How Mind Hygiene Changed Everything: Preview

In this episode, we explore profound loss, transformation, trauma recovery, and self-love techniques with Dr. Druva, a family medicine physician with over 27 years of experience. Discover practical tools like CBT, EMDR, and the power of creative expression to transform your mental well-being.

"Okay, that person did it, I can do it."

You can hear the full episode on Sunday, August 2, 2026    

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm walking in from the primary care area to the urgent care area. They're quite separate. The lights are bright, fuzzy. I got sober July 31st of 2018 and I'm 47. I'm gonna be 47 now. So whatever that minus is, I just don't remember the exact sometimes people are like, Well, were you 38 or were you 39? I was around then. And I walk into the medical director's office and he's sitting across from me, showing me a lot of compassion over the months that I was decompensating. And as he sits across from me, he says, Look, we're worried about you. Well, this time I was in full-blown self-hatred. I was in a cocaine-induced manic episode. I was seeing 37 stars an hour, drinking 37 drinks a day, trying to do cocaine as often as I could, and it just was not with it. I mean, the speech patterns were quick, the stories were all over the place, and I was gonna die, lose my career. I was in $300,000 gambling debt. I was a goner. Let's take that time where I'm in. Lights are bright, fuzzy. I can hear little voices in my head telling me that I'm dumb and stupid, and my hands are fidgeting, talking fast, and I'm in my medical director's office. Let's take some cognitive behavioral, dialectical behavioral and eye movement desensitization techniques into that. Cognitive behavioral therapy would say, okay, this is what's happening. A lot of the time people are like, well, let's just get on my phone. Nah, man, let's call my brother. I gotta call my friends, let's go have a drink. You're cognitively forgetting it. You're trying to block it out. Cognitive behavioral therapy in my mind is very simple. You're just accepting things, you're aware, and you're creating some mindful techniques, which dialectical behavioral therapy will do as well. Dialectical behavioral therapy is where you take this instance and you say, Okay, wait a second. I'm drinking, I'm drugging, but my medical director's helping me. Oh, I hate myself, but Vincent figured out a way to love himself. So that's a dialect. In my mind, and I don't mind the words positive and negative. It's just for me, certain things don't work and are good or bad. We won't view this as good or bad. This situation is just an experience. An EMDR is eye movement desensitization reprocessing therapy, where you take whatever you're doing. For example, if I am the EMDR therapist, which I'm not, my EMDR therapist was great, God bless her. And you take this instance, you're in the medical director's office, you're drinking drug, and everybody knows it. You just think about that. You just keep on processing it. I like that word better than reprocessing initially. You process it over and over again, and one day it'll vanish. Or what I like to call in all of this mind hygiene, you write it down, you accept your awareness, you're taking time to be compassionate to yourself because you're saying, look, I'm not dumb, stupid, I'm trying to understand it, which is another EMDR technique. So what you're doing here is essentially all three of these, which they flow so well, is you just accept it, you say, Okay, that person did it, I can do it. Let me alchemize these resentments, meaning let me turn it into purpose right now. Let's try to do that and then let's reprocess it, which could take several years. I know it doesn't sound exciting, but at least when you start it, you have the confidence that you can continue to do it. So that's my personal take on it.