Surrendering to Change: Cedric Bertelli's Guide to Emotional Freedom

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve. A show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today's guest is someone who has taken their personal pain and personal loss and used it to help others all around the world transform their inner lives. Cedric Patelli grew up in a small village and he eventually started into the high performance world of luxury hospitality where success looked strong on the outside, but in the inside, he was struggling after the tragic suicide of his mother. It led him down a deeply emotional path where he started to explore how emotional patterns affected our lives. Cedric is the co-founder of Emotional Resolution and the founder of the Emotional Health Institute. So we're going to be talking to him about how he transformed his pain into helping others and everything that he's up to and gonna be up to. So Cedric, thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Thank you, Curtis. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Well, I think you did a very good job already.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

So let's see what I can add. Um, yeah, I came from a very small village in the south of France. Um modest family, but we did live in the country, so we, you know, we didn't miss anything. I didn't do so good in school. So after the first year of high school, I decided to learn a job and went to culinary school because in France you can learn a job and study in the same time. Um became a chef, went to uh hospitality business school, and had an opportunity to uh start with the Ritz Carlton Company. And I started as a chef and then went uh into the restaurant world and became a restaurateur, director of restaurants. Um, as you said, uh from outside everything was doing well, but inside it was uh, I would say like an inner storm always. I've been struggling with uh anxiety, uh low-grade depression, self-directed anger. And um during all this time working in hospitality business, I was trying to find ways to feel better. Some of them were healthy, such as psychotherapy or different workshops, some were less healthy, such as alcohol, uh, for example, but I always you know was trying to find a way to regulate the way it felt inside. And um more or less successfully. Uh, I became very interested in emotion as I had more responsibility with the company, as you can clearly see when you have a team with who you work, that you don't manage people, you manage their emotions. You have to take the time to hear where they're coming from, hear what's going on in their life a little bit, hear what's in what milieu environment they thrive, what kind of activities they like doing, so they're happy to come to work every day and to be with co-workers. And uh and so so you see that you you don't manage people, you just manage their emotions. Emotions have been something that always interested me, mostly as I said, because I was struggling with mine. Uh, in 2008, 2009, the economy went down, and the way we're doing business changed drastically and uh wasn't congruent with my my belief, and uh it wasn't bringing me joy anymore. So I decided to quit my job and went back to France to study uh for two years, somatic therapy, basically approaching emotions via sensations. I learned a bunch and came back to the US, kept on studying, researching, and uh slowly opening my practice and via you know, meeting people, researching, working, I met other uh folks with who we created the emotional health institute, the main one being Dr. Jacques Fumex, who is a gastroenterologist from France. So 2019, um, we were happy with the methodology we created called Emotional Resolution or MRES that is purely based on how the brain constructs emotion, and from this understanding, how the brain can deconstruct emotions that are not congruent with our current reality. And we started the adventure of the Emotional Health Institute, which is now in the USA, in France, and in Japan. And what we do now is, of course, we have personal practices where I receive people and you know and help them support them with their emotional difficulties. But my main job is to communicate and teach on emotional resolution, MRES. So it is a resource for people to know that they don't have to suffer from the same emotions or behaviors for a lifelong. Um we don't have to control things, things can resolve, actually.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Well, I know you grew up in a small rule setting and then you transferred to the high performance world of luxury hospitality. So how did those talk about how those two environments shaped who you became?

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Yeah, it's um it's you know, uh my my village was extremely small with 80 people. Um we were in the forest, my father was a lumberjack, my grandfather was on lumberjack, also working in vineyard, spent my first, I would say, 12 years, 11 years until middle school, um in the forest, you know, working, working with my dad in the forest, spending a lot of time in nature. And um, my grandfather was a big influence on me. I recognized it later, but uh I can say now there definitely was a big influence on me. He passed away a couple of years ago, it was 102. And as I as I learn, 101, sorry, as I learned more about emotions through my own experience and also via my job working with veterans and and other people dealing with PTSD, for example, uh I recognize um that him and people of his generation who lived through World War II. My uh my grandfather was a resistant in World War II, their level of resilience was very different from the level of resilience we see with people coming back from war here today. Not that they were more resilient and people from today are less resilient, but with time I could see that the way that they lived life after they came back from war was very different from today. After war, they worked together, men with a similar experience in nature, with a common goal, which was to bring their family up and create something for their family. Um, so anyway, that's sorry, I I uh I went through uh a different way here. I didn't really answer your question. So let me answer your question. Um it was it was a a culture shock to move from a tiny little village to the world of luxury. And um in a way, I lived the American dream, you know. I I came I came to the US with nothing, just a craft, something that I knew how to do. And I had like an opportunity, an incredible opportunity to come from absolutely nothing and then to be uh projected into the world of luxury. And um it was really a chance, right? Because I I understood how some people sometimes save money for years just to spend one night at the Reds. Uh and and I work for those people. I I worked for those people. It was um so I don't know if I'm answering your question very much, but it's where I came from informed my entire life, and it made me appreciate the simplicity of reality in a way.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Okay, well, I know that on the outside you looked strong and successful because of your career, but on the inside you were struggling. So talk about what that struggle was like on a day-to-day basis.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

Yeah, well, and I mean, I guess I struggled from the same thing from the time I was a little kid to I would say my late 20s, which is extreme, a lot of anxiety, like everything was anxiety-provoking for me. Um, like public speaking, uh leading a meeting, um, very, very anxious. And again, I became really good at hiding it. Everybody in my in my surroundings thought that I was like a pretty relaxed, funny um guy when you know, behind the humor was a lot of stress. Basically, from outside, it looks all cool and and and good, and inside it was a constant storm. And from the moment I woke up until I went to bed, and um, you know, sometimes when you work in hospitality business, you finish work at 2 a.m. And at 2 a.m. you're still I was still so anxious, high, so to speak, in stress, that I needed to self-medicate with alcohol to come down and be able to sleep. And that's um that's something that happened every day for for several years, and um something that um you know I guess it's common in the business, but it's not it's not it's not the norm, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Well, you experienced a deeply personal loss with your mother's suicide. So talk about how that loss shaped your perspective on life and emotion.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Yes, it was that was obviously a life-changing experience. Um, when my mom passed away, I was already doing a lot of um a lot of work with sensations and emotions. So what I what I decided to do is after she passed, you know, it's grief is a is an interesting, is an interesting thing. I don't think grief is something that can be avoided or should be avoided. Um but the grief is grief is just missing the person that was there, um, missing the outlet that our love was directed toward. When she passed away, I realized that a lot of the emotions I was I was feeling had nothing to do with her. It was a lot of anger, a lot of guilt, shame, resentment uh toward different people. And I quickly realized that if I let myself eaten by those parasites emotions, I probably will never be able to grieve my mother for who she was. You see, I uh I had no idea that my mother was struggling. My mother always looked and behaved as a very strong woman. I had no idea what was going on inside of her. I still don't know uh exactly. I can make up theories, but I really don't know. So uh what I did is every time I felt an emotion that was not directly related to the love I felt toward my mother, I applied some of my own medicine, which is I did my emotional resolution, which is I felt the emotion I felt through the sensations and let them change, let them shape. And little by little, all those emotions that used to take a lot of space in my mind, in my heart, well, faded away, and I was able to actually grieve, which is means deeply my mother, and this experience transformed into uh, you know, how can I say that? Now my mother is still present, but not in a in a physical form, so to speak. She's always informing my life in some way, which is very different from how my father, for example, or other people from my family are who grieved my mother in a way they never grieved her. Uh, they they're still taken even more than 10 years after by all those emotions um that uh that hide, so to speak, the the purity of grief. So that for me was was very important, especially working with people around grief. I uh make sure to tell them that grief is not something that we resolve. People that grieve for years and years and years, what it means is that they never had an opportunity to grieve because most of the time they're too busy dealing with their own fears.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Or talk about the moment that you realized that you couldn't just push through, but you had to face the struggle that was going on inside.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

You know, uh yeah, I think a lot of us are pushing through, right? We've been we've been taught to push through since very early on. We've been taught to control how we feel or control how we how we behave from very early on to regulate how we feel. Um at some point it was clear for me that if I was continuing like this, I would end up being a mess. Um, I mean, I would have continued drinking, um, I would have uh continue being eaten from inside by stress and anxiety. And while while I was living with this behavior, I kept on thinking about my grandfather, right? Um I never lived anything traumatic like he did. I never fought a war, I never was hungry like he was, and still, how can him and other men from this generation become resilient? How can I could they um you know be like uh my grandfather was a bit like a Buddhist monk, so to speak? You know, he was he was a stand-up guy, and I was always struggling with this story. So, like how my life is far from being miserable. Why is it that I'm being trapped in in this jail of fear? And um, so it it was it was clear that I could not control anymore the way that I felt. So if I cannot control, I have to surrender. And to surrender, I really have to feel all those stuff that are haunting me, you know, all those ghosts that we feel all day long, those sensations, those tensions. So, in a way, I didn't have a choice anymore. I didn't want to live the life the way that I was living it, because it was not a lot of joy, it was a lot of control, and um yeah, it was it was uh obvious that I needed to surrender and approach all this stuff that I was trying to mask in order to become free of them.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Well, you call developed emotional resolution. So, can you explain what that is in a simple way and how it differs from traditional emotional health?

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Yes, Curtis. Um, emotional resolution does just that resolving debilitating emotional patterns, meaning emotion that keeps on coming back. Um, people in general think that emotion can be controlled but not resolved, but that's not true. Um, we know today how an emotion is built by the brain. Um, a few things we need to keep in mind is number one, the brain constantly predicts. That's what we know about the brain for sure. The brain constantly predicts based on past situation. The brain predicts the present and predicts the future, even if it sounds a little strange to say that the brain predicts the present. We can see that uh with food, for example, when we have, let's say, the first brand new apple of our life, those green tart apple, we take a bite of this apple and we have an experience, the crunchiness, the juiciness, the acidity. And after this one time, every time we grab an apple, that kind of apple, and we're about to bite it, well, the brain is already predicting what experience we are about to have. So it's it's an example of prediction, but we predict constantly. That's the first thing we have to keep in mind when it comes to emotional resolution. Number two, what you and me and and the audience is aware consciously right now is about 2,000 bits of information per second and process at a bit of 150 uh miles per hour. That's conscious. In the subconscious, we are we have the ability to gather about 400 billion bits of information per second and to process it at a speed of about 150,000 miles per hour. While the prefrontal cortex is filtering a lot of the information so that we can live in this society. Now, something else we need to know about emotional functioning is we understand what is at the origin of any of our difficult emotional patterns, is what is at the origin is an instant of trauma. It seems that in order for us to feel debilitating emotional patterns, at the origin is always an instant of trauma. Now, what is a trauma? A trauma is an instant that holds too much stress, physical or emotional, for us to take on at the moment when we live it. That's it. Um and to be precise, what creates the pattern is not the traumatic event per se, it is the moments plural of dissociations happening during the traumatic events. Every time we dissociate, which is a normal process that is happening so we don't suffer too much during the trauma. Every time we dissociate, the prefrontal cortex is inhibited, shut down in a way. And the subconscious is taking over. When the subconscious is taking over, you can imagine a huge whirlpool open in our in uh inside of ourselves and outside of ourselves. A whirlpool that gathers tons of information at a very high definition, extremely fast. So, in all instant of dissociation happening during a traumatic event, your brain is going to record what you see, what you smell, uh, the colors, the texture, etc., extremely fast in a nonlinear, non logical way. It's also going to record what you feel in your body, the tensions, the sensations at the same time. Later on, when your body or your brain is exposed to one or several elements that were present during an instead of dissociation, our brain is going to instantly predict what physical sensations we're about to feel in our body based on what was felt in the event that is linked to the current situation. Those physical sensations are generated by the body. It is called interoception. Those physical sensations is what let us know that we feel an emotion. We know that we feel an emotion because we feel physical sensations that we conceptualize based on the context. So, how emotional resolution works is that it's from the understanding that those sensations that we put that are the base of anger, anxiety, fear are nothing else but outdated prediction from the brain. We can resolve emotional difficulties by letting the prediction play out until the end without interfering with it. So, in a nutshell, it is what MRES, emotional resolution does. It is to re trigger safely an emotion that someone doesn't want to feel anymore because it doesn't serve them anymore. When the emotion is generated through the sensations, we're going to invite the client, for example, to feel the physical sensations as they change in the body in a safe place without interfering with them. No breath, no self-talk, no blame, nothing. Just feel. Feel the sensations as they're changing. They're going to change for about three seconds to 90 seconds. At the end of the prediction, that means when the sensations are done moving and abate, the brain is anticipating to be hit by some kind of danger, as it happened years ago during a specific dissociative moment. At the end of the prediction, during a session, nothing happens. The person is safe and sound. From that very second, from that very instant, the brain is integrating the stimulus that used to trigger this response, this reaction, as a non-event. Whatever triggered you nowadays, before that, will not be a trigger ever again. Once an emotion is resolved, it is resolved.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Well, a lot of people feel stuck in patterns that they can't break. So why do you feel like those patterns are so hard to change?

SPEAKER_02 22:55

It's a great question. Um it's a loaded question. Human beings are complex beings, and um often we link, we bridge our pattern to some events that happen in our life. Our childhood, a relationship, you name it. And often we feel a sense of loyalty toward. What we see is at the root of our pattern. It's a bit as if if we resolve the pattern, we are disloyal to what created it, to the pain we felt at the origin of the pattern. It is one of the reasons. The other reason, another reason might be that we take this pattern as part of our personality. And we don't even question it. We have been feeling a certain way for so long that it's not even an option to think that we can resolve it. That's two reasons why we stay stuck with our pattern. And also we've been told that we can control our emotion, we can regulate our emotion. Most people out there think that an emotion cannot be resolved. We have to live with it. It's a belief. It's a belief. Big part of my job is to demystify emotions, to vulgarize what emotional difficulties are so that people realize that they don't have to carry stuff for a lifelong.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

What talk about the most common misconception people have about dealing with their emotions?

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Well, they in a way, they you know, it go back to goes back to a little bit what I just said. People think that we need to teach our young, our children, to control their emotions. Very early on, I got a five-year-old, and it's cool, they're already teaching her how to control her emotion, how to breathe a certain way, how to um self-talk a certain way. In a way, we have to understand, and every time we try to regulate an emotional difficulty, instead of letting the prediction play out, every time we try to regulate it, we maintain a pattern. And the pattern can keep on repeating for a lifetime. The thing is, from a pattern will come up other emotions because as human beings, we build emotions upon emotions. So um it's it's really changing the paradigm or view of people on the emotion and just uh uh getting them to understand that we can live life, dense, so to speak, strong of all our experiences without being overwhelmed by them.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Can you share an example or a story of someone that experienced a transformation using your method?

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Yes, there's there's plenty. Um, I could tell you about people who have been dealing with um social anxiety, you're not able to speak, not able to um well struggling with going on dates or meeting someone, and it's only fear this can be resolved. It can be people feeling anxious on a daily basis to go to work, and this anxiety is isolating them from the rest of their team that that can be definitely resolved. It can be uh um people who carry a lot of anger and realize they carry a lot of anger and cannot control the anger even toward their children. They create a lot of tension at home, and we can resolve this anger, so there is no more, so there's way less tension at home. Uh, I mean it's infinite in the sense that any emotional difficulty that we recognize is not serving us, is toxifying our life or our relationships, can be resolved.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Well, for someone listening right now that might feel overwhelmed or stuck, what's the first step you would advise them to take towards real emotional change?

SPEAKER_02 27:09

So um, depending on what they're looking for, um uh it might be it might be it might be a good idea to reach out to one of our practitioners and do one session with them so they can they can feel supported in in the process and experience that something can be resolved. Um, somebody who is listening to to the show and maybe you know want to try something by themselves, I can I can tell them how they can try already by themselves to resolve an emotional difficulty. There's a few things to know. Number one, the best way to resolve an emotional difficulty that you feel that you don't want to feel anymore, is when you feel the emotion to recognize it right away, to realize that you're in a funk. Not trying to be courageous, not trying to understand why, not to try to not you realize that you feel an emotion as soon as you can. As you realize it, you're gonna close your eyes. Closing the eyes is not to meditate, is not to cut what's around you. Closing the eyes is important because it's going to show you if your body feels safe. If your body doesn't feel safe, you're gonna want to pick and to keep your eyes open. For this to work, your body needs to feel safe. So you feel an emotion right away, as soon as you can, you close your eyes and make sure you can close your eyes and be comfortable with that. Then you're gonna move your attention to the physical sensation that you're feeling. The physical sensations, not the story, not uh the theory. No, no, no. What sensation lets you know that you're feeling in a funk right now? You're gonna have to feel two to three sensations at once. So not scanning, but feeling two to three sensations. When you do that, you won't be in emotional reaction anymore. You will be in touch with your emotion, and chances are that's something that never happened to people in the audience because most of the time when we feel an emotion, we act out of it or we try to shut it down. Here you're just gonna take the time to feel physically what's happening. No story, no history, feel what's going on in your flesh. Then becomes the difficult part, which is that you have to do nothing. You gotta keep on feeling, keep your the intensity of your attention strong, keep your attention active toward the flesh. You see that the physical sensations are going to start changing and they might become a little uncomfortable or not. What you gotta do is to just feel. Don't try to relax, no breath, you just feel. You would have to feel those physical sensations changing in the body for between two and 90 seconds, as I said earlier. Again, not trying to control, not trying to calm yourself down, nothing. You just feel. At the end of the transformation, you will feel calm. You will not cry, you will not jump for joy, you will just feel calm. Then open your eyes. And if you know what triggered you, think exactly about what just triggered you to see how you feel in your body. You will notice that nothing is happening in your body. Where you used to have tension and sensations, it will be nothing, you will just feel calm. So that's the first experience people who can listen to us, who are listening to us, can try.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

We uh we just finished um a clinical study with a large um university in the US. Um, so that's we're looking forward to have this result published as a result, are um are very good for MRES, showing how MRES reduce and resolve anxieties from a community which is very, very uh exposed to stress and anxiety and fear. So, what's coming next is for us to do more clinical studies. Our people need to see, of course, the proof of the work. Um, so in the next month, uh our job is going to be to collect more funds in order to do more clinical studies, um, doing more uh speaking engagement as well, so people know that we what we do, how we do it, and and we exist and keep on working, keep on teaching um people to do this work with their clients and their patients, and also trying to work with some NGOs um in order for people to really need this work to benefit from it.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Well, so people can keep up with everything that you're up to, they'll actually contact info. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

My contact info is gonna be the best is good to go to our website, which is emotionalhealthinstitute.org. People can also go to MRES E M as mother or as uh Robertes.com.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Close us out with some final thoughts, maybe if there was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on. Any final thoughts you have for the listeners?

SPEAKER_02 32:04

No, I think the questions were right on. Um just it's not because we've been feeling away a certain way for a long time. It doesn't mean that we cannot resolve it. The brain is or the body is not meant to hold on to trauma or to stress or to fear, it can be resolved. So try it, experience it so you can you you can see that life can be different. You don't have to control and and suffer. I often tell my clients we keep on dying from events we survived a long time ago, and that is not necessary.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

All right, ladies and gentlemen, emotional health institute.org. If Cedric can help you in any kind of way, please contact him and let him know what you need. Follow rate review, share this episode to as many people as possible. If you haven't done so, please go sign up for the Living the Dream newsletter at www.curveball337.com. Leave us a review, any kind of suggestions or feedback you have for the show, you can leave it right there and share the website and the show to everybody you know. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Cedric, thank you for all that you do, and thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_02 33:26

Thank you, gorgeous. Thank you for having us and giving us a voice.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.