Podcast Episode: Dr Jen Draper Reveals Her New Book on Empowered Health

Transcript

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:01)

Dr Jen Draper, welcome back to the podcast.

Dr Jen Draper | (00:04)

Thanks so much for having me here again, Melanie.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:08)

You are the first repeated second-time guest.

Dr Jen Draper | (00:14)

Really?

What an honour! Wow! I would have thought that you would have had plenty of people who would want to come for a second time around, given how gentle you are with your questions. Yes, very gentle. I felt very comfortable. I felt that you were listening to what I was saying, you didn't interrupt me, you allowed my tangential speech to go on, and eventually I got back to answering the question that you asked in the first place.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:25)

That is so sweet, gentle.

Honestly, in some conversations, I do interrupt people to get things defined or clarified or get more of a description when there's a story. Sometimes that happens, but we really talk at a pace where there is space to dive in and ask, okay, what exactly is this thing? And that is so crucial when we're talking with experts from so many spaces, because we're talking to listeners who could be

Dr Jen Draper | (00:43)

You

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:13)

completely fresh to what we're talking about. And that's all good. This is for anyone who is curious. Talking about explaining things, you said that you have written your book.

Dr Jen Draper | (01:24)

Yes, since we last spoke, I was inspired and I have completed my ebook, and I also intend to narrate it and turn it into an audiobook as well, because I recognise the power of audio, and I think I may well do that in a podcast format. I've found the little app.

that connects with people on their phone that they can download and then I could just send it through a snippet at a time because I feel like ⁓ in this busy world that we have we rarely do have an entire hour to be listening to one whole big long podcast. I'm sure that I could easily narrate my book in less time than that because it is only 77 pages but can I share with you the title?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (02:13)

Yes.

Dr Jen Draper | (02:14)

beautiful. Well, it is called unpatient, and every time that I type that in my dictionary, it tries to change it, but that is exactly what it's called. Unpatient it's a word that I created and it means exactly as it says and the subtitle is how to stop outsourcing your healing and rebuild self-trust in a world that profits from your disconnection and my dedication is to all my patients across the years who deserved more than I yet knew how to give. I'm sorry, please forgive me. Thank you, I love you." And yes, that does make me a little bit teary staying that that is a Hono Ponopono and I can mean that with the greatest of respect to all of them who gave me the honour over the years of trusting that I was acting in their best interest. And now I only work with unpatience.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (03:18)

Yes.

There are a few things there to unpack already because firstly, I was very keen to ask, how does the world profit from our disconnection?

Dr Jen Draper | (03:33)

Well.

How can we start? Okay, so the world is built upon business, okay? Money is energy, energy flows, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it is transformed into different forms. And that's, you know, that's physics and laws of relativity, et cetera. So when we are going through our lives, there is so much that is not conscious in what we do. And that is what I'm referring to by disconnection. Because the societal emphasis is on always moving forward, always being of purpose and being productive. And when one pauses to actually reflect and contemplate on what is going on within our life, almost instantaneously, we will be bombarded and barraged with demands upon our time. And when I speak about disconnection, I am literally talking about the disconnection within ourselves and I think about ourselves as being a trinity of mind, body, spirit is one way of saying it or if I use my hands you know it's a podcast but you do record the video so the body the mind and the spirit or the soul I use those two terms interchangeably. How that equates for me is I think about our mind as being our ego in the 3d existence that we are in right now, our ego, I don't diss the ego at all, it gets us where we are, it gives us our person reality, our creativity, our interactions in the now and into the future. But we need to acknowledge that there are two other parts of that trinity, the body being the representation of our subconscious, which is also called our imagination, and the spirit, being our higher self that is interconnected with the oneness, with God, with the creator, with the universe, the cosmos, whatever is the language that you choose, it is that bigger part that is still part of us or we are part of it. And disconnection basically means not allowing the flow to happen. Living so much in the ego that you ignore the oneness or you feel disconnected with your body. So does that explain what I some as disconnection?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (06:31)

Yes, it does. And I wanted to emphasise that we can all connect with a version of a higher power, even if it is the world around us. There's more than the individual inner self. There is something beyond that. And the disconnect from the body, that is something we could explore in so many angles because you were, for those who don't know, you were a GP doctor for a long time. And we talked previously about how we disconnect from our bodies in so many ways. We let someone else tell us what is wrong or right or different about our bodies and our minds. And that could lead us neatly into the whole issue of diagnoses and labels, because I've been curious about this. There are even some behaviors that could fit anxiety or a neurodivergent label or something else, or just having a bad day or a whole string of bad days until it looks like it is a habit. But I'm curious, what's your take on how we have disconnected in terms of identity with our bodies and minds?

Dr Jen Draper | (07:57)

Absolutely. Taking that and breaking that down into the individual parts, you were speaking about the disconnection with our bodies in terms of forming habits, and those habits actually come from our subconscious. So Dr Joe Dispenza is a great one for describing how so much of how we live our day is on autopilot, and unless we actually cause and consciously choose that we are going to rewrite a neural pathway that has us behaving in a particular manner, we will unconsciously repeat those same behaviours. So a perfect example is your morning routine. Most people have a morning routine which is the same day in day out. They may consciously choose that they want to do something differently because they've read, say, for example, that it's not a good thing to wake up in the morning and reach for your phone and suddenly be exposing yourself to EMF radiation, blue light and doom scrolling on social media. So they may say, okay, I'm going to change my morning habit and I'm going to rinse my face with cool water, have a glass of, have some water to drink.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (09:15)

Thank

Dr Jen Draper | (09:19)

and get out and get some early morning sunlight and some grounding, take my shoes off, well, hopefully your shoes are already off because you've been in bed, and actually take initiative to change the subconscious programming. What that then does is it's disconnecting, reconnecting you with consciously your ego, making some choices which are going to bring you closer back to nature.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (09:45)

Thank

Dr Jen Draper | (09:47)

And of course, when we go through life, we increasingly become more and more disconnected from our true, authentic selves because we are exposed to the toxicities of modern society, encouraging us to be productive. And that's wherein the society profits from us by making us more productive.

by making us always thinking, what is the next thing that I need to be doing? What is the next thing that I need to be engaging in? It takes us out of our natural space of being able to care for ourselves by reconnecting with nature. And that morning routine is a perfect example of how I, and I always learn from my own experience and that of what I witness in others and I remember the time when I was working as a busy general practitioner and my work hours were from eight till six, five days a week. And I would in the morning make time to get up, but I didn't get my shoes off, I mean, keep my shoes off and go outside and ground. What I did was I had this PEMF mat inside my bedroom.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (11:05)

Thank ⁓

Dr Jen Draper | (11:06)

so that I could kind of switch from one bed over to another bed that gave me the grounding frequencies that I knew I needed to bring myself back into a state of resilience, because I didn't allow myself that extra time to throw some clothes on and go outside to the backyard and ground. So that was a concession that I made to using technology to

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (11:34)

Thanks.

Dr Jen Draper | (11:36)

be more productive and maintain that disconnection with what I felt I would have preferred to have done if I had allowed myself the time, versus being aware of the time pressure and therefore taking the quickest route. So does that kind of explain a little bit about more about the disconnection? And then you wanted to know about labels. I've obviously and I loved the way that you

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (11:44)

.

Thank

Dr Jen Draper | (12:06)

made a reference to my terminology that I introduced you to the other day. And I recognise that this is going to be incredibly confronting to many people. When I speak about my own perspective, and it is very important that you have disclaimers over this podcast episode, that I am not giving medical advice and it is likewise not an attack upon the medical system because there are certainly times when the ability of a healthcare professional to synthesise the information that is presented and prepare a diagnosis so that action can then be taken to avert a crisis can be life-saving. So in that case, the label happens in an instant and happens because of the lived experience and the training of that healthcare professional, who then is able to put in place that to give a change in circumstances to that individual that they have before them. But I like to do things slowly, as you can probably appreciate, and I although I enjoyed my time in emergency medicine

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:11)

Thanks

you

.

Dr Jen Draper | (13:32)

I consciously chose that that was not the space where I wanted to be. And I loved the model of general practice where I was in, wherein I could take time to really get to know people on that mind-body-spirit level, together with their environment, together with what was their actual presenting symptom. And how it used to work for me when I was purely in the medical paradigm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:46)

Thank

Dr Jen Draper | (14:01)

was I would take the presenting symptom and take a comprehensive history, then do an examination, then already be making up my hypothesis. And what I was taught in medical school was that 90 to 95 % of your diagnosis, which would be a differential, okay, so meaning this is the number one that you think things are, but it could be da, da, da, da, da, these other things, this is your differential diagnosis 90 to 95 percent of that comes from the taking of the history. So that is how doctors and medical students are still taught even to this day and that is perhaps a little bit different to how the patient might perceive it when they go along to a health care professional and they want to seek advice for something because they are thinking that they are going to they've got a problem and they want it fixed. That's the perspective that they're in. And the perspective that the healthcare professional is in is they're coming with a problem and they want a diagnosis. So it's kind of, you know, the fix is the step after the diagnosis. And can you get from the diagnosis to the fix? Is that a direct pathway?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:08)

Yeah.

Dr Jen Draper | (15:25)

There's all of these other variables that come into play. Now, when you were speaking a minute ago about could this be anxiety, could this be a pattern which is you know, leading to a diagnosis or a label, well, I would like to take you back a step and to consider that pattern because that pattern, if it is a pattern that is repeated often enough

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:25)

Thank you.

Good night.

Dr Jen Draper | (15:53)

It is actually a strategy, a strategy that your body is taking or your mind is taking, that if you feel it is a problem, then perhaps when you go along to the healthcare professional with it, they are going to give you some kind of a diagnosis. But how does that then help you with that pattern?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (16:14)

Thank

Dr Jen Draper | (16:19)

How does it actually help you to change that pattern if it is a problem for you? Just by having a diagnosis.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (16:27)

I'm curious about that because when people get a diagnosis, it can often become an identity. And I'm feeling myself self-censoring a little bit here because we do want to give the disclaimers and a diagnosis, as you said, it can be part of a toolbox for helping people to fix something within the environment and within the tools that they have. But.

Dr Jen Draper | (16:36)

Exactly.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (16:56)

I've seen people say you are this, you are built this way. And some documents will say that someone is like this and unlikely to ever change. Those words are written and it looks, especially from the outsider's perspective, it looks like a prophecy or a fate.

Dr Jen Draper | (17:19)

Yes, absolutely. And for some people, I mean, this is a really, really controversial point. For some people, especially people who come from a clinical background, the diagnosis is everything. And for the perfect patients, the diagnosis is everything. And it then gives them their identity and it then gives them permission and explanation for why they are the way they are.

Now, how helpful is that for people? Let's take some examples to speak about. So recently, I've been working with a couple of clients who have got medical backgrounds. And one in particular, we've been having a very interesting conversation because her area of expertise is in, she's a clinical psychologist who works with people who are on the autistic spectrum.

Now many that come to her will not actually have received their label. They may suspect it themselves because they are intelligent people, they're very sensitive, and they've recognised patterns in the way that they behave. For example, they may find that everything needs to be done in a particular manner for them and that if it isn't done in that manner, then they need to either criticise or control or change things so that it is done in that way, and then when it is done, they feel a sense of calm within themselves. So they may have done some googling and you know autism and ASD is a very very popular topic on YouTube and on various many platforms and what the influencers stroke educators who usually are experiencing that particular label themselves or know someone close to them who fits into the category will almost make jokes about especially when we're using the example of autism because let's face it people on the spectrum are bloody funny because they just are so stereotypical. I mean, I myself have never sought the label, but I could certainly fit into, I mean, look, my nickname is Spock or Sheldon. So I am very rigid. I like things to be just so. I'm quite texturally sensitive, so the not quite meeting all the diagnostic criteria when you look at that manual that we referred to last time, the DSM-5, might be sensory processing disorder or auditory processing disorder. So these are kind of like steps before you tick all the boxes to be fully labelled on the spectrum. And of course, spectrum in itself refers to a wide variety. So anyway, getting back to the conversation that this clinician stroke client and myself have been having is that she in her role giving strategies especially for couples wherein a lot of the conflict within their relationship comes because one of the parties has particular ways of doing things that avoids discomfort within their body for them. When it's done the way the other member of the relationship or the couple does it, it makes them very antsy or it triggers the alarm in their body. So I think we touched on anxiety alarm last time when we were speaking. So, for those who haven't heard before, anxiety is a thinking process. Alarm is the feeling process that invariably accompanies the anxious thoughts.

And borrowing from my good friend, Dr Russell Kennedy, who alerted me to this way of thinking about trauma-informed practice wherein the anxious thoughts that you are is basically your self-talk, your internal communication that you are saying over to yourself again and again, can be an attempt of your ego to maintain the disconnection from the alarm stored in your body. And it can be a very important and effective technique. I can see that I have triggered some interest there, Melanie.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (22:02)

Yes, yes. This is aligning with something that I wanted to ask about, and I was figuring how to zoom in on it, which angles to take, because I've been curious about anxiety and stress lately, but also I've heard from some women on the podcast, on the podcast and beyond, where either they became burned out or some of us, get very sensitive with our hormones, get migraines and the moods can be intense. And it can seriously become what feels like depression, whether it is or not. And, what I'm sort of realising far too late in life, I'm really curious to get your opinion on this. It seems like sometimes we can have very intense feelings, be it a trigger or something happening within us or burnout or something else. And we are trying to look for a narrative because we need an explanation. We're wondering what is going on. And to quickly reference what we talked about last time we recorded, the great risk is to remind people, I literally went to the doctor, and I said, This is what's going on in life. And she said, Well, here's your test result. He is a hormonal drug of some sort. And I said, sure, but this is happening, and it's stressful. And I'm wondering how can we unpack the narratives? How can we connect with our actual realities? And are we disconnecting from something when we're just piling on narratives? How can we actually heal all that?

Dr Jen Draper | (23:52)

Absolutely,

yeah, yeah. Well, first thing, when you go along to a doctor, the doctor is coming from an incredibly different perspective to you. And for you to be able to explain your experience of what is going on and get assistance from them, look at the perspectives within which they have been trained and unless they have experienced similar things in themselves or in their lived experience of dealing with patients, then they're going to come at it with what their tools are most familiar for them. And the most familiar tools for a general practitioner are diagnosing after taking a history and examination, or ordering tests. Everything is pigeonholed and siloed. This concept of the Trinity, the mind, body, spirit, there's very few clinicians who have the time and the resources to be able to incorporate that within their practice. And the cynical me says that that's because that is the pathway to true healing. And we've already spoken about that a healed patient is no longer a patient. So at the risk of, and look, I've also got to say that counter it with the other side because Many of my colleagues who are clinicians would dearly love to help people. They just don't recognise because it hasn't been in their training or their lived experience, how to actually do it. Because the ultimate thing is that the stories that you are telling yourself when you are trying to make sense of them within that conventional narrative of history, examination, diagnosis, treatment plan, etc. It completely ignores the uniqueness of you and the lived experience that you have had all through your life, and the patterns that you have set up unconsciously because of the trauma response centers in the brain and the amazing ego that you have, which is your mind, and the resilience of the brain as you are developing that ability for the amygdala to package away what hurt you when it did and send that into a part of the brain that you cannot consciously access. You only can unconsciously access it and it comes in the form of a bodily sensation. So the doctor may proffer suggestions, as may the helpful internet searches, etc, that it's hormonal, and you may notice a pattern where it's happening each month at the same time. I mean, we spoke last time about my client who was having daily headaches, and of course, those daily headaches seemed to get worse prior to the menstrual cycle. So you know, one of the hypotheses along the way had been that it was hormonal headaches, but it wasn't.

It was stored in balance within the stories that she was telling herself with regards to the meanings she had created from the events that she experienced earlier in her life, that were replaying for her subconsciously, causing her to adopt particular behavioural patterns that therefore avoided her feeling the stored emotion.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (27:38)

Are we at just as much risk of attaching other narratives, like social narratives, like this person is driving me crazy for months on end and giving me a headache. Are we at just as much

Dr Jen Draper | (27:50)

100 %

100 % So, what you have hit the nail on the head, we are the master puppeteers of our own experience. And we are encouraged by the system to give that power away into a diagnosis, which therefore explains the patterns of behaviour that we then observe within our lives.

And an example, we were talking about the example of autism. You know, I could get the DSM and tick them all off out in front of me, but one of the things that integrative doctors are prone to say, and of course, that was me as a GP, I wasn't just a conventional GP, I was an integrative GP. And I used to work with children who would be regressing in their developmental skills and then earn themselves the label of autism because they had difficulties across the fields of communication, behaviour and socialisation. So those difficulties that developed, you know, they weren't developing normally; they were neurodivergent. So they would earn the diagnosis of autism which is neurodivergence. This is just this new buzzword for being on the spectrum. They don't like to or or having ADHD or having some kind of a brain inflammation which is happening and the sort of diagnostic and even the integrative process for dealing with it is avoid the triggers, avoid the triggers.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (29:37)

Yes.

Dr Jen Draper | (29:38)

Yeah well guess what triggers are actually gifts because they allow you to tune in to the signals that your body is giving you to then highlight where the healing needs to occur if you want to be able to rewrite the story. And this is something that I go into in quite a lot of detail in my book where I'm talking to people about how Once you are grounded and you recognize that giving yourself that sacred pause for reflection and contemplation into your body as opposed to just in your mind and Google searching and looking for answers, your body holds so many answers which will give you clues as to yes, this practice is increasing vibe for me. This one is creating dyssynchrony and I can put good boundaries into my life so that I limit my exposure because you cannot outrun all of the toxins and the demands on your pressure. You can't keep out running things. You... yeah?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (30:57)

Half agree. And the reason is that there are some out there, I saw it more before the pandemic, there's some, there are some out there who will hide away in an eco village and avoid all of the toxic spaces and politics and ego-driven extremes and the plastics, all of that, they'll hide away and joyfully collectively make their own foods and and possibly I was going to say sing kumbaya but I don't think I was even mocking that song but I seriously you could I think there was a moment in history when we're close to having those groups nothing wrong with that but I'm curious so you're saying that we can't outrun our triggers but I'm wondering maybe when we are even

Dr Jen Draper | (31:52)

Mmm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (31:57)

Hiding away in a whole lot of zen with organic everything, something could still end up triggering us. You think there's always, do you think you can't un-run your soul? Sorry, you can't out-run yourself.

Dr Jen Draper | (32:10)

100 % because

yeah 100 % because you're talking and referring to external triggers or exogenous triggers. Well, obviously, we are organisms that interact with the Oneness and other beings, but often we will find that it's our thoughts that trigger us because something might just come to mind. And the issue is that our brains and bodies cannot actually differentiate between our thoughts and the perception that we get in through one of our other senses. So, you know, some people feel there's only five senses or perhaps six senses, but we can also look at interdimensional existence and recognise that frequencies also affect us and that causes a change in our resonance in our beings where you know like for example when you're listening to music even people who are deaf can listen to music or feel music and still resonate with it because it's not just going through those accepted sequences.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (33:26)

Really?

Dr Jen Draper | (33:35)

senses, it's a frequency thing. So when we speak about triggers, when I am not talking just about exogenous or external triggers, I'm also talking about what happens within us. And that can come from our patterns, from our habits, from even our actions, you know, as we are going about our day, we may become triggered when we eat.

So it's a fluid situation in which once you decide that your interaction with in yourself and with the world is the same modus which is of curiosity and gratitude then that can actually open so many more doors for you to start recognising power that you have within yourself and what ⁓ is transformable within you if you consciously ⁓ make an effort to delve into the unconscious. And just to take that a little bit further and getting a little bit philosophical and esoteric, but you know we were already there, so that's okay. If you what you perceive is what you're actually projecting, and your mind cannot differentiate between what is lived experience and what is your thoughts, and you get the same bodily response, then who's to say that your memories are actually true, and could they perhaps even

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (35:11)

You

Dr Jen Draper | (35:32)

be all just imagination.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (35:37)

Whether we remember something accurately or not, it's all just remembering elements of what happened in the past and trying to reconnect with something that doesn't exist anymore.

Dr Jen Draper | (35:54)

Exactly. It's something from the past. But then, when you look at quantum physics and you recognise that the only time is now, it's it really becomes that very philosophical question that you can certainly relate to why you know Eastern monks can spend time in silent contemplation, and you know just come from that place of gratitude and recognition of the vastness of everything. And then looking at atoms. Atoms are 90 % space, and electrons are vibrating at a frequency. Everything is an illusion. What is truly reality? And those sorts of life questioning questions can really get people, especially those who are very much more grounded in the physicality and quite black and white in their thinking of things, can cause them to start looping and become very much into the uncertainty. And that is something which some people will then step into fear, fear about the unknown and for myself and you mentioned about during the pandemic how there were many groups of people who decided that well, this is it, we just want to check out of society and be self-sufficient and support each other and make alternative communities. I mean that kind of thing's been going on for many, many years. Communes and communal living, and this recognition that we as souls come together with a resonance and an appreciation for each other's frequencies. It's not just for those basic human needs of safety and control, although of course there are studies that show that, you know, that minimum number of souls to support is 150, like that's the maximum number of meaningful communications that any one individual can sustain. And it's also the magic number to keep community thriving external to the world. yeah, so these sorts of philosophical questions are very fascinating to me and that is wherein I recognise that I'm never going to receive that label of being on the spectrum because it's literally trays that I hold within myself and It's just like when someone said to me the other day on social media, you're a narcissist and because that is their perception. So what we perceive is what we project, and in psychology, we learn about all of these terms like transference, and you know, so transference is an energetic exchange between people. So I'll speak in my kind of woo.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (38:50)

Why did they say that?

What's that?

Dr Jen Draper | (39:12)

comprehension of what it is, and then I can give you the textbook meaning. So the textbook meaning is when people project onto another their beliefs about themselves. So it's like a deflecting technique. Narcissists will call other people narcissists because they actually identify with those traits. And when we talk about being triggered by others, it is so often the aspects within ourselves that we have stored emotions surrounding, like shame or guilt, that we will find to be triggering when someone calls us a name or tries to, even if they are transference from their perspective. So that's why I say from the woo explanation, it's an energy exchange. When you've got individuals interacting and one part of that interaction starts becoming defensive that's not there because they're a narcissist that's because it's their pain that is trying to that their ego is trying to protect with a trauma response patterns such as defensiveness that is part of the trays that when you look at the DSM-IV for personality disorders and note that doctors rarely will attribute a DSM-II which is the personality access because they are untruthable. They're like you were hinting at before, patterns that are observed that define that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:51)

Thank

Dr Jen Draper | (41:00)

Reality, that way of interaction that you know can't be changed, and it's like you're making a prophecy about them. You know, one of the worst possible diagnoses that ⁓ people used to find within a chart, like it would be the heart sync patient who would come to you, and they would say I've got borderline personality disorder. So my medical doctor version of that used to think goodness, here's a cutter, here's a self-harm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (41:30)

Okay, question there. Is that the perception with professionals now, and what actually is involved with that?

Dr Jen Draper | (41:30)

And yes, yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

So borderline personality disorder, which I will allow, I will encourage people to go and look up the DSM diagnostic manual for it and how it is recognised. It is basically a pattern of behaviours and relationships wherein there are a number of trauma response patterns that we see happening there on display, such that there's attention seeking, there's gaslighting, there's dysfunctional relationships, there's self-sabotage, there's episodes of anxiety and depression, and there's self-harming most commonly. And these patterns are not the true individual; they are their pain. They are the ego of that particular individual seeking to protect the wounded in a child within who most likely experienced some significant emotional events during their development, some of which they often won't actually consciously remember because of that amygdala reflex that I was talking about beforehand. And so they vary, as they hop from health professional to health professional, it often will take many years before this label is attributed to them. And along the way, they might earn other labels such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder or ⁓ anxiety or depression. And they may well have even attempted suicide on a number of occasions. And it has all been because they are highly reactive and they get triggered easily because they're so sensitive to their surroundings and their ego is the defense mechanisms that are trying to keep a lid on what's in the amygdala. Very scared, incredibly scared and the younger child within them each time they are triggered

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (43:45)

basically scared. ⁓

Dr Jen Draper | (43:57)

If one adopts the approach of becoming an unpatient, then you, as the adult ego, are getting an opportunity to actually reconnect with your younger self. But society doesn't give you time to do that and doesn't encourage you to do that. If you've got one of those labels and you think, This is unfixable. Well, because you've got to stay functional and purposeful and have a job and be raising a family. Exactly.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (44:15)

How?

You don't get a break.

Dr Jen Draper | (44:25)

So the re-parenting or the reconnectioning of yourself takes time out of your interactions in everyday life and involves being able to put a pause in before you then react in that common trauma response pattern, which is then used by helpful clinicians to diagnose and pigeonhole you into an untreatable disorder. what

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (44:48)

What? Hang on, hang

on. Let's really look at that for a second. Are you saying that if someone is looking triggered enough and showing those signs, and from your perspective, it could simply be responding to something that happened years ago. And are you saying that professionals then dismiss that sort of person as untreatable?

Dr Jen Draper | (44:51)

Sure

100 percent.

No, I'm saying that if you have a personality disorder, there are management strategies that are used, such as DBT, dialectical behavioural therapy or ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy. These are all various modalities in psychology and delivered usually in groups but the reality is that if within yourself you can find the resources to give yourself permission, not someone else giving you permission, but you giving yourself permission to not just instantly write it off and say, oh, I'm just like that, but to actually be curious about those bodily sensations that come up in you and recognise each time you will be getting it, like it's a form of the anxiety alarm cycle the triggering that you experience and the feeling of the emotion welling up and your ego jumping on it and saying, don't go there, it'll hurt you. It's remembering back to a time when you had those similar emotions elicited as a child that you had to suppress, and your amygdala system did suppress that for you. And then you've learnt the meaning of that was pain. So let's not go there.

So the strategies that we adopt are these trauma response patterns. So what I'm doing as I'm sharing this knowledge with you is I'm speaking from my perspective now, which is my lived experience of going through this trauma, healing myself and with others, with clients now. I didn't have the time to do that as a general practitioner with my patients because I couldn't go into their subconscious because we were in the now, and we were time pressured through the consultation, and we were in the paradigm of this is how the medical system does things.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (47:10)

You didn't have time to look through it all.

Dr Jen Draper | (47:14)

and wasn't trained in it because I've done the training in this subsequent to ending my career as a medical doctor, because this type of work is highly intensive and centred on that unique individual in front of you, but you can do it yourself, and that is the reason why I wrote my book, because I recognise that

There is so much of this that once you allow yourself the comprehension by freeing yourself from the paradigms of that I've got to give my power away to the health professionals and let them look after me, I'm sorry, they haven't done a very good job of looking after you. So if you're going to keep on in that pattern, then that's not the people that I'm speaking to. I'm speaking to the people who want to become unpatients themselves. They want to take responsibility and own their own shit. Own what's within them, and that's what I'm doing for myself, which is where we started when someone called me a narcissist. I own the fact that yes, there are narcissistic traits within me 100%. It's not a derogatory term when you come from the place of love and forgiveness for all, including yourself. You can acknowledge that there will have been events in the past wherein, in that particular iso-related, especially doctor-patient interaction, I am sure that there were occasions in the past wherein my behaviours were perceived as being narcissistic. And for that I apologise because I didn't know any better at that time, and the system encourages me, pops me up on a pedestal and says, You know, fix these people. But the only people who can fix are you. Like, you can fix yourself by owning your shit.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:11)

Thank

you

We're both looking at compassion. And this time around, I've just let you talk, and I barely chimed in because you have so much to say. You seem to be very forgiving of yourself for how you supported your patients with the tools that you had at the time. But I'm really forgiving myself because, of course, I have to be careful about what I say on a podcast about myself and my life. And I definitely get to avoid that a bit when other people are just talking about themselves, and my existence doesn't even come up that much. what I'm forgiving myself for, which I think some people might relate to, is the very wound up or intense reactions to present surroundings, knowing that In my head, things resemble things from years ago, and to me, it doesn't feel any different, and there's a good chance that other people don't see the present reality that way. So I know that I can end up with physical aches, I can end up with a different form of migraine, or I can simply have all of those signs we get when we're in extreme fear, the, the, if you imagine someone standing in front of a house that's burning down and all of the panic, and I've had those sorts of feelings and reactions to all sorts of things. The metaphorical house is burning down in this moment, whether it is or not. And what you've been describing frees a lot of us from that sort of thing, because I'm just, I'm hoping that if I reveal a few things, it could maybe explain it within your very holistic approach. So I was months old when I had operations, and then I was definitely seeing some, a lot of tension around me in the years after that. And I say that very carefully because I'm sure that everybody was handling things the way they knew how, but now when I see anyone in the workplace or in community, anything, I think that, I think that the way I perceive anyone, it really stems back to this feels like those early things that I can't even describe or fully remember where I was probably getting literally cut open or in terms of surgery or, you know, there's a feeling if you're so young and things are happening and then you can't even later explain what happened. I think that's very significant. And a lot of us could have had something like that going on. We had on this show a while ago, Sarah Banyan, who had a childhood trauma and it was a long time before she could articulate what even went on.

And I'm wondering, have you seen clients now or people in your GP days, realizing that they are just relating to the world based on something that's so deeply rooted that they are turning into a person that people don't know how to relate to.

Dr Jen Draper | (53:05)

100 % 100 % and thank you so much for sharing. So I did definitely get the impression that you have a lot of stored bodily trauma within yourself and that's very brave of you to admit that recognition that you have there and I feel that being overly cautious as to what you share on your podcast is very gracious of you but perhaps not necessary and perhaps would actually assist in you know I believe we meet people for a reason. People come into our lives for a reason, and so if my lived experience can help translate some of that experience that you are having into a meaningful framework for you, so that you can compassionately reconnect with your younger self. Because let's break that down, okay? Your experiences when you were younger, during which time you perhaps didn't have conscious memory in your cortex, your body was still experiencing, and you were powerless. So you may now experience things like a dislike for physical touch from strangers. You may find that you are feeling tenser in your body when you are experiencing a sensation that may make you think that you need to seek medical attention, and that might be because subconsciously you equated the experiences with the when you were in hospital having operations, as being that your power was stripped from you and that there was pain involved with that. So it is actually an automatic response that is being engendered within your body, and you've given yourself some kind of explanatory story to be yourself as to why this is. So what is that story that you tell yourself as to why you are like the way you are? Had you already drawn that correlation for yourself that your previous experiences in childhood were influencing how you are in the now?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (55:53)

actually the description for this that I put in the draft of my book that I haven't released after I drafted this three years ago. The thing is, it was some sort of, I don't know what the urethra is, it was some sort of boring technical sounding operation that I needed when I was tiny, my whole, pretty much the bulk of my life, I've had a scar right across my tummy, basically from the side of my waist to about my belly button. And it's very visible. So the description that I had articulated for quite a while is that I was just scarred from the beginning. And I think so many of us grow up and then something happens later, and I ended up with other scars from surgeries, and I actually felt very powerless in those because I felt compliant. I felt scared to say no to anything. I was just going along. I felt tortured sometimes with the medical treatments that I got when I was an adult, and I just went along with everything. And what I know about that early experience is just that I don't even really understand what happened when I was that young. All I know is that I had to have been cut open enough to have a line right across half of my tummy. And I felt embarrassed my whole childhood. I mean, I was getting into my early teen years in the early noughties. You can remember the innocent years of Britney Spears, Christina, all of them basically the crop top eras. Could you imagine growing up in the crop top eras with a giant line across your middle and just being a weird, I just felt, I felt unattractive. I felt unappealing, and I just felt broken. It just looked like I was always broken from the get-go.

Dr Jen Draper | (57:49)

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, scarred from the beginning as you said. Yeah, yeah. So, having that recognition of yourself, you are actually describing stories that you told yourself during that time. And the, from a holistic perspective, if those are stories that are actually ingrained within to your subconscious, yes, the original nemesis of them will have come, or genesis, sorry, I should have said, not nemesis, genesis, from the childhood experiences and then a reinforcement. But the other things that I hear in what you're saying is I hear an incredible amount of comparison with others and self-judgment and perhaps if you were able to obtain some kind of an explanation from way back then that helped you to reframe the experiences that you had during your childhood, then there would come about a lot more self-acceptance of why you are the way that you are. And yes, my sacral has just given me beautiful message that that is exactly what you need. So that would be the process that we would take you through and in particular speaking now about what I do in my service to people now is I do this technique that's called timeline transformation therapy and you have identified that quite possibly some of these stories are actually still some limiting beliefs for yourself and you've quite clearly given us the origin within your timeline as to where they came from. So what we would do is we would say that you know, on the basis of our brain as this most powerful conductor and orchestrator of everything, but that there is so much information that comes in, we can't possibly absorb every single aspect of it. So what we do is we delete, distort, and generalise, and from those perspectives that you had back in your childhood, what happened was the messages that came through were fear, feeling tortured, and feeling powerless, and all of these messages, which have got emotions associated with them, emotions that are probably trapped within your body. Very much sense fear is there. And we would consciously say, okay, are we going to allow to release the fear? And we would take you into a slight hypnotic state, and we would take you back along your timeline to the very first event at which you stored the fear. And we would, using this very powerful technique, we would evolve the energy we would transform the energy. So we would allow to release the fear and instead accepting the lessons. Because each experience that we have had that has been subjectively significant for us along our timeline has resulted in it was a lesson for us. Life doesn't happen to us. It happens for us to learn about ourselves, and having gone through those experiences yourself, you will have gained lessons which, during the timeline therapy, we bring to the forefront into your consciousness by you putting them into words. And then after we bring you out of the trance, you can reflect upon those lessons, and you've actually released the emotion, so that with continued awareness of those lessons, now in your consciousness, the fear dissipates from being stored in your body. And that's how true healing happens. So I've let a few of the magician's secrets out during that, but I share exactly this in my book, Unpatient, and I'm very excited to have that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:02:19)

Thank

So, yes, you can.

Dr Jen Draper | (1:02:46)

Well, not published because you don't really need to publish in this day and age.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:02:50)

I think it is publishing because publishing can be online as well. You are becoming a self-published author, and I applaud you so much for that.

Dr Jen Draper | (1:02:54)

Yes!

Thank you, thank you. And I applaud you for your bravery in sharing that. And I hope that little insight was helpful.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:03:06)

And I wanted to say everybody get Jen's book. Where can people find it after? ⁓ When is it coming out? And where? When and

Dr Jen Draper | (1:03:14)

Well, ⁓ well

I should have my funnel sorted within, I would say, the next 48 to 72 hours. So I am on socials, drjenn.wellbeingholistic and my website is wellbeingholistic.net and I will definitely be having a link down the bottom to the book but I will also have a book funnel that will have its own web address and it will more than likely be wellbeingholistic.com slash book dash unpatient. Yes, it will be, and I will definitely be having some advertising that will be directing people through to that. But if you do happen to listen to this podcast and you are interested in my book, then just please read out to me because I do have an advanced copy that I'm sharing with people with a just a link to my Google doc.

And I'm very happy to take commentary as well, while it's in the formative stages before actually being published, because I really believe in the power of group collaboration and getting feedback. Because if I'm attracting people now and they're interested and curious, then I would love to refine my message to assist with them in their healing journey, because they are obviously those that are like the flies attracted to the light, to the beacon and very, very happy to assist and help heal people who have taken the initiative to find me.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:04:49)

Yes. Okay, so for those who don't know a funnel, it's just going to be some sort of space that's leading you neatly and conveniently to where you can get the book. And I trust you'll send me some sort of neat link that I can put in the description of this episode.

Dr Jen Draper | (1:05:05)

Absolutely,

yes, I will do that for you. Awesome.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:05:08)

And is there anything

else that people will wind up? Is there anything else that people can reach out for aside from the book?

Dr Jen Draper | (1:05:15)

Well, I do ⁓ work with people for individual one-on-one coaching. So I'm a life coach and my technique that I use primarily is neurotransformation therapy, which I've talked to you about the timeline therapy. I also am human design certified. And so if you are interested in learning more about human design, which we haven't touched upon at all.

And that is because I don't consider myself an expert in it. I believe it is a curiosity, conversation provoker. And it's fascinating. When I learned about my human design, it just explained these bodily sensations that I get when I'm tuning in to the direction that that individual needs to go. It's this beautiful, sacral response. You might've heard me say it. When you were saying something as you were giving your story, I got this amazing sacral response flow up in through my lower legs which tells me it's my inner authority that guides me this is the direction that will provide healing. So it's a fascinating spiritual building in with quantum physics, astrology, etc. So I do that, I do coaching, yes.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:06:29)

Was it?

Does it articulate how things can feel right when you're in a particular action or direction?

Dr Jen Draper | (1:06:36)

Yes, yes when you are alignment.

Yeah so once you recognize the parts of yourself and what is your energy type, how you can honor best your energy. For example, if you're a manifestor or a generator or manifesting generator or projector or the very rare reflector, these are all different energy types, and when you are in yourself and you are flowing in alignment and making decisions, respecting your authority and knowing what your purpose is, then everything flows so much better. So I forgive myself now that I have so many pots on the boil because I am a manifesting generator. And as long as I get a good night's sleep and I recognise that those so many pots on the boil is feeling great for me and I'm feeling satisfied and off purpose and I don't beat myself up that yes, I have taken so many things. Everything's in flow and alignment, and opportunities come to me because I put my words out there into the universe and attract and polarise, repel those who don't align and attract those who do. And it's a fascinating way to go. So I also offer human design chart readings and those things for people as well. So an awful lot of offerings, not just the one, but it does all start with a free quantum call, and people can book for me directly through my website, wellbeingholistic.net. So I'm more than happy for people to reach out.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:08:14)

To sum up the many modalities that you offer in your era after your GP days, you are helping people to heal themselves and become independent in their healing.

Dr Jen Draper | (1:08:24)

Yes.

Yes, that is the primary thrust of what I do. Yes.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (1:08:30)

Wonderful. Look, Jen Draper, thank you for being on this

Dr Jen Draper | (1:08:34)

You are welcome, Melanie. Look forward to connecting. Again, I'm sure we will. Doesn't have to be on a podcast.