The 5-Step Process to Managing Trauma, with Dr. Caroline Leaf - The Brain Warrior's Way Podcast

[Music] welcome everyone we are here with our friend dr. Carolyn leaf who's a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist she specializes in cognitive and meta cognitive neuropsychology we're going to talk about what that is she was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change neuroplasticity with directed mind input sounds like ginger brain change your life I loved that during her years in clinical practice and a work with thousands of underprivileged teachers and students in her home country of South Africa and in the United States she developed her theory called geodesic information processing theory of how we think build memory and learn into tools and processes that have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals with traumatic brain injury chronic traumatic encephalopathy CTE learning disabilities ADHD autism dementia and mental illnesses like anxiety and depression she's helped hundreds of thousands of students and adults learn how do you use their minds to take back control of their mental health dr. Lee is the best-selling author of switch on your brain which is just amazing book think learn succeed think and eat yourself smart and many more she teaches at academic medical and neuroscience conferences churches and to various audiences around the world and today we're going to talk a little bit about doctor Leafs background and also around koban 19 and her perspective on how to stay healthy in a pandemic and how to prevent really the next pandemic which is a mental health pandemic yeah welcome i'm so honored thank you so much i'm a big so it's wonderful to be talking to you so as a communication pathologist you really took this a big step forward on going after how you can literally change your brain tell us how you got interested in this well it started in the 80s when I was doing initially did my research and I remember thank you one of my professors he was giving us this whole lecture on in neuroscience of traumatic brain injury and you'd probably remember those days Daniel in the 80s when we were told that the brain couldn't change and I said well something's wrong here because we all keep changing and growing and we respond to life so logically there's a misfortune and I remember saying to my professors you know what I believe that if we direct our mind we can change your brain I don't believe our brain is fixed so instead of teaching or teaching my patients how to compensate I want to do rather teach them how to learn again and change their brain and improve mental health and all that kind of thing and I remember them turning around to me except for two professors turning around to mean saying that's a ridiculous question and I said okay well let me prove it so I took traumatic brain injury which we which was there was hardly any research on traumatic brain injury in the 80s most of it just said well once you've got a damaged brain that's it and you know that history so I'm preaching to the choir here so I basically decided I'm going to take an area of research that I know is a problem and I'm going to prove this on that on that particular group of people so I'm sort of doing research in the area working with people that are the worst that I could find people that had been in car accidents I mean comas for over two weeks and I mean you know what the neurologists used to say in those days between him more than eight hours in a coma and that said you are pretty much no hope and I started developing this dream under its tick techniques being very not just mindful but going beyond mindfulness so mindfulness was very much part of it but really directing how you think and feel and choose around building your brain so I focused a lot around learning academics whatever the person needed whatever whatever they the need was if I had a patient who was at school I would take this schoolwork if I had some he was executive and executive I would take whatever was relevant to them if I had who whatever was relevant to the person that would be the material that we would focus on and then I would teach them be reminder of the techniques in order to be able to rebuild their brain broken at first and then I would work on the emotional traumas that would then come up and I found that as I worked on building the brain helping him to learn how to learn literally rewiring their brain growing the brain grain resilience they were much stronger and more able to deal with the traumas that they were dealing with the emotional things that started coming up and we could deal with those in the same way so parallel to developing building brain techniques I've developed how to manage tumor and emotional torment techniques and then I took that out into the field I was in South Africa at that time and I worked for 25 years in the worst of the worst areas so I was in the in the time when it was pre apartheid then the transition with Mark Nelson Mandela and in the post apartheid era so it was fascinating because I went into the areas that no white woman could come out of alive you mentioned me you you and you're a shock you were murdered you were raped I could go in the I'll head back for kids I'll be nine months pregnant I could drive around on my own no one touched me because I would could go anywhere we would sit up and it just would we go to the local schools of the local community centres we would have thousands of people just pecking in and I will just teach him about their brain and their mind and how you can use your mind and your brain can change and how to manage this and how to learn it was unbelievable I did that three days a week for 25 years with people that were starving hungry traumatized it was phenomenal we had one day one young girl I was teaching at there were thousands and I was teaching one young girl like literally clipped to the front the board to the front to to me and she was bleeding so he thought it was her psycho who minced a menstrual cycle but it wasn't she had just been raped and she had heard that dr. Lee they used to call me the search on your brain lady doctor Leif was in town she literally got up from that rape came to the session and the teachers at the back recognised her and she wants to take her to the hospital she wouldn't she said she wants to see me they wrapped in a blanket they said it at my feet and she said you for five hours I transferred I can tell you a thousand stories like that but it transformed my life I worked in around post-genocide I worked in Rwanda working with those people so I have seen and I was a work with execs and I work with all started every socio-economic started but in the field and what I was trying to understand was the power of the human mind we have such resilience and such incredible ability and our brain has to listen to our mind and we have to golf program you at your field I don't have to tell you that but we've got so much more ability than what you realize and the research just continued from there and I still currently do clinical trials working on this whole mind brain connection so it's a quick quick walk through my history so the early work you did what were the things you saw that worked to help people switch on their brains what were some of the early connections you made to develop the practice you have now the first thing that I found was to give people in in South Africa the population I was working with they they recognized that if they got educated they could change their life so they need was to learn how to actually master knowledge so I started off by studying the science of thought and understanding its thought what is the sort how do memories and thoughts work how can you build memories can you build memories can you actually wire stuff into your brain and improve how you learn is I to fix all those kind of questions so what I was teaching them was the results of that work which was when you direct it very intentionally they retire you learn and you go through a very sequential process you can anyone can learn how to learn that's what I saw so I taught him how to learn I taught him how to take academic work we would go into into the school rooms where they didn't have chalk board they had they had a chalk board the old fashioned chalkboards with chalk like this we will take newsprint from the local newspapers and put him around the wall and they didn't have textbooks they would have one maybe amongst a hundred so we were then translate all the tics the content they needed for whatever grade they were in or whatever level of university or whatever the college whatever they were studying like that into this five-step process using the paper on the walls and these kids would virtually learn from there and so it was basically helping them to take a chunk of knowledge to firstly the big picture let's say you were studying something like biology and you were studying a chapter to get the big picture and then to break it down into chunks and to go through the process of building it up what we found that as we as they started learning how to learn and learning and learn how to write an exam which is it's such a basic skill or learn how to be more masterful in the academic inner educate work environment or something or learn and you skill so they could work better in the environment then the Talmud stuff started coming up then there was the next phase we would always have a session we would work on learning and then we would you take the same basic principles and work on emotional trauma and it was all very directed there was all very much capture those thoughts and don't let them go all over the place in terms of traumas capture those thoughts and embrace them and process and reconceptualize them with learning it was focus on the detail of the information and slowly but surely build that into brain through a very secretive process and that's kind that's what I would teach those are the very basic principles that I that are taught and that I have translated into different techniques now over the years and we've just done clinical trials last year a bigger two clinical trials of my team we were looking at the advanced version of Quisling I developed a theory and then I developed it over the twenty five years I developed and refined the technique and now and then last year we did a clinical trial working with people's anxiety and depression and just general tumors and so on and using the technique and we found actually analyzing the results now which is very appropriate because it's in who knew that COBIT was gonna happen so it's been very interesting to see how when we really directed our attention pretty much you know like you similar to ends when you direct your attention when you control your mind when you look off to your brain you're coming at the same angle but on the same thing but from two different angles basically when we come back I want us to talk about trauma and because I mean you're practicing in an area where there's a lot of neuroma and now we're in the middle of a pandemic where there's again a lot of trauma when we come back we're here with dr. Carol and Leif author of a number of books but the New York Times bestselling switch on your brain [Music] welcome back we're here with dr. Carolyn Lee author switch on your brain and a number of other books we're gonna talk about trauma and this is such an important issue now when you're in a global pandemic but you know your early life in South Africa there were having societal trauma in many ways and you helped many people who not only were starving but also had gone through significant trauma talk to us about how your work helps that see be specific with us so the people who have who are listening often have had significant trauma in their past trauma because I mean I've heard you talk about the physical trauma but also the emotional trauma so so it's a great question and I think that's very relevant my I'm pretty much my whole career has been involved with working with people in very traumatic situations and helping them to manage and then also I've worked with many other different groups of people and everyone has taught me so that's so that's the big thing we've got to level the playing fields we all have turm a bit different and I always like to look at sort of a scale and think okay you've got your bell curve and is the average ups and downs of life in the middle I mean we've got our outlying situations that happen on the extreme and it's pretty much all of us so one of the first things that I've always tried to to address when it comes to trauma is to look within the societal group that you're in so if I was working in Africa or wonder wherever it was always you've got to look at the case study you got to look at the individual in their environments and that's one thing that my clinical trials and things have shown me is that we can never really group people so these in this may sound contradictory but is the first point is that we are currently at the moment facing as you all know Q at the global human he's facing the same issue so as a human as if you as humanity we're all globally facing the same enemy so what's very interesting here is if I brought that down back to what my work in South Africa will wonder they were a community also facing an enemy so it's just not translated into a global situation so it's kind of leveled the playing field because we all these know selection process and covert it gets you if you even you are wherever you aren't can you you vulnerable and exert vulnerability that makes people feel so uncertain so I believe that the very first place to address anything in terms of practicality in terms of trauma is to be encouraged is to be comfortable with the uncertainty and I know that people are talking about this and how do you do that it's really I mean you know from your work in the brain and that's really see this I use QE G's for the neuroscience of the group that we're doing and we've been really looking at just how the non conscious mind which is really what you feel in your truth value your real what you really are experiencing it's very quickly reflected in in a to EEG for example and and I know in the SPECT you're gonna see that - you're gonna see what's really going on but our conscious mind we can often convince ourselves that you know we could try and lie to ourselves and we could push down the truth and then that creates tremendous conflict so I think what a lot of us are doing at the moment is trying to or in that conflict stage where we are fearful of the uncertainty and what's coming up and how it's going to change life but at the same time we're not really facing that we are avoiding dealing with it we kind of pushing those feelings down and getting immersed in a toxic path of just all the problems as opposed to saying okay it's like there are these problems I know that they are they but I've got to be comfortable with the uncertainty because no one has really offered a decent solution yet so therefore the only way we're going to really be comfortable with this is to be comfortable the uncertainty and then come together calisca was collectivistic lee and resolves us but we need clear minds so if we in a conflict our brains going to what I call a red brain so it basically you get too much hard beta you can't you'll see that on the fixed end to that you're going to just get this kind of thinking where you can't be calm and while people are not calm you can't make good decisions and if people are all in that state we're all going to be running around with backup crazy people chaotic in trying to resolve this issue so I think as individuals week one of the pandemic at the grocery so I don't live in an area where you know you would not think that would happen and I think it happened worse than other areas with crazy people were literally getting in fist fights and singing opera and it was just the craziest thing I've ever seen pushing people in the grocery store he's been grabbing the toilet paper I mean going insane over toilet paper I mean it was so people make crazy decisions in it that's almost herd mentality so I believe as individuals my appeal is that we have a collectivistic mindset instead of an individualistic mindset that we are individuals but we have got to go back to the fact that we're facing this together and we have to stay calm and it is uncertain so it's a mindset shift because we're not mindset shifts to accepting uncertainty and accepting that we can do this together we act like adults and I mean even the kids so politicians I don't believe are acting mostly the scientists are acting like the big people in the house and they a lot of them are fighting but the majority of scientists are collectivistic lis sharing and pooling knowledge and trying to keep calm and we all know we will face the situations where you a crisis happens in your life and I'm not talking about covert now I'm talking about just the day-to-day stuff and we know that we say to us okay calm down you've got to calm down you can't carry on so we tell ourselves to do that to know that we can't handle the next moment unless we accept the uncertainty of the now and that's what I really believe is a very first step that we need to do it is uncertain let's accept at least not have the conflict except the fear get it out tell people how you feeling if Spurs are you feeling don't lie about this it is scary because if you don't get it out as we as we know it's going to be embodied inside of you and then that emotionally you mention one of the emotional side in the work that I've done what I did was time really understand thoughts what is the thought what is the memory because it's people use those words theories Bakley and and you guys don't but I know you understand them but in general people use the word thoughts trauma emotional healing and in one sentence but they're different things that we're talking about a thought is a concept like Cobert is scary it's changed my life we've stepped out of normal what does the new normal look like concept I'm scared I could die my financial etc so the big thing is covert is scary that's the thought you think of a tree or like if I use my hand as an example there's the thought is the whole hand it looks like a neuron in the brain which is your little dendrites and your cell body and your everyone knows what a neuron looks like species they follow you so if you think of a sort looks like a tree then the the thought is the whole concept the memories are the details of I haven't got a job I might get sick I have already lost a loved one etc teacher the detail of so those are the memories the information are the memories in the big sort and every memory has an emotion attached to it so every bit of memory information has emotions so as I think of I don't have financial security is that the reaction in you in your HPA axis you feel fear and anxiety and stress and if you all those scary feelings come out because the information as it comes up into your conscious mind comes along with the emotion so here we've got this covert thought it jumps up I start thinking about the details of the Kobuk sort there is they there's the detail and there's the emotion attached to that and the Annette links to that and that means to there and it's not just five fingers of thousands of different things that are interrelated we can go down a rabbit hole what we have to do is capture this it's so interesting you said something so interesting you said the scientists are the acting like the big people in the house and I just wonder because we were talking about that real ever strengths and weaknesses right yeah and I'm very clear that I have a lot of weaknesses but one thing that that both of us are pretty good at and I've noticed with with some of the people I know is that we're good in crisis and one of the reason and I was a trauma nurse but I wonder if that's because that scientific training that you have one thing I keep telling the kids relax calm down step back and gather information and I wonder if that's that scientific training that you have we need information like before you freak out we don't even know what's happening yet so it's like we can't freak out so we know what's happening I think I can't make a decision yet but we've gotta gather information make sure we're saved and then let's figure out what's happening but I wonder if that's that scientific training and if we could somehow access that cuz everybody has that ability we've all got that it but I love you to access that's brilliant so that's just that's what you said is absolutely spot-on we've gotta get the data and that goes to the people all the myths that are out there all the conspiracy theory objective rather than subject exactly rather gather the data and all the sides of the day not just reading it from one perspective but no multiple sources because people I get I get emails all the time I get them in your name but sending me Oh have you seen this conspiracy theory and in some crazy person on you to stop watch you then things exactly I'd rather go straight to I know Edward Snowden made it really hard for me as a psychiatrist because you know I'd have paranoid patients come and go the NSA is listening to my phone calls yeah and I would go oh no and then it turned out oh yes they are listening to your focus balance psychiatrist for 10 years and so the conspiracy theories around the pandemic have really elevated anxiety oh my goodness always not beautiful sources because initially you know China came out and said it was the wet market and everybody went oh it's the wet market except they don't so that's in the wet virus the Secretary of State goes not came from kids understand it that adults certainly can and this is what I mean by gather information yeah I'd be with you we don't want to be in the dark we don't want to be sheep and just following people around gather the information and that's I told the kids I'm like just gather information we're rational enough that if we have all of the information we and you research it and you and you actually fact check it we ain't you're out what's you know what's why that's learning exactly that's rather than just accepting what people are telling you and Pam exactly I totally agree with you so the first thing is to accept the uncertainty and the second thing is to build your brain and that's what I would literally would do with my patients I would look nice okay let's let's get all these it's yes except we don't know what we're doing we don't know what's going on I don't know why your head why would someone rape you who knows why someone kill someone who knows why that will we cannot will be going to become through the uncertainty now let's get the facts and also sometimes we use sex as a not a distraction but as a way of building resilience because what what my research is showing and I really think this confirms what you guys are doing is as a as a scientist both of you being scientists when you think when you gather data when you distract not distract that's the wrong word when you go and study a whole lot of different sources and you do it objects a fear where you keep your emotions under check so you're not getting mad I hate this women think you just get good this one says this this one scissors like you would do if you're preparing for an exam and you're getting different with you that you have to present is preparing for a medical exam doing Grand Rounds you have to get different perspectives in order to get the big picture we want you to do that it calms people down I always find my patient that came in that will lock collapsing with anxiety couldn't focus I'd say okay what are you interested in let's learn some new information let's study something it's gather some facts and immediately that change the brain changes how if you look at the qejy it changes calms our brain down gets it into more of a flow state and then you can actually think straight and we have to go to the next episode in a second but I want to just confirm what you said that even works yes that's true in a scientific setting but I'm actually writing a memoir right now and it's about overcoming trauma and that is true even in that situation because how'd you do a bunch of research and then have a key you know family members for situations that were really hard words right yes and in doing so I got a very balanced perspective and went huh like okay it was hard but you all of a sudden realize there were reasons like there were reasons that people what they did I might not agree with them but everyone was doing the best they could with it with the resources they had and all of a sudden is where it balances everything out and easier to move on so gathering that information and being objective is really so a comeback we're going to continue to talk about trauma the pandemic but specifically what you can do to manage the anxiety and trauma in your life stay with us [Music] welcome back we are here with dr. Carolyn lathe communication pathologist cognitive neuroscientist worldwide teacher the author of switch on your brain think learn succeed think and eat yourself smart which were just huge fans of and we're talking about trauma and what you can do and first the step I'm hearing Carolyn is one you got to calm yourself down because if you're physically freaking out you are not going to make a good decision the second step is got appropriate information and and I suspect they don't know this for sure but I don't trust the medical establishment I don't any one doctor I've been a doctor for 40 years and I've been a psychiatrist and making diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data and then prescribing medication I'm just not a fan of pandemic no one's talking about at least you don't hear that the president's briefings are from the CDC that the United States is four percent of the world's population it has a third of the covin cases our death ray is completely unacceptable and everybody's talking about medicine and vaccines and no one's talking about well why is the US head it's because we are unhealthy our incidents of obesity is out of control we're at new study forty-two point four percent that's it's sane the incidence of diabetes is or pre-diabetes is fifty percent my pretension or pre hypertension is 60 percent no one's talked we're going to spend these trillions of dollars really not focus on the underlying cause which is our immune systems are weak because we are unhealthy as a society and so to just go oh I'm going to stay at home until there is a vaccine is a bit insane because what we should be doing is really optimizing our health and the health of those we love and so I don't think I'm a conspiracy theorist but you know I've been imaging for just about 30 years and you know my colleagues go you shouldn't do that why would you want more information and so it's made me suspicious yeah as a trauma nurse I don't a lot of gunshot wounds and bandages on them so I totally agree with you it's going to explode somewhere in your night just when you saying that I'm leaping inside with joy because that's why I love you too because you I agree 100% if we don't change our internal environments and recognize how important that is be alongside doing all the medical research for antivirals and vaccines obviously and finding the best way to reintegrate back into society and keeping our hands wash them social that we've got to do those basic things well we found we've got to put the build the army change remember the old battles build the army tent you being a nurse you know put them in made them the temp reinstall you connectivity and sort out the whole issue put the band-aid on in a ten-piece state but we still have to deal with it the face string wound and I think you've hit the nail on the head is if it's internal environments and I've been saying this as well for weeks now that we've got to address as you talk about the physical we've got to eat protein all that we know that and this country is a modern American diet 60 years ago in the modern American diet came in at the same time the whole psychiatric changed happened so the way people managed mind the simplest way to explain this is 60 morally 60 years ago we started eating processed junk food and until also at the same time we started forgetting about the mind and we started focusing on brain brain brain now you're not totally in love with the brain I mean the three of us read brain but brain is controlled by the decisions you make with your mind to healthy to exercise to capture those thoughts to do the end to do which is mind works so the brain is reliant on how we actually look after it and that changed sixty years ago it was all reduced down to as you said Daniel biological you know the biological components you say my amygdala made me angry is the most stupid single can't do anything the amygdala just responds to what you are doing so what are you doing with your internal environment and that's been a huge part of what I've been trying to help people do is understand that your mind and that the series I develop the work that I've done for 38 years has focused on the non conscious mind large fee and then unconscious mind not subconscious and unconscious is 90 percent of who we are it's our spiritual nature it's the it's you it's you it's your power that you have within you to think and feel and choose and as you think and feel and choose that moves through your brain you can't do that without your brain your brain as general is is your responder it's holding all your thoughts it's with the memories also you've got to have sit the separate little mind and brain are separate but inseparable so like you say you've got to look after our brain so the mind you think and feel and choose and that moves to your brain your brain is going to respond your body's going to respond so in other words we have huge responsibility to make decisions about what I eat and put into my physical brain is and my body is going to impact how I'm thinking while I'm eating is huge we know the research shows that if you are your digestive system is controlled by your thought process so if you are simple example totally anxious and you're eating that organic farm-to-table sustainable food you're eating the right food but if you're in an anxious state your pancreas which is only one part of your digestive system is not going to secrete all the neuro peptides required for assimilation simply because your emotional state has affected the functionality same thing with your mind if you if your mind that the 150 years of integrative medicine has shown us that the mind impacts your stress system and impacts that right down to the telomeres I've been doing research with telomeres we cellular aging your effectiveness and house of yourself the way you thinking is affecting all of that so the 90% mind stuff is not being addressed sufficiently what we have and I listened specially because of being with podcasts that I was listening to an interview yesterday I mental health experts you were talking about what is gonna be a pandemic invent needle health which I agree but I think that approaches are wrong what they want to do is set up a whole lot of more labeling more medicating stick making people ill giving them a label of illness and lumping mind issues and giving mind issues the validation of an illness in other words they saying they have you have to make mind problems into an illness in order to validate them which is insane because when you throw mind out the door which they did sixty years ago and you just focus on brain and you try and treat anxiety from a pandemic as though it was an illness like diabetes you've missed the boat because you cuz then you want to put it in a little box wrap it up give it a label give it an indication and now you must get better but it doesn't because we're dealing with a ninety percent ninety to ninety nine percent of this huge individual response that each of us has in the collective response that each of us is having chooses a massive change in our lives and that's very anxiety-provoking and we can't just say that everyone's now ill so the pandemic that's coming off to this like you so rightly say is one of how are we going to teach the humans to manage their mind so that they don't freak out we're going to have over medicated people or people living under another label there's no logic to saying to you you have a clinical depression because you've run through covert no you've gone through coverage you don't have a clinical depression you depressed it's so important it's the ninety two ninety nine percent who you are it doesn't need a medical medical label to validate it let me validate the depression you feeling right now let me validate your anxiety let me enter that word to what worries me was the approach that's coming up is sticking people into the box of New Haven illness we're not going to treat it properly we're going to tell people that we don't have enough resources meanwhile we can help each other collectivistic lee we can help each other process through so be shift that is the whole view and see us as humans collectively going through this tumor some organ experiences this way some that way it's all individualistic but we can come together different just win all the way around exactly not only the medicine in the back scenes but from a psychiatric standpoint you're gonna get a label anxiety depression and anxiety increases the incidence of Alzheimer's disease what a depressant that you won't be able to stop and and I'm not opposed to medicine I'm just opposed to it's the first and the only thing people do and in that way they don't do the work of really learning how to manage their minds freaked out I mean you know their lives came to screeching halt or not I mean you know just got her driver's license her first job it's like the world the sky is falling and one thing that we did with them right off right off the bat and it's what works for me is they have to have something to do that's empowering exactly you gotta have put your energy into something empowering focus on something that you can do that you at least the sense of control sense of control so over something your own life your own actions your own decisions at least I love that because that's what we're sort of talking about right in the beginning that the uncertainty that we need to accept that's the first step in getting control cuz as soon as I'm aware of my uncertainty then I'm on the path see empowerment because now I can start controlling and I love what you say because you can do little things get some purpose we know from Dan witness would be know from global work that as students do you have a purpose and a passion yes you're going to be more in control you're going to handle all these robberies and the connection that give me more connection that happens with each other can then grow as well alongside the passion and the purpose no one like certainty better than I do I mean I'm like literally the epitome of a pertinent person who loves certainty so put me in the middle of a pandemic and there goes certainty right so specially down the whole world and there goes certain meaning is the illusion right there's no there's no certain code piece that yes Lois Road and in 1948 about the atomic bomb and if you just replaced ovid 19 he said you know basically the scientists have figured out yet one more way for you to die a painful death and you already have thousands yeah that's such a good food if the virus comes it should find us doing sensible human love Thanks when we come back we're gonna talk and Carolyn what I would love for you to give our listeners are just the most practical tips you have learned over the last 38 years of helping people have better brains and better minds you welcome back we are here with cognitive neuroscientist dr. Carolyn leap author of think learn succeed think and eat yourself smart I mean it is you everybody knows on the brain workers way podcasts were just a huge fan of food healthy food and then switch on your brain Carolyn thank you so much for being with us what are the most practical things people can take away from your work especially now during a pandemic and then where can they learn more about you and what you do and the resources you have to offer wonderful thank you well I think the first and first thing is the 32 1632 90 minute rule and that's the as you are hearing something like reading maybe another piece of bad news or someone tells you someone else has died or is another funny whatever whatever news comes in is not to react immediately to that because as that signal of that information is coming in as you guys know your brain is adjusting for the listeners your brain is adjusting to this information it's a quantum signal it's a sound signal it's a your brain responds electrochemically and what kinds of things so while your brain in that state waits processing and you're building that information in your brain as a structure it's not a good time to respond you're going to you're going to react instead of be proactive so to try and use the 30 to 90 second rule where you actually just don't say a word just listen just read and get to the point you can calm down and respond that works brilliantly as well considering you all on top of each other in our homes a lot of people with like in small spaces and it can be you know you're with each other all the time so in terms of glue we get lots of questions like I'm sure you do about wow I love my my daughter or my husband or why wife but we are getting on each other's nerves how do we handle toxic words and toxic people the 30 to 90 second rule is no no it doesn't have to do I didn't go to the whole house where the truth it didn't hey you got the say we've loved it meat would be work together all the time we actually have a role in our house it's a pandemic you get a tantrum a week yeah more than a tantrum a week in reality we have to talk about last week and he just looked at me okay honey I love you and if you 10 minutes later and I'm like I'm sorry I love you I'm sorry I'm done it's so practical well here's another practical one that we've been doing and it works really well is heaven a covert 19 area in your house and it's the only it's group about covert 19 and it worked so well because it got is my youngest daughter is sitting and all having these dinners and which is had become quite a ritual there always were battalion but now with Koba they didn't become more of a ritual and we were talking about covert non-stop and my daughter's that I'm head enough so we have one area in our house and that's what I recommend people do one area in your house where you talk about covert and then also in that time limit the time and then talk about not just the negative but also the positive even if you can't find a positive there's something we still got each other there's always something always in the conversation on something positive and there's always something positive that we can ahead yeah I find a lot we usually limited it so that we can't talk about kovat at dinner because that's our big gathering time where we all together so there's no covert talk at dinner anymore because initially there was that's all it was and then what does happen we don't know what's going on you know gathering information talking about it and all of a sudden we realize this is really unhealthy and so we're not gonna do that anymore we can have our time you know you know during the day that we talk about it we gather we talk about it but we're not talking about it at dinner and like you said we talk about the positives like I realized life was moving too fast I like moving slower I like the dinners to come yes like all of this exactly I agree with that to the next I love that and what you just said life is based on our in terms of certain things and that's what I think people to think this going back to normal it's one of these and other things you were going to just maybe discuss that's that could be a third practical point is don't but I don't want to go back stops thinking to go back to normal cancel it's no mind and what was that it wasn't very nice anyway so yes the financial and the meat and health-wise we're gonna move forward you can't go backwards because backwards didn't help us now we have to move forward so that's something is to think don't try and go back but go forward so the new don't look for what's the new normal just look for how can we create it when we conceptualize what we're doing and then our fourth thing is I would recommend that people understand in terms of trauma that you because you are going to have full man accept it embrace it celebrate it because as soon as you embrace and celebrate you're not celebrating the pain of what you've gone through you celebrating the fact that you're away from the research that I've done on their conscious and unconscious mind and the neuroscience stuff is this you can't change something if it's shoved down into the non conscious mind that is shortening your lifespan that is causing all kinds of chaos and damage you need to embrace how you feel and you need to not stay stuck in just embracing people are quite good at saying I feel scared that meaning very encouraged a lot of psychologists and a lot of mental health experts have been advising people to express how they feel I'm saying Express how you feel and process it so go through it what are the what are the the detail go through the detailed steps of what does this mean process through not just I feel scape but be very specific and then we conceptualize which means redesign look at it differently I can't do what I used to do I can cry over spilt milk and throw into tantrum or you can throw one tantrum a week and move forward and reconceptualize and design and what I did was all that up over the years all these techniques are developed I've put into the main technique that is that really drives the mind to drive the brain to rewire is a five step process that I develop that's based on the neurophysiology of house thoughts form inside the brain and that's called the five step process very simplistically and you are asking where people can get their hands on that sort of thing so I mean I can assure you he's got an app called switch I don't if you can see this we can send you the details but I've put the five steps and I can tell you what the five steps are the app is called switch called switch and it's available wherever Google iTunes in other normal place and that's it's an audio driven 63 day program at all you do you keep doing it works in cycles of 21 so in your changes in your brain happen in cycles of 21 what I did was a lot of work on how does a habit form and that cycles of neuroplasticity and if you're going to really change something it's not going to change overnight we all know that they all know little habits we all know that look how long does it really take which has been thirty eight years of my work and it cycles up 21 days so it takes 21 days to build along to memory but it takes 63 to build a habit so therefore I've taken that concept and put that into if you're learning for school you're going to have to work in those cycles to really build knowledge that is going to stay in you that you can actually use I used to train medical students for years for 25 years I'd go in and teach medical students how to learn all the other information just as a side note but you mean in a medical field then also if you detoxing a tumor it's going to not take for days where people give up mostly after four days it's going to take three sight at least 63 days to hear that alma it's going to take so these things that we're going through and now as we transition we're in the initial stage we've been in it now for almost six weeks we've kind of got along tomb in which we've almost obliterated we've almost ultimate eyes this way of functioning so we've actually already entered which is good news entered into a new way of thinking so now we have to just unpack what that looks like in each of our lives and as long as we and it takes at 63 days so in terms of cycles of so in terms of what I teach in here and also in switch on your brain is the is the version that's there's that there is the story descriptive version of what's in the books and this book I teach how to learn I mean these tons of these five steps are in different versions in the book the app is easiest cause it's audio driven but essentially it's the first thing is you've got to be away you've got to gather awareness the second thing is you've got to really focus your reflection on finding you've got to dig deep into an unconscious mind to find out what you need a process we've got to write things down your brain rights genetically when you write things down that does all kinds of things as you know to bring things out of your brain you've got to we kick you've got to work on reconceptualizing which is redesigning seeing it differently and then you've got to practice doing that and these five steps can be done in as short as the research I've done shows in shorter 7 to 16 minutes a day over cycles of 21 days and that's how you can really practically learn to deal with the tumor that going streamers current time and any tumors from any stage this is what I did with my patients for you it's what I used to go into the township areas into Rwanda I would teach these five steps how to learn same clap steps like slightly differently how to build your brain and in the same five steps how to detox your brain she'll go to using our mind to fix on our mind to fix Elaine so let's use a practical example me so the pandemic has been sort of a wild ride for me from you know I baked clinics around the country one in New York that we have said closed for two weeks because one of our employees ended up on a ventilator with no.19 and then my parents got sick and ended in hospital together and then they came out but my dad really never got completely well because he had other medical things last week he died and I've been teaching people about grief and how to manage and how to manage but you've been calling it [Music] and it's it's not funny but it's odd when you know I post cuz I've been posting almost every day if my siblings hear me say something not complimentary about my dad because he was brutal and by it's a very powerful person that they get upset the truth his last year's he was one of my best friends I mean he's like was tan and my dad and but but I would love your thought you know having done a lot of your early work in South Africa obviously grief is a part of what you've done to help people what what are some of the strategies you use to help people process grief and I imagine it's very similar to that five-step process you just know definitely so if you take the fastest excuse me the first thing is I'm sorry I really am sorry for what was an awesome you telling me about your mom and dad and how they did it yeah no that's that's the incredible story so this the first part is gathering awareness the fact that you actually are not pushing it down you're going through you know you're getting it art you know the stages of grease that people talk about they aren't actually linear they don't happen in that nice little neat package it isn't actually how the the lady who developed sort of her namesake and it's actually a much more fluid process so that's the first thing is we gotta get it out in our time that we're ready so not all of us are going to be able to talk about it straight away so some people that maybe your siblings some of them are not dealing with it is that you are I mean we're gonna you you're talking some of them might brush it down a little bit for a while but at some point we do have to get it out so that's their gathering awareness where do I want to talk about this now or in a month time or in two weeks time or do I want to talk to who do I want to tell everyone so part of what you're doing is you are gathering your awareness by translating it into what you get to do which is teach people you transfer your knowledge and that's how you process which is brilliant so your reflection the second step is you've taken this this this grief and this dis and you've turned it into lessons so you're processing you processing by teaching people so it's almost like the steps you going through so the second step that you reflected on your your pain and you've turned that into step 3 which is like a a set series of lessons and as you are teaching them you're kind of in that for step 3 checkers as you're teaching in my beat you as you talk you learn more and more and more you getting healing coming and then the actual teaching that you're doing would be the five step to active reach you doing something so before you started your teaching process of this series that earth grief you would have gone through those five steps because you go through them every team you literally go through them but these numbers are insane on an unconscious level you goes through those five steps of 400 billion actions per second just before you consciously aware you're going through them just 10 seconds before you're aware of doing something for you you literally okay at this it speeds it slows down a little bit by the time you're conscious you're actually going through those those those files forty times a second but you only aware about every ten seconds and so that means that when we go into the five-step process we start training ourselves to become very aware of the every ten second moment which is living a very soft regulated life so translated the most simple basic thing is being self-aware that's all those numbers simply translate into being self-aware self-awareness enables you to bring healing between the non conscious in the conscious mind the unconscious mind is your truth values a pain of losing a loved one creates tremendous confusion of energy and energy is not something weird energy is what keeps us alive it's the zoom is energies the zoom technologies energy so energy is in the non conscious mind energy needs to be balanced and part of balance is expressing your brief acknowledging recognizing it will never leave you that's another big thing with grief it's never going to get better the worst thing I could tell you is time will heal it won't heal what you will simply do over time is you learn to manage the pain that keeps balancing you in the image in your brain if you in an unconscious level if you start denying and pushing down your own unconscious it forms like little I'm just giving you simple analogies like little not sucking your time when you overdo exercise and you don't then you get knots in your muscles that's what if you don't deal with grief if you don't process it if you don't go through in some way all the stages anger denial in whatever order there's no order you can do it in whatever way and it's going to be up and down and in six months time you'll have a bad day and then it'll be fine for six months and then three years later could come back and if we don't allow ourselves to process that we build up these clumps of energy and they send little warning signals through your subconscious into a conscious mind and every 10 seconds or so you can you'll be a wave I feel anxious up for age it is something not quite right this this is what Toma does any kind of trauma grief is a trauma and if we become self-aware and train ourselves to become self-aware we can listen to those messages of the subconscious mind which is then telling us the root of the issue that we need to just enclose and unwind and part of grief is not I have to get over it I have to just go beyond it is it's always going to be with you so great techniques for grief are remembering the good times when you're feeling really sad cry when you need a cry feel the sadness you're human it's beautiful to feel the sadness of grief it shows you what relationship your head we scared of grief that we must embrace grief because it shows the beauty of the relationship that you had with that person so when you feel that sadness you can also just to balance and help yourself think of a really fun time or a really good example of just a great memory especially around Christmas and birthdays when it's really hard is just express the emotion and then grab onto some happy memory which can kind of just bring that balance back again yeah which is really nice and the other thing is is to allow space like sometimes like my dad died and HT 9/11 literally that a month after and they were in New York and 9/11 happened went back to South African he died a month later which was totally shock to everyone but my mom remarried and I know when she remarried a few years later she said to me the one day I really battled was I still AM dead you know I still glad you're dead I said well it's okay you've got space for both and that's what we need to understand was Green if you remarry or if you find that you find now you transfer that that that need or that what your dad meeting you you might have a mentor a friend who seems to be fulfilling it but it's not replacing it's just another space so you can't undream disloyal exactly helping destroy you can hold two people in you can love two people at the same time you can love the person who's died and you can love the new husband or then you mayn't or whatever it is holding them in those spaces so that's a couple of things that I would recommend thank you sir I found because good grief you do cry cause you're sad and I have his voicemail saved on my Daniel I did that with my dad when he died I still got it nights how many years later and I still have that recording and it did it was in four years I did I listened to it I'm doing his memorial service really excited about because it's really how he continues to live and even though he died he continues to live not only through me but I have six siblings and fifty nieces nephews you know his grandchildren and great grandma and I think it's really special because your early years with your dad were and so to see that you like have resolved that and you look beautiful yeah and and this grief process is one where you you're realistic about your relationship with your dad but it's also with fondness that you you know you're able to do that and it's just been yeah I love the realistic that's great honor that being realistic being honest some of the way talk about the bad times so you don't just suddenly have to pretend everything was great because not everyone is great all because you can validate your own well it's less line in the poem is and he was perfect for me because I really like how my life turned out thanks so much of your dad in you sometimes I laugh because his dad is is very strong he's an overcomer he is you know he's a powerful man and I'm like sometimes he would say like these things why is dad annoyed him when he was young and I'm like really that mirror image the mirror image happening okay so grateful for you and for your time I'm glad that we've been able to get to know each other yeah I'm so excited and I hope we can keep connected it's just lovely talking to you and I just love what you're doing and would be collectively trying to help everyone which is so great you're doing a great great job so thank you I'm so excited to get with you funny well we will post these links and Carolyn Lee father of switch on your brain you can also get the app at the App Store or called switch and she's also the author of thank learn succeed think and each or so smart we are grateful to you stay safe if you're enjoying the brain Warriors Way podcast please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode and while you're at it feel free to give us a review or 5-star rating as that helps others find the podcast if you're considering coming taemin clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from brainmd you can use the code podcast 10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at Amen Clinics comm or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmd health Dunkel for more information give us a call at eight fifty five nine seven eight one three six three

Channel: AmenClinics

Views: 9,597

Keywords: brain warriors way, brain warriors way podcast, caroline leaf podcast, dr amen podcast, daniel amen podcast, daniel amen, dr amen, tana amen, tana amen podcast, brain warrior podcast, managing trauma, brain health podcast

Id: u_sHPAvOXh4

Length: 58min 36sec (3516 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020