Overcoming Self-Bullying to Embrace Holistic Health with Anna Marie Frank

Ashish Kothari: Hi, dear Anna Marie, it is so lovely to have you with us today.

Anna Marie Frank: Thank you. I'm very excited and honored to be here.

Ashish Kothari: So, my friend, I wanted to start, you and I had a chance to engage on your podcast, and that's when I really started to get to know your beautiful mission around Happy Whole You and the work that you're doing. Share with our listeners and me a little bit about your origin story. How did you actually get into this work and start to focus on holistic wellbeing?

Anna Marie Frank: Thank you. I honestly struggled with depression starting in high school. Back then though, I didn't know that it would be called depression. I had good grades, was an athlete, had both parents, and had a roof over my head. You could check all the boxes.

After graduating high school, I went on to university and continued to struggle with my mental health. I kept chasing the carrot. I thought, okay, once I graduate from college, then I'll get a job. I moved from Michigan all the way to California because I thought I'd go to California, reinvent myself, and then I'd be happy.

We do this thing where it's like, "I'll be happy when." I came to California in my early twenties. I went to a doctor because I was still not happy and struggling with my mental health. They put me on medications, which made me go on a further downward spiral.

Luckily, I had this little light inside of me that really shook me and said, “wake up.” When I hit my rock bottom, it was like, “you are the only person that can make yourself happy and choose happiness, and you need to do that.”

So then I stepped forth on a journey to find ways to increase my happiness and joy. I started to shift the way I thought and spoke about my life. I did a lot of little things over time that started to change my brain chemistry. I thought of it as rewiring my brain. I thought if we could rewire a computer, we could rewire our brains.

That set me forth on the journey. I started to discover holistic health modalities and different natural things that the earth gives us that can help improve our mood and bring us more happiness. But it really started with a mindset shift inside of me to choose happiness instead of thinking someone had to fix me and I had to seek it out somewhere else.

Ashish Kothari: So beautiful. That's why I wanted to have you because I think we all recognize, and you early enough recognized, that this "if-then-else" game is never-ending. Happiness is a choice. It requires us to fundamentally rewire because that is where we fall.

Some of us struggle with it more, others struggle with it less, but the reality is we all struggle. The struggle is an internal one because of how we are experiencing the world and the stories we're telling ourselves about ourselves and the world.

We'll get into that in the second half around your beautiful book called "Stop Bullying Yourself." But let's spend a little time on the first part, which is what you said: you started looking for different health modalities.

What I loved about getting to know you and seeing the services is the range of modalities you're curating and bringing in the service of individuals. Talk about how you think about holistic health and how you integrate these modalities to support and customize what an individual needs.

Anna Marie Frank: Thank you. So what was interesting through my research is I started to learn about how the body gives off what we call physical observations in natural health that can indicate certain things going on within the body.

For example, your tongue. If you have a line down the middle of your tongue, a light coating, or what we call scalloping on the sides, these can be indications of digestion disruption, maybe some candida or fungus. The scallops could mean needing liver support. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

If I have some digestion disruption, I learned that 90% of your serotonin is made in your gut. Interesting. For the body to even make serotonin, which is our mood-stabilizing hormone, we need to have the amino acid tryptophan and vitamin B6. If we don't have these raw materials, our body is challenged to produce these hormones.

I learned about how different foods such as pineapple, citrus food, turkey, and salmon can uplift serotonin levels in the body and lift your mood. Then I learned about massage therapy, acupuncture, putting my bare feet in the grass, and getting sunlight to hit my skin to produce vitamin D and more serotonin.

I also learned about light therapy. I started to open myself up because I used to think that to get better, you go to a doctor, take a pill, or get counseling. This isn't a one-size-fits-all. Sometimes going to a counselor and talking to someone is really what helps move the needle. But I learned very quickly that most people need more than just one modality to work on themselves.

So, after doing things with myself through herbs, mother nature, technology, and learning about medical-grade saunas, theta therapy, biocharger therapy, I started to create. Some of these things may sound foreign to some listeners, but there's technology out there that can hack your biology and start to shift things within you.

The ultimate hack is our thoughts and words. Our brain is the strongest pharmacy on planet earth. The moment we choose to speak of love or even say the word love, it feels very different in the body than saying the word hate. It changes how our body functions.

When we look at different modalities for healing, number one is how we think about and speak about our life. You get to choose your brain chemistry and can shift that at any point through a single thought alone. It only takes about 40 milliseconds to change and shift a thought.

On top of that, we have mother nature that we can spend time in. We also have herbs, vitamins, and nutrients that we get to put in the body to utilize those raw materials for our physical body. Then we have the technology and different things we can do at our wellness center here. There are so many wonderful places offering these services now.

Ashish Kothari: So I love that. Friends, if you're listening, there is so much wisdom in our ancient wisdom traditions. There's so much insight, and they still are alive in the East, from India, the science of Ayurveda is all about living in harmony and recognizing that for almost every illness, there is something in nature that can cure it.

With Ayurveda, for example, the heart of the diagnosis and the heart of the treatment is not the symptom but the underlying cause. When it comes to herbs, I love that when you go to an Ayurvedic doctor, they will actually take your pulse.

In fact, they'll take three pulses, three different types of pulses they train to sense what's going on. Is the liver imbalanced? Is there something going on with your stomach and digestion? They really examine the body, and it's a long visit.

Think about when we go to the doctor. They say, "Oh, have acidity? No problem. Here, let me prescribe you Pepto Bismol. If it's too much, let me give you a pill, which is even stronger medication."

We are treating symptoms versus going to the underlying root causes, which is what you highlighted, and there is so much power to it. It takes longer, but there is always a beautiful meld that we can create between East and West.

Anna Marie Frank: Oh yeah.

Ashish Kothari: What I also love about what you are bringing in is, oftentimes Ayurveda doctors only look at Ayurveda. Or if you have acupuncture or acupressure, they're only focused on that and specialize in it. If you go to a massage therapist, that's what they do. Maybe they'll do a little bit of stretching.

What I loved in your story was that you became a student to learn with an open mind as much of what was out there and then really started to curate that so you could give somebody what they need, starting with not just technology and food, but thoughts, which became the source of your book. I love that.

So talk to us a little bit about, if somebody comes to you, how do you go about diagnosing and figuring out what they need to heal themselves? What's going on here?

Anna Marie Frank: My process with everyone varies, but there are some staples that I use. I do use biofeedback when evaluating clients. I also use iridology, where I look at their eyes for different markers that can indicate various conditions within the body. I look at their tongue, fingernails, ears, and face.

I also listen to the words they're using and how they're speaking. Their voice can give a lot of indications of different things that could be going on. If they're in person, I use energy medicine techniques to test the body, different meridian points, and chakras. I also use kinesiology testing, where different points on the body are tested.

For example, you can see my little guy back here. The sodium marker, mineral markers, and these points on the body where we can test.

I'm just really looking to see if this person is deficient in anything or if their body needs more support. Are they telling me they're experiencing anxiousness on a day-to-day basis, which almost 20 percent of adults experience? When they stick their tongue out, is it quivering? That can be another sign of that nervous system response.

I use a lot of different ways to figure out what's going on with their foundations of health. Are there any potholes in their foundations of health, and how can we smooth those over the next 30, 60, 90 days?

That may look like using plant stem cells, which are very inexpensive therapies. When I did my master herbalist certification, I was surprised by how affordable these therapies are. Plant stem cells carry different vibrational frequencies that can impact the body emotionally too.

I look at different organ systems that may be acting out, usually tied to a different emotion the person is storing in their body. This could be an emotion that's their own or something inherited through lineage. I'm trying to figure out a broad scope of what this person may be experiencing.

We figure out the way they wound up being, what's going on physically and mentally, and then make a game plan. It may involve seeing another practitioner or things to do at home, like identifying food sensitivities and foods to limit or enhance.

I have a wonderful chart that I made. I'm a very visual learner. This chart indicates four major brain chemicals: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. On this sheet, I list the different foods, nutraceuticals, and actions that can help activate those brain chemicals.

For example, if you tap right here on your chest, people who get tired around two to three o'clock in the afternoon can benefit from tapping this K 27 Meridian. Think of King Kong beating his chest. It gives the body energy and gets the meridians flowing forward.

I teach them different ways to hack the body to get it to respond in a way that calms the nervous system and gets their body to be in homeostasis. These are ancient practices that have been around for centuries, but we're not taught this in the United States anymore. To find this information, you have to really dig.

There's a whole story around why that is in this country, but we don't need to get into that. The most important thing is to recognize that there is hope and other options, especially for those sensitive to pharmaceutical drugs. Our bodies don't recognize pharmaceutical drugs easily.

When it comes to happiness and mental health, the brain is the only organ doctors prescribe mind-altering medications to without a way to scan or test brain chemistry. It's a shot in the dark. I encourage people to ask questions and try to adjust things before going on medications. Medication should be the very last resort for shifting mental health.

Ashish Kothari: It's beautiful. When I was around 43 or 44, I was struggling with anxiety. Many people suggested seeing a doctor for a pill or talking to a therapist. I didn't do either. I decided to do my own research, which became the core part of the Hardwired for Happiness practices.

I studied neuroscience, psychology, and ancient wisdom traditions. Every drug has a side effect people don't talk about. If we numb ourselves, we also numb ourselves to love and other emotions. Everything has an opposite effect.

You mentioned in your chart that you have foods and actions that people can do. Can we dig into that a little bit? What's one action that someone can do for each of those four chemicals you mentioned?

Anna Marie Frank: So dopamine, we'll start with that one. That's our reward chemical and the body completing a task. Just the simple thing of listening to a good song. We can all shift our mood by turning on a song that lifts our mood.

For serotonin, sunlight and exercise. I mean, getting sunlight on our skin, not being covered up all the time. The sun is so healing for us.

Ashish Kothari: Five minutes or less, you can start to actually harvest the benefits of it.

Anna Marie Frank: Yes. So, it's really good. We use sauna therapy here. People will go in that sauna, sweat, and the moment they step out and it's nice and cool, they get that rush of serotonin and just feel good.

Endorphins, you know, this is exercising. You can actually create endorphins by pushing your hands together, rubbing your hands, smiling really big, and laughing. You will start to create endorphins and get excited, which is amazing.

Oxytocin, our love chemical, brings us together. This can be as simple as giving someone a hug for 20 seconds or longer, giving a kiss, holding someone's hand, or simply putting your hand on their shoulder and thinking positive thoughts. Looking at someone and smiling.

These are ways to hack our brain chemicals. You can always go back to shifting your thoughts.

Ashish Kothari: Yes.

Anna Marie Frank: Shifting those thoughts when you're laying in bed, not getting outside, and feeling down. I've been there where I don't want to get out of bed. It can be as simple as thinking positive thoughts, thinking of the future you want to create for yourself, or thinking of something you are grateful for.

Bringing yourself into gratitude. One thing that helps bring me to gratitude is going through my body and thinking of my eyes, which give me the gift to see my children, family, trees, and sunlight. My ears allow me to listen to music, and my mouth lets me taste wonderful chocolate.

Going through all your senses and appreciating what they do for you. Your legs walked you into your first day of kindergarten and down the aisle one day, or maybe they will someday. It's just getting into gratitude for how amazing our body is.

Many people struggle with appreciating and loving their body, but it's incredibly amazing and beautiful. You can lay in bed, go through those thoughts, and start to lift yourself up. It starts with the mind and is very powerful.

Ashish Kothari: It's beautiful. Another way to generate oxytocin is by giving yourself a hug or gently rubbing your arms, especially when you're beating yourself up. You might have messed up and feel terrible. This is something I learned from Dr. Kristen Neff. Experiencing it firsthand is amazing. You can feel the warmth of oxytocin by giving yourself a hug, even if you don't have another person.

Anna Marie Frank: I love that.

Ashish Kothari: We've talked about shifting thoughts. There are moments when we find ourselves really down or we can't notice and know that our thoughts, mind, emotions, and body are all interconnected into the experience we're having. We can always access any of those doors to shift out of an experience that might not be serving us or the world.

If you're lying in bed and feeling hopeless, you can move your body, listen to uplifting music, bring an image of a loved one to mind, think of things you're grateful for, or remind yourself of a win or the impact you've had. This can help shift out of a funk or mood.

It's okay to experience hardships. The important thing is not to stay in it. Before reaching for a pharmaceutical or substance like marijuana or alcohol, know that there are many ways to create the chemicals in your brain and shift your experience through actions from within.

Anna Marie Frank: I want to jump in and share that we have hardships on purpose. This really helped me shift my way of thinking and viewing the world. Once I started to get in gratitude for all the good, the bad, and the ugly that happened in my life, I realized these hardships were wonderful lessons.

They allowed me to extract something of value and a way of being that would enhance the way I showed up in the world. There's no way I could be doing what I'm doing now if I hadn't gone through a lot of those hardships.

Now, when I have hardships, I think, "Okay, God. Okay, universe. I see what you're doing now." It doesn't always feel great, but I know there's something for me to learn. I get curious about why things are happening in my life versus blaming others.

I used to blame my boss, the government, my parents, or the economy. Now, I choose how to respond or react. It's important to remember everyone has hardships. It's not a competition. Every single human I've met has had an easy life.

Ashish Kothari: The point you're making is that we can fall into the victim mindset, or we can choose to adopt an agency mindset. We can ask, "What can I learn from this?" Katie Byron said, "Life doesn't happen to us. Life happens for us." It's for us to find meaning, create meaning from our experiences, extract the learning, and keep moving forward.

We can wallow, but one mindset makes us more resourced to take action. Let's dive into that. We've talked about holistic health and different modalities. We quickly jump to symptoms through Western medicine rather than the underlying cause. There are many alternate ways.

By the way, friends, a beautiful documentary called "Heal" explores real-life transformative alternate medicine and modalities.

You talked about nutraceuticals and how we can create brain chemicals through actions we take. I want to shift to the biggest shift that makes us sick: our own thoughts and beliefs.

Let's dig into that, especially insights from your book, "Stop Bullying Yourself." Many people bully themselves all day long. Talk to us about what inspired you to write the book and some key highlights from it.

Anna Marie Frank: Honestly, I started writing the book for my children. I had a son and then a daughter. I had postpartum depression really bad with my son and worked through some holistic things.

When I got pregnant with my daughter, I decided I was not going to go through that again. After having my daughter, I went on a major journey to start shifting my mindset and became happy. I woke up excited day in and day out to live my life, not just waiting for vacations or special events to feel happy.

As I worked through different things, I wasn't sure if the depressive state I experienced was something I was born with or caused by trauma. What I did know was that I was able to work through it, and I wanted to document that for my children.

If they ever experienced what I went through, I wanted them to have a resource with a familiar voice saying, "Not only can you do it, but here are some specific things that worked for me." It started as a Google document and my sister, a counselor, told me I had to make it into a book. It snowballed from there into a beautiful personal growth book, offering different mindset shifts.

Shifting our perspective can help start rewiring and firing new neurotransmitters, getting us out of cemented ways of thinking. Our brain has plasticity, so we can start to mold a new brain. This begins by asking ourselves questions.

It's great to have a coach or someone who can ask you these questions to help shift your perspective. Some questions include, "What if nothing was wrong with me?" and "Who am I without all these problems and challenges?" We ask these questions out of curiosity, not judgment or blame.

When I shifted the questions I was asking myself, I started to shift my thoughts and developed a more collaborative mindset over a competitive one. As a D1 athlete and the fourth of five children, I thought to find love and happiness, I had to be the best and someone else had to lose.

Shifting to a collaborative mindset, I found win-win relationships and focused on the compound effect of small positive actions. In the book, I discuss building on good habits, shifting our mindset, and getting out of funks when feeling depressed. It's a book that anyone can turn to any page and get something out of it.

Ashish Kothari: What would be your top three pieces of advice from the book on ways to recognize when we're bullying ourselves and how to shift away from that?

Anna Marie Frank: The first thing is not to believe every thought you have. It's a very powerful one.

There's a certain push in my way of thinking that has allowed me to have the success I've had. However, when that push goes overboard, where no matter what you do, it's not good enough, no matter how many accolades you get, it's not good enough, you still feel like you're not doing enough and you're not good enough, that's when we step over to the bullying side.

Yes, there's a push to say, "Hey, you could do better. You got this. Keep trying. Keep pushing." But when it leads to reflecting on all the things where you think you're coming up short, that's a problem.

None of us are coming up short. We are exactly where we are supposed to be. Our lives couldn't have happened any other way than how they've happened thus far, and we are truly in the moment we need to be in.

So, the first piece of advice is to not believe all the thoughts and recognize when it pushes you over. When you have a wonderful success but don't celebrate it, that's a warning.

The second piece is that we have to move our body and be outside. We are inside 80 to 90 percent of the time now, whereas we used to be outside and moving 80 to 90 percent of the time. Our body is meant to be outside and to move.

I used to run as punishment, thinking, "I ate this, so I need to exercise to burn these calories." Instead, we should view being outside and moving our body in a loving, kind way. Think, "Wow, I get to do this. This is great," instead of, "I have to walk up this hill because I ate ice cream last night." Movement should be a gift, not a punishment.

The third piece of advice is about food and how we nourish our body. We create neuro associations with things. Many people associate eating green leafy vegetables with being on a diet. Instead, adding fruits and vegetables to any meal should be seen as healing and nourishing the body.

It's like gasoline for a car; we need it to function properly and more efficiently. Shifting our mindset around food to eating foods that are generous to our overall wellbeing is really important.

Ashish Kothari: I loved all those three provocations for our listeners. Number one, you're more than your thoughts. Don't believe your thoughts. Especially when most of our thoughts are negative due to the brain's negativity bias.

Observe them at a distance and choose which ones to believe. Mo Gawdat, who has done a lot of work in this area, named his inner voice and asks, "Is what the inner voice is telling me helpful or true? If it is not helpful and not true, don't listen to it."

I love your provocation on movement and being outside, treating it as a gift rather than a punishment. And the one on food is especially powerful. We are what we eat. Food has such power over our emotions, body, and thoughts.

Learning more about what we eat and getting professional help to decide the best way to eat, incorporating more fruits and vegetables into our diets, are powerful steps.

This has been such a joy, Anna Marie. I'm excited about the collaborations we will create to help people build healthier habits and heal themselves. Thank you.

Anna Marie Frank: Yes. Thank you.

Ashish Kothari: Such a joy. Take care.