My friend and colleague Dr. Drew Ramsey, MD, a nutritional psychiatrist, has written a new book called, Healing the Modern Brain. Drawing upon his years of experience as a physician, father, and human, Dr. Ramsey provides us with a broad-based prescription for wellness that we can absolutely fill.
Upon coming across the chapter called Unburdening, I wondered what Dr. Ramsey meant by this word. There are many ways to unburden ourselves. For example, we can minimize contact with “toxic people,” reduce clutter in our home, or say no to tasks that add too much to our plate.
We can also unburden our inner world. For example, we can let go of long-held grudges that keep us stuck. We can discover and process buried emotions that weigh us down. We can refuse to be burdened by the demands and judgments of others, like being told we aren’t good enough or that we are to blame.
This following is an excerpt from Healing the Modern Brain on Unburdening:
I have another client, Patrick, who is incredibly uncomfortable when it comes to personal finance, even though he has a great and well-paying tech job. He finds himself very uncomfortable having conversations with his wife about their household budget. He refuses to look at or pay any bills. When his family recently decided to renovate their kitchen, he went out of his way to avoid visiting the bank to sign the paperwork for a home equity loan – making his wife quite angry as he missed appointment after appointment. When I asked him why he was so reticent to deal with money matters, he had first dodged the question.
“Isn’t it my job to make the money?“ He said. “I’m relying on my wife to manage it. I don’t see why I have to be involved. I’m busy enough with my work.“
But as we talked more over the coming months, I learned that Patrick came from a rather impoverished background. His father had struggled to hold down a job throughout his childhood – and his mother was always taking on extra work to try to make ends meet. He remembered, at one point, his mother dressing him and his sister’s up in their Sunday best to go down to the bank. They had fallen behind on the mortgage payment and his mother was asking for grace until they could make up the difference. It was, he told me, deeply humiliating, and not the only time his mother used the family to plead for financial leniency. All of a sudden, the idea of avoiding a trip to the bank to sign some loan paperwork didn’t seem so strange anymore.
“Does your wife know about this?“ I asked him.
“She doesn’t know about this stuff.“
“It might help her understand you better— and why you can be somewhat reticent about engaging about the finances.”
It took some time, but we started to talk about ways that he could communicate about money. By exposing himself to it a little bit at a time— a small bill here, a bank statement there— he learned to be more comfortable about the topic. And to understand that his nervous system was reacting to then, not now.
One of the main ways I help unburden people is by helping them identify and release buried core emotions. Additionally, the burden of anxiety is often relieved by identifying the core conflicts that lurk underneath, like the desire to strive versus the pull to feel safe albeit unchallenged. And, there are many other practical ways to unburden ourselves. Dr. Ramsey describes one method called Exposure and Response Prevention (ESP).
The idea of ERP is to build up exposure to something that may be causing you some anxiety, recognize why those feelings may be there, and work through them.
Methods like ERP and tools like the Change Triangle, and many other strategies, help us release our burdens and forge a lighter more “authentically me” path to life. We can care for ourselves and in so doing become even more open to love and connection with the people in our lives.
Healing can happen over the full span of our lifetime if we set out with that intention. In each chapter of Healing the Modern Brain you will be nourished.
Books for healing:
Healing the Modern Brain (Pre-order)
Parents Have Feelings, Too (Pre-order)
