Life Conversations with a Twist
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Life Conversations with a Twist
Healing Trauma: How Your Subconscious Mind Sets You Free with Dr. Tara Perry
"When the brain is tired, stressed out, it just wants to watch television, drink a beer, and go to sleep, and that's not where change happens." —Dr. Tara Perry
If stress, anxiety, or past pain keeps showing up no matter what you try, you’re not broken—you’re human. Healing is possible, even if it hasn’t worked before. You deserve more than just coping—you deserve real relief. There’s hope, and it starts with understanding your own mind.
Dr. Tara Perry spent decades helping people heal chronic pain and trauma, first with acupuncture and then by diving deep into the subconscious mind. Her journey from hands-on healer to mind-body expert revealed that true change happens when you rewire the patterns beneath the surface.
Tune in for real talk on healing trauma, breaking old habits, calming stress, and even boosting fertility—plus practical tips you can use right away. Hit play and discover how to turn your struggles into strength, one step at a time.
Connect with Heather:
Episode Highlights:
02:51 Trauma: Its Lasting Impact and How It Blocks Healing
05:27 Why Siblings Experience Trauma Differently
10:52 Top Traumas People Face
14:03 Therapists Also Need to Cope
17:37 The Roger Bannister Effect
20:16 DIY Healing Tools and Subconscious Work
24:19 The Science Behind Brain Change
26:32 Chronic Pain and Emotional Stress
30:34 Mainstream Medicine vs New Solutions
35:55 People Pleasing and Healthy Boundaries
39:22 Personal Growth and Lasting Change
Connect with Dr. Tara:
Dr. Tara Perry is a renowned integrative healer and trauma specialist based in Nashville, with over 30 years of experience in acupuncture, hypnosis, and mind-body medicine. Formerly practicing in Southern California and teaching at UCLA, Dr. Perry has helped countless individuals—including celebrities and athletes—overcome chronic pain, trauma, and emotional challenges. Her innovative approach blends scientific research with holistic therapies, empowering clients to access the subconscious mind for deep, lasting transformation.
Dr. Perry is also a podcast host, YouTube creator, and former radio broadcaster, dedicated to sharing stories of healing and resilience. She offers both in-person and virtual sessions, and is committed to making effective, science-backed healing accessible to people worldwide.
Heather Nelson: Welcome everyone to this week's Life Conversations With A Twist. I have the honor of having Dr. Tara Perry on today. We are going to dive in, because I already know I'm gonna have 5,000 questions for you, and so we're just gonna dive right in. Tell the listeners a little about who you are, maybe where you live, and the work that you're doing?
Dr. Tara Perry: Sure. So I'm currently in Nashville. Although I spent 30 years in Southern California, I had my offices in Santa, Monica, Beverly Hills and Beaumont shore. I taught at UCLA. And then covid came along, and I had already been having my eye on this area. So when covid hit, it was a no brainer decision. What was a surprise to me was that because I had been hands on doing acupuncture, which is wonderful, I'd help reverse paralysis, and help girls get pregnant that really were not likely to get pregnant. Reverse Bell's Palsy, drop foot, all kinds of aches and pains, migraines, headaches, depression. And I loved it. And then what happened was I had somebody come in who had a big background with trauma, and she was all excited about what she was doing because it was helping her so much. And when I found out it was based in hypnosis, because I had some familiarity with hypnosis, I had been to two of the top hypnosis in Los Angeles because I was curious and it was interesting, but it didn't rock my world. This rocked my world because it really bypassed the conscious mind, and allowed you to get access to that big, beautiful subconscious mind, which is 90 to 95% of the show. So when I discovered that people were coming to me with panic attacks, anxiety, stress and pain, one guy had 40 years of back pain from breaking his spine in a motorcycle accident, and he was an advanced meditator in the Dr. Joe Dispenza community. And I said, look, you've done acupuncture, you've done chiropractic. Why don't we just go to command central and fix whatever is getting in the way of your healing? Because if you break your femur, which is the thickest bone in your body, that should be healed better than ever. In 8weeks, he said, great. Sign me up. And in two sessions, he didn't have any pain anymore.
Heather Nelson: In two sessions? Wow.
Dr. Tara Perry: My experience has been that the human body has immense energy for healing. But if it's getting in its own way, if you're in some form of fight or flight, freeze, fawn fawning is my people pleasers. If your brain thinks that there's an emergency that has to be solved, then so much energy is taken away from your ability to heal or to just feel optimal. Once you pull away the old filters that are stuck from childhood, usually between the ages of 2 and 10, and sometimes it's the craziest things. I had a woman I worked with who was a really wonderful dental surgeon, and she didn't feel comfortable asking for money in spite of being outrageously good at what she does, and so we just went back to the beginning. The root, the reason for it, and that was when she was doing homework with her sister. And her sister is even more brilliant than she is. And so her father said something not kind to her, and she thought, oh, I'm not worthy. And so she carried that with her into adulthood, and all we did was rewire it. And I called her up a couple of months later, and I said, how's it going? And she says, oh, my God, I go home with more energy. I'm a better wife. I'm a better mother. I said, dollar wise, what's it worth you to be able to ask for what you're worth? She says about an extra $10,000 a month.
Heather Nelson: Wow. I got chills, because I think that's so cool.
Dr. Tara Perry: It's like the stupidest thing I had.
Heather Nelson: I do want to hear some of the stories. I do want to ask you one quick question about trauma. You had mentioned that most of our trauma comes from, you said, the ages of 2 to 10?
Dr. Tara Perry: Yeah. Most people. When I think of trauma, they think of car accidents or something, wartime or something like that. But being born is traumatic, and then it doesn't matter so much what happens to us. It's our response to it, our interpretation of ourselves, the world and other people that gets in our way. So two people can go through the exact same experience. One person can say, okay, I overcame that. I am very adaptable, I'm strong, I'm capable. The other person goes, oh, my gosh, this is wiping me out for the rest of my life. And they can both have very, very different experiences.
Heather Nelson: Do you think that's true? I instantly think of my sister. Her and I are growing up, and they always say that it's so crazy how siblings can grow up and be raised in the same childhood, and have the same parenting, as their parents raise them. But then later in life, like me and my sister went through divorce, I have a very different outlook on it, perspective of it. But she still kind of hangs on to the victim mentality of like, this is why she is the way she is now. Do you think that's the reason behind that?
Dr. Tara Perry: Well, that's a great example that you just gave. And yes, it's confirmation bias. So if one person says, okay, I'm strong. I'm capable and adaptable. Then you're going to look for confirmation bias in that direction. If you're going, oh, this horrible thing happened to me, how will I ever recover? If you want to have better answers, you better ask better questions. And a lot of it is subconscious. So if it's below the level of your consciousness, it's pretty hard to get to. I have so many people who have been through decades of therapy and didn't get what they needed and wanted. They were still having panic attacks, still couldn't focus. One guy was in the military and got 100 on his PTSD scores, which is the highest you can get. He was given my process from a relative. He had done all the military stuff, and was still not able to focus, still had his panic attacks. And after two sessions, he's like, it can't be this easy. And I'm like, yeah, it actually can be.
Heather Nelson: What does a process like that look like? When someone comes to see you, what do you expect?
Dr. Tara Perry: I do work with people over 90 days, because I find that there's layers to things, and I want to make sure that we really go from where you are to where you want to go. And so each session takes about two hours, and there's four brainwave states. Most people are familiar with them, alpha, beta, delta, theta. Two of them are asleep, two of them are awake. We're in beta right now, so we can multitask, we can be aware of all kinds of things. And most people spend most of their days in beta because we're doing things actively. If you're meditating, if you're focused on something, if you're watching television, you might be in an alpha state. If you're in a light sleep, that would be a light theta. But if you're in that slower brainwave state, then you have better access to the subconscious mind. So when you're talking, when you have somebody in that state and you're talking to them, then you have better access to the subconscious mind. So all of that stuff that's swimming around there, the conscious mind is only processing about 40 bits of information per second. Your subconscious mind is processing 40 million bits of information per second. I know it's not even comparable. So if your conscious mind wants something like, okay, I'm smart. I'm successful. I'm strong. I'm resilient. And your subconscious mind is going, we're in danger. We gotta run, we gotta hide, we gotta please somebody. Whatever the agenda is, it's not likely to be your experience. If your subconscious mind has another program running, which we all have programs running. People have done my process although they've gotten from where they are to where they want to go, life still happens. Some people decide to go ahead and enroll in the process again because they're like, okay, well, if I got 90 days that easily, I definitely want to go from here to the next level.
So we're human, and life happens. But if we can learn from the experiences that we have, at the subconscious level where our subconscious really understands, oh. I always say people are like an iPhone 16 operating on iPhone four technology. It's not efficient. It's painful, it's old, it's a struggle. And once the blinders come off and the subconscious mind realizes, oh, I'm not an iphone 4. I'm actually an iPhone 16. I'm willing to make that transition. But you've heard the expression that the mind prefers a familiar hell to an unfamiliar heaven. Even if what's familiar is horrible, your brain is going to keep defaulting to that because it's familiar. The brain wants to save energy so it thinks, familiar, safe, familiar, safe, familiar, safe. And it won't change until it realizes, that's a hot poker I'm holding on to. That hurts, that's painful. And then as long as it has a clear path from where it is to where it wants to go, it'll be willing to make that journey. So after the session, a pattern becomes clear that's unique to that person. It's kind of like a lock and a key mechanism. Just throw out a universal key and expect it's going to fit your brain. So once your brain has the formula from where it is to where it wants to go, and it listens to it each and every night as you drift off to sleep, you're building those new neural pathways to that unfamiliar heaven so that it can become familiar and the old bad pattern can dry up and blow away.
Heather Nelson: Interesting. When you went from doing acupuncture into this work, did you have to go to school to learn the scientific things of the brain?
Dr. Tara Perry: Yeah. I'm a bit of a hybrid, because I've trained for it with, I would say, 6 of the top people on planet Earth. I studied with Marisa Peer who won the Best Therapist of Britain award. I've done Paul McKenna's process. I've trained with Dr. Richard Bandler. I've done hundreds of hours of Joe Dispenza processes and Tony Robbins. I've done Dr. John Demartini stuff. I like to say we stand on the shoulders of giants. And when you start to understand how the subconscious mind works, you realize, okay, all of these things, they all work if they're a process that's been tried and tried over decades. And they work because they interact with the mind in a way that the mind can synthesize.
Heather Nelson: I totally believe in not all this stuff. I've been doing a lot more meditation and all the work alongside that, and I was very intrigued by the process. Is your process in person, or can you do a virtual?
Dr. Tara Perry: That's a great question. The other great advantage of Covid is, I do work virtually. I work with people all over the planet. If people are close by and they want to come see me in person, that's great. I love to see people in person. But if they're in Europe, or Australia, anywhere else on the planet that doesn't lend itself in person, it works just great virtually.
Heather Nelson: If you could put together the highest trauma that people go through, or some of the cases and experiences you have seen, what are the three traumas that most people suffer from?
Dr. Tara Perry: The top three? That's an interesting question. One gal was attacked by a Rottweiler, and she went through six jaw surgeries. She was living in pain and fear of losing more teeth, and she had developed a choking disorder every time she ate. She was at risk of going to the hospital. So sometimes, a physical trauma like that, and the after effects of it, Western medicine has done all it's capable of doing, but there's just this underlying fear that's stuck there. So she cried in her first session and realized, okay, this is different. And didn't have any more visits to the ER, and no more teeth lost. She had three young kids at the time too, so that was a real problem. Another gal saw her husband catch on fire. He's fine, but he dropped and rolled, and took care of it, but it ignited PTSD, and mold, mast cell, inflammation, Lyme disease. I mean, just everything in the book. Because again, if you're stuck in fight or flight, your body can't heal. So she became allergic to all but five foods. Her husband said, look, I either have to take you to a mental institution, or you have to go see Tara because I don't know what else to do with you. They were doing acupuncture twice a week, and nothing was solving the problem. And in her first session, she was able to experience more peace than she had known in her entire life. And after the three sessions, she didn't need all those doctors anymore, and she was able to start introducing foods. They just sent me a card. They just had their first baby.
Heather Nelson: Oh, I get chills. I love that you can break these awful things for these people who are just stuck, miserable, and being able to get them into a place where they can thrive again, I think it is so powerful. I want to know all the stories, but I want to know some of the coolest or the biggest impact. And I also know that you do a lot of work with celebrities, athletes and things like that. And I'm curious to know, what is it that an athlete might struggle with trauma?
Dr. Tara Perry: People are people. I think in all walks of life and in all professions, people have backgrounds. And some of them are awful. Unfortunately, there's a lot of child abuse, and a lot of sexual abuse. You asked me, what are some of the worst things if a parent is really not present and is rejecting their child a lot? That's very painful and creates a lot of problems down the road.
Heather Nelson: I struggle with that all the time with my husband. I'm always like, I don't want to mess my kids up. I have a four year old, an 11 and a 14 year old, and we have a 19 year old. I'm always so hyper sensitive to how we raise them, how we interact with them, and how we show up for them. It was because I don't want them sitting in therapy later in life and being like, I had so much trauma when I was a kid. Because you hear so much of that, and I'm sure you see so much of that.
Dr. Tara Perry: My heart swells for these people that get past it and move on, because some people get dealt some tough cards.
Heather Nelson: How do you, as a therapist, be able to heal, but also to not take in the pain?
Dr. Tara Perry: I've just made a switch in my brain that I can't help people if I struggle along with them. I have to maintain a certain detachedness so I can be useful.
Heather Nelson: For those people who are probably listening, and I'm sure I have some out there that are struggling with some kind of trauma that they can't let go of, you're telling us that they can get through this if they are willing to go through the process?
Dr. Tara Perry: Yeah. I have huge confidence that the body and the mind are given the proper tools, and can get past so much stuff. I would say 90 over 90% of the people I work with dump 50 to 100% of whatever they're struggling with.
Heather Nelson: How many patients do you have at a time?
Dr. Tara Perry: I don't work with a lot of people because I'm taking a deep dive with each person. I'm not one of those people that like, okay, you're done. Next person. I need my recoup time, and I really dedicate that time to them. So I do offer a free 30 minute evaluation to see if they're a good fit for this work, so they can connect with me, answer about 10 questions to just gain clarity on what their issues are, and see if it's a good fit.
Heather Nelson: And then not only do you do this work, but you also have a podcast. Talk about your podcast, and who are your guests? What do you talk about?
Dr. Tara Perry: So I started out because, well, way back, I have a history in broadcasting in Los Angeles. I had a radio show out of Angel Stadium called the Men's Dugout. It was a man's adventure, lifestyle and food. Lifestyle and fitness. And because I was right before the Angel games on Sunday, I was really blessed to be able to get whoever I wanted. So I had all these MVPs, Gregg Braden, John Gray and all kinds of cool people on there. And then I guess I just transitioned out of that. Covid happened, came to Nashville, and then I was just having all these crazy successes with people. And I really wanted others to know how relief was available even though there was some difficult struggle that you were going through. So I just started having those people on my podcast. So if you go to my playlist on my YouTube channel, there's a list of people that I've worked with. You know what their experience was, so it's nice to hear. And insomnia has another one. Because if your brain doesn't feel safe, it's not gonna go to sleep. So one gal that I worked with hadn't slept well for seven years. She only slept three to four hours a night. She had done real regular sleep therapy, and it didn't do anything for her. And she said, I don't know how you did this. You didn't even mention sleep in the process. I didn't have to. I just removed the emotions that were preventing her from sleeping in the first place. And as an additional side effect, she was able to experience bliss for the first time in her lifetime. She said that hadn't even been part of her vocabulary.
Heather Nelson: Wow. And even just some of the stories you've mentioned, you forget how much people go through in life. And that was the reason why I wanted to start this podcast because I was meeting so many women, and then they were telling me these awful things they're going through with their kids, or divorce, losing their children to cancer, or whatever hard cards they were dealt. And I really wanted to create a platform for them to talk about it, and to talk about how they were able to get through, and how they were able to get support. Because at the end of the day, we're all probably struggling with something. And if we can meet that one person that has gone through it, that is able to make the change to inspire, that was the reason why this podcast is here, and that was my WHY?
Dr. Tara Perry: Yeah, that's great. It's like the Roger Bannister Effect. As soon as you see somebody else has gotten over whatever you're struggling with, then you go, okay, I can do that too.
Heather Nelson: Yeah. You're like, I got this. Do you interview guests who have been past clients of yours?
Dr. Tara Perry: It started out that way. Again, on my YouTube channel, I think it's at Dr. Tara Grace Perry. And on the playlist, those are the people that I've worked with since then. I've interviewed all kinds of New York Times best sellers. I just interviewed Dr. Richard Bandler, who is epic. He trained Tony Robbins. He's the inventor of NLP. He could cure a schizophrenic in an hour just by, again, understanding how the brain works. He's famous for saying that the map is not the territory. We go through our lives with a map of reality in our brain that we created mostly subconsciously, and that's not reality. It's the map that we created of reality. So the good news is that even though you did it subconsciously, you created it, you can rewrite those programs.
Heather Nelson: I'm sure that it's so much fun being able to interview amazing people who are doing this great work, and able to really transform people.
Dr. Tara Perry: Yeah. I interviewed another fellow last week who's done over 55,000 brain scans, QEEG. And he's measuring exactly how the brain actually shifts when you do this work. It's not just woo, woo, positive thinking. It's not that at all. It's when you think a thought with an emotion, you're forming a neural pathway, or supporting one that's already there. So to get an old neural pathway to go away, you have to stop feeding it, and start feeding another one. Learning a language, or going to the gym when your muscles aren't that strong. I do work with people who have an 8, 9 or 10 who need to change, and an 8, 9 or 10 commitment to change. Because again, when the brain is tired, stressed out, it just wants to watch television, drink a beer, and go to sleep. And that's not where change happens. Change happens when you start using different muscles than you used before. It's not rocket science, but it does take some consistency. Again, I have people listening to that audio each night as they drift off to sleep, and I give them a high performance planner to track their progress each day because that's really important. You really have to have clear goals, and then monitor them as you're accomplishing them.
Heather Nelson: Yeah. I was gonna say, I would assume the work you have to be able to track the progress of how horrible it was, to how great it is. Besides working with you one on one in a 90 day session, in the 90 day program, is there anything that people could do on their own without working with somebody like you to help clear those things?
Dr. Tara Perry: I do have a reading list on my website, consulttara.com. There's a ton of tools there. There's breath work, there's yoga, there's cold therapy. Wim Hof is famous for getting over his depression with cold therapy. He's got an app and walks people how to do that. Being connected to nature is huge. If you're in a city and you just don't have any connection to nature, I just think that's really rough on the nervous system. Community and support from others is huge. There's a lot of nutrition. I'm a huge fan of nutrition. My dad was on the board of the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, so I was lucky enough to grow up with no white flour, no white sugar in the house when they thought Twinkies was a vitamin. And today, the food supply is, I think, rather compromised. So getting to know your farmer, if you can in the Farmers Market, and getting really good, nutritious food into your body. Exercise is super important. There's a huge link between exercise and feeling good.
Heather Nelson: It's totally true. Every day I'm like, today is not a good day. I'm not vibing today. And then you get out and walk, and you're like, there you go. I feel so much better. It's just that little reset.
Dr. Tara Perry: There's a book, Atomic Habits, and it just teaches you how to create habits in your life. But you really want to have your default be healthy. You can't follow thrills in too many places in your life, and still have success in your life.
Heather Nelson: Okay. I have to ask you a question. I would love your opinion on this. I hear so many people who want to do this work, doing Ayahuasca or some mushroom medicine. What are your thoughts on that? Have you seen success? I think it's one of those weird things that people are still unsure about.
Dr. Tara Perry: So I like to call this the psychedelics without the psychedelics, because it gets you past your conscious mind to your subconscious mind, which I think is part of what people are achieving with psychedelics there. I actually interviewed a guy that does all the platforms for psychedelics.com, so I'm very aware of the science behind it, and how beneficial a lot of it is for a lot of people. So I think the problem for a lot of people, when they have an experience that's positive, they don't have a roadway back to what that positive is. They lose it. They go back to their life, and then they're like, wait a minute. I felt so good when I was out there. Some people do not have good trips, and that can be really problematic. For the majority of people, I think there's good benefits there. Some people don't do so well with it. So I think it depends on where you're doing it, how you're doing it, who's guiding it, those kinds of things. Overall, I'm a fan. I think it's got tremendous benefits, but I think it can also be abused or not done properly. The whole legal issue has been a real problem, so it's not readily available to do it in a safe environment. Unless in some cases, if you leave the country. I think psilocybin is legal in a bunch of states now, which is great. And again, not that it can't go poorly for somebody that's not using it right, or not doing it in the right circumstance, or maybe they're not a good candidate. So I hope I answered that.
Heather Nelson: I'm with you. I've heard some people who've had really great success behind it, and they were able to really get through some things, and come out on the other side. But then I've heard people who, like you were saying, didn't have great experiences, and it actually set them back a lot more. So for me, I think I was just curious because I personally don't think I would ever go down that route just because of the unknown. But I love that you do this work without the psychedelics, and it still works. Again, I'm sure you probably spend a lot of your time educating people on what this is. And you were saying a lot of people like, oh, it's kind of woo, woo, or it's very spiritual. I don't feel comfortable with that. But if you can, let that go. What impact it can make on your life.
Dr. Tara Perry: Well, there's a lot of science out there as to how neuroplastic the brain is, again, take this fellow who's done 5,000 brain scans and is showing that, okay, you do hypnosis or NLP. This is what your brain looks like later on. This is how the brain waves have balanced out, and is in a healthier functioning brain. Joe Dispenza is also doing great work with brain waves and blood microbiomes. He's looking at all kinds of metrics that it's undeniable that this kind of work makes you a healthy person. It's almost like you're a different person if you leave a really positive event where you've joined with other people and have gone into meditation, and done practices that help balance out the brain, and light up the mid prefrontal cortex and slow down, or the amygdala hyperactivity, which is the fight or flight section of the brain.
Heather Nelson: Wow. So it's also intriguing. I want to know all the things. What are some of your other success stories? Give us a few more, if anyone's out there listening and might be struggling with some of your clients.
Dr. Tara Perry: Most people with migraines and headaches find that a lot of results. Because think about it, if you're a kid and you're under stress, what are you going to do? You're going to tighten up. People with tight jaws, tight necks, people that are running to the chiropractor and acupuncturist all the time because they're always tight. And again, what I love about this is going in and finding out, okay, what got installed? What does it want? What does it need? How does that iPhone 4 get to the iPhone 16 so that you can actually live the life that you are in, rather than what your brain still thinks it's living in from years ago?
Heather Nelson: I have migraines. I've suffered with headaches my whole life, and I never would have thought that that would be the reason why. Makes sense. Then you go to the doctor and they're like, you just take this medication every day for the rest of your life, and just hope for the best. I'm like, this doesn't work that way.
Dr. Tara Perry: A lot of people really don't like the side effects of their medications. I do recommend being aware of what those are. Because sometimes, you suffer the side effects of a medication, and then those people go to their doctor and then they get another drug to treat the side effects.
Heather Nelson: Have you had any cases where this has benefited, maybe somebody who's going through cancer or some other type of life threatening disease?
Dr. Tara Perry: I can't say. I've done lots of those. I've worked with people in chronic pain. And depending on the issue, some of them get great relief. John Sarnao wrote a book on low back pain, and he said a lot of chronic low back pain is due to stress. Most people are in their wage earning years. If it was an aspect of aging, then you would expect the 70 and the 80 year olds to have the worst low back pain. But that's not the case. It's the people in their wage earning years. So there's a strong emotional stress component there.
Heather Nelson: That would make sense. Very interesting. I do have a quick question, you mentioned it way earlier and I was just curious because you did acupuncture work. And one of the things you had mentioned was acupuncture with fertility, with women who are trying to get pregnant. How does that relate to it? I'm only asking this because I'm about to be a surrogate for my second journey, and so I'm very much in this fertility world right now. And a lot of women are talking about their struggles with that. I'm just curious how that could help somebody.
Dr. Tara Perry: All the leading fertility clinics are using acupuncture. Now, there was a study a long time ago. I was actually quoted in one of the leading fertility books from some of their most difficult cases being pregnant. But gosh, they've done studies that show that the amount of gonadotropins that you need, which is the harsh chemicals that women take to go through that whole cascade of chemicals that are going on with pregnancy, you need half of them if you do acupuncture regularly. And that just doing acupuncture before and after. This is an old study. It improved implantation successes 64%. That's just one treatment before and after. I think ABORM is the organization that's set up for acupuncturists to get additional certification to do this. If you're going to do it, do it with an acupuncturist who's got good training in it, because it does its own thing. You want to have that added benefit. But I think it's a no brainer.
Heather Nelson: For all my fertility friends out there, this is great advice. I had no idea what I was like, especially when you have friends who are really struggling with it.
Dr. Tara Perry: If you have time, you might want to do the acupuncture with a good acupuncturist a few months before you even start the infertility process. If you have time, because I know time is an issue for a lot of people. But the stress relief that comes along with acupuncture is great at dialing that sympathetic nervous system response back. So there's a lot of benefits that come from that. And the reason I just love this work so much is that you're going to the root of where that sympathetic nervous response got installed, and then shifting that so that your new normal is a more calm, relaxed, peaceful state, a more resourceful state. I have business people that say that they get three times as much done with half the effort. Because, again, once you calm down the stress response, your mid prefrontal cortex is more active, which is your executive function.
Heather Nelson: I hear about so many people, especially in the fertility world, who find a lot of success if they really dial back if they're super stressed or super anxious, and if they can figure out how to work through that, they actually can get pregnant. So it's interesting.
Dr. Tara Perry: The wisdom of the body is not going to be okay if we're running for our lives. If we're fighting for our lives, if we're hiding for our lives, it's not a time to get pregnant.
Heather Nelson: That's actually really true. Is there anything else in the work that you've done, the stories, the things that you've done and through your journey that you would love to enlighten the listeners with today?
Dr. Tara Perry: Gosh, well, in a nutshell, I think whatever one is struggling with, there's answers and solutions. And sometimes, they're just not right in mainstream medicine. I love Dr. David Perlmutter. He teaches doctors all over the world. He wrote Grain Brain and Drop Acid. That's not LSD acid, that's the acid that forms in the body as a result from improper diet, uric acid. But he says that it takes 18 years for good information to get into mainstream medicine, which is too long. We don't have the best mechanisms for things that really work to get into mainstream medicine quickly. And if there's economic incentives, because there's been pathways for doing things a certain way for a certain amount of time. It just takes a long time.
Heather Nelson: I know that people could work with you via Zoom, if they choose. But if somebody was looking on a local level to do something in person, and they wanted to find someone in their neck of the woods, who would they look for?
Dr. Tara Perry: Yeah. That's challenging. Same way as you would find a talented acupuncturist, or a talented chiropractor. Read what people say about them, look at their website, have a chat with them, see if it's a good fit for you, make sure that you feel comfortable, and that your questions are being answered. Your concerns are being answered the way you would any competent person who does what they do.
Heather Nelson: Definitely. I would love that. You have resources on your website too to brush up on, so I'll definitely include all of that in the show notes. But is there anything else you want to leave with the listeners today?
Dr. Tara Perry: Nothing in particular is coming to mind. There's solutions out there, and it pays to go out, listen to podcasts and find people who are solving the problem that you're looking to solve.
Heather Nelson: I know I love podcasting. What topic do I want to educate myself on today? Or what do I feel like I need to be inspired with today? You can find it out there.
Dr. Tara Perry: But healing is a multi faceted thing. I think you have to have balance, and make sure that you're ticking off the boxes what's necessary for having a happy life. And gratitude is a big one. Forgiveness is a big one. I run into that all the time. I think it was yesterday where one of the big stumbling blocks was that this man had never forgiven himself, and he had nothing to forgive himself for. He was a kid with crazy parents, and it got installed in there that he wasn't a good kid. And again, I'm talking about environments. I'm not talking about a parent not being perfect. Because if you're generally available to your kid, if they know that you love them and you're there for them, I don't think you have to be perfect. I really don't. I'm talking about parent kids that just went through years of neglect and mistreatment. I think parents are getting better.
Heather Nelson: We always hope for that, and thank you for that reminder. Because I think sometimes, we do beat ourselves up as a parent to make sure we're the best of the best.
Dr. Tara Perry: I think being a helicopter parent is also not a good thing. I've seen children not do well from that. So if you know your child peeps on the other side of the house, and you have to go drop everything and fly over there, make sure everything's okay, I don't think that's healthy either.
Heather Nelson: A really great reminder.
Dr. Tara Perry: I've seen that. If your child falls down, just take a second and go, okay. Because if you go over there and you cuddle them, oh, are you okay? Are you okay? Then some of them get the message, oh, okay. This is what I should do in order to get massive amounts of attention.
Heather Nelson: I'm sure that absolutely leads to issues down the road too.
Dr. Tara Perry: I'm not a child development expert, but I'm just speaking from personal experience.
Heather Nelson: I think it made me think for you too, you should just educate parents on not causing their children trauma. Because you probably have seen so much of what people have struggled through, and it usually stems from that. To be present is such a huge reminder for our parents. These are the important things to make sure your children grow up normal.
Dr. Tara Perry: Gabor Mate writes about, in the realm of hunger, ghosts and things like that. He's a wonderful doctor, but kids really just want a sentient person there that is connecting with them. That's the most important thing. So he calls it attunement. But if you're a kid and you have a loving, attuned, capable adult with you, that means the world. And it's not like you have to do everything perfectly because you don't want to train them to do that either, because perfect is the lowest standard.
Heather Nelson: They love trauma too.
Dr. Tara Perry: They love working with me because that's a standard. You can't meet it, and you spend your whole life trying to be perfect, and you never feel good about yourself. So that's one of the common programs that we will rewrite, and that people just have a much better experience of life. They can feel more relaxed, they can feel more fulfilled, they can feel more at ease because they're not trying to meet that stupid standard.
Heather Nelson: You said that you work with a lot of patients around people pleasers, that would be me.
Dr. Tara Perry: That's definitely a trauma response. A lot of my clients who suffer with that issue, they love it because then they end up with healthy boundaries. They don't have to say yes to everything, because those people get taken advantage.
Heather Nelson: I'm trying really hard. I'm doing it for myself too. I'm like, nope. You don't have to do everything.
Dr. Tara Perry: It's a different program for different people. But when you can see what the needs of the people pleasing are trying to solve, then you can create a custom way to get those needs met in a way that's appropriate. And again, this is starting to sound like regular psychology. It's not regular psychology. It's connected to the subconscious mind, because the subconscious mind does not think in a linear way. It speaks more in feelings, pictures and emotions than it does linear language. Which is why linear language, again, from my experience, a lot of people go through decades of therapy. They don't get what they want because they're trying to do it with linear language. They're trying to do it with logic. They're trying to do it with the conscious mind.
Heather Nelson: Can you do couples?
Dr. Tara Perry: Oh, okay, that's a good question, because I just worked with a couple. And both got referred to me by their doctor, unbeknownst to the other, which was really funny. Fortunately, that got figured out pretty quickly because I didn't want to be working with them behind each other's backs. But the wife said to me, oh, my god, this is a miracle. She says couples therapy was awful. We both hated it. It didn't help us. All we had to do was work on our own stuff, and the relationship got better.
Heather Nelson: That's what made me because my husband and I are going through couples therapy right now. We've been doing it for a year and a half, and same thing. It works to a point. But now, all these conversations come up of things that have happened in our past that keep pulling us into what all the crap we're in right now. So that's what made me think. Maybe my husband and I need that.
Dr. Tara Perry: Actually, I do have a really funny story. A couples therapist sends me people, and again, if therapy is working for you, great. If it's not, there's other ways to accomplish issues and problems. So the wife had been referred to me, and so she started making shifts and changes. And then I got a call from the husband, and he had been kicked out because he was being abusive. So he calls me up and says, we're doing the session today. We're doing the session today. I'm like, well, I can't do it today, but I'll get you in really soon. And I'm like, okay, well, what do I need? You need to just have a room where you can be a rag doll, relaxed for two hours. He says, I'm kicked out of the house. I don't have a room. So we did the session in his truck parked in a parking lot of his business off in the corner where he wouldn't be disturbed. It worked beautifully. He also had been in the military, and had a lot of military trauma. But what I find a lot with military people is they don't go back to the military. They go back to childhood. His childhood was horrific, and so he needed to connect to that little boy inside of him that had not gotten anything that he needed when he was a child. It was difficult for him to even imagine any picture of him prior to age six. So we did rework that, and it worked out great. They ended up getting back together, and resolved a lot of issues for them.
Heather Nelson: Well, good job. Honestly, all these things keep coming up. I'm like, oh, that's where that's coming from, way back when my mom neglected me. When my mom talked badly to my dad, that's now creeping up into my relationship. And so that's very interesting. We might have to look into that. I love this work that you're doing. I think it's really cool. I think more people need to realize that there's ways to get through whenever they're struggling, and to live a happier life. And so thank you for doing this work. Thank you for being on the podcast and sharing your story. I would love to stay in contact and continue to follow you, and see all the good work you're doing. Well, thank you so much for being here.
Dr. Tara Perry: My pleasure.