Wisdom and compassion in your divorce recovery - Michael Mendribil, N.D. || DPTSP #076 || David M. Webb

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Don't Pick the Scab Podcast, a podcast that seeks out the out-of-the-box solutions in people to help my men over 40 recover from divorce. Today we have Michael Mendribil, a naturopathic physician, transformative coach, functional medicine practitioner, and he has gained his superpower, he has a hell of a superpower, by being a student and teacher of life. Go ahead and tell us a little bit about your mic and I got some questions for you.

[00:00:26] Welcome to the Don't Pick the Scab Podcast, with the premise of connecting men over 40 with the tools and community to thrive in their divorce recovery either before, during, or after a divorce. Check it out.

[00:00:56] Yeah, hey David, thank you so much. I'm looking forward to our conversation. So, yeah, one of the questions people go, how did you get into naturopathic medicine? The story was I was pre-med back in the 80s and worked in a hospital and it was an orthopedic ward and I just saw that the medicine was being mechanical and it wasn't what I wanted to do. And I learned about something called homeopathy at that time and that sent me down the rabbit hole. I said, where can I learn this more holistic kind of medicine?

[00:01:23] And I eventually ended up in an MD school up in Seattle, Bastyr University. So that's like several lifetimes ago and it's been quite a process. They taught us a lot about medicine and healing. The NT is just so much about business. That was another PhD that I'm still working on getting. Wow, you're still in school. No, that's life school. Life school, man. Yeah. So your life story is both inspiring and deeply human.

[00:01:45] How have your personal challenges like navigating two marriages, adoption and your wife's Alzheimer's shaped your philosophy on resilience and recovery for men? Yeah, that's a great and deep question. Yeah, I'll say I was very fortunate even early on during naturopathic school to have some male mentors who helped me learn how to feel. Number one, I don't think I probably felt anything from the age of seven to probably my late 20s. I was just living up here in this space. And finally, they taught me to drop in a little bit and say, hey, what's really going on?

[00:02:15] What are you really feeling? Like anger, sadness, grief, all these things. So I started getting even early on the ability to at least be aware of my feelings and get support around them. So my first marriage, we got through it pretty easy. We didn't have kids. So it was pretty uncomplicated. And the judge said at the end of the proceedings, so you guys go buy each other a beer. So it was a reset. But as I went through life and I got married the second time and adopted my wife's niece, it would have been at six months old. That was life-changing overnight.

[00:02:45] And then eventually, 20-something years later, my wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And that was another life-changing, epic moment in my life. And all those forced me to look at a couple things. The most important was like, where am I putting my energy? Is it on taking care of everybody else or is it taking care of myself? And what I learned is that I'm not useful for anybody else if I don't make myself number one and take care of myself first.

[00:03:10] If there's any message that I can put out there is that, guys, it's like the most important person to take care of is yourself in every single way, every single level, and every single capacity. Whether that's your health, your relationships, your mindset, your moods, your finances, your work, everything. Make that priority. And out of that, then you'll have some reserves, hopefully, to take care of those around you and be the leader that you are. It's almost like when the plane goes down, you put your mask on first and not your kids.

[00:03:41] It's so simple, man. People don't get that. And I don't understand. They're so busy taking care of everybody else and they forget about themselves. Yeah, for sure. And I was guilty of that, too. I'm in the healing arts. It's just my job is to take care of other people. I was wired for that from a young age. And even today, I have to be reminded, hey, you taking care of yourself from the guys in my circle? And you're looking a little strung out. You working too much? So, yeah, it's like, and I know for myself, yeah, that was still an ongoing lesson for me to be reminded. Hey, slow down. Get your routines in order.

[00:04:11] Make sure your sleep style and your nutrition, your exercise. We can talk more about a lot of these things. But just fundamentally, it's like learning how to take care of ourselves and ask for what we need from others and get support. And we're all taught to like man up and have it all together. The truth is, it's like a lot of the times we don't. And it's okay. And actually to share that with other men is like really empowering because then the guys can come in and support you. So, yeah, you probably know what I'm talking about. Oh, yeah.

[00:04:39] And now we can segue into therapy because men suck at that, too. So we might as well get the suckies out of the way. I talked to a lot of men and they think that going to therapy is a sign of weakness. And men have come around a long way from the hunter-gatherer. I don't talk about my feelings, but how do you speak to men out there who actually probably need therapy and need to seek it out?

[00:05:04] Yeah, I think the number one thing that I do in conversations is to say, hey, what's really going on? Let's get past the bullshit on the face. And what's really going on? It's like, where are you hurting? And then where do you want to go? You want to get those two things. And if you're really hurting and you really need some support, whether that's therapy, coaching, medicine, whatever it is, you're not going to get to where you want to go if you don't deal with where you are right now. And it was just a quick story early on.

[00:05:33] And in my process, I was in a men, no, it was a co-ed group at the time. And I remember showing up to this group. We're all sitting in a circle and it was a naturopathic doctor who was also a therapist running the program at the time. And I remember sitting down and he goes checking in with everybody and goes, and how are you, Michael? And I said, I'm fine. Probably just like that. I'm fine. Dang. And he goes, Michael, I'm going to do you a favor.

[00:05:58] I want to get up and go over there into the bathroom, look in the mirror, and then come back in here and tell me what you saw. Okay. So I get up, I walk in the mirror and I look in the mirror, like probably something like that. And I came back and he says, so how are you doing? What did you see? He says, I'm not fine. That's about all I had. I didn't know what I was feeling. I didn't know anything else at the time, but I just knew I wasn't fine. And I think that's the first thing to acknowledge is that I'm not fine. And once we know that we're not fine, it's like, then there's some possibility.

[00:06:28] But if we think we're okay, we're not. And we're lying to ourselves. We're never going to get the support that we need. Yeah. You've mentioned that resilience and strength are qualities we create, not ones that you're born with. How can men in the midst of a divorce begin building resilience when they feel emotionally depleted and their ass is kicked? Yeah, that's a good one. And I know that. I felt my ass kicked several times in different ways through loss, through financial challenges.

[00:06:55] And the number one thing I would say is get some sleep. Get sleep. Like rest, sleep. Turn off the TV. Get to bed early. Or whatever chronotype you have. It's like honor that chronotype. Use supports in natural medicines or whatever you need to do that. Take a nice warm bath a couple hours before you go to bed. Whatever things you can do to get that sleep and get that rest. And that's number one is just getting some rest.

[00:07:22] And two is starting to develop like a routine where you're doing self-care. For me, that's getting up and like spending some time with a journal. Spending time like in meditation or mindfulness practice. And you can use apps for that and courses for that. But to begin to get to know yourself and to get some rest and start the day on a good beat in terms of resilience. And we talked a little bit about therapy. But call in your brothers. Get together with friends. And yeah, you can shoot the shit and talk about sports and stuff. But get underneath it. How are you doing?

[00:07:52] Down to the crooks. Yeah. How are you? No. How are you doing? Yeah. Or you say, hey, buddy, I'm struggling here. And your buddies will listen. You'll be surprised. You think they're going to judge you? They're going to go, oh, yeah, me too. Yeah. It brings them out, too. Yeah. Yeah. Permission.

[00:08:12] So I think one of the things I've noticed about myself on this journey is that by my sharing my vulnerabilities and the difficulties, I've been able to be a leader of other guys because they're going to go, me too. And I need support here, too. And a lot of the shame will then just fall away because you're saying, hey, this is life. This is human. This is what we all struggle with these things.

[00:08:35] In some way, nobody, no matter what their life looks like, they've got something going on that they wish it wasn't. And who knows what it is? But everybody's got something. We're all in this life school working through stuff. And don't have any, be ashamed of it. It's like, actually, that's a power. It's a superpower to actually bring that out. There you go. Yep. Yep. So divorce often comes with a sense of failure or loss of identity.

[00:09:05] And that's huge in men. How do you help men reframe these feelings and find purpose again? Because purpose, men need purpose sometime in order to go forward. How do you reframe that? Yeah. So I think there's a few things. The first is like when I'm a big believer that we actually are creating everything of our experience by the lens and the frame that we're looking at life. So whether it's the loss of a relationship or we're still framing it in a particular way.

[00:09:33] It's like we inherited some glasses from our upbringing and the way that we look at all of life. And so not with blame, but I would say just first, let's see how I have been creating this along through my habits, through my acts of omission or commission or things that I didn't say or waited too long to say. Just do an inventory. See, okay, how have I been maybe creating this? And as a reframe is, okay, now post-divorce, post that loss, I have some new freedom here.

[00:10:03] I have some new freedoms and new agencies. Who am I? What do I love? What did I used to love that maybe I put on the shelf? And start to begin reacquainting yourself with those things. And I find it's mostly things that we've been interested in since we were little kids that maybe we have set aside. Some form of play, some exploration. So I would say the reframe is like now you have new freedom, right? You don't have that partner, that spouse that you had before. Who do you want to be now?

[00:10:33] Given that's not there anymore, what do you want in your life? What would you love to create? What would you love to have as a possibility? And then think of it, maybe the canvas isn't purely blank because you're a different person, but you can start drawing and painting. What would you love to see happen now in your life? So I would kind of start right there. So you're such a two years young and you describe yourself as still on the path.

[00:10:58] How do you encourage men over 40 to embrace the idea of starting over even when it feels late in life? Yeah, the classic phrase, it's never too late. It's never too late. And we're always creating. We're always creating our experience. So I don't even say we're starting over. It's like, in fact, one of my coach asked me after all this, I was in a workshop with him. He said, so he's starting over with family and partner and marriage and kids and stuff.

[00:11:26] And I go, never starting over. I'm just continuing in a different way. So I look at my life as this long kind of this journey. It's like, it's just now I'm looking at a different scene. It's a different context that I had before. So my context changed when my spouse went into a skilled nursing facility. I said, okay, now I'm like, now I don't, she's not here. Wow. Okay. What do I want now? So I want to, maybe I want another relationship. So I started dating a little bit and I had more time.

[00:11:56] I wasn't responsible for caring for her in the way that I was before. So I started doing new fitness things that I didn't have time for before. Cycling and biking and rucksacking, which we can talk about, which is a weighted backpack way to walk. I hate running, but I like the cardio exercise. So those are just a few things that I would recommend. You've lived through bankruptcy and other major life transitions. What lessons did you take from those experiences that men going through divorce can apply to their own healing?

[00:12:24] When you have something so devastating, how can you flip the script for those devastating transitions? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The first thing I would say is find a way to make it all. Okay. All you guys are doing the best you can, given your, your makeup up to that point. And it's like, and so I had a lot of self-judgment, frankly, around going through bankruptcy and the financial situation that I got back, got into. And I had to like, find a way to make peace with that. And so fundamentally, I forgive myself.

[00:12:55] I forgave myself for creating that and for being in that particular situation. I find a way to embrace myself rather than judge myself and beat the crap out of myself, which is typical things that we do. Definitely. Yep. Right. When things aren't going good. And there's many methods to do that, whether it's something called the release technique or the work of Byron Katie, it's actually called the work. It's a way of like reformat, reframing and recontextualizing and restoring who you are today.

[00:13:22] So often our experience is created by the thinking that we're engaged in and the thinking that we're engaged in is often habitual and based on the past. So oftentimes we're just using our imagination in ways that don't serve us to make us miserable fundamentally. Wow. So divorce is often emotionally and physically draining. How can naturopathic medicine or functional medicine help men rebuild their physical health during this time? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:49] I would say I wish more men actually took advantage of this. Most of my practice is women, probably 80%, but the 20% of men that are in my naturopathic medicine practice have gone through something, whether it's divorce or some kind of huge stressful event, or all of a sudden they notice that they're way overweight and their blood pressure is high. And they're just not happy with the medical route.

[00:14:09] I would say that naturopathic functional medicine, nutrition, all these things can have a profound effect because if we don't have our physiology working right, that's going to affect our mood. It's going to affect our sleep. It's going to affect our energy level. I'm always encouraging guys is get your health in line, right? Do what you need to do to get the support around that. That often is the dietary change, getting the metabolic function better. People's insulin resistance or their ability to use glucose often declines as we age.

[00:14:39] And man, I saw that in the late thirties. I was like, I was gaining weight and I was going, I exercise and I eat pretty good, but it wasn't good enough for my particular makeup. Sleep, which we talked about. Nutrition. It's like, watch the carbs guys. It's like those heroes in pizza and the processed foods. It tastes so good. I know. You got to do it every once in a while though. You got to do it every once in a while, but to make it a staple or foundational part of our daily meal, we'll have costs.

[00:15:07] And I see those costs all the time. Being trained in what I'm trained in and seeing as like whole natural foods are the way to go. Those societies that live the longest are the ones that eat Mediterranean style diet, which is no, but there's no one diet that's perfect for everybody. Everybody's a little bit different. Um, but those basic fundamental principles of whole natural foods shop around the perimeter of the grocery store, not in the center aisles where everything comes in boxes. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

[00:15:35] So you got your meat and your fish, your eggs, your dairy products, your fruits and vegetables stick around those things. And people generally just eliminating a lot of the processed foods for one will make a big difference in someone's life. And then eat meals. Don't graze all day. Some, some guys are like, they, I have a patient just like getting him off the grazing. He's a real estate guy and getting him off, like grazing in the car and having this bag of chips. I know you're hungry. You're hungry because you're eating all the wrong foods.

[00:16:05] So stress is a major factor after the divorce. Can you explain how chronic stress affects men's health and how your biofield sync system addresses it? What is biofield sync? Yeah. So bio first, bio first, I want to show you what we talk about first. Let's talk about the stress part first, because that's big. And I know this one. It's like when you're under stress and it's mental or physical, emotional, it's going to impact your, what we call it, your circadian rhythm.

[00:16:35] So your sleep wake cycle will be impacted. Your cortisol levels, which are cortisol secreted by these little glands on top of your kidneys called your adrenal glands. And initially it'll secrete some extra cortisol and some adrenaline. You'll feel like to muster up the energy to deal with the threat, the perceived threat, whatever that is. And you can do that for a while. When we're in our twenties and maybe early thirties, we got some extra oomph. We can handle it. But over time, that'll eventually start going down.

[00:17:03] And when it goes down, then people feel fatigued and tired and their libido goes down. Guys, it's like, that's one of the biggest things of chronic stress is like libido can be certainly impacted. We don't want that to happen, right? Boom. And so the cortisol itself can also cause dysregulation of the metabolism. So pain, particularly around the belly can start to happen all from cortisol, from the stress hormone.

[00:17:30] So getting that under control is really important. So how do we do that? We talked about sleep, one exercise, another one walking time in nature, meditation. I'm a big fan of processing our thoughts and feelings of getting in tune with what we're thinking and feeling and learning how to move through that. Number one is just to become witness of, oh, I'm feeling something here. I don't even know what it is, but I'm feeling pressure. I'm feeling tension. I'm feeling tingling.

[00:18:00] And then start to notice what kind of thinking am I engaged in? Oh, I'm worried that my ex is going to want more or that, you know, battle over the kids or whatever it is. We're always feeling our thinking. And so if we can just understand that we're not really responding to what's going on outside of us, that it's internally generated by the quality of our thinking. It can make just understanding that can make a big difference and knowing that we're not responsible for our thinking, right?

[00:18:29] Our thinking is just showing up like a cloud, right? Based on habits of thinking. And once we see that, we can go, oh, if I'm always just feeling my thinking and now it looks like I'm feeling good because my football team was now in the playoffs, then we feel good. Or if it looks like, oh, now I suck because my favorite teams, I had the worst season ever. Just using those as an example. But it doesn't work that way. It's not an outside in, it's an inside out.

[00:18:57] And if we can begin to shift our understanding to see that we're really living in a world, an experience that's generated inside of us. Now, all of a sudden we have some agency. We can do something about it no matter the outside situation. I just want to stop there for a minute and see if you have any clarifying questions or. No, that sounds good. Yeah. Yeah. And I think early on, I studied something called the release technique or the Sedona method.

[00:19:24] And people online, it's like a very useful technology that deals with getting in touch with feelings and just letting them go. Basically, that's one process. But there's many others. And I probably study most of them and use different ones on different days. I'll be journaling and I'll write, oh, there's that feeling. And I just spontaneously let it go once it's one is up. So I'm constantly trying to be like a screen door for life.

[00:19:49] So as life's storms and winds come, we want it to just flow through us. We don't want to be like a catcher's mitt of every single hit that happens in our life. That's exhausting and it hurts. So the more we can be porous and let the experiences pass through us, the more peace we'll find, the more agency we'll have. And just a more beautiful life that we'll experience.

[00:20:15] So those are some of the things that I took away and that I support men around is how to. We all have this natural inherent capacity. It's just who we are. We've just forgotten. We've just forgotten that we're the blue sky and not the storm clouds that seem to be rumbling across our view. I hate to stop you here, but we got a late start and I got another podcast in 10 minutes. But anyway, we're going to close it up, but we're definitely going to come back because either I'm going to dump you down or you're going to get a new laptop.

[00:20:47] So we'll see what happens. How can the people out there find you on the Internet? Sure. Yeah. Probably the best place to go is my website. It's Michael Mendrabil, M-E-N-D-R-I-B-I-L-N-D like in Nancy, not M-D, but N like in Nancy, N-D.com, MichaelMendrabil.com. And if they just type in Mendrabil in Google, M-E-N-D-R-I-B-I-L, I should be the first one to pop up. There's not a whole lot of us. There you go. David, this has been awesome, man. Yeah.

[00:21:15] I'm sorry we have a short, man, but I got way more questions. So we're going to get together again in 2025. But I want to appreciate holding on to the line. I want to appreciate you taking time to hang out with us, with me, and go from there. And since we have some kindred spirits here back in the day. So everybody have a nice night. All right. Bye-bye.