Are We Conditioned To Fail? (w/ Stephanie Ike, Amber Riley & Dr. Caroline Leaf)

[Music] welcome to the samer on this episode of the same room i'm going to be joined by the amazing dr caroline leaf neuroscientist and best-selling author as well as the beautiful actress amber riley best known for her recurring role on glee and most recently tyler perry's nobody's full our conversation is going to be centered on brainwashed are we conditioned to fail if that sparks an interest in you you don't want to miss this stay tuned it's so amazing to be in the same room with a neuroscientist and an incredible actress to talk about our life's journeys and the things that we have learned that has conditioned us almost to fail and when i speak about failure i'm talking about the limitations that we often place on our mind or our potential um amber you are no stranger to dr lee's teachings what is it about her that inspires you or has impacted your life um i was going through a time in my life so i've dealt with anxiety my whole entire life didn't know what it was that i was dealing with until i got a little bit older went through you know the talking to doctors went through medications still not really getting better just maintaining and it wasn't until i did i did dream girls in the uk a couple years ago and it was just a high pressure situation and my anxiety had gotten so bad to the point where it was like physically making me sick and i remember just being on youtube i don't know how i found it but i actually saw um saw dr caroline on priscilla shire's youtube channel and they were just giving that giving this amazing interview she was just talking about the brain in our thought life and um it made me kind of go down the rabbit hole get on youtube and i started watching her lectures and then funny enough my mom had already told me about her but in true fashion i did not listen to my mom i found it on my own and i started reading her books and it just it literally just transformed my life and i it it gave me my power back she gave me my power back that's amazing wow this is a moment right here and even you're saying that that she transformed your life and she gave you your power back dr leaf you normally talk about that we are being created in the image of god that we were created perfect and that's almost what you're referring to like you came back to that the the original nature of who you are um how do you define what you mean by perfection okay that's a good good word and a lot of people have actually challenged me using that concept because you know how we throw around the concept of i'm not perfect you know it's okay you're not perfect and yeah and i always say actually you are because your physical design and that's why i love science so much because science really helps us understand these very complex concepts about life in a very practical way even though science is complicated so perfection really if you look at the human body there isn't anything in the brain or the body that is designed for anything but good thinking good feeling and good choosing so when we do think make choices or to get toxic in our thinking our body starts to suffer because our mind and our brain and body are separate and the mind has to use the brain the mind works through the brain so the mind is this non-physical thing that's working through the brain and the body and if we don't use our mind in the way that our body's designed to handle it it's a bit like taking a computer and you know throwing it on the floor and then wondering why the computer doesn't work anymore so the hard way of your brain and your body are designed for the career kind of thinking so when we use the the concept of being made in god's image and you know we all say that all the time but what does it really mean we're looking at love essentially god is love and if you look at what love is science has a lot to say funnily enough about love and that basically our physical body is wired to generate love energy yeah they measured and they do all those fancy science to show that we actually generating waves and and the way that as we are alive all the uh where our heart beats and the way the blood flows through our body and the energy that we generate it's naturally designed for for love and that's what this perfection means so the physicals in that designed and wide for what we also call an optimism bias so that's our natural inclination and then our mind which is separate from our brain is the energy of thinking feeling and choosing so the easiest thing is to think of the mind as thinking feeling and choosing okay and that works through the brain and deposits the memory inside the brain so that physical brain there's a brain over there yeah that brain isn't producing your mind your mind's working through it and that's designed to handle good mind action and so that's when you you talk about just the difference between the mind and the brain and i think that we have confused that for such a long time that when we refer to the mind you know even when we point at the mind it's like we're like you're trying to like point at the brain but you in your teaching you talk about how the mind is actually what controls the brain exactly the brain the brain just responds so the brain just does what you tell her to do so what's you telling it to do it's your ability to think it's your ability to feel your ability to choose yeah and that is designed for this optimism wired for love nature because if you think of it we've got god's love design which is this ability to think feel and choose correctly but the key is choose so choice is our is our issue you know we're responding we're reacting we're making choices in response to daily life and a true love design allows for freedom of choice and that's where things can fall out the bus so what we can do is what we do do is we respond all of us there's no humans exempt from this we all make wrong choices we all think feel and choose those three go together and when we think feel when we think we feel when we think and feel we choose and sometimes we make wrong choices we respond in a toxic way and then we keep responding in that way and we set up habits and those habits then are moving through our brain and you explained this perfectly when you said that you got to the point where you felt physically ill because your brain and body can't handle that anxiety because we don't have wiring for anxiety because we're not created no for that no yeah we're not created for that so we don't have like little special wiring or little areas of the brain that handle anxiety what we have is a brain that's expecting a mind boosh energy for want of a simple explanation that is aligned with this thing of making good choices and so on but life happens and we make wrong choices and we're going to make mistakes we're going to all know that but also that's the one side where we voluntarily do that the other side is that we experience trauma yeah we have events and things that happen to us that and generally if there is an anxiety and i'm sure you experienced this and we've all you know when you work through it with with the doctors and things there's always a reason why there's always a foundation does this connect you to it and it's interesting because even as you talk about this um the ability because if when we think about choice you know no one is sitting down wanting to make the wrong choice and so um exactly yeah so no one is like why do we do it why do we do it exactly and i think about even the society that we are in you know what do you just about thinking about that perfect nature because i want to get back to what you said in regards to reaction and trauma but even in that mindset of the perfect nature of a person how would you respond to when you look at society today um how what what about society reveals where we are mentally when it comes to mental health oh my gosh there's a lot to be said but i mean it's something that i often often pray about in this generation because you know there's been a lot of people coming out and the good what i'll say is there's a good thing that there is such shine on on mental health now um that people are actually talking about it and they're taking the the stigma out of it i think that that's amazing uh where it gets difficult is a lot of people don't know what to do after that's right they don't know and and you know thank god i have amazing parents and i have a really great foundation and i have um um a a great village around around me that i can go and i can talk to so my journey has been difficult but i've had an outlet everyone doesn't have that yeah you know um so it's it's just no i love what you said that they don't know what to do after because i do believe that this this increase in the awareness of mental health has actually it's almost counterproductive in a way because you have more people that are finding their identities in whether it's depression or adhd or bipolar disorder because i remember not too long ago i was speaking on depression a little bit and i was not i was it was just like maybe a few sentences and people got so um defensive that it is my depression and this is the reason that i'm depressed and so even though there is an awareness it's almost like the awareness is great because it's it's beautiful to have language to explain you know to express what you're going through but and not suppress it but at the same time it's that this awareness is making people find an identity in what they refer to as mental illness and i feel like oh i believe rather that the missing link is what you teach on and when you teach on the fact that the brain can renew itself the brain can heal itself and i don't think that people are having that conversation and that's why i'm so excited about this because when you talk about the brain healing itself you're speaking at a broad spectrum you're speaking to the person who has a bipolar disorder the person who is clinically you know depressed the person who says they have a chemical imbalance i want you to speak on that okay so both of you said very powerful and very relevant information and things and very good con brilliant concepts what we need to do is talk about a new narrative completely yeah so when we talk about people owning bipolar and talking about my anxiety disorder my bipolar that's the language that has been given in terms of diagnosis people have been given this thing so what's happened now is we have mental health that has been categorized as an illness that affects certain people that's completely wrong it's not scientific it's not spiritual and it's not accurate or true and yes it's helpful and it's not helpful so let me start by saying this first of all i totally and utterly sympathize and identify with what it means to feel anxious depressed listen i'm a mom i have four kids i've been through stuff we've all been through stuff i've worked with thousands of people in my practice i have total and utter sympathy for the relevance and the importance of the fact that life is tough that their struggles that depression all these things these are real very very real issues but they're not illnesses they're not disorders they are simply the struggles of life it's the human condition so we have to completely look at this from a different angle and realize that there was nothing wrong with you there was nothing wrong with x person or whatever there's nothing you don't have bipolar doesn't even exist what we have is a name that is actually describing a symptom that is describing an underlying issue so anxiety bipolar bipolar depression schizophrenia schizoaffective disorder all these names are simply descriptions of symptoms of something that's going on and what is going on that's that could be either one of two categories trauma related to toxic habits that we haven't known how to control so we've got to stop talking about mental illness and the reason we talk about mental illness and saying it's on the rise it's not mental illness that's on the rise it's the mismanagement of mental illness that's created a whole new thing which then goes to your point that people don't know what to do after so you get a diagnosis you get a label which is supposed to destigmatize and give you description but what it's done is it's taken something that's psychological and lumped it into something that's medical and it's not medical it's life it's the condition of life there isn't a human who's exempt from mental ill health every time we experience trauma which every single one of us will if you're not going through something now guaranteed in the next few years you will if someone in your member of your family is you you are someone else in your family isn't guaranteed in the next five years someone in your family is going to go through something major this is not something new this is something old and this is something that applies to every human so it's not a mental illness per se we've got to stop talking about that we've got to say hey all of us changing the village we are all change the narrative that we are all going through things why we react in different ways that's our uniqueness that's all and the reason why it throws us and puts us into states where we feel caught up is because we've stepped out of alignment with our natural nature which is that optimism bias and that's okay if you've failed and if you've made the mistake if you've thought the wrong thoughts if you've got the toxic thoughts you can't let guilt and condemnation keep you stuck and that's what's happening people feel guilty and condemned i'm a christian i shouldn't be anxious i've got the scriptures i shouldn't listen to these tremendous guilt things yeah these tremendous guilts around oh i've got my label i've got my meds why do i still feel bad you know so there's a lot of that keeping people stuck so we've got to throw all that narrative out and start re-looking at okay we are humans we're in life it's the human condition we all struggle we've all got our issues how do we manage that how do we help each other manage yeah how do we come together i love what you're saying that it starts by us changing the narrative because um what we're seeing right now in our generation is this need to understand what a person is dealing with because of the phrase that it's a chemical imbalance and the the part with biology that scares people is that these are things that we think that would not change and so it almost creates this hopeless narrative as we talk about changing the narrative what what can you speak to um this whole concept of a chemical imbalance okay well first of all the good news is that it's a complete myth it's not at all scientific um so and it's basically a very nice propaganda that sells medications some a lot of people pharmaceutical industries or making a lot of money out of it so this it was an idea that came into being about 60 years ago a scientist proposed that a physician and spent his rest of his life trying to understand it and when he died he said this doesn't work this is not going to work but the narrative had been picked up by the pharmaceutical industry because it aligned with the when they found the first psychotropic medication which is like it's antipsychotic and that gave birth to the whole industry of an in it is an industry the industry of medications for mental illness so an industry was born about 60 years ago and that industry was one of mental illness that needs to be the domain of the may of medicine and it needs to be diagnosed like a heart problem or diabetes which is very often the example that's used and that it needs medication now that model is called the biomedical model and it works brilliantly for the physical body so if you've got a heart problem you need the blood test you need the various different types of different types of testing you do etc and you can actually see what's wrong and you can you can meditate that works for the physical body doesn't work for the psychology doesn't work for the mind the mind is a whole different ballgame a whole different animal it's a whole different non-physical it's the spiritual part of us so you can't and it's also completely and utterly unique and that's why there is no such thing as like a mental illness no there's no such thing as mental illness if you say like when you say mental illness you take hope away and that's something that you were mentioning that you take hope away because what you're saying is it's almost as scary as saying you have cancer you tell someone they've got cancer they hope you know there's like a lot of trauma involved in that the same thing you are suffering from if you were raped or bullied or abused or went through some kind of something which we all go through and you've reacted in your unique way how can i ever number one presume to understand what you've gone through because it's your unique experience so how can i sit back and say oh from a 15-minute questionnaire you have an anxiety disorder so really you feel terrible now you get told that you're crazy or your brain's broken or that you are now ill and those tests are not as well you said 15-minute question there because these tests are perfect they're i mean you have some that are even shorter than 15 minutes yeah immediately you're prescribed we could go fill in on internet now we could go fill in some questionnaires and we would like people it's real though the the the goal is and i know this has been in this field for many years the goal is to basically label people and diagnose and medicate because it's a very financially profitable industry and not everyone obviously who's in that is as aware as they should be but there is um a very big awareness that this is an industry that's not helping people because even with amber when you talked about anxiety um did you fee were you were you ever in that place where you felt hopeless like this is my anxiety oh yeah i i definitely like fought that that was my diagnosis and you know there's no hope you know my mom would tell me because you know my mom is christian i grew up in a christian household and she's like you can't claim that over yourself but my feeling is i'm dealing with it so obviously this is the diagnosis you know there's there's no you know so when you're saying i think what people feel like when you say that they don't have what they say that they have is you are diminishing their their their struggle i think that that that's the perception which is the incorrect perception you verbalize that beautifully if i can pick up on that what we want to say is what you're going through is incredibly real this is like serious by giving your diagnosis we're not acknowledging the reality of it you're suppressing the reality so the diagnosis is not actually acknowledging it's lumping it and shoving it in a corner whereas if i said okay amber let's let's talk let's see this tell me talk and i just listen in a non-judgmental loving way to the story of of what's going on and as you talk through and you get the context of the whole person that takes a lot of time that takes and that's what they don't you know the industry doesn't want to do but that's the reality is that you have a whole story and as you talk it through and as you verbalize and as you identify it may take a few days few hours who knows how long it's a life journey of understanding and getting to the root that is acknowledging your pain that is hearing your story by lumping you and saying there's something inside your head between your ears that's causing you to feel this how can you say to someone who's been through something like a trauma of some sort tell them that you are feeling that pain because you are diseased someone's just cut back from the wall or someone's just been raped or someone just been abused in some way or gone through something and you tell them you're diseased it's very normal to react to abuse and rape etc and something interesting because you mentioned you grew up in a christian home yeah because i think this would be it's because i think one of the the reasons that this may contribute to this need to protect what you're feeling um i think is also the misconception that when a christian says you'll be fine like you know it's you know you're gonna make it through that it is almost this vague idea that okay i know you you know god heals everything but this is my symptom this is what i'm going through and i wonder if within even amongst believers or amongst christians or amongst religious people that there is this need to protect your diagnosis um if you may say because of the idea that if a christian hears you talk about you know i'm dealing with depression it's like hey let's pray about it and ignoring that okay you're going through a real you know well in my family it wasn't that my mom was trying to put a blanket on i call it a jesus black jesus she wasn't trying to put a jesus blanket on what i was going through i think she was more trying to get me out of the confession because i i feel like the reason that i was really drawn to her teaching is because it is scientific but it's also backed by what's in the word of god and that's how amazing i think that god is because he does everything for a reason yeah you know he's strategic and i'm reading this and i'm like crying and i'm overwhelmed because now i can use the word of god to help me but i'm also understanding what's going on physically in in my body and and i i do think that what you're saying um is is very real as far as um church is concerned you can't just put a jesus blanket on everything and just and only pray about it you have to have action behind it also so getting in therapy reading a book you know whatever it is that it is for me personally that i did um it's still a journey also that's right i haven't arrived anywhere at all i'm still retraining myself when those negative thoughts come to counter them with scripture or counter them with confessions or you know not wallow and sit in it i'm still i'm still learning learning that because i'm in a high pressure i'm an entertainer i'm in a high pressure business yeah where all you do is deal with judgment you know and in this uh this social environment also dealing with people wanting to know your opinions all the time and then you know debating and all of that so it's a very anxious world and all of it is is right there on your phone social media you know um the the news coming straight to your phone it's all immediate yeah so i've had to learn how to instantly um deal with those things and it's it's all it's all training though yeah and i want to speak to that because even when you say you know counter it with scripture or you know like when these thoughts come up to to you know to choose that thought you talk about like selecting you know our thoughts and so that we choose healthier thoughts um and even talking about the in your industry you know right now in the social media age i think that anxiety has increased at an all-time high because we're constantly looking and comparing ourselves to other people and there is this new thing i don't know if it's a new thing but i mean for me it seems new when it comes to visualization and speaking you know like positive thinking positive speech but i want to hear um your thoughts on that because when you talk about because sometimes even in doing that we may not believe what we're saying and you mentioned that that is actually toxic for the brain that if you say something that you don't believe how do where's the balance in that where's the balance of um being selective about your words to saying something that you don't believe when it comes to this idea of positive speech and thinking and okay it's a brilliant question and your answer that you gave just now is really excellent and and what you both hit on very important points we can't just say something whether it's a positive affirmation or whether it's a scripture and hope that those words are going to convince our bodies so you have to have what you call you can't have what we call cognitive dissonance where they're out of alignment so positive affirmations and using a scripture like a positive affirmation is using god as a magic you know the genie and scriptures as a magic potion and that's very often what happens just to answer the pre-thing and then to link it back to the positive affirmations because there's kind of the same same point is that we've i'm not saying that that um people don't use scriptures with absolute intense belief behind them obviously there's that but there is an inclination in this day and age to oh pray for you you know why aren't you you know like kind of the judgment of why aren't you better with that's using a scripture like a magic potion or if you're feeling terrible inside and you're using a scripture or you're using a positive affirmation to try and suppress that feeling because you can't handle it it's there to life what you need to understand is that thoughts are real things thoughts occupy mental realist space real real as a state so in other words when you think and you feel and you choose you actually switch your genes on in your dna and you make physical proteins that hold little computers tiny computers neural quantum biobiological computers that group together into branches that look like a plant literally in your brain this little plant over here and you are growing thoughts that look like trees and every branches i just don't even thought these are real things we create matter out of mind we're changing structure in our brain and that's why when i talk about coming back to everything we've said so far um why we can't just take a scripture that's something very positive or a positive affirmation and just say it because what you're saying is i hope that this is going to take away my feeling of pain which is coming from the fact that i was bullied or the fact that i um was that my identity was crushed or the fact that you have a partner or boss or someone that's treating you badly or there's something that's really going on in your life just saying oh i'm going to pray or i'm going to say a scripture or god will meet all my needs is just trying to put a band-aid on the womb and that creates tremendous um dissonance because deep down inside we've got a toxic tree so if we look back at this one over here we've got a third one and that is as you think feel and choose that that combination of energy switches on like you switch a light so a toxic thought literally would look similar to like this in the brain pretty much because healthy thoughts look like healthy trees and toxic thoughts look like distorted wiry trees so that's literally and they build on top of the neurons in the brain so the brain is made up of these nerve cells and then the tops of the tree are these branches so as you're listening to me now you're growing those branches to hold my words yeah and that's a short-term memory that you're forming so that's what memory looks like so when i say thoughts are real that's what you're growing and you grow those in response to daily experiences so you're thinking feeling and choosing is resulting in a physical thing so if you are believing you've spent a lot of time believing that x y zed about yourself that you can't do this that life just sucks and that everything's always going to go wrong and that people are looking at you like this and that well so if you've got that belief system and that everything's negative and that look at you failed again and possibilities just this i can't see anything you know that kind of i'm just not going to forget i'm so angry or whatever those mindsets are toxic so by having that mindset as your view of life and multiple mindsets that of the toxic mindsets and then you say oh my gosh i'll meet all my needs you're trying to put something like that on top of that the energies don't it's like putting oil and water together they don't mix so that's creates tremendous conflict in ourselves and that goes back to the very first question we're wired for love we're not wired for toxicity yeah so therefore creates um it creates this literally like damage in the brain there's energy that's like shaking up the brain and creating neurochemical chaos and every cell of your body is affected you know what i love about this because i'm really i'm a firm believer that god is very um practical and he he is he's he's concerned for our natural response he he looks after our natural response and i think that sometimes in wanting to please god we just want to say the right things and it's like that no god cares about what is that natural response and how do i help you heal that natural response and so not doing the jesus blanket or jesus yeah because you you can't cover it because this will still exist it exists once it's built there forever you know every thought you build is alive for eternity yeah so everything so if you choose wrong or react wrong involuntarily through a tumor it's alive it's living it's in your mind and it's in your brain so the only thing you can do one of two things you keep it and you break down and you start coming out with symptoms of the the depression anxiety whatever that just shows that your brain can't handle it those depression all those big words are simply showing that you out of your word for love perfection thing and all of us do it so it's totally normal we must all understand that it's very real so we either keep it or we reconceptualize it we redesign it we take that and say okay i did fail but thomas edison failed a thousand times and he didn't see that failure as a failure when he was asked well how do you feel about your thousand failures before you hit the light bulb success he said they weren't failures they were now they are a thousand things i know not to do just recently i was having a conversation with four children with one of my daughters and she was telling me here i'm thinking like i know everything about parenting like you think you do but then you realize you don't know anything and she was telling me just about an incident in her teenage years and i thought my goodness how did i miss it really messed up big time and i felt immediately like such a failure and then i thought okay what am i gonna do this is okay are we gonna we're gonna i'm gonna reconceptualize this by me listening taking ownership for what i did wrong her having the freedom in a non-judgmental environment to tell me what i had done wrong me to be able to listen and talk it through and reconceptualize that thoughts alive what i did was create it yeah but i could re-conceptualize so i can't change what happens and help and define truth and reconceptualize so i can't reconceptualize means i can't change what's done yeah but i can change how that past plays out into the future that's powerful okay so god is beyond space and time love is beyond space and time so i can go into the nowness and alwaysness of god which means that the past and the present and the future blend so i can take this moment with my daughter and i can say okay this is a chance for me to say sorry to learn what not to do to make sure that this never happens again to break that in our generation because i realized my mom did the same thing to me her mother the same thing to her we have a chance to break a generational behavior pattern um to her to pass that on meat or whatever so reconceptualizing was redesigning reformulating and seeing how that could be transformed into something that's positive so now i know what i did but it doesn't just it's not toxic anymore it's not consuming me with guilt so it really seems like what we're talking about um here is the power of awareness um the power that it's it doesn't have to end like this it doesn't i don't my life doesn't have to continue this way because amber when you about anxiety that powerful moment was learning that wait i don't have a mental illness that this condition or situation or how i'm feeling is not hopeless and i think that even in our society today because when we look at this you know the toxic tree and we're you know trying to put jesus blanket or the positive affirmations that we may not even believe um it just it brings to mind the increase in the rate of suicide and not just the rate of it even the age at which children are talking about suicidal thoughts and different things how do you how do you speak to that you know and even before right before we get into that i want to even ask you in the industry what do you see just when it comes to anxiety and almost like this conflict that people may have within themselves with wanting to be positive but not dealing with the root cause of whatever these issues are in the mind with this toxic tree right here um i think in this society we put up a front and we want to look uh have a certain look or or seem like we have it all together um i don't even know how to how to i don't even know how to really say this but even sometimes in the industry i don't know if the word is glamorized or they sensationalize you know um dealing with mental health it's almost like it sometimes has gotten people more more attention and um i feel like we need to start talking more about how we're moving past it yeah as opposed to um acting out in it you know uh it would help a lot more people because you know there's young people that look up to us i have young people that come up to me and and say just a song that i did or you know it uh it has greatly affected them or uh made them feel better or whatever the case may be or make them realize things about themselves but i just feel like in this industry um people need to get past the sitting in it and making it seem like it's um in a weird way i don't want to i i don't want to seem judgmental because i'm not trying to judge but from what it is that i'm saying i feel like people are making it seem like it's close like a stunt glamorous or it's cool or it makes you edgy or you know there's something about it someone gets me too or yeah as opposed to saying hey i'm dealing with this and this is how i'm i'm moving forward or moving or this is how i'm getting help because going back to that awareness that i this is not how my life should be and i don't think we're having that conversation and that's why i think that even when it comes to suicide because with children when children are committing suicide when children are talking about having suicidal thoughts that that narrative is not being discussed in the home and so there's no there's no narrative of okay yes this is what you're going through but you can come out of it it's almost as though this is your diagnosis or you need medication for this can you speak to that absolutely so the two quick parts of the question awareness and suicide yeah and this kind of the link between it and then also how you've picked up on awareness and the awareness of the whole mental health issue and on the one hand have been good because people are more open but on the other hand it's negative because people are making it like a glamorous thing but it's also causing more these are linked definitely to suicide suicides have increased this one every 40 seconds and it's happening younger one and um and i've done vlogs and by the way all these things you're talking about i've done blogs and posts and um podcasts and all that kind of stuff on this stuff if you want to go deeper but essentially awareness is vital number one part two and then we'll talk about the suicide things that okay yeah answer the awareness thing first we have to self-regulate we ha and self-regulate requires the first step of awareness so when we become aware of okay this is how i'm thinking it's a celebration even if it's toxic thinking even if it's like wow this is really bad thinking but the mere fact that you are aware what we know from science is that you've weakened that issue so the minute that something is in your face and oh my gosh like my daughter telling me i acted like that you see hey i've got a really bad way i'm getting bitter about this all the time while i always react like that whenever you're aware of anything that's great because research shows that the minute that you're aware of something you've weakened the actual toxic thought remember thoughts are real things so by awareness i'm now taking that little tree in my brain and with my mind i'm bringing it and shining a spotlight on it as soon as that spotlight's shining on it it's weaker so now the little branches are like weak and the chemicals are weakening which means i can change it so the brain can change which is a comment you made earlier that you wanted to ask me about the fact that the brain can be changed can't change itself it can be changed so i choose to be aware i choose to self-regulate i choose to see this mental health thing is not mental ill health that doesn't exist it's not the same as diabetes mental health is there my own that's and my mind is over here they separate things i'm not going to be going down the road of mental health being an illness it's same as heart medicines or i mean a biological disease it's not biological mental illness not biological that's the number one awareness for starting to make change so let's keep the body where it is and let's get the mind the mind and now let's deal with the mind let's put the body back out there it's not we're not dealing with diabetes at the moment we're not dealing with heart disease we're dealing because diabetes are sorry sorry with diabetes you're talking about insulin with the mind you can't prescribe that because even just even as you continue because just what you said like put in the the body and put in the mind in in its own place put them in their place because you can't just prescribe a chemical for the brain exactly because it's not like prozac is what's missing in your brain it's like someone who is anxious in a social situation they take maybe they have a couple of drinks that calms them down they move yeah it doesn't mean that they have fixed a social problem they needed alcohol to fix it their brain was missing alcohol so they had to put that back and that's what you're saying all these psychotropic works like antidepressants antipsychotics and anxiety meds these are not putting something back that your brain is missing they are actually just numbing the brain they are the jesus blanket but they are the technical jesus they are very often called chemicals and straight jackets that's very often brain disabling chemical straight jackets so it's really the same concept so what we need to do is we need to deal with our pain so it's an awareness of mind body separate awareness of okay i must now be aware of what i'm what i'm going through and also that the toxic issues that i have chosen to kind of keep in my life because if i've got a bad habit of getting irritated all the time or getting shouty or whatever i don't know whatever it is getting jealous or envious or whatever it may be i my awareness weakens it my awareness of i'm anxious because there actually was maybe some big trauma in my life i can be aware i can change so awareness is vital for change and that is a thing to celebrate so i don't get stuck in it i don't go digging back for years and years but i realize okay this anxiety has a root the root is this why that happened to me why the person bullied why the person trafficked why the person is why you're never going to get that answer so that we don't do we don't go down that awareness road we go down to the awareness road of okay this is why i feel anxious so now this i'm going to reconceptualize i'm going to redesign it's part of my life it's part of my suffering it shapes my life i re-design i reconceptualize that into that and it's part of my story can you see that that's all requires awareness so if i don't do that if i don't reconceptualize that life that thoughts alive for eternity so this thing's a life fraternity you keep these things whatever you think about the most will grow so when we choose as humans which we do to keep these things we give them energy whatever you think about the most is growing i love that statement whatever you think about the most why do you think that self-awareness we run from ourselves because it's not like anyone is you know watching our thoughts why do we think um because i am a firm believer that self-awareness is really the key to self-mastery you can't master what you don't know um so if you know that okay hey i have jealousy issues or you know what i'm i recognize that i'm dealing with pride and to to be aware of that so i can heal from that and recognize that okay i don't have to be this way um why do you think because if if i ask myself the question i would say we're distracted but i would like to ask what do you think is the reason for that that people run away from self-awareness i feel like people try to run away because you can't really run away there's no there's no actual way to run away yeah you're going to be dealing with it and your actions are going to show it if it's there yeah um we ignore it um we end up hurting others you know what i'm saying but i i also think we don't like to have that responsibility responsibility and responsibility when i got into therapy i i started saying before i got into therapy i started telling myself those things that happen to you that may have caused trauma are now your responsibility the trauma is now your responsibility you got you got to figure out how to deal with it and people don't want to deal with that's a powerful statement responsibility we don't want to take responsibility because and it's almost by nature we find more pleasure when we can point a finger and say you're the reason this happened you're the reason that happened responsibility what responsibility awareness they totally go together because you can't not as soon as you're where you have you don't take responsibility as you just said you're going to point your finger and then you're going to then you become a victim you know yeah that's always the victim but the weight yeah exactly so now that and that that in itself is a side effect and it's going to keep you stuck here so this negative cycle starts going around and you can become a person who lives inside that victim mentality but the thing that we can do is when we get awareness and we take responsibility we can actually now celebrate the changes that we are that we can make in our brain so those those are very closely linked we can now now we are aware okay now i can actually redesign and re-conceptualize and that's not what we've been trained to do that's what not be dave when you said people don't go further what are you how do you manage your mind that manages everything else that's what i'm trying to help people do because that's you gotta get your so if we don't come into the suicide question so awareness responsibility you know we don't wanna take the responsibility quickly to speak to that and then the suicide link you can't control the events and circumstances of your life because they are the result of other people's choices so what you learned in therapy and what we all need to learn as humans and this is a lesson every single one of us have to realize that we need to learn is that other people make choices and those choices affect you yeah you can either live under the um entangled in the chains of those choices and and continue to go down the whole where your body and mind break down or you can forgive and release that because you can't change the circumstances but there's something that you have power over and that's your reactions so your reactions are awareness responsibility then leads to how are you going to react so my reaction is okay i know that i can reconceptualize that means i can and i know how to then i can take that and i can transform that into that and then i can then what i've been through can be part of my struggle i can reshape and then that particle character now you have a story to tell and now you can help someone else if we don't do that we will get to the suicidal ideation not everyone will commit suicide obviously not but the mere fact that we have 41 every 40 seconds and then it's happening younger and younger we have to look at i mean you look at anthony bourdain and kate spade all these people that have got it together you know we see so many okay so we've got to look yes drugs can create a lot of suicidal i mean i take about talk about drugs i'm talking about psychotropic antidepressants that's one of the side effects is suicidal ideation the other thing is that when you have so much of this inside of you it causes the most unimaginable unseen pain no one can see your pain so you can have the smiley face i mean kate spade had access to some of the greatest things because this again going back to where thoughts are real things in the brain so it's existing it's even no matter how much you you smile you laugh this is still existing and if it's getting bigger and bigger you're not dealing with it even and even even in therapy kkk it's bad she had lots of therapy it's not like a lot of these people so it's not become and there's no judgment when people are in a place where they are trying to kill themselves they don't want to die because even with suicide there's something you said about how it's um it's almost like uh it's like someone who is mentally desperate it's mentally desperate i have worked with people that have actually tried and it's failed yeah and that have been in that position where it's in their mind but people that have actually close to me that have you know in my own family that have had they've gone through that so i know the pain there now those people when they and from the work that i've done it's like being on a burning building there's a fire behind you and either either you fall in the fire and die or you jump off the building and you die so which one do you choose so people that commit suicide or try i have such unimaginable invisible pain that they don't want to jump off the building but they don't can't deal with that anymore so that's not a weakness it is not it is a complete and utter torment and society is not allowing a space for this we're not allowing people because there is a solution to suicide and that solution is the village it's the talking it's the connection it is me recognizing hey i haven't seen that person around for a few days let me go phone them and see if they're okay it is that person who's too depressed to reach out that you reach out to it's sitting next to someone holding their hand and saying i'm listening i'm not judging i'm not going to tell you say anything i'm just gonna listen i'm here for you it's knowing it's creating an environment where we recognize the socioeconomic and political pressures that people are under the fear the anxiety someone who's come back from war they need to be told hey listen i haven't been through what you've been through but i do know that if i'd been in your position i probably would have reacted worse than that how can i help you that social media can be used in that platform that you don't have to have a phd you don't have to be a doctor you don't have to have any qualification to help someone not commit suicide or help someone not deal with that anxiety i mean to deal with that anxiety you just have to have love you have to have the care and the compassion and the realization that you're a human that we're all human that it is human to care it's the most natural thing and honestly it's sometimes just that smile that look that will be enough and we need to recognize as well socioeconomically when there's a high rate of suicide when people lose jobs when they can't fend for their families there's a high rate of suicide amongst kids because of bullying the isolation that comes from um social media which is created which is fantastic but it's also created isolation and humans will die in isolation yeah you know so we can a society resolve suicide very quickly if we go back to being human again you know i really love this conversation because at the core of it what what i believe that people are going to take away as one awareness you know the awareness that even helps us to change the narrative of what we're discussing amongst ourselves when it comes to mental health when it comes to knowing how to even be there for one another even when we speak about taking responsibility of our choices and our decisions when we speak about the sometimes their actions that other people would make that we are you know we are i don't want to use the word victims to but that you know that affect our lives but i also think that even the awareness of knowing that we also make choices that affect the lives of other people so it helps us we're all in it together yeah so it's not that it's ever you know unfair or unjust because at some point we also move in brokenness and we've made decisions of we've made choices like you shared about what you did not even recognize that happened with your daughter yeah so when we see that that we are all in this together and we all have a role to play it's just fascinating because to me it connects back to the word of god in romans 12 2 when it talks about that be transformed by the renewing of your mind and the how science and the word of god you know i love what you say how science is literally catching up to what god has said yeah we say science is the how to and the bible is the story it's a story i love that it's a complete blend of of the two they were examples i i think that you know everyone watching this what we really want you to take from this is the awareness if if there's one main thing that you took from this episode is the awareness to recognize that you are not in this by yourself you are not hopeless no matter what you're going through there is still hope because we are created the brain is even created to change can i say it change itself or we have the power to change the body we change the brain and so with our thinking without thinking and that is the thinking feeling and choosing the awareness the taking responsibility and that mental illness is not on the rise i think that's a massive takeaway too isn't it yeah mental illness is not on the rise because we don't have it's not we're not going through mental illness yeah people think it's an illness they think that it follows your jobs it follows your insurance policy it's a human condition and so we cannot label it as a medical problem it's the human condition of the human condition beautiful next on the same room welcome back to the same room on this episode we're gonna piggyback off on the conversation we had with dr karen lineleaf the incredible neuroscientist and best-selling author as well as amber riley the beautiful actress who is best known for her recurring role on glee and most recently tyler perry's nobody's full now we left you speaking about brainwashed are we conditioned to fail on part two of this conversation we're going to be speaking about getting back to the real you and it's going to be practical [Music] wisdom [Music] you

Channel: The Same Room

Views: 36,427

Rating: 4.9479723 out of 5

Keywords: The Same Room, Amber Riley, Stephanie Ike, Dr. Caroline Leaf, Failure, Brainwashed, Mental Health, Healing, Transformation, Faith, Culture, God Is Real, Jesus Is Real, Sarah Jakes Roberts, The Potter's House, One Church

Id: QMWb4u2bpos

Length: 49min 35sec (2975 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020