression head-on. Today, I reveal how therapeutic approaches like EMDR and cognitive processing therapies have been pivotal in my healing process and offer a lifeline to others struggling with emotional imbalances.
Transitioning from the structured life of the military to the unpredictable civilian world can be daunting. I discuss the emotional toll this shift can take, not just on veterans but on anyone experiencing a significant life change. Discover the crucial connection between our emotional health and physical well-being, and how unchecked emotions like fear and anger can wreak havoc on our bodies. Through my experiences and patient stories, we uncover the vital role of therapy and holistic approaches in maintaining emotional and physical balance.
Recognizing the need for help is often the hardest step. In this episode, I open up about my path to seeking support and how leaning on friends, family, and professionals has been instrumental in my recovery. This journey isn't just mine; it's a call to action for anyone grappling with emotional trauma. Learn how to identify the subtle signs of trauma and the importance of addressing these issues promptly to prevent them from diminishing your quality of life. Join me, Dr. DeWayne Baugus, as we navigate through the complexities of emotional well-being and discover the power of support systems in healing trauma.
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Episode Transcript
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Dr. DeWayne Baugus (00:06):
Welcome back to Balancing Life and Medicine.
I'm Dr DeWayne Baugus.
I'm an acupuncture physician,licensed in the state of Florida
as a primary care physician.
One of the things I'd like todiscuss today is emotional
imbalances, or emotionaldisorders.
It's something that's very nearand dear to me, as I'm a combat
veteran.
I have suffered for many yearswith PTSD, with anxiety and with
(00:31):
major depressive disorder.
In fact, that is what I amlabeled per se through the VA
system, so I am a combat vet.
I have a history with emotional, so I am a combat vet.
I have a history with emotionalimbalances and disorders and,
in fact, after many years ofworking with them and multiple
medical systems when I saymultiple Eastern medicine,
(00:54):
western medicine and everythingthat I could find help in
between.
As far as therapies go EMDR,ert for dreams, cpd, cognitive
processing therapies all kindsof different things that I've
went through over the years Iwould like to discuss that.
I would also like to discuss myjourney of understanding when I
(01:15):
had trauma.
It was not something I wasaware of when I was struggling
with depression, which I didn'tknow what depression was, and
when I realized that I wasavoiding things.
In other words, I had ananxiety and I was limiting my
life and what I would do andwhat I wouldn't do, based out of
previous trauma, and that'skind of an interesting journey
(01:39):
that I've shared with manypatients over the years, as well
as how I've grown andunderstood how to overcome these
imbalances, these traumas.
We all have trauma, not justcombat vets, first responders,
just anybody who gets in theircar every day and drives down
the road, or anyone who's raisedchildren.
(02:00):
I'm sure that there's lots oftrauma that we could all discuss
and share together.
Who's raised children?
I'm sure that there's lots oftrauma that we could all discuss
and share together.
But today, what I'd like to dois help you understand it,
identify it and know that thereare therapies out there that are
getting better and better, andfor you not to give up hope.
There's those of us who havewent down that road, and
(02:21):
sometimes it's not a road, it'skind of a.
It's a thorn patch,psychologically speaking, where
we go to dark places and then wemake our way back out of it,
and I contribute all that to thegrace of the Lord.
But before I found that, thatthe Lord was there, ready and
willing, with his hand out,waiting to help me, waiting to
(02:45):
let me let him help me, I guess,is a better way of putting it.
There was a lot of struggles.
There was addiction.
I used a lot of alcohol.
I was never into drugs.
I had previous trauma withother individuals that did drugs
, so you could say my PTSD ledto more PTSD and I didn't do the
(03:06):
bad things that some people getinto while they're trying to
overcome or handle ordisassociate with trauma.
So, growing up in Oklahoma City,I grew up the last of three
children bigger family thereended up being five but very
(03:27):
rough childhood and throughoutthat childhood I started to
learn how to overcome anxiety byjust stepping into things,
almost becoming aggressive, andthat's not a good thing.
So, as a child being aggressiveor being challenging, I wish
(03:49):
that now teachers and parentswould understand more about
children when they're acting outaggressively, if they're being
bullies or if they're completelypassive, which that was a stage
I went through as well, where Iwas being picked on all the
time because I wasn't.
I didn't feel like I was strongenough.
(04:10):
I felt like the world wascollapsing on me as a child.
Years of frustration that Igave my parents instead of them
being able to see what I wasgoing through the trauma, the
anxiety, all those things.
I was acting out of an emotionand in fact a lot of us growing
(04:34):
up acted out of emotions.
We're not going to talk aboutthe crazy teenage years.
Those are acting out ofhormones and emotion and it's
just.
It's crazy.
That's for another segment.
But when it comes to straightemotion and being locked in as a
child, children get stuck in anemotion and a lot of times
that's fight or flight and thatlooks like different things.
(04:57):
I'm not trying to say thatother titles and what we found
in psychology.
Children don't have those.
Whether it's ADD, adhd there'sso many different things that
children go through and thatwe're learning that children go
through.
But when it's an emotion, I'dlike to help you understand that
and identify it.
So when a child is acting out,it's not time to discipline.
(05:22):
It's time to ask why out?
It's not time to discipline.
It's time to ask why it's timeto dig in closer.
It's time to figure out what isupsetting a child or what makes
them do what they do, insteadof just punishing fear-based to
get them to do what you wantthem to do.
Because if we say it like that,if someone's already in trauma
(05:43):
and you create more trauma, thenwe're not really helping the
situation as an adult for achild to get through that.
We're adding layers onto it andunfortunately that's what
happened in my childhood and Iknow a lot of us that were born
in the 70s went through that.
In fact, we always have theselittle social media memes where
(06:05):
we survived right, and we did.
But through that process Ithink it could have been better.
I think I could have turned outmaybe different if someone
would have had a little bithigher emotional IQ, someone who
can look at the situation andnot respond to it but defuse it.
(06:27):
So with that childhood I wentinto the military right out of
high school.
In fact, my confidence was solow and I was so traumatized
from growing up in anenvironment that wasn't
encouraging and uplifting to me.
I turned down a basketballscholarship and I joined the
(06:48):
army.
And when I went in the army, ofcourse my family was devastated
.
They didn't understand why.
They wanted to know why Iturned down a perfectly good
scholarship to go in the army.
That didn't make any sense.
What they didn't realize iswhat I'd been going through and
then I didn't have theconfidence to go to college to.
(07:08):
I didn't feel like I can makethose grades.
In fact, in high school I was aterrible student because I was
never really there emotionally.
If I got a C plus man, I washigh-fiving people in the
hallway.
I mean I was that guy.
But I was also an athlete andthat was kind of a hint or it
should have been a hint for allthose that were around me when I
was growing up.
(07:28):
I excelled in sports because itwas a good escape and it was
the ability for me to go and beme within a different setting.
But within my own life, when Ihad to sit down and concentrate,
I was always in fight or flight.
In other words, you don'treally retain good information
when you're always in survivalmode.
(07:49):
So I won't go too in depth onthat.
I do treat a lot of children inthe clinic.
I do counseling typeacupuncture, where we're talking
about problems as we're workingthrough them, and I do work
hand in hand with localtherapists, psychologists and
psychiatrists.
Believe it or not, some of themare patients of mine.
(08:11):
But they also refer patientsinto me because we find that
there's good results withacupuncture If it can knock down
cortisol levels and stresslevels.
There's little bleeps ofnormalcy in the mind and that
fight or flight starts to start.
It fades and in fact that'ssomething that helped me, but
I'll discuss that here in just afew moments.
(08:34):
Back to joining the army insteadof going to college.
When I went into the military,my traumatized childhood made
the military seem like it wasgoing to the park.
To give you an idea, basictraining was.
It wasn't bad at all.
I didn't understand why othersoldiers that were new, just
like I was.
(08:54):
They were crying, they werebreaking down, they wanted to go
home and all these big men wereyelling at us.
And well, I was used to beingyelled at and that was my
comfort zone.
So if you'd like to take notes,during this video, I'm giving
you a little little hints hereand there.
If someone is used to beingscreamed and yelled at and they
act perfectly calm with it, youmay want to lean in a little bit
(09:17):
closer and see what they'redoing, see what's going on.
That was something that wasnormal for me.
So the military, the training,the physical training, the
psychological training they wereall very welcome to me.
My body was already conditionedas an athlete to go through the
physical part of it, but thepsychological part was something
that turned out being rough,and what I mean by that is being
(09:42):
deployed.
Spending several years in thearmy, I'd seen different
situations and been in differenttheaters what we call of the
world, where you see things thatyou probably shouldn't see.
You see things and do thingsthat they don't quite mesh with
(10:02):
civilian life, but that's whatyou do as a soldier and that's
what you do in the military, andI can honestly say I was able
to help a lot of people with mymilitary service and that gives
me good gratification and makesme feel positive about my
service.
But in turn, the psychologicaleffects of it, along with my
childhood, started creating, Iwould say, a big storm.
(10:25):
So as a young adult, I nevergot to mature emotionally.
I went straight in the militaryand was told how to mature
emotionally, which was a fakestructure.
When someone gives you astructure like the military does
, it's easy to take it on.
So, becoming that mindset,knowing what to wear every day,
knowing how to polish your boots, knowing how to iron your
(10:46):
uniforms, knowing how to be ontime Ten minutes prior always
military If you're not early,you're late.
So all these things where toeat, what to eat all that stuff
is provided.
It's a structure.
The military provides a reallygood structure, and then you
learn the psychology of how tonavigate the military, the egos,
(11:09):
all the things that can go on.
I'm going to pause it.
We'll start over, I'm sorry.
(11:33):
I think all the things that cango on yeah, all the things that
can go on as far as thestructure, the psychology, all
the things you gain from themilitary, well, it eventually
goes away because you have toget out of the military.
So I'm going to fold back onemore time not fully matured as a
(11:57):
teenager and psychologically oremotionally imbalanced military
.
If you think you're going toget emotional balance when you
go in the military, that's agood one.
We can discuss that one off tothe side.
If you want to send us someemails, go to our website,
mabelbrookacupuncturecom.
We'll get into thoseconversations personally,
one-on-one.
But I hope you don't findbalance in the military and
(12:19):
think that that's going to benormal from now on, because
you're going to find this recoil, this impact, when you get back
into the civilian world.
And that's where my story reallystarts to clear up in a bad way
.
When I became a civilian, Irealized that my structure was
gone in the military and,emotionally speaking, I came
(12:43):
apart.
Unfortunately, I had never beentogether.
I had taken on all these otherstructures that were given to me
, growing up in a householdwhere everything was structured
strictly, and then growing up inthe military, everything was
structured both physically,emotionally, all of it put
together.
All that now gone.
I was pretty much out flappingin the world, and the world is a
(13:06):
vicious place.
You have to make your own way.
You have to make your own food,you have to make your own, you
put your own clothes on, youhave to buy your clothes, you
have to fit into society and youhave to do it not just
physically and visually,materialistically, but
emotionally.
And that's where I started tofail and I didn't understand why
, in fact, I started to drink.
(13:29):
I was covering up my emotionswith alcohol because I didn't
really care if I drank enough,enough.
And we see that in society, alot People are using drugs.
They're using things todisassociate, whether it's
staying home and playing videogames, whether it's overeating
with sugar, whether it's very,very bad diets.
Vices is what we used to callthem and we still call them that
(13:51):
things that we're holding on to, that give us comfort, when in
fact, we should be able to findour own comfort, and the other
thing that we should be able todo is understand when we're
being emotionally compromised,or how to find calmness or peace
emotionally.
Now I ran into that.
I was in Sarasota, florida, andI was working four to five
(14:13):
different jobs.
That's how I covered was.
I tried not to sleep.
I was having night terrors.
My PTSD from what I'd seen inthe military, my anxiety, my
depression of not fitting intothe civilian world all these
things were starting to reallycollapse on me.
They had happened previously,but now I was having to deal
with them.
(14:34):
It was a perfect storm andunfortunately, that's where we
start to see a lot of suiciderates.
The military has extremely highsuicide rates, but it's not
just the military.
They're focused on as a specialgroup, but we find this
happening throughout society.
We find it with firstresponders, we find it with
healthcare providers, we find itwith individuals who submerge
(14:56):
themselves into a career fieldor a certain habit and then they
fade away, but you never reallyget to know who that person is,
because that individual theydon't know who they are either.
So what I have found is a lotof therapy, a lot of work.
A lot of different approaches inmedicine combined to help me
(15:18):
understand emotions, toessentially gain an emotional IQ
, not just for myself but for mypatients.
When patients come in, manytimes they'll have something
going on emotionally that'simbalanced, usually with a
physical pain, a problem withdiet, a problem with sleep, like
(15:42):
insomnia.
All those things have anemotional tie.
They're rooted in something.
Maybe that isn't settled in themind, but I also find internal
organ systems that areimbalanced.
For example, we know that fear,long-term fear from trauma will
(16:05):
affect kidney function.
You can see this with how thebody responds to long-term fear
or long-term abuse.
We can discuss all that more indetail.
If you like, shoot an email atus and we'll do a video just
based on fear and that emotiontrauma.
But there's also many otheremotions that affect different
(16:25):
organ systems and I'd like tocover a group of those today
before we get detailed into onespecifically, as mentioned, the
kidneys, fear the liver, angerand depression those emotions
(16:47):
affect the organs but thoseorgans will also create those
emotions.
The lungs, we know, is affectedby grief.
We know intestinal problems canbe the inability of letting
something go, something that'shurt you in the past or
something that is reallypersonal to you that you've just
held onto for years can createdigestive disorders.
The emotion of worry andoverthinking affects our
(17:09):
digestion, our stomach and ourspleen.
The spleen in Chinese medicineis actually the pancreas in
Western medicine.
So we see people that arecaught up in worry and
overthinking and that's acomfort they're looking for and
usually they'll find it withsweet things like sugar and
essentially it turns into anation of diabetics.
And we're seeing that going ontoday, where so many people are
(17:32):
overwhelmed, they worry, theyoverthink and after COVID they
don't even know what theirfuture looks like anymore
because everything is kind ofbusted up their foundation of
what's going to happen tomorrow.
Everything can change so fast.
It's a type of trauma.
So people started eating overCOVID.
The COVID wait is what I hearpeople say and what it is is.
They got into bad habits, theyworried, they were sitting
(17:53):
around, they were stagnant,their mind was being compromised
emotionally with fear andanxiety and their jobs.
Everything changed.
So the heart.
The heart is directly affectedby joy as well as sadness when
we're hurt.
(18:15):
How these organs respond to theemotions.
It's also reversed.
If you have an organ problem,you'll manifest those emotions.
We're wired that way and a lotof people don't understand that
their emotions are directly tiedto their health.
Not to mention a lot of themdon't know their decisions are
(18:37):
being made in an emotion, not inwhat they really want.
If you ever had thoseindividuals in your life, you
say you want to go out to dinnerand they're like, yeah, where
do you want to go?
I don't know where do you wantto go.
No, where do you want to go.
They're afraid, they don't wantto say something wrong.
They're not actually makingdecisions based on what they
want.
Now you ask a kid what a kidwants and they'll tell you they
(18:58):
want McDonald's.
They know what they wantbecause they haven't learned
that fear, that trauma, isn'taffecting their decision-making
process or the thought process.
So understanding where emotionsare, where they go, how they
affect the body, is somethingthat I do in great detail.
One of the first things I didwhen I finished medical school
was I created a television showand that was in Sarasota,
(19:22):
florida, and that was me tryingto express, as a veteran.
How do we identify emotions andemotional imbalances?
How do we identify when we'restuck in the emotion of fear,
stuck in worry?
In other words, we worry dayand night.
If we're so worried, how are wepresent of our situation now,
in the emotion of fear, stuck inworry, in other words, we worry
(19:42):
day and night.
If we're so worried, how are wepresent of our situation now?
If we're worried aboutsomething, it's usually we're
worried about the future.
Many times, that's the biggestlie we can tell ourselves.
It's the biggest deceit iswe're worried about something
happening and that takes awayour moment.
Now we're worried about thingsthat usually never happen, and
that's sad because we I guess itwould be better to say we have
(20:03):
whole warehouses of data in ourbrain of all the things that can
possibly go wrong, but we neveropen those filing cabinets
because they never really gowrong into detail.
We're worried about flyingbecause the plane may crash, or
the one that I had to use a lotto help family members
understand how to identifytrauma or emotion in another
(20:25):
family member, because thefamily member maybe doesn't know
what they're doing is someonehas a car accident, so they get
up every day and they leavetheir driveway.
They go down the street.
They always make a left at thestoplight and then they make a
right at the next stoplight andthen they're at work.
Well, they leave their driveway.
One day they go to the firstintersection, they get t-boned.
(20:45):
Their life changes in a splitsecond.
Someone doesn't stop at thelight, or maybe they didn't see
the light and their car isdestroyed.
They've got whiplash, there'spain associated with something
that just turned the worldupside down, and it's not like
they seen it coming, itblindsided them.
In other words, everything thathas stable and has worked for
(21:07):
years has been destroyed.
Their pattern, their process isnow broken.
Now they'll recover, they'llget a new car, hopefully they
got insurance and they've gotall those fun things going on.
But the physical repercussionscan last a lifetime, the
psychological ramifications evenlonger.
But these individuals sometimesdon't even know that they're
(21:27):
acting out of trauma, thatthey're in survival mode, that
they're in fight or flight.
But a family member may realizeit real quick.
Say, a family member joins thatindividual months after the
accident that they just had.
You know it's gone, it's in thepast.
They've went to PT, they'vecome to see me with acupuncture,
we've worked through themusculoskeletal issues, and then
(21:48):
a family member gets in the carwith them because they're going
to go out to dinner.
And on the way to dinner it'sthat same pattern that they
would take on their way to work,but they completely avoid the
intersection where they had theaccident.
In fact they will block aroundit.
Where they had the accident, infact, they will block around it
, they just avoid.
They start avoiding thatintersection.
In fact they avoid everythingat that intersection and they
(22:12):
don't even know it.
Now that's when someone getstrapped but a family member
starts to recognize or noticehey, why don't you just make a
left and go straight?
Why are you going around theblock?
You know, just taking thescenic route.
You know I like it this waybetter.
I don't know what it is, I justI don't like going there.
What we start to notice is it'snot just an intersection.
(22:34):
Then the car that hit him wasbright red.
Now their anxiety goes upwhenever they see a bright red
car while they're driving intraffic and all of a sudden
they're focused on those brightred cars and they're all over
the interstate.
So they no longer want to takethe interstate, they don't want
to get on the highway.
They start avoiding certainareas altogether.
(22:56):
They avoid all traffic areas.
They start going throughneighborhoods, they start
avoiding anything that canpossibly make them feel
uncomfortable, and that initself would be a trauma, a long
lasting trauma, and a traumathat gets worse.
It snowballs.
So with every passing monthsomething closes in on their
life.
They keep their world keepsgetting smaller and smaller,
(23:19):
because they're avoiding andit's not always a conscious
thought that they're doing this,it's something else.
It's their fight or flight,it's their fear.
It's that worry that starts tocreep in and they start to limit
themselves.
And this is how we start to seepeople close up their world and
they don't want to leave thehouse anymore after a while,
because everything becomes athreat.
(23:39):
That's just one example of whatwe would look for as a family
member, maybe riding with them,or a family member that we've
realized that they don't want toleave the house anymore.
And that's where we have to digin and we have to say hey,
what's going on?
Maybe you should get sometherapy, maybe we should look
deeper into this.
It doesn't mean the individual'sweak.
It just means they'reresponding to trauma.
(24:01):
That's a natural, healthyreaction.
You stick your hand in fire andyou get burned.
You don't keep doing it.
You learn to avoid that.
You don't want to do that overand over.
So whatever may cause us painor trauma or change our world,
sometimes we start avoiding andthat is a big flag.
It's a big indicator that youneed to get into therapy.
You need to talk to a therapistor a counselor.
(24:21):
It's not a weakness to get intotherapy, you need to talk to a
therapist or a counselor.
It's not a weakness, it'snormal.
It's normal for us to go talkto someone and ask for help.
But a big job that I have hereas far as working with patients
is when they come in with trauma, going through it myself
personally, I pick it up prettyquick.
We have intake forms.
We have a process when we doconsultations where we start to
(24:43):
figure that out and start tonarrow things down.
And many times I'll bringthings to a patient's attention
and they'll say, whoa, I neverthought of that, I never knew I
was doing that.
And the other times is whenthey bring their significant
other, their spouse, in and I'llpoint these things out and the
spouse is going.
That's true, you're living infear, you're living in worry.
You, and that's true, you'reliving in fear, you're living in
(25:05):
worry, you're overwhelmed bysomething that no longer exists.
How do we help you move past it?
So, going over emotionaldisorders, imbalances, that's
something that I have personallylived from my childhood to my
early adulthood as well as aveteran and living in the
civilian world Acupuncture andoriental medicine gave me a
different perspective on it.
I won't say that that alone waswhat helped me.
(25:27):
It made a big difference in mylife, but the combination of
individuals who specialized inunderstanding where I was in my
emotions and how to work me outof those situations.
And there is one that standsout above all the rest and
that's my faith in the Lord.
When I finally couldn't handleit anymore, I cried out to the
(25:50):
Lord.
Because when my alcohol didn'twork anymore, when my running
didn't work anymore, with themultiple jobs, overworking,
workaholics yes, you're lookingat trauma, believe it or not.
When people won't come home orthey just got to stay with it, I
mean money.
Money shouldn't cost you yourhealth.
(26:12):
You shouldn't be working thathard.
There's other things that youcan do to live a peaceful life,
but when we see people running,that's another identifier.
Those individuals in my pastwere really, really detrimental.
They were other veterans thathelped me, that stepped up, just
(26:32):
going through that process,finding that moment that I
needed to ask for help, to cryout to the Lord.
Those were big changes, thosewere big steps as far as
understanding.
I needed help, which is that'sneeded.
You need to know that there's aproblem.
(26:53):
Helping you identify thatproblem friends and family,
therapists, counselors, myself,people like me and then what
steps to take to move forward,to battle it, to start fighting
back, to not give in to thatever-shrinking world that
sometimes comes with our traumain life.
(27:14):
Well, if you have any questionsabout that, if you'd like to
know more details about how ourbody is physically affected, how
our mind, about how our body isphysically affected, how our
mind can be affected, how wehold on to things and how it can
really limit our life, send usan email, shoot us something on
our website, https://www.
(27:34):
maplebrookacupuncturecom.
Go to that website, check usout or contact us here by phone,
and I'm always very ready andhappy to help others struggling
through emotional imbalances soyou can have a better life.
Well, I'm Dr DeWayne Baugus,with Balancing Life and Medicine
, and I look forward to the nextvideo.
(27:56):
Take care, guys.
Welcome back to Balancing Life and Medicine.
I'm Dr DeWayne Baugus.
I'm an acupuncture physician,licensed in the state of Florida
as a primary care physician.
One of the things I'd like todiscuss today is emotional
imbalances, or emotionaldisorders.
It's something that's very nearand dear to me, as I'm a combat
veteran.
I have suffered for many yearswith PTSD, with anxiety and with
(00:31):
major depressive disorder.
In fact, that is what I amlabeled per se through the VA
system, so I am a combat vet.
I have a history with emotional, so I am a combat vet.
I have a history with emotionalimbalances and disorders and,
in fact, after many years ofworking with them and multiple
medical systems when I saymultiple Eastern medicine,
(00:54):
western medicine and everythingthat I could find help in
between.
As far as therapies go EMDR,ert for dreams, cpd, cognitive
processing therapies all kindsof different things that I've
went through over the years Iwould like to discuss that.
I would also like to discuss myjourney of understanding when I
(01:15):
had trauma.
It was not something I wasaware of when I was struggling
with depression, which I didn'tknow what depression was, and
when I realized that I wasavoiding things.
In other words, I had ananxiety and I was limiting my
life and what I would do andwhat I wouldn't do, based out of
previous trauma, and that'skind of an interesting journey
(01:39):
that I've shared with manypatients over the years, as well
as how I've grown andunderstood how to overcome these
imbalances, these traumas.
We all have trauma, not justcombat vets, first responders,
just anybody who gets in theircar every day and drives down
the road, or anyone who's raisedchildren.
(02:00):
I'm sure that there's lots oftrauma that we could all discuss
and share together.
Who's raised children?
I'm sure that there's lots oftrauma that we could all discuss
and share together.
But today, what I'd like to dois help you understand it,
identify it and know that thereare therapies out there that are
getting better and better, andfor you not to give up hope.
There's those of us who havewent down that road, and
(02:21):
sometimes it's not a road, it'skind of a.
It's a thorn patch,psychologically speaking, where
we go to dark places and then wemake our way back out of it,
and I contribute all that to thegrace of the Lord.
But before I found that, thatthe Lord was there, ready and
willing, with his hand out,waiting to help me, waiting to
(02:45):
let me let him help me, I guess,is a better way of putting it.
There was a lot of struggles.
There was addiction.
I used a lot of alcohol.
I was never into drugs.
I had previous trauma withother individuals that did drugs
, so you could say my PTSD ledto more PTSD and I didn't do the
(03:06):
bad things that some people getinto while they're trying to
overcome or handle ordisassociate with trauma.
So, growing up in Oklahoma City,I grew up the last of three
children bigger family thereended up being five but very
(03:27):
rough childhood and throughoutthat childhood I started to
learn how to overcome anxiety byjust stepping into things,
almost becoming aggressive, andthat's not a good thing.
So, as a child being aggressiveor being challenging, I wish
(03:49):
that now teachers and parentswould understand more about
children when they're acting outaggressively, if they're being
bullies or if they're completelypassive, which that was a stage
I went through as well, where Iwas being picked on all the
time because I wasn't.
I didn't feel like I was strongenough.
(04:10):
I felt like the world wascollapsing on me as a child.
Years of frustration that Igave my parents instead of them
being able to see what I wasgoing through the trauma, the
anxiety, all those things.
I was acting out of an emotionand in fact a lot of us growing
(04:34):
up acted out of emotions.
We're not going to talk aboutthe crazy teenage years.
Those are acting out ofhormones and emotion and it's
just.
It's crazy.
That's for another segment.
But when it comes to straightemotion and being locked in as a
child, children get stuck in anemotion and a lot of times
that's fight or flight and thatlooks like different things.
(04:57):
I'm not trying to say thatother titles and what we found
in psychology.
Children don't have those.
Whether it's ADD, adhd there'sso many different things that
children go through and thatwe're learning that children go
through.
But when it's an emotion, I'dlike to help you understand that
and identify it.
So when a child is acting out,it's not time to discipline.
(05:22):
It's time to ask why out?
It's not time to discipline.
It's time to ask why it's timeto dig in closer.
It's time to figure out what isupsetting a child or what makes
them do what they do, insteadof just punishing fear-based to
get them to do what you wantthem to do.
Because if we say it like that,if someone's already in trauma
(05:43):
and you create more trauma, thenwe're not really helping the
situation as an adult for achild to get through that.
We're adding layers onto it andunfortunately that's what
happened in my childhood and Iknow a lot of us that were born
in the 70s went through that.
In fact, we always have theselittle social media memes where
(06:05):
we survived right, and we did.
But through that process Ithink it could have been better.
I think I could have turned outmaybe different if someone
would have had a little bithigher emotional IQ, someone who
can look at the situation andnot respond to it but defuse it.
(06:27):
So with that childhood I wentinto the military right out of
high school.
In fact, my confidence was solow and I was so traumatized
from growing up in anenvironment that wasn't
encouraging and uplifting to me.
I turned down a basketballscholarship and I joined the
(06:48):
army.
And when I went in the army, ofcourse my family was devastated
.
They didn't understand why.
They wanted to know why Iturned down a perfectly good
scholarship to go in the army.
That didn't make any sense.
What they didn't realize iswhat I'd been going through and
then I didn't have theconfidence to go to college to.
(07:08):
I didn't feel like I can makethose grades.
In fact, in high school I was aterrible student because I was
never really there emotionally.
If I got a C plus man, I washigh-fiving people in the
hallway.
I mean I was that guy.
But I was also an athlete andthat was kind of a hint or it
should have been a hint for allthose that were around me when I
was growing up.
(07:28):
I excelled in sports because itwas a good escape and it was
the ability for me to go and beme within a different setting.
But within my own life, when Ihad to sit down and concentrate,
I was always in fight or flight.
In other words, you don'treally retain good information
when you're always in survivalmode.
(07:49):
So I won't go too in depth onthat.
I do treat a lot of children inthe clinic.
I do counseling typeacupuncture, where we're talking
about problems as we're workingthrough them, and I do work
hand in hand with localtherapists, psychologists and
psychiatrists.
Believe it or not, some of themare patients of mine.
(08:11):
But they also refer patientsinto me because we find that
there's good results withacupuncture If it can knock down
cortisol levels and stresslevels.
There's little bleeps ofnormalcy in the mind and that
fight or flight starts to start.
It fades and in fact that'ssomething that helped me, but
I'll discuss that here in just afew moments.
(08:34):
Back to joining the army insteadof going to college.
When I went into the military,my traumatized childhood made
the military seem like it wasgoing to the park.
To give you an idea, basictraining was.
It wasn't bad at all.
I didn't understand why othersoldiers that were new, just
like I was.
(08:54):
They were crying, they werebreaking down, they wanted to go
home and all these big men wereyelling at us.
And well, I was used to beingyelled at and that was my
comfort zone.
So if you'd like to take notes,during this video, I'm giving
you a little little hints hereand there.
If someone is used to beingscreamed and yelled at and they
act perfectly calm with it, youmay want to lean in a little bit
(09:17):
closer and see what they'redoing, see what's going on.
That was something that wasnormal for me.
So the military, the training,the physical training, the
psychological training they wereall very welcome to me.
My body was already conditionedas an athlete to go through the
physical part of it, but thepsychological part was something
that turned out being rough,and what I mean by that is being
(09:42):
deployed.
Spending several years in thearmy, I'd seen different
situations and been in differenttheaters what we call of the
world, where you see things thatyou probably shouldn't see.
You see things and do thingsthat they don't quite mesh with
(10:02):
civilian life, but that's whatyou do as a soldier and that's
what you do in the military, andI can honestly say I was able
to help a lot of people with mymilitary service and that gives
me good gratification and makesme feel positive about my
service.
But in turn, the psychologicaleffects of it, along with my
childhood, started creating, Iwould say, a big storm.
(10:25):
So as a young adult, I nevergot to mature emotionally.
I went straight in the militaryand was told how to mature
emotionally, which was a fakestructure.
When someone gives you astructure like the military does
, it's easy to take it on.
So, becoming that mindset,knowing what to wear every day,
knowing how to polish your boots, knowing how to iron your
(10:46):
uniforms, knowing how to be ontime Ten minutes prior always
military If you're not early,you're late.
So all these things where toeat, what to eat all that stuff
is provided.
It's a structure.
The military provides a reallygood structure, and then you
learn the psychology of how tonavigate the military, the egos,
(11:09):
all the things that can go on.
I'm going to pause it.
We'll start over, I'm sorry.
(11:33):
I think all the things that cango on yeah, all the things that
can go on as far as thestructure, the psychology, all
the things you gain from themilitary, well, it eventually
goes away because you have toget out of the military.
So I'm going to fold back onemore time not fully matured as a
(11:57):
teenager and psychologically oremotionally imbalanced military
.
If you think you're going toget emotional balance when you
go in the military, that's agood one.
We can discuss that one off tothe side.
If you want to send us someemails, go to our website,
mabelbrookacupuncturecom.
We'll get into thoseconversations personally,
one-on-one.
But I hope you don't findbalance in the military and
(12:19):
think that that's going to benormal from now on, because
you're going to find this recoil, this impact, when you get back
into the civilian world.
And that's where my story reallystarts to clear up in a bad way
.
When I became a civilian, Irealized that my structure was
gone in the military and,emotionally speaking, I came
(12:43):
apart.
Unfortunately, I had never beentogether.
I had taken on all these otherstructures that were given to me
, growing up in a householdwhere everything was structured
strictly, and then growing up inthe military, everything was
structured both physically,emotionally, all of it put
together.
All that now gone.
I was pretty much out flappingin the world, and the world is a
(13:06):
vicious place.
You have to make your own way.
You have to make your own food,you have to make your own, you
put your own clothes on, youhave to buy your clothes, you
have to fit into society and youhave to do it not just
physically and visually,materialistically, but
emotionally.
And that's where I started tofail and I didn't understand why
, in fact, I started to drink.
(13:29):
I was covering up my emotionswith alcohol because I didn't
really care if I drank enough,enough.
And we see that in society, alot People are using drugs.
They're using things todisassociate, whether it's
staying home and playing videogames, whether it's overeating
with sugar, whether it's very,very bad diets.
Vices is what we used to callthem and we still call them that
(13:51):
things that we're holding on to, that give us comfort, when in
fact, we should be able to findour own comfort, and the other
thing that we should be able todo is understand when we're
being emotionally compromised,or how to find calmness or peace
emotionally.
Now I ran into that.
I was in Sarasota, florida, andI was working four to five
(14:13):
different jobs.
That's how I covered was.
I tried not to sleep.
I was having night terrors.
My PTSD from what I'd seen inthe military, my anxiety, my
depression of not fitting intothe civilian world all these
things were starting to reallycollapse on me.
They had happened previously,but now I was having to deal
with them.
(14:34):
It was a perfect storm andunfortunately, that's where we
start to see a lot of suiciderates.
The military has extremely highsuicide rates, but it's not
just the military.
They're focused on as a specialgroup, but we find this
happening throughout society.
We find it with firstresponders, we find it with
healthcare providers, we find itwith individuals who submerge
(14:56):
themselves into a career fieldor a certain habit and then they
fade away, but you never reallyget to know who that person is,
because that individual theydon't know who they are either.
So what I have found is a lotof therapy, a lot of work.
A lot of different approaches inmedicine combined to help me
(15:18):
understand emotions, toessentially gain an emotional IQ
, not just for myself but for mypatients.
When patients come in, manytimes they'll have something
going on emotionally that'simbalanced, usually with a
physical pain, a problem withdiet, a problem with sleep, like
(15:42):
insomnia.
All those things have anemotional tie.
They're rooted in something.
Maybe that isn't settled in themind, but I also find internal
organ systems that areimbalanced.
For example, we know that fear,long-term fear from trauma will
(16:05):
affect kidney function.
You can see this with how thebody responds to long-term fear
or long-term abuse.
We can discuss all that more indetail.
If you like, shoot an email atus and we'll do a video just
based on fear and that emotiontrauma.
But there's also many otheremotions that affect different
(16:25):
organ systems and I'd like tocover a group of those today
before we get detailed into onespecifically, as mentioned, the
kidneys, fear the liver, angerand depression those emotions
(16:47):
affect the organs but thoseorgans will also create those
emotions.
The lungs, we know, is affectedby grief.
We know intestinal problems canbe the inability of letting
something go, something that'shurt you in the past or
something that is reallypersonal to you that you've just
held onto for years can createdigestive disorders.
The emotion of worry andoverthinking affects our
(17:09):
digestion, our stomach and ourspleen.
The spleen in Chinese medicineis actually the pancreas in
Western medicine.
So we see people that arecaught up in worry and
overthinking and that's acomfort they're looking for and
usually they'll find it withsweet things like sugar and
essentially it turns into anation of diabetics.
And we're seeing that going ontoday, where so many people are
(17:32):
overwhelmed, they worry, theyoverthink and after COVID they
don't even know what theirfuture looks like anymore
because everything is kind ofbusted up their foundation of
what's going to happen tomorrow.
Everything can change so fast.
It's a type of trauma.
So people started eating overCOVID.
The COVID wait is what I hearpeople say and what it is is.
They got into bad habits, theyworried, they were sitting
(17:53):
around, they were stagnant,their mind was being compromised
emotionally with fear andanxiety and their jobs.
Everything changed.
So the heart.
The heart is directly affectedby joy as well as sadness when
we're hurt.
(18:15):
How these organs respond to theemotions.
It's also reversed.
If you have an organ problem,you'll manifest those emotions.
We're wired that way and a lotof people don't understand that
their emotions are directly tiedto their health.
Not to mention a lot of themdon't know their decisions are
(18:37):
being made in an emotion, not inwhat they really want.
If you ever had thoseindividuals in your life, you
say you want to go out to dinnerand they're like, yeah, where
do you want to go?
I don't know where do you wantto go.
No, where do you want to go.
They're afraid, they don't wantto say something wrong.
They're not actually makingdecisions based on what they
want.
Now you ask a kid what a kidwants and they'll tell you they
(18:58):
want McDonald's.
They know what they wantbecause they haven't learned
that fear, that trauma, isn'taffecting their decision-making
process or the thought process.
So understanding where emotionsare, where they go, how they
affect the body, is somethingthat I do in great detail.
One of the first things I didwhen I finished medical school
was I created a television showand that was in Sarasota,
(19:22):
florida, and that was me tryingto express, as a veteran.
How do we identify emotions andemotional imbalances?
How do we identify when we'restuck in the emotion of fear,
stuck in worry?
In other words, we worry dayand night.
If we're so worried, how are wepresent of our situation now,
in the emotion of fear, stuck inworry, in other words, we worry
(19:42):
day and night.
If we're so worried, how are wepresent of our situation now?
If we're worried aboutsomething, it's usually we're
worried about the future.
Many times, that's the biggestlie we can tell ourselves.
It's the biggest deceit iswe're worried about something
happening and that takes awayour moment.
Now we're worried about thingsthat usually never happen, and
that's sad because we I guess itwould be better to say we have
(20:03):
whole warehouses of data in ourbrain of all the things that can
possibly go wrong, but we neveropen those filing cabinets
because they never really gowrong into detail.
We're worried about flyingbecause the plane may crash, or
the one that I had to use a lotto help family members
understand how to identifytrauma or emotion in another
(20:25):
family member, because thefamily member maybe doesn't know
what they're doing is someonehas a car accident, so they get
up every day and they leavetheir driveway.
They go down the street.
They always make a left at thestoplight and then they make a
right at the next stoplight andthen they're at work.
Well, they leave their driveway.
One day they go to the firstintersection, they get t-boned.
(20:45):
Their life changes in a splitsecond.
Someone doesn't stop at thelight, or maybe they didn't see
the light and their car isdestroyed.
They've got whiplash, there'spain associated with something
that just turned the worldupside down, and it's not like
they seen it coming, itblindsided them.
In other words, everything thathas stable and has worked for
(21:07):
years has been destroyed.
Their pattern, their process isnow broken.
Now they'll recover, they'llget a new car, hopefully they
got insurance and they've gotall those fun things going on.
But the physical repercussionscan last a lifetime, the
psychological ramifications evenlonger.
But these individuals sometimesdon't even know that they're
(21:27):
acting out of trauma, thatthey're in survival mode, that
they're in fight or flight.
But a family member may realizeit real quick.
Say, a family member joins thatindividual months after the
accident that they just had.
You know it's gone, it's in thepast.
They've went to PT, they'vecome to see me with acupuncture,
we've worked through themusculoskeletal issues, and then
(21:48):
a family member gets in the carwith them because they're going
to go out to dinner.
And on the way to dinner it'sthat same pattern that they
would take on their way to work,but they completely avoid the
intersection where they had theaccident.
In fact they will block aroundit.
Where they had the accident, infact, they will block around it
, they just avoid.
They start avoiding thatintersection.
In fact they avoid everythingat that intersection and they
(22:12):
don't even know it.
Now that's when someone getstrapped but a family member
starts to recognize or noticehey, why don't you just make a
left and go straight?
Why are you going around theblock?
You know, just taking thescenic route.
You know I like it this waybetter.
I don't know what it is, I justI don't like going there.
What we start to notice is it'snot just an intersection.
(22:34):
Then the car that hit him wasbright red.
Now their anxiety goes upwhenever they see a bright red
car while they're driving intraffic and all of a sudden
they're focused on those brightred cars and they're all over
the interstate.
So they no longer want to takethe interstate, they don't want
to get on the highway.
They start avoiding certainareas altogether.
(22:56):
They avoid all traffic areas.
They start going throughneighborhoods, they start
avoiding anything that canpossibly make them feel
uncomfortable, and that initself would be a trauma, a long
lasting trauma, and a traumathat gets worse.
It snowballs.
So with every passing monthsomething closes in on their
life.
They keep their world keepsgetting smaller and smaller,
(23:19):
because they're avoiding andit's not always a conscious
thought that they're doing this,it's something else.
It's their fight or flight,it's their fear.
It's that worry that starts tocreep in and they start to limit
themselves.
And this is how we start to seepeople close up their world and
they don't want to leave thehouse anymore after a while,
because everything becomes athreat.
(23:39):
That's just one example of whatwe would look for as a family
member, maybe riding with them,or a family member that we've
realized that they don't want toleave the house anymore.
And that's where we have to digin and we have to say hey,
what's going on?
Maybe you should get sometherapy, maybe we should look
deeper into this.
It doesn't mean the individual'sweak.
It just means they'reresponding to trauma.
(24:01):
That's a natural, healthyreaction.
You stick your hand in fire andyou get burned.
You don't keep doing it.
You learn to avoid that.
You don't want to do that overand over.
So whatever may cause us painor trauma or change our world,
sometimes we start avoiding andthat is a big flag.
It's a big indicator that youneed to get into therapy.
You need to talk to a therapistor a counselor.
(24:21):
It's not a weakness to get intotherapy, you need to talk to a
therapist or a counselor.
It's not a weakness, it'snormal.
It's normal for us to go talkto someone and ask for help.
But a big job that I have hereas far as working with patients
is when they come in with trauma, going through it myself
personally, I pick it up prettyquick.
We have intake forms.
We have a process when we doconsultations where we start to
(24:43):
figure that out and start tonarrow things down.
And many times I'll bringthings to a patient's attention
and they'll say, whoa, I neverthought of that, I never knew I
was doing that.
And the other times is whenthey bring their significant
other, their spouse, in and I'llpoint these things out and the
spouse is going.
That's true, you're living infear, you're living in worry.
You, and that's true, you'reliving in fear, you're living in
(25:05):
worry, you're overwhelmed bysomething that no longer exists.
How do we help you move past it?
So, going over emotionaldisorders, imbalances, that's
something that I have personallylived from my childhood to my
early adulthood as well as aveteran and living in the
civilian world Acupuncture andoriental medicine gave me a
different perspective on it.
I won't say that that alone waswhat helped me.
(25:27):
It made a big difference in mylife, but the combination of
individuals who specialized inunderstanding where I was in my
emotions and how to work me outof those situations.
And there is one that standsout above all the rest and
that's my faith in the Lord.
When I finally couldn't handleit anymore, I cried out to the
(25:50):
Lord.
Because when my alcohol didn'twork anymore, when my running
didn't work anymore, with themultiple jobs, overworking,
workaholics yes, you're lookingat trauma, believe it or not.
When people won't come home orthey just got to stay with it, I
mean money.
Money shouldn't cost you yourhealth.
(26:12):
You shouldn't be working thathard.
There's other things that youcan do to live a peaceful life,
but when we see people running,that's another identifier.
Those individuals in my pastwere really, really detrimental.
They were other veterans thathelped me, that stepped up, just
(26:32):
going through that process,finding that moment that I
needed to ask for help, to cryout to the Lord.
Those were big changes, thosewere big steps as far as
understanding.
I needed help, which is that'sneeded.
You need to know that there's aproblem.
(26:53):
Helping you identify thatproblem friends and family,
therapists, counselors, myself,people like me and then what
steps to take to move forward,to battle it, to start fighting
back, to not give in to thatever-shrinking world that
sometimes comes with our traumain life.
(27:14):
Well, if you have any questionsabout that, if you'd like to
know more details about how ourbody is physically affected, how
our mind, about how our body isphysically affected, how our
mind can be affected, how wehold on to things and how it can
really limit our life, send usan email, shoot us something on
our website, https://www.
(27:34):
maplebrookacupuncturecom.
Go to that website, check usout or contact us here by phone,
and I'm always very ready andhappy to help others struggling
through emotional imbalances soyou can have a better life.
Well, I'm Dr DeWayne Baugus,with Balancing Life and Medicine
, and I look forward to the nextvideo.
(27:56):
Take care, guys.
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