Adam has experienced many highs and lows to arrive at this point where he can now share his experiences with the world to help with their own mental health issues through vulnerability, support, and hard work. This episode is a powerful, open, and emotional conversation that looks into the life of someone suffering from mental illness. Adam shares his ongoing journey to achieve ultimate balance, confidence, and happiness, how he got here, and where plans to go next.
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Tapping (EFT) To Transform
The State Of Wellbeing
In this episode with Dr Peta Stapleton, we are exploring the Effective Freedom Technique (EFT) to deal with stress, anxiety, weight management concerns, chronic pain and so much more. As an outside-the-box-mind psychologist, Peta taps into her researches and studies over the decade. She shares with us the improvement she has seen using EFT in her patients.
Initially, Peta’s dream was to become a lawyer. As fate redirected her to find her true passion in psychology, particularly in EFT, her goal remains to find the right solution to help people. Being an expert in EFT, she sees the opportunity of this “fourth wave” therapy becoming more accessible to all. Peta believes wellness is an all-encompassing concept, and with easy tapping techniques which have been shown to leave a long-lasting improvement on our well-being.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of this treatment, Peta guides the Wellness Warriors podcast host, Felicity Cohen through the tapping technique.
Show Notes:
01:39 – What took you through choosing to take the pathway to psychology?
Dr Peta tells the story of how her plan to get into law redirects her into finding her lifelong passion in psychology.
04:11 – What do you think are some of the things that have shaped the change in the perception towards psychologists?
The wider community starts to have access to psychologists through the Medicare program. It used to be harder for people to access unless they were able to fund themselves or through private health insurance.
06:35 – How has EFT been used effectively with children and in a school setting?
Being recognised by the local schools, Dr Peta and her team helped implement EFT to help students and teachers manage their stress and food cravings. She explains how EFT is a very effective technique for kids as it’s very easy for them to do.
10:13 – How you actually entered into the research space with regards to EFT and how did it help grow and evolve the whole movement.
Originally specialised in the eating disorder space, she found that many traditional techniques weren’t that effective. As she started to see more clients recovering from their eating disorders through EFT and decided to look deeper into it in her researches. She takes EFT into improving many different health issues over the last 15 years.
13:02 – With your current research project on tapping as the chronic pain intervention, what is your findings?
In her most recent research in 2020, Dr Peta found that there’s an absolute reduction in the severity of pain, psychological things like anxiety and depression respond positive as well as the overall quality of life.
17:26 – What have you experienced implementing EFT into the bariatric patient population?
Through her research and working with bariatric patients over the decade, Dr Peta says she has seen a profound impact on those patients using EFT as part of their treatment.
18:58 – Why do you call this type of treatment the fourth wave?
Dr Peta explains that the recent discoveries within the therapy space have shifted into combining a whole range of treatments that involve the semantic and movements to treat patients in different areas.
22:06 – As far as the fourth wave evolution and just continuing its growth, what’s the international landscape look like? And how have you impacted that through your research?
Dr Peta shares with us the fact that these practices are becoming more and more recognised worldwide. This includes having EFT being accepted as a safe therapy for veterans and PTSD sufferers.
24:04 – Dr Peta guides us through how quick and effective the treatment is, as experienced first-hand by the host, Felicity Cohen, in this episode.
29:15 – Where would you like to go next with EFT and what areas of research do you feel have been untapped?
Chronic pain space would be Dr Peta’s main focus for a while as it’s an extremely emerging area currently. She would also love to seek to have EFT approved as a Medicare item so that more would have access to the therapy.
31:11 – Have you seen EFT patients have a reduction in their medications?
In a previous study, they have seen the impact of tapping on the vagal efficiency in people. They also track many physiological measurements as well as people history of medications and how that shifts over time.
33:29 – What does wellness mean to you?
To Dr Peta, wellness is an all-encompassing state of mind.
Tom dives deep into the meditation practice, sharing the tremendous amount of benefits it has on our being. He sees how meditation not only improve his own life but of those around him. His aim is to help bring people back to stillness and peace through his current work.
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Reforming Parent-Child Connection & Growth through Compassion with Heidi Rogers
A psychotherapist, counsellor, trauma specialist and speaker, Heidi Rogers, specialises in children’s issues and their solutions. She found her passion in helping others to get through mental health struggles and to come out the other side as she experienced it for herself that it’s possible.
After working with children for many years, she quickly realises that the impact is so much more magical when she works directly with the parents. She is now helping parents all over the world to manage meltdowns, improve behaviour, and yell less.
In this episode, Heidi explains the best way for parents to re-establish and maintain healthy relationships with their children. Especially during this unprecedented time where stress, frustration and a sense of disconnection are being heightened in our society. She wants parents to understand their roles through different phases of children and teenagers’ life and the importance of connection that is built upon love, compassion and empathy. That way families can come out of this together, bonded more than ever.
Show Notes:
1:26 – Felicity: Why psychotherapy and why did you choose to work in the specific area of working with children and families?
Heidi explains how her mental health struggle in her early 20s had pushed her towards sharing the gift of life through her work in therapy. She transitioned from working with children and adolescents to working more with parents instead as she realises how much more powerful the impact is.
4:14 – Felicity: What do you think are some of the greatest challenges that children are facing here and now that is different for you and
new in terms of how you treat?
Heidi points out the obvious how the pandemic has affected our mental health globally. Backed by statistics and research, she informs us that teenagers within the age bracket of 12 and 25, are the most severely impacted and are going through maladaptive mental health issues more than ever.
5:59 – Felicity: How are you coping with dealing with this and managing and navigating your way through treatment at the moment with children or adolescents and young adults?
Heidi tries to still see them in person as it’s not worth it to do it any other way. It’s too hard for her young clients who are already struggling with mental health to get consulted online, displaying more disinterests. People in a helping profession needs to be mindful of their own health. Especially having to pivot to online, which is exhausting even more to work with.
13:46 – Felicity: What are some of the positive things that we can take away from this? In terms of they’re facing adversity now, it’s going to build resilience and strength and possibly some other characteristics that will be more positive in the future. Do you think we can look at this as well from a positive framework?
Heidi firmly believes that resilience can only be built, if taught well during the early years. To help enable them to build resilience, it needs to be through connection, not through adversity. Heidi suggests parents facing difficulties in their children’s day-to-day with a curious approach. To get into it with curiosity, empathy and compassion and validation that then makes them able to share.
She hears a lot that parents want to be able to control their kids, which she believes is wrong. She reminds us that you can have influence over them and influence is way more powerful than control. And to be the positive influence children wants to listen to, you would need to establish a relationship and connection with them first.
The work includes being able to recognise our own patterns first and reparenting ourselves and how we deal with negative emotions like anger. Shifting perspective and start showing compassion for yourself within that moment because “Antidote to anger is compassion”, Heidi says.
34:33 – Felicity: The addiction to devices, the addiction to everything that is social media etc we’re seeing right now, what do you think about that?
Heidi reminds us that these platforms and devices are specifically designed to keep us addicted. This is the way they can gain that connection and artificially get the dopamine hit through their phone usage in lockdowns. It’s out of their control too and parents need to adjust the expectations that are placed on their children. Realising that they are just getting through and as parents, we need to make it easier on them not harder. Heidi stresses the importance of connection. The need for a collaborative discussion, a compromise, meeting them with empathy in your interactions makes them open up to parents more willingly. Parents can look for ways to provide that experience at home, something that facilitates that connection and the dopamine hit. Transitioning out of being a manager and into a consultant in their lives instead.
44:53 – Felicity: I see this increase and I’ve seen it over the last few years that consistent increase in those diagnoses or are they labels or are children being over-diagnosed with these kinds of conditions? Is there something that you see in your work? Do you see a lot more people presenting saying, oh, my child has this or that?
Heidi explains that this is due to the advancement of research and deeper understanding. Labels are just means to address the different spectrums of how our brains operate.
While labels can be helpful for us to understand ourselves more and have compassion, they can be abused into making up excuses. Heidi likes to look at it as we are all on a spectrum of some sort in different degrees. At the end of the day, it’s about acceptance for parents to love and care for the children as they are despite their labels and behaviours to assist them through life.
49:33 – Felicity: Heidi, in your total parenting transformation program, runs for nine weeks. What do parents expect to gain out of a nine-week program working with you?
Heidi focuses on improvement overall. From understanding how we were parented, and what we could do differently for our kids. She provides the parenting style that leans towards vulnerability, compassion, and empathy. Through her academic research and background, she is able to provide parents with ways that will prevent kids mental health and how to support them with what they go through right now.
54:29 – Felicity: What does wellness mean to you, Heidi?
Wellness to me means wholeness. And wholeness means if there are all the different parts of me that make me up. I like to use a boardroom table analogy that we have all these little board members that sit around this table and I have present me, little me, anxious me, angry me, mum, friend, sister, daughter, therapist, like all the different parts of myself.
The parts of me that I find hard to love, the parts of me that I want to reject your abandoned, that I go find them. I recover them. I allow them to sit at the table. I reconcile with them and I integrate with them. So that could be things I’m ashamed of that I’ve done that have happened to me. Parts of me that I struggle with, lazy me, or any of those kinds of parts of me that I find hard to love.
I think wellness means wholeness, that all of those parts of me are allowed to sit at the table. All of those parts are loved, welcomed, receive compassion. And that then the wholeness is what equals wellness.
Former NRL rugby league player Chris Walker completed his 2.5million step expedition in July 2021, he walked from Cairns to the Gold Coast to raise money for charity and raised an amazing $200k in total. Chris covered a brutal 1900 kilometres over 71 days to raise awareness for charities: Beyond Blue, RizeUp Australia and the Alcohol and Drug Foundation. Demand for specialist services offered by all three charities has been at record levels over the past 18 months, due to the mental health challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Walker has partnered with the new charity fundraising platform Fund My Challenge, a challenge-based charity app that has been created to revolutionise the giving process.
Get to know the life of this incredible man, from his upbringing as one of four very competitive boys (they are all professional athletes), his journey as an NRL rugby player, what inspired his epic trek and where he plans to go next as continues to give back to the community.
For more inspiration, follow Chris Walker’s journey on Instagram @iamchriswalker
Show Notes:
00:50 – Growing up into a professional rugby family
Along with his three brothers, Chris followed in their family’s footsteps in pursuing professional rugby. Chris reminisces his childhood and how they were brought up, which have built a strong bond for the brothers.
11:07 – Retiring from Rugby to building a family
Since his retirement as a professional rugby player in 2011 to be with his family, Chris found himself advancing through many challenges using what he’d learned.
17:36: – Recipe for success from NRL field to all areas of life
After many years as a professional rugby player, Chris shares the key characteristics he believes will get us far, not only on the field but in all areas of life.
19:15 – Chris Walker’s Fund My Challenge making a real difference
Wanting to give back to Australian communities, Chris started Fund My Challenge, which connects people with charities and causes they are interested in raising funds for. Their goal is to ensure that every dollar raised is distributed effectively to the causes and make a real difference in people’s lives.
24:39 – The Cairns to Brisbane Walking Challenge, 1900km in 71 days
Chris finished his walk from Cairns to Brisbane as part of his Fund My Challenge initiative. He shares incredible stories through his course, the heartfelt moments, inspirations, the work of the team and the challenges he was facing to make to the finish line.
38:16 – The domino effects of kindness and encouragement
Passionately walking through his challenge to help the causes, Chris still felt depleted at times, wanted to give up. However, Chris shares felt uplifted seeing the words of encouragement he received from the community online and offline. Even those beeps from random cars passing by had helped him power through the journey.
48:33 – What wellness means to Chris Walker
Wellness means happiness for Chris. It’s about being infectious with your attitude and being upbeat and happy.
