Podcast 540: The Missing Link in Chronic Illness: Healing the Nervous System

MITCH: I got hit by a dump truck, totaled my car. It's one of my nine lives that got used on that one, and post-concussion syndrome for a year. As soon as I get better with that, I start sleeping again, get my energy back, went into the gym, and got COVID for the first time, and it tore me apart. COVID wasn't a big deal, it was more the aftermath of what it did to my mitochondria, so energy.

MARTIN: Hey, everyone. This is Martin Pytela for Life Enthusiast Health Shots Podcast. You'll find me at life-enthusiast.com. And let me introduce to you today Mitch Webb, a man cut from cloth quite similar to mine, if you will allow. Mitch, welcome.

MITCH: Martin, thanks for having me, man. Appreciate the opportunity to share.

MARTIN: Yeah. My audience knows my story. The wounded hero who overcomes the obstacles and lives to tell the story. But I think it would be useful to just outline the depths of despair that you endured to gather up. I think that the fuel of desperation or dark, whatever, hole, is the stuff that propels us if we decide to use it that way. Anyway, that's what I think. What do you think on that?

MITCH: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I love that, man, to think of the dark night of the soul, and it's a sink or swim kind of situation.

I think those of us that accept the journey, accept the setbacks, and instead of making ourselves a victim, and accept the challenge of going into these dark places, and maybe the parts that we've pushed away and suppressed, and bringing those into the light is, although it sounds beautiful, and it is, it's crawling through mud for a lot of that. And those of us that are willing to crawl through mud, I think, get the fruits of the labor. And by no means am I done crawling through the mud, brother. I'm still very much got some certain days I've got feet in the mud. But there's light at the end of the tunnel, and the progress that I've made keeps me going. I don't know. What about you? Are you in the mud or are you on top of the mud?

MARTIN: I think it's a boot camp. We get sent back in for refreshers now and then.

MITCH: That's a good way of looking at it.

MARTIN: I think we get to be humbled by situations all the time. I think the word that you used, Well, no, you didn't use the word, but I call it agency. It's the “do or die”. It's not what happens, but how you react to it or respond to it would be a better word.

What you do in the face of adversity? Do you cave or do you just, well, buckle down? I don't know what the word would be.

MITCH: Cave, for me, it was avoid it, suppress it, run away from it, act like it's not there. And then what we resist persists and gets stronger and louder and meaner and nastier, and you can't help but pay attention at that point.

MARTIN: Well, outline it. Just describe it. What was your life like before you decided that that was the end of that?

MITCH: Oh, man. So many times I've said it's the end of that. It's layers. And kind of like you said, we have rounds, or we get pulled back into it, and I think that's when things become more clear. But to give you a high-level overview, I'm going to try to make this as short as I can, that's not a skill of mine sometimes.

MARTIN: No, let's not dwell in darkness, but let's just describe it just how it got.

MITCH: Yeah. So, I had a traumatic brain injury that really began everything when I was maybe 20 years old. Started having panic attacks, anxiety. Maybe six months or a year later, started having autoimmune plaque psoriasis all over my body, and was given medications and kind of sent on my way. And a couple of years later, I moved into a house that had black mold in it. Developed Lyme disease. So that's a tick-borne illness.

When I found out, when I went to a doctor, I found out that I also had metabolic issues, borderline diabetes and heavy metals in my body, and really went through this process of detoxing. And I fell in love with health and wellness. When I met one of my first clients, I got hit by a dump truck, totaled my car. It's one of my nine lives that got used on that one, and post-concussion syndrome for a year. As soon as I got better with that, I start sleeping again, get my energy back, went into the gym, and got COVID for the first time, and it tore me apart. COVID wasn't a big deal, it was more the aftermath of what it did to my mitochondria. So energy, gut health, immune health, hormones, and I got that three times in a row, man. So I had long COVID for three years, and eventually traced that back to nervous system dysregulation, to childhood trauma, and just seeing I had very little capacity to handle the stress that I went through. And so that's kind of the foundation, and when I fell out of that window when I was 20 years old, that was kind of the-

MARTIN: The beginning.

MITCH: The beginning, yeah.

MARTIN: When I talk to people, I just hold out these four fingers, and I say it's toxicity, malnutrition, stagnation, and trauma.

MITCH: Mm. 

MARTIN: Those are the four doors through which chronic inflammatory metabolic illness will enter your life, and it can enter through all four.

MITCH: Oh, yeah. Perfect storm.

MARTIN: Yes. And so, yeah, that long COVID, it's also analogous to Lyme disease, and it's that the broken immune system is both on the co-infections as well as on the black mold trajectory. And that car accident was the echo of the falling out the window. And, here's an interesting thing that I know. Leaky gut gives you a leaky brain, gives you a leaky immune system. 

MITCH: Yeah

MARTIN: So, if you do a TBI, it will affect the other two. If you do mold, it will affect the other two. And if you eat crappy food, it will affect the other two. So you're just spiraling around waiting to get through the hole into the sink, right?

MITCH: Oh, yeah. And you'll like this one. It sounds like you got a functional medicine background. When they did the heavy metal detox for me they did it incorrectly.

So there's a leaky brain. There's no binders. They were giving me spirulina, yeah, chlorella. And they're like, "These are your binders." And we know that's,

MARTIN: They're completely,

MITCH: You talk about feeding into the leaky brain.

MARTIN: Yeah.

MITCH: So that's like what? Mad Hatter's disease. And so doing that incorrectly really set things off until I eventually worked with Dr. Dan Pompa. Me and him worked together for about a year and he's the one that helped me detox the lyme and the mold, heavy metals and diabetes stuff.

MARTIN: Yeah. Dan's a great guy. Not particularly affordable, but very good guy.

MITCH: Not affordable, that is true.

But one thing you said, it's the accident, the falling out the window, mirrored the head injury. It's like we repeat the familiar; that's the trauma.

MARTIN: Yeah.

MITCH: We repeat the stress.

MARTIN: Yeah.

MITCH: We become it, we identify with it. This is me until we can be ready to look at that and see that that is not who we are, and we don't want to attract those things anymore.

MARTIN: Well, you can either overcome it or let it consume you, right?

MITCH: Yeah. That's the sink or swim.

MARTIN: There it is. Do or die. And, well, there you are. So what? Now you have, what sort of career were you in back then?

MITCH: I was in sales. Worked for my family business, corporate world, straight out of college. Working with my dad was certainly really hard and I liked the job. The money was great, but it was like selling my soul. I was telling my wife the other day, I'm a big hell yes or a no guy, and something has to really light me up. And what lights me up is helping other people, is sharing what I've been through, and seeing other people get the success that they've been looking for. And I just can't, we were selling printing and no knock on that. It was just, I can't get excited about putting ink on paper. For cigarette companies, that was my biggest company. And if you've ever seen "Mad Men," the show, they're drinking heavily and smoking cigarettes. That's my crowd. That's who I was selling to, and it just didn't resonate anymore. And luckily, I had a wife that said, "Get out of there. There's more things and this is,”

MARTIN: She was willing to carry you for a while?

MITCH: Oh, yeah. She's been carrying me for a long time. We carry each other. We take turns. For sure.

MARTIN: Yeah. All right. So you switched. So what have you learned? What do you know now?

MITCH: Now, I know, wow, that's such a good question.

MARTIN: Well, let me,

MITCH: I went through the years of,

MARTIN: Yeah, let me ask it differently. So when you go, you meet someone, they say, "I'm drowning. I have been in a moldy house." So you now know what to say. Right? You have a map in your head of how to unravel this situation. When somebody meets you, you probably have an approach.

MITCH: I used to have an approach. I used to have a sequential order of doing things like, "Let's clean up your diet. Let's get you moving. Let's look at your gut. Let's look at your diet." And the more that I've got into this more nervous system approach, it's really about meeting the moment. I do one-on-one coaching, so it's very individualized. I'm going to meet the moment without an agenda, without a way of doing it, without my process getting in the way, and I'm going to listen to where the person's at and what's going on, and where's the low-hanging fruit? Because I think you and I are both going to agree that people aren't going to do the work unless they're ready, and they really got to do these things, especially getting to the emotional stuff. Some people are ready to jump into that, and some people are not. So I'm going to meet them where they're at and figure out what the low-hanging fruit is and just keep chipping away from that perspective.

MARTIN: Right. So, we're right at Mr. Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective People."

MITCH: Yeah.

MARTIN: And it is, begin with the end in mind and start from the destination and build your way back, right?

MITCH: Yeah. Where are you trying to grow? And then applying a smart goal to that, maybe like, is that specific enough? Is that something we can measure? Is it actually attainable for who you are? If you want to compete in a race and you don't have a limb, well then, let's be real. Maybe we're going to adjust that and make that more of an attainable goal. Not that you can't have a bionic leg and do it that way, maybe that's the way. But it's being realistic. And then, start with the end in mind. If you can't see it, you can't feel it and taste it, this is kind of talking about manifestation, then how am I going to get you there? And it's not me getting you there, it's teaching you to become your own medicine.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

But yeah, starting with the end in mind is definitely something that we do in the beginning to just get clear.

MARTIN: Yeah. The health coaching as we do it, it's always, okay, where do you want to be?

And are you strongly motivated to get there?

MITCH: Yeah.

MARTIN: And are you ready to do what it takes to get there? Are you willing to give up some of the crutches and some of the, perhaps blocking factors that they have to come off, otherwise you cannot get over the hump.

MITCH: Yeah. You got to feel that pain enough to be willing to, I don't know if it's doing anything, but it's being willing to do things differently, like you said.

MARTIN: Yeah. I have files upon which I have written “NEP”, which stands for not enough pain.

MITCH: I like that.

MARTIN: Not suffered enough yet, not ready to commit to being elsewhere.

MITCH: Absolutely. Yeah, that's the kind of person I see is, "I've tried everything and nothing's working." And I'm like, "Oh." I love, I guess I love solving, and I always learn something from my clients, and it kind of goes both ways and,

You got to be ready.

MARTIN: Yeah.

MITCH: Not enough pain. I love it.

MARTIN: Yeah. The humbleness of the coach, knowing that we are limited, and we have something to learn. Every time we encounter a new person, they're here to teach us something.

MITCH: Mm-hmm. It makes me think of, I got a call from another coach yesterday, or a message, and she said, "I need you." We're in North Carolina, we got pollen like crazy.

And so everybody's allergies are going off, and you can see it flying into the area. It's yellow. And she goes, "I need you to do some content around people with their allergies and not wanting to go outside." And I said, "Well, how does that make you feel?" And she's like, "Well..." And she had been through that, and I said, "Hey, people are ready to do the work when they're ready." And sometimes we see the solution as a coach, and we just want to give it to them. But if they're not ready, they're going to subconsciously pull away because they're being forced. And maybe this is more of a time of supporting them and allowing them to be in their stuff and offering suggestions, and when they're ready to hear it, they're going to hear it.

MARTIN: Yeah. The classic, “I can lead the horse to the trough. They'll have to do the drinking.”

MITCH: Yeah.

MARTIN: Yeah. All right. Well, so I don't know, describe a few stories then. Let's just go with that. The biggest success story of 2024 for Mitch was? 

MITCH: Oh, for Mitch or for Mitch's clients?

MARTIN: Oh, client story, something that you have done with somebody that said, "Oh, wow. We did good."

MITCH: Yeah. It's when I made the switch, and I started adding in this nervous system capacity and regulation building, really just doing the basics. Learning to listen to our body again instead of dismissing it, pushing it away, avoiding it, or overriding it. And I had this guy, and he's kind of like a hedge fund guy, came from nothing, made a s**t ton of money, and just a good old boy. 

And he came over to my house for his first workout. If I have local clients, I like to get with them every now and then, and he came over for a workout, and he's complaining about his shoulder, and I'm like, "What's going on with that shoulder?" And he's like, "Oh, man, it's been hurting." "How long?" "10 years." I'm like, "What?" I'm like, "All right, so here's the chiropractor. Here's the massage therapist. Go see these guys." And six months later, he's just like, "It's not getting better." And I'm like, "Okay. Now I'm curious." And I'm like, "Describe this to me." And he's like, "Man, I get home at the end of the day, and I'm carrying all this stress, and I'm just so tired, and I don't have any time to do the walk that you want me to do." And I'm like, "How long has this been going on?" And he was like, "Ugh." And I'm like, "Oh, so you can let it go." And so he's like, "I don't know." I said, "Okay, for this week, I want you to just create a relationship with the shoulder and neck pain, and notice when you're holding that tension and bringing your shoulders up to your ears., When does that happen?" 

And he comes back, he's like, "Oh, man, I'm doing it all the time. I'm doing it in these meetings with these guys who are making these decisions, and it's super stressful." And I'm like, "What are you doing?" He's like, "I'm doing this. I'm putting my head down, and I'm just trying to get through it." So I'm like, "So there's not a lot of awareness. How much of those meetings do you remember?" And he's like, "I don't know." 

So where we go from there is I'm like, okay, I taught him how to orient, how to be in the space, how to feel your butt in the chair, how to feel your feet on the ground, how to feel these four walls that are around me. Maybe bring in a little bit of safety from that perspective. And then ultimately follow your impulse. So what is your body telling you you want to do? And I didn't know if it would land. This is like a 15-minute conversation. It's a quick explanation. This is a gentleman who's like, when I go, "Hey, man, you ever been to therapy? You ever thought about going to see a therapist?" "No. I'll talk to you. I'm not talking to anybody." I'm like, "Got it, cool." 

And so I saw him maybe two weeks later. I'm like, "How's the shoulder thing going?" And he's like, "Well, I fired these two people. These two people are no longer my friends. They're a bunch of sharks in water. They want my money. They didn't want me. They weren't trying to help me. These friends are not my friends." And he's like, "And damn, you know what?, This shoulder's feeling a whole lot better." And I just got a big smile on my face because he came into his body. He recognized what he wanted. He got the sharks out of the water. He said, "No," he set boundaries. He was with himself and responding to what he needed, and lo and behold, the physical pain goes away. So I just thought that was amazing. And to see that from a man who didn't feel open to this type of work, I thought it was really cool. Being a health coach, sometimes we're forcing things on people is what it felt like in the past. It's like a balloon trying to come to us, and we're just smacking it away, when really we kind of just let it fall in our lap and do what feels right for us.

MARTIN: It's a lovely example. 

MITCH: Thanks.

MARTIN: An example of being open and allowing your intuition to land well. 

MITCH: The funny thing is, coming from being a health coach in the past, I'm sure you know this, if you're familiar with trauma, we treat ourselves like we were treated. And so if our authenticity wasn't allowed, if our voice wasn't heard, if who we are wasn't expressed, that's how we treat ourselves. And then maybe, typically, we got so much going on that feels so overwhelming from the neck down, we squeeze ourself up into our head. We think our way to safety. We please, we do perfection. We become all these things in order to feel like we're safe, and that's a false sense of safety that keeps us dysregulated and stressed. 

And in the past, I was like, we're going to force our bodies to heal through these restrictive diets, these punishing workouts, these cathartic releases that really cause more dysregulation because we have zero capacity to be with that experience or to even. It's like the person that goes on a plant medicine journey and has a great experience, and doesn't wonder why they're healing, or they're doing their 15th one on and on and on. It's like we're chasing something, and we're avoiding the real pain because that s**t is scary and it hurts and it takes time.

MARTIN: Yeah. Good example, right? If you have stored unexpressed anger, it is probably blocking your liver, and no amount of liver cleanses is going to release it until you let go of the primary traumatic concept that's holding you hostage.

MITCH: And that's such a good example from you, too, because that would be me. I was coffee enemas, liver detox, you name the detox, I've done it. I think they're beneficial. But like you said, if the emotion, if that's what we're bypassing, if physical cleansing can actually set us back even more, and we can't process that, and I've had detoxes go south and give me additional symptoms for months after that. And now knowing this emotional piece that we're talking about, that's what I was avoiding. That's the healing that I needed. Not the next cleanse, the next supplement, the next crazy diet.

MARTIN: But listen to this one. We have this product called Core Water, which is an emotional healing, vibrational cleansing. Water is the memory device. The stuff that is in your shoulder or in your belly or whatever, that's actually stored in soft tissue, and it's the water in the body that's holding it together. 

Anyway, this Core Water is a concept of releasing the information.

MITCH: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

MARTIN: And I had an associate working in my house. He was recording some stuff, and it was my storage room. And he didn't pay much attention. He just saw a bottle on the shelf. Core Water is supposed to be taken a teaspoon at a time.

MITCH: Mm.

MARTIN: Well, he cracked it open, drank half the bottle. And in the next three weeks, he reconciled with his estranged son. He got out of a relationship that he was in that was not working. He found a new place and said goodbye to the old house. This shark experience that you just talked about a moment ago, this was triggered by drinking half the bottle of this emotional restructuring signal water, and just allowing the body to bring all the unresolved emotional issues on a silver platter. I think it was whitewater for him. It was not a fun three weeks. 

MITCH: Oh, no.

MARTIN: But at the end of that, it was all different. 

MITCH: It sounds like a catalyst. The more I learn about water, the more I don't know about water. And we know that water carries information,

MARTIN: Yep.

MITCH: Structured water specifically. And yeah. When I've had big openings, there's a million ways to get up the mountain. I think we know that. I've had big experiences, and you're describing here, and it's like a three or four-week psychedelic experience that's not fun. You're just getting hit over the head, but you're seeing what's in the way. And when you get to the other side of that, especially if anybody's listening to this and is going through it, one thing I like to look at is the body's either healing or adapting. There's nothing wrong with the body. And so when we're in a healing crisis like this, if we can step out of the fear and see this as my body is doing exactly what it needs to, on the other side of that is going to be contraction. On the other side of that's going to be an expansion. And there's going to be new regulation and new capacity. I was going through something like this last week, and one of my colleagues said, "Oh, I'm so jealous of you." And I was like, "What?  What are you talking about?" And she's like, "Well," she reminded me, she's like, "Think about how you're going to feel next week, or whenever this thing is resolved." And she's right. And I think that's trusting the self.

MARTIN: Yes. I wish I could do another emotional purge and let go of some of the shackles that hold me down.

MITCH: Yeah. 

MARTIN: All right. Well, that's an interesting approach, starting from the heart.

MITCH: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's the journey, right? When we've lived here for so long, just recognizing it. I think that's a form of functional freeze, is to stay in our head to avoid this.

MARTIN: Right. You have the ventral and the dorsal freeze, right?

That's the fight or flight, fawn or freeze.

MARTIN: Mm-hmm. 

MARTIN: Yeah.

MITCH: Yeah, that kind of dorsal comes on when we've experienced prolonged stress. It's an adaptation that says, "Hey, we're going to red line if we're going to run into this wall if we keep going, so let me slow you down." And what happens is we've done that over and over. We've made ourselves small. We've not allowed ourself to express. And so then now, we've put the reps in. We've gotten real good at shutting down. And so then we live in this false window of tolerance that is functional freeze, where we don't feel anything, and that's a lot of us guys. And I'm going to make my body submit with my mind. And so we'll be just there, and it's rewarded in our society. And it takes a whole lot of courage, it's really being a man to recognize that and to be willing to be vulnerable enough to go on that journey.

MARTIN: Yeah.

MITCH: And if you're someone who wants to do that, you need a group of people and mentors and all that stuff around you, too. It's not easy, and it's possible.

MARTIN: Yeah. You need a partner, a good, I don't know, call it marriage or whatever, partner for the journey.

MITCH: Community.

MARTIN: Goes a long way. Yeah.

MITCH: Yeah. You need a community. We don't do this, I think as we become lone wolves, we feel like we've got to do this alone, and when we realize we can ask for help and lean on other people, man, that's a big part of it as well.

MARTIN: You're not supposed to allow them to see them show any weakness because they'll take advantage of you.

MITCH: I know. That's a real very,

MARTIN: Well, it's justified.

MITCH: Absolutely.

MARTIN: Yeah. True strength is in being vulnerable. Oh, my lord. Okay. That's great. Yeah, you remind me of the really, really important things in life. Really important things in life.

MITCH: Yeah.

MARTIN: And to me, it's okay, there's the spiritual level, then there's the emotional level, then there's the mental thinking level, then finally we're getting toward the physical.

MITCH: Mm-hmm.

MARTIN: And the causative things are way out there, that the physical manifestation, it's just a consequence of all of the terribleness that dwells in the emotional and spiritual bodies.

MITCH: I'm curious. I see it the same way, these levels.

MARTIN: Yeah.

MITCH: And as someone who loves to figure things out, it seems like, I know I did. I started at the bottom, the physical, went to the mental, maybe bypassed the emotion and went to the spiritual, and came back to the emotional.

MARTIN: Right.

MITCH: But I think that's the beauty of working with me or working with someone like yourself, it's, we see these things, and that's what I mean by, I'm going to meet somebody where they're at. I don't know that there's a right order of doing things. I know that if I could go back, maybe I would do more of the emotional stuff. Because at almost 40 years old, learning about this stuff is like learning a new language, and I feel like a little baby.

MARTIN: Yeah.

MITCH: Spent so much time in the physical, mental, even a lot up in the spiritual. But the emotion, man, that's like if you could have the ideal approach or maybe do it again yourself, which, how would be the route?

MARTIN: Right. I don't know, because I had a father who was emotionally distant, closed, competitive. He thought I was a rival.

MITCH: Mm-hmm.

MARTIN: So it was bizarre, right? I wasn't close to my father until he was two years from dying.

MITCH: Mm-hmm. I have a similar situation with my dad. 

MARTIN: Yeah. And I don't know, could you be a better father now? Can you be nicer to your kid? Or is it required that strong men raise weak children, and that thing of generation, how the strong men overcome and then make it easy for their children, and their children become weak because they lived or grew up in a cozy environment, and so it just keeps shifting back and forth?

MITCH: Hmm.

MARTIN: I don't know. The recipe.

MITCH: Yeah. I don't have kids. I like to think that if I did, and maybe I don't because of that relationship, I feel like I'd do it better. I think that's what we all want to do. But it's interesting, this cycle that I've certainly heard myself. I go like, "Does it have to be like that?"

MARTIN: I don't know.

MITCH: Yeah. That's a great place to be in. I don't know.

MARTIN: As I'm looking at you, I'd love for you to raise my grandson.

MITCH: Yeah. Wow, thanks. That's a hell of a compliment. Thank you.

MARTIN: Yeah, because you're being a good human, right?

MITCH: It's not always pretty. But we're all human, and we're all dealing with our thing, and I think everybody's doing the best they can with the resources that we have. And if you've been through a journey like this, it require you to look at things a little bit more.

MARTIN: Yep. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Facing it head-on. Admitting it.

MITCH: Yeah.

MARTIN: Analyzing it.

MITCH: Yeah.

MARTIN: I keep thinking of all the people who are in emotional pain. Who will take stuff into their body that will help them not feel it.

MITCH: Mm-hmm.

MARTIN: Yeah. Starting from alcohol, but graduating to you name them, pharmaceuticals or street drugs or whatever.

MITCH: Yeah.

MARTIN: I think the main problem in our society today is that people are in a lot of emotional pain and want to not feel it.

MITCH: Yeah. I've seen this in myself, a professional, and can do this with things that are healthy as well. The things that I was describing earlier. I'm lucky that I went that direction and I was a biohacker, man., And I used to say, "If you've got stress, you need to hit it with more stress." And my idea of a rest day was hot yoga for an hour and a half and then cold showers afterwards. And I wondered why I was burnt out and tired all the time. I very quickly went into drugs and alcohol and partied my a** off when I was in my 20s and things like that, and I just hate hangovers. So, that's not going to work for me. 

But it's that inability to be uncomfortable and to sit with that pain and to avoid it because society tells us that it's bad, right? That I want to get rid of this anxiety. I remember going to the doctor after the injuries, and I'm like, "I can't sit still. I don't feel comfortable in public. I usually like to talk a lot." There's this PTSD type stuff, and he wrote down, "You have anxiety." And I remember going, "What is that?" So we put this label on this thing and this whole industry is built around if you've got an ailment, the industry and the medical system's got something to sell you.

MARTIN: I got some benzodiazepine for you, baby.

You will feel nothing.

MITCH: Yeah. And then that doesn't work anymore. And either you're going to... I was definitely hooked on benzodiazepines several years ago, and it makes sense. Here's the thing, too. If you're numbing, if you're avoiding, know that that's a life raft, that that's a resource for now, and use it. I'm not going to sit here and shame you if you have your glass of wine at night or you smoke a joint or take or pop a pill. But know that that's a resource and we want an external resource, and what we want to do is build internal resources and like the thing you said earlier, eventually the crutches can come off.

MARTIN: Yep.

MITCH: So I think don't shame ourselves for our addictions to exercise or food or drugs and alcohol, but let's be aware of it and let's learn to be with that pain and sit with that. And the more capacity we can build in the nervous system, and it happens, the less we need those things. And I think the way it happens with myself and with clients that I've worked with is, let's don't focus so much on the crutches. Let's focus on the capacity and the regulation and building safety before we do any kind of big practice where we're moving out these old implicit trauma memories. And I think they'll work themselves out on their own. It's not a rush. You don't have to be perfect, you don't have to rip the Band-Aid off first. Use that freaking Band-Aid. Use the life raft. And, over time, you won't need it.

MARTIN: Yep. Do you work with people remotely, or is it only face-to-face?

MITCH: Oh, yeah. It's mostly remote.

MARTIN: All right.

MITCH: Yeah. I work with people all over the world now. I've got a couple of clients overseas, and it's fun to have people locally, but most of my clients are over the internet here.

MARTIN: All right. Well,

MITCH: With my deer antlers in the background.

MARTIN: Yeah. I guess you're not a vegetarian.

MITCH: I did. I tried everything. It did not suit me. I got out of that. I did that for about six months, and then I went to this regenerative agriculture, grass-fed farm where they had seven different pastures, and feeding the cows and the pigs and the chickens, and it all kind of going together. And what was cool, too, it was a drought, and next door, the family that were the farm that was doing monocropping was completely drought. And this is the most lush, it's like, where are we at? Are we on a safari? And told me all about the food and had my first cheeseburger in six months, and I haven't looked back since.

MIARTIN: Yeah. Genetics over mental concepts, for sure.

MITCH: That's an impulse. Natural, healthy intuition over relying on external resources. I think that's a big one.

MARTIN: Yeah. So connection over religion.

MITCH: Yes. For sure. Well, folks, if you feel connected with Matt... Pardon me, with Mitch.

MITCH: I'll do that one. All good, Martin.

MARTIN: Yay. I tell you, it's my first time meeting a guy, right? It's Mitch Webb, and that's M-I-T-C-H-W-E-B-B.com. And that is where you find Mitch, and if you want to connect, go to the website.

MITCH: Yeah.

MARTIN: Send him a message. Tell him Martin sends you.

MITCH: Yeah. I appreciate that. Also K. Webb on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn and Facebook as Webb as well. So you can find me in all those places.

MARTIN: Right. Yep. You can get a decent dose of real humanness right there.

MITCH: Yeah. That's a great point, too. It's like before this journey, and you interact with other people after this journey that aren't having this, it feels less human. It feels we're either in the past, projecting on the future, thinking the worst-case scenario, we're not here. And when you meet someone that is here now and showing up in an authentic way, it always shines through, man. So I appreciate that. It's a huge compliment for me.

MARTIN: Yeah. The story of the mask, right? We wear masks, we wear personalities, personages. I am this way with my wife, this way with my child, this way with my employer, and so on.

MITCH: Mm-hmm.

MARTIN: And when we allow ourselves to be truthful to ourselves, it just is so liberating because we finally meet the people that are free like we would be.

MITCH: Mm-hmm. That's true. You'll like this. When I was in sales, specifically, I thought my superpower was that I could be a chameleon, and I could shape-shift for anyone.

MARTIN: Yes.

MITCH: And the funny thing about that is, it's exactly what my nervous system was doing. I was living in a, what you would call, high sympathetic activation, basically, and that's normal. Was really high sympathetic. And I'm still working with that. But I would shape-shift, and went to more of a functional freeze and make myself small and shut down for the environment. And so what that left me was, when I started doing more of this work, I was like, I just want to be authentic. And it's quite a wake-up call to realize you don't know who you are, and you've been doing this for years. And you get the day two, figure that out, and love yourself.

MARTIN: Yep. This is a real gift, man. A real gift. Yeah.

MITCH: Yeah, man. Thank you. I appreciate the share. This has been a great conversation. All right. All right. MitchWebb.com. This is Life Enthusiast Health Shots. Martin Pytela here. Life-enthusiast.com if you're listening. Mitch, it's been a real pleasure meeting you.