Healing the Nervous System: Rethinking Mental Health | with Dana Hargus

Michael Unbroken: One of the things that I think that we have to really address is the reality that there are a lot of tropes in mental health that I don't think really stand true any longer. And yet we're continually told that this is the way to heal. This is the way to change, this is the way to improve your mental wellbeing. And yet here we are doing the same things over and over and over again to no resolve. And that's why I'm excited for today's episode with my great friend Dana Hargus, to talk about exactly how we can create real and lasting transformation in our lives by healing our nervous system. And not only that, but understanding the other limitations that we're faced with in the world.

In today's scope of mental health. If you are struggling, if you're lost, if you've listened to 998 episodes of Think Unbroken and you're still like, I don't know what to do, listen to this episode 'cause it's gonna be super powerful. Dana, my friend, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.

Dana Hargus: Thank you. It's great to be here. 

Michael Unbroken: If someone is listening right now and they are feeling inclined to stay for the old episode, why should they stay and listen to every second that we talk today? 

Dana Hargus: I think that I have had a lifetime, an adult lifetime of 30 plus years of dealing with mental health issues from the perspective of an educator, the parent of difficult, you know, hard kids that came from hard places, and then also a mental health counselor. And I feel like the way that I see mental health is unique and that it offers real healing for the whole person. 

Michael Unbroken: Let's get into that. Why is it unique, right? What is it that you have seen, and obviously with a tremendous amount of experience, personal background, and all of the things that anyone could really use to leverage of being an expert. What is it that you see that you think we're missing or isn't talked about? Or you have this unique perspective, what does that look like and where does it come from? 

Dana Hargus: Well, I think it comes from years of looking at what doesn't work, you know, as you, as you're in this world. And I have had foster children that I later adopted. And like I said, I was an educator, mostly of children in special education often worked with kids who we would call emotionally disturbed or delinquents and then I moved into this mental health field. So I tend to see myself as a problem solver, it's like I'm interested in. And why I've always been intrigued, even as a child, as to why everybody doesn't solve problems. Because you look at a problem and you see what it is, and you're like, what do we need to do to fix this? How do we change it? That's my perspective. And so when I watch people just sit under a problem and never change it, I think, why don't you do something different? Even if it's just I'm late all the time, you know? It's like, why don't you try to figure out how to not be late? So all these years of looking at things and thinking this does not work, and watching the brokenness that's created by our society, like we look at medication and the side effects of that medication are unbelievable, and the fact that we would hand it to a child.

Is like, at least an adult gets to make a decision. I see that this pill could cause homicide, suicide, you know, anger, rage, constipation, you know, the list just goes. It could cause a heart attack, it could cause these things, but I'm choosing to take it anyway. Well, a child doesn't have, it doesn't have that luxury of getting to say, this doesn't make me feel good. I'm not gonna do this. So when I look at all the things we do, I think something has to be different. And I feel like I've spent the last, at least 35 years of my life thinking what needs to be different and how do I make it different? And that's where I am today of going, we don't need to be considering these options.

We need to be looking at how to fix a problem. Our society's just full of bandaids. We just slap a bandaid on it with no thought of getting to a real solution. It's like we don't even believe there are solutions. We just believe that if we, if we just slap more and more bandaids and stitch this up a little and, and look at it from this perspective, then we can survive. And my goal is not survival. My goal is healing and thriving and living and loving and being joyful. I guess the most grandiose of my thoughts is, I wanna change the way we do mental health. Like, it's one thing to look at something and say it's wrong, but it's another thing to have options on what we're gonna do differently.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah, that's why I created this, you know, the effort and energy of writing the books, the podcast, the speaking on stages has always been just because I felt like there has to be something different. I mean, I watched my mother literally kill herself on prescription drugs, watch my grandmother walk down that same path, watch the people in my neighborhood do the same things. And I would always just think to myself, and as a child, I remember having these moments of looking at their experiences and being like, this doesn't work. Like, I distinctly remember, like, this is not working. It's making it worse. And I think by the time that my grandmother was heading towards death, she was literally taking like somewhere between 17 to 20 pharmaceuticals a day.

Right? And that just the pain and suffering that I watched her go through, tremendous, the pain and suffering I watched my mother go through. I mean, honestly shaped me, right? I mean, I don't get to this place in my life without those. And, and as a young child, for myself personally, growing up in such a traumatic household with a drug addict, alcoholic mother, an alcoholic, abusive stepfather, never meeting my father, having a learning dis all of these things.

And I'm labeled one of these kids who needs to be in the special classes who has anger issues and emotional dysregulation. And I'm like, yeah, no sh*t. Look where I come from. And the solution was, and unfortunately still is, let's medicate. And at super young age, I was taking psychoactive medications to try to regulate my brain that were making me legitimately even more crazy, right?

Like I remember being nine, 10 years old and having brutal insomnia and going to do sleep studies, and people are like, we don't know why you can't sleep. I'm like, I can probably guess. And so you look at this and we're like, all right, so the game that we're playing here is, is solving for XXI believe in this scenario what we're talking about, like how do you create this path to actually heal people at the root Is, is such a hard problem to solve when you're facing, I think two things.

One, a giant media propaganda. And two, a pharmaceutical industry that is not governed in any capacity. And so all we see on television is ads. Take this pill, your life sucks. Take this pill, make your life better. Take this pill. And, and you and I both know that's ultimately, that's not the thing. We're so tied to the quick fix though, right? We're so tied into this idea that if we just do this one thing, everything gets better. But all of the research and data consistently show things like SSRIs do not work in comparison to a placebo, in comparison to exercise. We see depression, medications actually cause more suicidal ideations. We see all of these things happening. But I have to tell you, Dan, I think people just, it's not even necessarily that they're uneducated, and I think that'd unfair to say, I just think people have given up. I don't know how to help move them through that. So when we have this conversation, I guess really my first thought, my first question around that is like, do you feel the same way? And if that's true, how do we intervene? 

Dana Hargus: Well, I think part of it is that when you look at models that are intended to help, no model ever looks at the whole person. Like it's so interesting that we just look at, um, at bits and pieces and people go to the doctor, even, even though the data tells us any, which study, look at 85 up percent of issues medical have a stress component, but the doctors aren't talking about stress. Like they're not talking about the way that people live their lives and how that contributes to a problem. So, I just think everybody's like in their own lane. I remember years ago meeting this child. It, it wasn't even related to work. It was at church and she was, she was little, like, she was like two and her skin was like, kind of peeling off like horrible eczema and all this.

And I didn't know them, so I didn't have any liberty to ask questions. I just kept noticing. And her sisters would say, miss Dana, please pray for our sister. Please pray for our sister. She's sick, and finally I just asked one of the children, I'm like, what do you mean sick? And they just said, oh, well, her skin hurts and she can't go to the potty. And they just start listing all these things. So finally I get my nerve up and walk up to these people, I don't know, introduce myself and say, you know, your other daughters told me that your little girl is sick. I would love to talk to you. And the mom looked at me, kind of puzzled and said, aren't you a counselor? I said, but I know a lot about physical health. And I said, why don't y'all just come and talk to me? And I said, there's no charge, no strings, you don't have to do anything. let's just talk and see if maybe I have anything to offer. And when they came in, they began to share that this child had multiple doctors, like five or six different doctors that never communicated with one another like none of them did. And one of them were saying they thought she might have cancer and another one was saying this. And these parents were young and uneducated and terrified, and I just started asking questions and they didn't. She, the child drank very little water. They ate a lot of processed food in the home, and they were not bad people, they were wonderful people that had no grid for change. And so I just said, well, would you be able to make these changes for her? And I'm telling you; the things I offered up were very common sense. Let's just get away from everything but real food, fruits, vegetables, meat and water. And let's avoid those, those big triggers, dairy and gluten.

Let's do this, let's do that. and identified a few things that would be safe to start dealing with her extreme constipation. And I gave 'em my phone number and I said, if you have questions or concerns, call me. And they're like, can we get off of this medication? I said, well, I'm not a doctor so I can't advise that. But you're her parents. So you have a right to do anything you want. So call your pharmacist, call your doctor, find a medical person that, that will support you reducing this medication. Well, to make a very long story short or shorter, they just made those changes and she started going to the bathroom and her and her skin cleared up and they got her off all that medication. And like, and this is just over a period of months, I just met with them once a month and we would just talk through things and continued to encourage them and like she was well. But that's all we did. We, all we did was just deal with something that, I can't imagine that you have five doctors and nobody says drink water, eat fruits and vegetables, avoid processed foods.

Like why would that not be a common-sense approach to every problem? But we're skipping that. it just lacks common sense that we skip things that are easy to do. I mean, maybe easy is too big of a word maybe, that are, that are simple in nature that if you choose to do it, you can, yet we sit back and we ignore things that could make a huge difference.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah, and I think that part of that is looking at, you've probably seen the studies where people are more likely to finish a round of antibiotics when giving it to their animal versus then giving it to themselves when they're sick. Right. I think there's something about human nature where we often will give more. For others and other entities than even for ourselves. And, and I think that that's a one of those things where it's like, okay, well how do you get to the place to care about yourself enough to do the thing that you know will make you better? Right? I think there's an odd addiction that we have to our own suffering.

I mean, I'll give you a great example, just personally in my twenties, I smoked cigarettes and I watched my grandmother develop emphysema and C-O-P-D-I watched my uncle just not be able to breathe ever. And you know, they're on oxygen machines. I mean, all of my friends smoked. We would go to bars and party and smoke cigarettes, and there were times where I couldn't breathe.

And Dana, here's the craziest part of all of this. I grew up with asthma. In fact, I had such a bad asthma attack at eight years old. I coded. And you think about this and you're like, okay, well what drives a person who quote unquote knows better? Right? To still do the thing that causes self harm 'cause I look at that, I go, that's self harm, that's the same guys as cutting, that's how I look at it right now. I'm not a doctor, so I can't diagnose anyone just like anyone else can for that matter. But I look at that and I think to myself, well, why do people so easily give up on themselves? We know the thing, right? And so if, if, the thing we're trying to address here is, well, how do we get people to do the simple thing, which I think comes down to like love thyself, right? Effectively is what it is. There's a disconnect there. I mean, there certainly was, for me, it took deep inner work and learning that not smoking and doing drugs and all that stuff was not only a sense of self love, but self-respect. And I realized like a lot of times people aren't taught respect for self, especially people listen to this show because for trauma survivors generally, most people listen to this show at an adverse childhood experience, right?

So we learn not to respect ourself through the experiences that we have. And then on this other side, now you're trying to live life as this person who has ill-informed information about what love and respect means. So, so how do we bridge that gap, right? Because yes, it's simple and yes, that family amazing. I'm so glad they helped their child. But my question is like, well, would they have done it for themselves? And then how do we get people to do that for themselves? Like how do you bridge that gap? 

Dana Hargus: Well, if you wanna get real practical, we can talk about like, the nervous system. I think sometimes people are self-destructive because they're internally unorganized when what's going on inside of you is so disorganized that, that you can't manage the basics of life. Like going to the grocery store and buying good food, or having relationships that are healthy and strong and being able to recognize your own needs and ask for them to be met as while you meet the needs of others.

Like all of life flows from what's inside. You cannot give away what you don't have like, if it's not within you, then what do we do to for that? And a lot of that is that practical piece of resetting that nervous system and beginning to do all the things that we need to do so that the body and this and the soul that, that mind will and emotions there, there's enough health there that, that we're able to make ourselves do the right things because dysregulation leads to a disorganized, unproductive life.

Michael Unbroken: I agree. And that's why when I look at my life at 25 years old, I was 350 pounds, smoking two packs, drinking myself to sleep all the time. And I look at the lives of many of the people that I've coached over the years. They come in and yeah, they're completely dysregulated. they don't know up from down circadian rhythm's a mess. Diet's a mess. Physical fitness is a mess. All adrenal systems are, everything's a complete mess. Right. And there is something interesting that you said, like being self-destructive is, is. Kind of the cornerstone of an internally unorganized system, that rings very true to me. So then the question becomes, well, if the process to end self-destruction is to internally organize, how do you reset your nervous system to get to the place where you're creating a frame that has a space to actually heal?

Because we have so many conversations. We hear so many things about nervous system, vagus nerve, this blah, blah, blah, that, like, what does it look, if somebody came to you, let's say someone's listening right now and they know they are complete mess, just everything is not working. And they've tried the talk therapy. They've tried, you know, some meds, they've listened to some podcasts, they've read some books, they may even maybe even have gone to a couple of retreats, nothing has changed, their life is still status quo. 3, 4, 5 years in countless hours invested, unbelievable amount of money invested. And they're still sitting here.

Nothing is working. Where do we begin with them? How do we get a reset that gives them the space to actually internally organize to end the cycle of self-destruction? 

Dana Hargus: So I kind of see it if, if you wanna see their life like a teeter-totter, and it's like the left side of the teeter-totter is down. And this is where we don't wanna be, whatever this is, this is addiction, this is fear, this is anxiety, it is insomnia. All of these things and the right side. Is where we wanna be. This is like this life that we think, ah, this is what I desire. I want to have love and give love, and I wanna have joy, and I wanna have peace, and I, I wanna make money. And I wanna do all these things. How do we get from here to here?

Well, I think that it's never one thing. It's a lot of things. We've gotta get enough stuff on the right side of the teeter-totter to tip it over. and yes, it's all that practical stuff that, that I've been talking about. Just like the simple, the simple things. You know, people, people say things like, I just don't understand why I'm having these panic attacks. And then as I just begin to talk to them, I realized that they drink three monster drinks a day. That's crazy. Like, that is just the definition of crazy, to give yourself enough caffeine that people sometimes have heart attacks, drinking monster drinks, but you don't understand why you have a panic attack.

And when I say, are you willing to get rid of the monster drinks and um, and add some water, they're like you're not. And you know, that's astounding to me. 'cause they were like, well, I was just hoping that you would be able to help me. I said, I'm helping you right now as we speak. There are lots of things we're gonna do, but the first thing we need to do is change the obvious things. But these series of things that we begin to change, begin to change our lives, but we have to do with them consistently and persistently, but not so fast that we give up. Because it took me a while to learn when I met people, I would think of this list of things they needed to do, and I had these great note cards and I would make notes for them of the things they needed to do this week.

And I would be like, this is gonna be so great. And then sometimes, and I would just be so excited because I'm like, just six weeks of this and they're gonna be a lot better. And they wouldn't come back. And I'm like, why didn't they come back? And what I realized is I overwhelmed them. It's like all, I may have 50 good ideas and may I may just need to give two. And then we need to get good at the two, and then we need to add a third and a fourth. But if I wanna say, what is my favorite tool for resetting the nervous system? It's biofeedback. You know, that is what I've done in conjunction with my counseling for the last 25 years. And that the glory of biofeedback is, it begins the reset without the participation of the person. I mean, obviously they have to show up, they have to sit in front of the computer, they have to do something, but they don't have to want it to work, and they don't have to do anything past being present for it to begin the work because it doesn't work on the brain at a conscious level. It works at a subconscious level.

So it's like when you wake up in the morning, you don't think, how many times does my heart need to beat today? How many respirations do I need to, um, have, you know, in, in terms of lung function and like. That's the part of the brain we're dealing with. So where the brain is living in a state of, there is a hurricane coming and, and they're constantly like, oh, hypervigilant, there's a hurricane coming, they sleep knowing it's coming, they wake knowing it's coming, they take care of their children knowing it's coming. But in reality, most of the time it's just sprinkling. There's just not much going on yet. We're living in this hypervigilant state. Biofeedback is the best tool I have ever seen to grab a hold of that, show the brain how to do something different and, and get it to a point that it could do an independent of me or biofeedback. So that's my short answer. Big fix is biofeedback. 

Michael Unbroken: Okay. I want to define biofeedback 'cause I know we have people listening who have no idea what you're talking about. But before I do that, so guys, stay with me for a minute. Before I do that, there, there's just this question of curiosity that's just at like the tip of my brain. When you have these people come in and they sit with you, and the space of overwhelm is created, even though we can see the path, the difficulty in those first steps is often the most overwhelming thing because it's so unknown. And our brains, we really balk against the idea of the unknown. We don't want that, right? Because we're always trying to keep ourselves safe. And so the question that I came up with here in this moment is, do people actually just fear the reset, right? Because we, we think about this idea of identity, right? Because so much of like who you become is based on the things that you do. You are habit.

There's just no way around it. You show me someone's habit, I'll tell you who they are, right? But I believe that, what I've seen 'cause I've spent so much time with people helping them navigate things like this. And there's something about that letting go, letting go of the identity of the person you are to become the person that you want to be. Do you see that too? Do you think fear is the thing that keeps people from the first steps of that reset? 

Dana Hargus: I think that fear is huge. I think that the, the hell we know is less scary than the potential of something good. I've seen that for years and I just call it out like at the end of session one. If I feel that is present in the room, I look at them and I say, you're not gonna wanna come back here next week. So I need you to know that if you do, I can help you, like, I can help you do this. I will not push you past where you can go. I will honor the rate and the pace that you want to go at, but if you don't come back a year from now, you're still gonna be where you are now. And clearly you don't wanna be here because you're here. So I really hope to see you next week. Would you be willing to give me a commitment that you would give me one more week? And I've never had anybody that I said that to, deny me that they're like, yeah, I can come back next week.

And I'm like, great, I'll see you next week. And because I say it out loud and talk about it, I feel like I decrease the fear because I identified, I know what you're feeling right now. I know this must be really scary, but I am able to help you and you are not alone. I will stand with you as long as needed. But you'll be surprised how quickly you're able to stand all by yourself and letting people understand that is, I think, such a relief to 'em. And I've had people years later say, I remember the first day I met you, and I'm like, oh, I don't, like, what was it like? And 'cause you know, people will come and go. People will come and see me for a while and they'll leave and 'cause we all have our threshold on how much we wanna grow. Right now I've just seen that because I'll feel like we're just beginning. You know, we're five months in and I'll just see all this progress in people and I'm like, wow. And I have this internal agenda of what might be helpful for this person. And they're like, I just wanted to tell you how much you've helped me. And then I realize like, oh, they're leaving. And I'm like, okay, you know, and they tell me all those, all the things that they've learned and how much better their life is.

And I just tell them how proud I am of them and they leave. But then years later they call me and say, Hey, I need to work on some stuff. Can I come back? And then the same things I knew we needed to work on when they left are right there on the surface and they're ready, and we all have to go at a pace that, that we can tolerate.

Michael Unbroken: That's a great point. Yeah, I think that's so true and it does ebb and flow because, you know, when I look back at the beginning of my journey, it was full on dedication. I mean, it was literally a full-time job to go to therapy, to go to coaching, to work on physical fitness, to be in seminars and journaling and meditating and just always learning and always, and CBT, this NLP, that ABC. And then there's spaces of time where it's like a year will go by and I'm like, I'm good. I just don't need to deal with it. Or maybe I don't want to deal with it. And then there's spaces where it comes back and I'm like, oh yeah, let's go get into this. So I think that's a great point, and I always try to explain to people, at least the way that I see it, when you sign the dotted line to walk this journey, healing's, it's like a rest of your life thing.

I mean, Dana, there's shit that comes up for me sometimes where I'm like, man, I thought I was done with this. Right. And it'll pop up. And then there's times where I go, man, I haven't dealt with that in 10 years. Wow. I completely forgot. That impacted my life. And I know that more things will come.

Biofeedback is so interesting to me because I don't think it's well known. I don't think it's well versed in the mental health space, especially not in the ways that it could and should be. I think that's because it's generally speaking, it's not a pill and it's not, Hey, let's go make billions of dollars off of people suffering. But I do think it's very important. It's something that I've experienced and that I've used in my life and I would love before we go into the depths of it, 'cause I definitely have more questions. Hit us with the high level. Explain to us what is biofeedback, what does it do, how do you do it, and how does it impact someone's life for the better?

Dana Hargus: So I'll just start with what it looks like, there is a client chair, just a comfortable, relaxing chair. They get in, put their feet up, and they sit in front of a screen. And then, I sit in front of a screen and both of our screens are connected to the same computer. And then we also have something connected to that called an amp. An amp is basically where the electrodes are connected and, um, the electrodes are gonna be hooked to the head. And let me say this, there are lots of kinds of biofeedback. Biofeedback is the most common word, and it's kind of an umbrella word, like biofeedback is any way you give your body information about itself.

So there can be like heart rate variability, there can be skin temperature, there can be a lot of different ways we give the body information about itself. What we do more specifically is called neurofeedback, which means giving the brain information about itself. So the way we do that is based upon the interview information and what we learn about the client, we put the electrodes on the head and, um, I'm gonna talk about the way it used to look because I feel like it makes more sense, in terms of what we see. The technology has come so far that now it's not as obvious what we're doing 25 years ago, but there was three seconds between what the brain did and the feedback on the screen. Now there's three hundredths of a second, so it's like now it's a more fluid process that's more enjoyable, works faster. You know, years ago I would tell people, give me 10 sessions and I'll show you progress. People leave after the first session and they're like, I don't understand how I feel different. I was only here for a little bit. And so it's like, it begins to shift things very quickly at the way we do it now.

But I think the way it used to look gives people more of an idea. So the old way, of looking at it, there was a game and it was like the old Pacman game. I don't know at what point that this picture is gonna wear out on me because people aren't gonna know what Pacman is, but most people still know.

So there was a Pacman game. The electrodes are on your head. Nothing goes into the brain. The electrodes are on your head simply to pull that raw EEG out and move it to and move it to my screen. So the computer has something to work with. When the brain was doing what the computer was asking the Pacman moved and ate the dots, and there were beeps. Every dot was a beep, so beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Every one of those beeps is like a yes. Like the brain is doing what, what we're asking for. So the system's saying, good job, good job, good job. Then the brain makes some frequency that is not productive. Say the frequency relates to lack of focus or anxiety. It's an unproductive frequency. So the Pacman turns black and waits and it doesn't have to wait long because the brain wants the yeses not the nos. So, you know that no is like, no, don't do that. So the brain stops doing that, moves back into the more productive activity and the Pacman moves on. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So they spend their whole biofeedback time getting a series of yeses and nos. If you can, it's just like you can learn to ride a bike or you can learn to play the piano or any other task. Your brain can learn to function differently. And it is smart. It innately knows when you have shown it something better than, than what it's doing.

And over time, with a series of steps, you will produce a brain that is calmer and more productive. Another analogy I like to use is that the masses of people's brains idle too high like a car. It's like their brain is revved all the time. And when that, and so you've got this idle point that's so high, and then life happens. It can be just the simplest of things happen. Your car breaks down, you get a flat tire, your kid makes a bad grade, you know, something happens. Or it can be a big event. You know, my husband says I want a divorce. You know, all of these complex things are happening and there's no space for them because, because you're idling so high that the things happen and you can't function.

And that's where people have what they categorize as a nervous breakdown or they fall apart or they wind up blowing their life up, or maybe they just can't function. Their head hurts all the time, their back hurts, their neck hurts. So biofeedback brings your idle point back in line. It pulls it low, and it leaves space for life. Because if you're not out of control all the time when something happens, you're able to think, ah, I don't like this. I hate that I have a flat tire. That's not the end of the world. I'll take my tire and get it fixed and put it, you know, all the steps that you have to do to get yourself back in line. You have space for that because now you're living your life from a place that is calmer and more organized. 

Michael Unbroken: How does this, I can visualize it. Well, I've done it so I understand it, but the visualization you just laid out is great because I think that really helps people understand the process that's taking place from a neurological perspective. What's happening deeper, like when we really look at the connections and the synapses and the way things are firing. One, what is the feedback looking for? And then two, what are the changes that are being created in the process? 

Dana Hargus: So, it's a great question, but I'll tell you that even in the field, depending on who you ask, different people tell you different things are happening. Because used to there was all these speculations about things, and I would think that's not what we're doing. But obviously I didn't know, like I can't see what's going on in some inside of somebody's brain. You know, it’s interesting too that some brainwaves look really dysregulated, like right on the screen but the person doesn't have a lot of symptomology of the dysregulation that I'm looking at their life is pretty organized, things are together, they're able to maintain work and marriage and family, and they seem relatively happy and they're here for like, oh, I wish I could sleep a little better.

And then you have somebody who's extremely dysregulated and sometimes their brain matches that other times it doesn't, other times they're there, the activity I'm looking at is what I would classify as normal. Like it's like there's nothing that I see what I figured out that our approach is symptom driven.

So I wanna know what are we working on? And I have lots of ways of figuring out where are our focus points, and then I'm gonna write those down and we are gonna discuss these symptoms every week. And like a common set of symptoms might be like, and symptoms, meaning if you had a goal of what you would like to be different when you left after you're through seeing me, what, what are those goals? And we might be looking at insomnia or depression or anxiety, or anger, or lack of focus, or lack of joy. You know, different people have a lot of different things, pain, tension in the body, PTSD symptoms, the symptoms related to their traumatic brain injury, like whatever their goals are.

Every time they return to me, I'm gonna pull those goals out and say, okay, so what did we do in relation to this this week? What did we do in relay? That is the best method I have ever found because clearly if we're meeting their goals, we are changing something inside the brain. the places where I get super intrigued are like, so you have a child or an adolescent that is just on fire, like they are committing crimes, they are hurting adults, they've had 17 placements in the last six months, they've been impatient, 17 outta 24 months. Like, so you look at this system and you're like, where do we start? You know, I can promise you where we start isn't talk therapy like you, there are many, many things we will not talk better.

I've had those kind of kids that eventually I have to try to help them deal with the trauma they experienced from their care for trauma like they experience trauma while they're incarcerated in an inpatient facility with other children who are dysregulated, being forced to take medication that makes them feel bad. Like it’s difficult. But if I can get them in that biofeedback chair and get them, um, doing biofeedback multiple times quickly, all of a sudden I just begin to see the child or the adolescent like they're there again. And it feels miraculous. It just, it's such a beautiful thing to see somebody who was lost literally inside of themselves, they are lost, who wants to live a life of hitting people and everybody being mad at you and people forcing you to move from nobody would choose the number of times I've heard, oh, he's really a bad kid. And I'm like, no, we are a bad society. Like we did this to this child and, and now we're blaming this child or this adolescent for things that are not their own.

And you'll never convince me that the, our adults that are imprisoned now didn't just start where these kids are, you know, I know there is responsibility. I do not negate the fact that people have responsibility for their actions, that we have to do something. I don't. But I think the things we're doing are a fail. And we need to look at what we're doing and what we can do differently. And biofeedback is the best thing I have ever seen because I promise you it would've taken years and years of not therapy, but of a loving, caring adult, being willing to live with these children while these children tore the house down. And where biofeedback can jump into that gap and say, we're gonna calm you down so you can be loved, so you can learn to love. Because that's the core of this is attachment. 

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. And that's actually where I wanted to go next, you know, because I look at my experience, I don't speak of my siblings experiences publicly, but I mean, we grew up in the same house, right? I look at the journey that I've personally had to have and seeing their journey be slightly skewed or different than mine, but all still kind of tied into the same experience. I mean, how do you not have abandonment issues? How do you not have attachment issues? How do you not have self-worth issues? How do you not believe that love is real? How do you not all of these things, when you grow up in these environments, like many of your children that you've worked with have, like many of the people listening to this show have, I mean, I did a rough estimate 'cause I can't know for sure.

But between eight to 12 years old, I lived with like 30 different families. And there were moments where I, like my mom would disappear. I literally lived by myself in an abandoned house for six weeks at 11 years old. Right. And so I think about all of these experiences that led to this place. At 25, I had a complete breakdown like there was just no way around it. I was not a functioning human. Five panic attacks a day, couldn't think straight, I couldn't drive. My business was failing relationship was completely done. Health was trash. Nothing was working. And this is one of those things that I wish I would've had access to much sooner.

Now, obviously I didn't, so it is what it is. But I see the efficacy in this because the reality is, we are cleaning up messes that other people made as trauma survivors. Like that's just the truth of it. 

I'll never forget this, I sat down with my therapist one night years ago, this is probably eight, nine years ago, and I look at him, I go, dude, I'm so tired of looking at your f*cking face every week. And it was a true statement because I was just like, I'm in here cleaning up other people's mess and that's a huge responsibility for people without, cause if I did it myself, I wouldn't mind so much. And trust me, the f*cking messes I've made that I've had to clean up personally, they are way easier to clean up than messes from adolescents and childhood.

And so I sit and I think about this, right? Well, if the goal is well, the goal is to fix the idea and the notion of whether or not you're lovable. Whether or not you deserve companionship, whether or not you are capable of attaching and having a restored uh, relationship with yourself, with other people, with an intimate partner, with a potential husband or wife, with even your own children. Why does this work? Why does this help people solve attachment problems? 

Dana Hargus: Well, because it begins to heal the parts of the brain that prevent attachment. Like, it's like when the brain is, that is at a level of dysregulation, it can't calm itself. It can't reset itself when you calm all that down, I don't think biofeedback in isolation would necessarily give you that a hundred percent that I desire, 'cause we also need to understand that we need human connection and what that looks like, and we need caring people in our lives that are willing to go there with us and to provide that physical contact and connection and love and, and tolerance for the learning process of how do you love and how do you heal and what do you do?

But I believe that biofeedback is like the foundation that allows all that growth to happen because it calms things down while you're on fire, you can't live the brain is very smart in that if my life is in danger, or even if I think my life is in danger, you know, I've had a lot of families say, I don't understand this.

We are safe, we love them. We have, you know, they are safe. It doesn't matter if you're safe, if you don't feel like you're safe. You know, felt safety is a real thing, that's exactly right. And without felt safety, you know, and if you think about the brain believes all that happened.

Like everything that happens in your life, it happened and the brain knows it happened. And oftentimes the brain is, is saying, I'm going to protect you. I will protect you from all these bad things. So whenever something arrives that reminds the brain of a previous event, then the brain starts going alert, alert, alert. Even though it's like, oh, you know, you have a child that was molested their whole life, and then they grow up, you know, they find themselves a decent kind, so person and they get married and then they're like, okay, I'm gonna have sex now. And their brain's screaming at them, this is bad. Don't do it.

You know, the brain is not trying to ruin their wedding night. The brain is saying, you remember when this happened before? So the brain doesn't differentiate in last year, last month, you know, a decade ago. And today when there's all that trauma. So we have to calm the system down so we can begin to, to be able to live our life not under the weight of that trauma.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. I mean that's so true. You know, I look at, the sexual abuse is such a great example because you have so many people who, to say that they fear intimacy in a sexual capacity would be a massive understatement. Right. And I think that it's one of those realities that people don't truly understand. And then what's even more difficult is the idea of expressing that to your intimate partner is often shaded with tremendous sense of shame and guilt. Right? And so it's like people are like, okay, well how do I navigate being attached to someone when I fear the very thing that in reality brings people closest together, right? And it's like, well, if you're completely dysregulated, it will never happen, that was an experience that I actually had in my early thirties because I kept trying to figure out, well, you know, because it can go the opposite way too, which I did, which I've talked about openly, where it's just like, I'm gonna chase every human possible, right?

Let's hook up as much as possible. My idea of intimacy and love is a number, it's not a person. And then it was like, okay, well where does that come from? Oh, well, sexual abuse as a child leads down the path where the fear of intimacy is this giant wall and border from true human connection. But sex is fine 'cause it feels good, right? And so it's wild whether we're talking about this or we're talking about the ability to pair bond, or we're talking about just the ability to put on your shoes and go outside, all of it to create a shift and a change. It really does stem from you have to get regulated, there's no way around it.

And getting regulated can be massively difficult because for a lot of us, we've never had that I will never forget. Like I remember, I was in this place called Thailand nine years ago. And I'm on a ferry, and I'm on this ferry, it's like a 45 minute ferry ride. And it was the calmest I've ever been, the most peace I've ever felt, the most regulated I've ever been because all I was doing was yoga and meditation and Muay Thai and working and just enjoying life. And I had this moment on this ferry where suddenly, and I didn't understand it in the moment I understood it, a day or two later I started crying. I was like, what the f*ck am I crying for? And I realized it was because I was happy. And until that moment I never, when I would see people happy cry, I'd be like, you are so full of sh*t right now. This is not a thing. Like people don't do that. But because I got regulated, I was able to access this deeper sense of emotion. And my hope and my encouragement and the reason why I share that story is because as someone who has as deeply dysregulated as I was, can get to the place where regulation can exist, even if it's just in pockets sometimes, but h*ll, that's better than nothing. Like I know that this is super feasible for people. What are some of the more common reasons why people are coming to you? I wanna really create a frame so everybody understands like what you're an expert at. Like what are 3, 4, 5 of the key points, key reasons why people are coming to you, what is that they're expecting of you, and what is it deeper in the work that you're doing with them?

Dana Hargus: Well, I think that when you live in a small town, you become a jack of many, many traits because, you know, it's like if you live in Dallas, you can say, I treat women with anxiety between 30 and 45, and you really might be able to make a living at that. But the glory of what I've been able to do is I've been able to do everything and I love it.

I might see a 3-year-old with behavioral problems followed by an 80-year-old that's, that's suffered a stroke, followed by somebody who has high levels of anxiety and panic followed by somebody who is looking for pain management. So, I think we do really well with post-traumatic stress disorder with behavioral problems. If you consider the brain like what doesn't start in the brain, the answer to that is nothing. For 25 years people have called and said, does biofeedback help with? I obviously can't make a promise on anything. Like I can't, you know, it's like, there are things that I've tried to do that I haven't succeeded, but I have succeeded a lot. Like we schedule over a thousand appointments a month in our outpatient facility, and the mass of the people that come here, come here because we do biofeedback, because we all, you know, we're doing it in conjunction with therapy. It's just a service that we offer in conjunction with therapy. So we kind of divide the time. But when you consider all the implications of what biofeedback can do that. I don't know anything else that can do it in the same way. And I have a lot of different tools and I like them. And I think that there are lots of ways to get to places, but biofeedback is just a core thing that does things more quickly in a way that is functional and allows for a quick improvement of quality of life.

Michael Unbroken: It's beautiful and quick is a key word. And I think that where the quick fix ideal of pharmaceuticals, often lead as a stray. I personally can speak as the quick fix. I mean, it's relative obviously. I mean, I did a bunch of sessions, but the quick fix of walking down the path of something more holistic like this is real and more so, it has longevity and that's one of the things that we don't get out of the more, dare I say, traditional modalities that we're faced with as the idea of healing on a daily basis.

You know, I encourage people, I want them to seek out and reach you and connect with you and spend time with you and schedule appointment and get on a plane or drive their car wherever it takes to get there, because this is real work that really helps people and it's powerful. Before I ask you my last question, where can everybody find you? Where can they learn more? 

Dana Hargus: Well, like I said, I have a large private practice in eight Oklahoma, but I have a new program that is a more intensive program, a nine week program that six weeks of it's at home and then you have two weeks in person in ADA, where you receive five months of biofeedback in two weeks. It is a rapid program that involves that and all kinds of other interventions that all together give you a massive reset of that nervous system followed by an online program called “Restore Plus.” And that program is full of things for people who possibly couldn't travel to Ada, Oklahoma and do that obviously you can't do biofeedback online, but that online platform is a gathering of all the practical information of what it takes to reset your own nervous system at home. So you're looking at the practical, you know, the practical parts such as physical activity and what about fascia and how trauma stored in our fascia, and how would you work on that and what do you do to restore your gut? Like we haven't really touched on gut health at all, but your gut is more important than your brain. It is literally your second brain and your mental health will be no better than your gut health. So Restore Plus is this continued opportunity to learn. And you know, we have live access to me and some other people on my team where we're ask, we're answering questions and talking about applications for children and adults, and what about pain and what about PTSD? So I feel like we have something for everyone that is able to offer this place to start and then how to move forward. And the best place to find us is restoreofada.com that's our website. And from there there's links to all our social media and all the other things that we have to offer. 

Michael Unbroken: Love that. Yeah. And guys, remember, if you go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com and you look up Dana's episode, you'll find all of that information and all of those links in the show notes. And I highly encourage you to reach out. I mean, especially if there was something you heard today and you're like, I just want to find out because I'll tell you, for me, my journey started with pure curiosity and sometimes that's all you need to have a huge leap in bound on the healing. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Dana Hargus: I feel like that we have a body, a soul, and a spirit. So, my definition of soul is the mind, the will and the emotions. And because we are three parts, we always predominantly in one of the three parts. For instance, some people are living from their body most of the time and it's like, yes, they have a soul and they have these things and they have a spirit but I think the place to live from is from spirit. And in my belief, it would be that the spirit is the place where the trauma hasn't touched that our spirit part is, is who we were created to be before the trauma happened. Our spirit is where we are, are like God like in our body and our soul, we have all of our wounds and all of our burdens, but from the spirit, we can live unbroken.

Michael Unbroken: Beautifully said. I absolutely love that. I want to thank you so much for being here, Dana, amazing conversation.

And again folks, I encourage you to go to the website and learn more. Thank you for listening. If this brought any value to you, share it with a friend. Somebody in your life very likely could use this episode and it may change their life forever. So you're also playing a role in their healing journey. Take care of yourself, take care of each other.

And Until Next Time.

My Friends, Be Unbroken.

I'll See You.