I refuse to fear the weird
On paying attention to new ideas in mindbody science
Hello readers! I’m Meredith Arthur. I work in product innovation by day and explore mental health innovation by night. Since 2015 I’ve been writing about how anxiety affects overthinkers, people pleasers, and perfectionists.
The best kind of text
I love getting texts from friends about things that work. I recently got one from my amazing and talented friend Claire:
"I meant to tell you something re: anxiety! Over the past couple of years, I found myself unbelievably stuck overthinking and anxious and unable to accept reality…so I got HYPNOTIZED (it’s called Neuro Response Technique). Have you heard of this?? Life-altering for me and I imagine it could be another tool for your community if it hasn’t been discussed already!"1
It’s the kind of text that really catches my eye -- especially when Claire followed up and said, "You literally go once, maybe for 10 mins, and your emotional response to whatever is in your head is forever altered." I wondered, “How could something make that big of a difference that quickly?” So I asked Claire to share her story, and she did just that.
Claire’s story, in her own words
“For over a year, I was stuck feeling very emotional and anxious about a certain life event. I tried everything from talk therapy to coaching to meditating and nothing was helping me feel any better.
I was stuck, as the expression “time heals all wounds" did not apply here. This life event would make me cry nearly every time I thought of it or it was brought up, and my emotions around it were preventing me from healing and moving on.
I believe that with any adversity in life, there’s an opportunity to learn something and grow, and the methods I had previously tapped simply weren’t working. In order to stay sane, I was trying to avoid it. My chiropractor, Dr Charlie Prins, introduced me to Neuro Response Technique, which can alter your emotional response so you can actually face your emotions head-on.
In a quick session, including mental visualizations to confront my trauma, chanting, breathing, and tapping exercises, my emotional response to this life event was forever changed. I can confidently think about it, talk about it, process it, even grieve it, so I can learn from it and ultimately move on. Neuro Response Technique is a great tool to bring back to traditional talk therapy, I plan on tapping into it next time there is something I’m emotionally “stuck” on.”
Why I was nervous to share Claire’s story
When she first texted me I was thrilled to hear that Claire had found a new way to move through difficult emotions and get unstuck. I was curious about this new approach she was describing. But I was also apprehensive about sharing it. I didn’t want to send people down the wrong path. I knew that writing about an unsubstantiated treatment like this would open me up to criticism.2 After all, take a look at the headline on this post by McGill’s Jonathan Jarry, creator of the YouTube show Cracked Science:3
Jarry was spurred to write his piece after seeing this one-hour documentary about Neuro Emotional Technique:
He says, “As the interviewees’ names flashed on screen, I noticed a pattern: most of them held the degree of ‘DC’ or Doctor of Chiropractic. More than that, many of them were listed as donors in the end credits, meaning that these chiropractors essentially paid to appear in this movie.” Needless to say, Jarry is very skeptical of chiropractic practices.
Why I decided to share Claire’s story anyway
Tldr; Because the story of mindbody science is still being written.4 Jonathan Jarry may dismissively think of “integrative medicine [as] a movement that seeks to complement actual medicine with therapies that have either not been shown to work or been proven not to work,” but I see it differently. In a world where medical doctors have not been able to help my pain (whose root problem is, in my case, misfiring signals from the nervous system), experimentation is the name of the game. When I got Claire’s text, my immediate thought was it sounded like other mindbody techniques — confusing, counter-intuitive, and not-fully-understood. It may not be for everyone, but Neuro Emotional Technique helped Claire in a way that no other therapy has, and for that reason alone, we Voyagers should know about it.
There’s something else at play. I’m tired of being scared to hit the publish button. I was scared the first time I wrote about the overconsumption of news, introduced Mind Body Syndrome, and shared my healing techniques in the 3-part stress relief cheat sheet. Each time, I feared that people would write me off as a New Age weirdo.5 I don’t want to be scared anymore. I choose curiosity over fear. And curiosity means that I want to hear if you’ve had experiences with Neuro Emotional Technique, or you know someone else who has. I want to hear about the weird ways you’ve learned to teach your nervous system that you are safe. I want a lot more discussion in this area, and if I can’t find it easily…well, then, I’ll need to create it.
Thank you for being with me on this journey.
As a student of the nervous system, when I hear Claire's description, what I hear is "My nervous system was terribly dysregulated. This technique helped me regulate."
I have no interest in trying to be a Gwenyth Paltrow, thank you very much.
A nerdy video series with strong public access vibes, this series feels like a relic of the past. I have no read on the host, would love to hear what you think.
I define a mindbody practice as one that helps people teach their nervous systems that emotions are not putting them in harm's way.
Despite living in California for over twenty years, I am still a Midwesterner at heart.