YOUR BRAIN IS ALWAYS LISTENING: Tame the Dragons That Control Your Mind

welcome everyone i am so excited to be with you i have been working on this new content for almost two years and just thrilled to bring it to you so tonight i'm really going to unveil my new book your brain is always listening and we're going to talk about about the first quarter of it where i'm going to teach you about really the major psychological issues people come to him and clinics for i'm going to use it as an analogy the dragons from the past that are still breathing fire on your emotional brain um i'll give you a sneak peek of what else is in the book and give you a lot of practical tips and tools to use because you know we are in this historically um difficult time and i remember when the pandemic started for me i'd basically finished the book um but ended up rewriting a lot of it i was actually on a book tour for my last book the end of mental illness which i just deeply loved and i was in my bathroom on march 10th getting ready to go to new york city we had scanned mel robbins i was going to be on her show the whole show was going to be about her scan and my book and i got a call from the producer who said don't come we're closing the studio and i remember writing down that night mental hygiene is just as important as washing your hands we need to disinfect our thoughts and tame the dragons that drive anxiety depression addiction stress and bad habits and that night i also wrote down this term pandemic squared that this pandemic if not handled properly would actually spawn another pandemic a mental health pandemic which indeed it did depression has tripled anxiety disorders has skyrocketed suicide like we have never seen in the 32 years we've been working at eamon clinics [Music] this is really an important time and so i use the analogy the dragons from the past that still breathe fire on your emotional brain and so i'm going to show you a number of the dragons tonight march 16th if we fast forward a week i was on the phone with one of my patients you'll know her miley cyrus uh miley went public last year that i've been her doctor for about 10 years and i dearly love her and like everyone else she was freaking out and her dragons especially the anxious dragon and the death dragon were breathing fire on her brain and she's asking me questions like how long will the virus live on packages remember that and everybody was completely freaked out about the virus and packages and over about an hour that night i walked her back from the ledge and we used the tools that she had already learned to tame the dragons and she asked me if the next day i would go live on her instagram uh to her 105 million fans which i did and then she started a whole series called brightminded so i was just so proud of her and a number of the other celebrities that i worked with to go public about their challenges just to normalize that no matter how fortunate you are this is still a historically anxious upsetting time and then if we fast forward april 17th my mom and dad became celebrities and they were on the front cover of the orange county register and i was so grateful both of them got covered uh my mom got better uh i put her on hydroxychloroquine which you know at the time that was the best that we knew and it seemed to work for her and even though my dad came home from the hospital that's why i made the cover of the orange county register he never really got better even with hydroxychloroquine and um he was sleeping 14 hours a day so he had this thing we now call long coved and his heart stopped beating on may 5th and at that time you see behind me the grief and lost dragons uh just breathe fire on my brain so um you know some people look at me and it's like oh he has everything and and it's like i have all the same feelings that you have um so this program this book is needed now more than ever before all of us are stressed anxious depressed as i said depression has at least tripled it was eight percent of the general population last february and by august it was 28 um in my lifetime we've never seen a change like that substance abuse is up suicide is up divorce and family issues are skyrocketing now that's not to say that there's not a silver lining because there is parents have more time with children than ever before but we are in a historically stressful time so in the book um i talk about the dragons from the past and here are 13 dragons we're not going to talk about all 13 tonight but we'll talk a bit about the abandoned invisible and insignificant dragon that's my primary dragon being that i'm one of seven and i'm a middle child and i have five sisters and an older brother which means completely expendable there's the inferior flawed dragon which we'll talk about the anxious dragon the wounded dragon the shouldn't shaming dragon which we're not going to talk about but the take-home answer here is guilt is just a bad motivator of behavior whenever you think you should do something um replace it with i want to or it fits my goals too the special and spoiled dragon the responsible dragon so common one of the most common where you feel like you have to take care of other people my wife tana's dragon the judgmental dragon where you just know the world would be better if they did what you asked them to do the angry dragon uh the grief and lost dragon which we'll talk about the death dragon which is just everywhere now it's think of it like godzilla pounding around the globe the hopeless and helpless dragon that drives depression and the ancestral dragon actually had a conversation with someone today about the ancestral dragon it's where the issues you have aren't yours that they belong to your mother or to your grandfather we're going to talk about that also in the book uh oh how you know your dragons we actually developed a quiz for you you can go to knowyourdragons.com and in six or seven minutes you'll know which of the 13 dragons you have the average number is six so if you get six dragons it doesn't mean you're messed up it means you're average you're like the rest of us uh some people have 10 or 12 dragons at which point you probably come see us at haman clinics and work on taming them but for sure the book will help you the book is just so simple and easy to access i think that's what people have told me through the years one of my gifts is to take complex information and to make it easy to understand so go to know your dragons and then we're not going to talk about it tonight we may actually set up other events to talk about the they them and other dragons so your brain is always listening to other people in your life past and present my brain still listens to my dad and my grandfather even though they're both dead um and you have your dragons and you're always interacting with other people who have their dragons and so if you don't really tame your dragons it can become like a modern day game of thrones and all-out war can be problematic so their parents you know obviously i still listen to my mom's voice siblings and birth order did you know that middle children are the most monogamous that the oldest and only children get on average 3 000 more hours of parenting than the other kids so early on their iqs tend to be higher and they talk earlier and walk earlier but we catch up children dragon any of you who have children know you always have their voice in your head whether they're talking or not the teacher and coach dragon the friends popular kids mean girls bullies former current and prospective lovers the internet trolls so you'll see hateful comments in the scroll tonight it always happens uh and it's actually one good thing about dying that's how you deal with the death dragon come up with a list what are the good things about dying no more internet troll dragons and the faceless society dragons that's the they dragons in the book there's a whole section on how to deal with your bad habits your brain is always listening to the bad habit dragons these are habits that result from dragon influences and increase the chances you'll be overweight and depressed and have brain fog so the yes yes yes dragon where you reflexively say yes when you really should say i have to think about it or you know these people no no no no matter what it is you say they argue with you um or the interrupting dragon they don't let you finish like half of your sentence and they've already interrupted you or trouble with the truth the oblivious dragon where you never read food labels you just don't know what you put in your body or on your body you have no idea how many calories a day you eat i mean you're just sort of oblivious to your health distracted procrastination disorganization one of my favorite bad habit dragons is let's have a problem these are people who are always poking other people but it's not good for you and the overeater bad habit dragon 72 of the population in america is overweight i published three studies that show as your weight goes up the actual physical size and function of your brain goes down which should scare the fat off anyone and then i have a whole section in the book on the scheming dragons these are societal influences that steal your mind your money and your children from food pushers the unhealthy health dragons are really interesting because they appear like they're healthy but they're really not the substance use whether it's drug abuse or even doctors that are prescribing xanax like candy the toxin pushers and i worry about this during the pandemic because everywhere you go there's hand sanitizer i want you to know the ingredients in those and are they really good for you or not so natural product companies uh making hand sanitizers you know i'm just a huge fan of those the digital dragons they're just completely stealing the minds of our children pornography negative news social media contact sports we just came off of the super bowl and the big lesson for me in the super bowl i mean there's just no question i did the big nfl study um a long time ago we scanned and treated 300 players playing football is a brain damaging sport just own it we shouldn't even have that discussion the science is really clear yet if you're going to do something dangerous you should do everything else right and um tom brady he's 43 was the super bowl mvp he played amazing he does everything else right if you actually look at his routines he's a brain warrior he knows how to rehabilitate his brain and you know quite frankly there are people that are going to play football if you're going to do that you need to be putting your brain constantly in a healing environment if you are in a job that is potentially brain-damaging firefighters police officers i've worked with many about um head trauma emotional trauma for firefighters toxic exposure they should be putting their brains in a healing environment all the time and then the holiday dragons it's like well it's halloween so i should have all this candy or it's thanksgiving i should gorge or it's christmas and we should celebrate christ's birth with bad food and i'm like no we we ran a weight loss group a number of years ago and started december 1st and the average weight loss was two and a half pounds the week of christmas you do not have to gain weight and be bad for your brain during the holidays there's a whole section on ants because the ants feed the dragons so those of you who follow my work now many years ago i coined the term automatic negative thoughts ants the ants that infest your mind and steal your happiness you don't have to believe every stupid thing you think and then um to finish the book um i write about the addicted dragons and while i was writing it i realized that the traditional aaa programs all of the anonymous programs sex addiction cocaine addiction narcotics addiction alcoholics anonymous or sex anonymous so on was developed 85 years ago and if you look at the 12 steps there's no neuroscience in any of the steps and so i reimagined the 12 steps keeping some of them because some of them are great but from a neuroscience perspective so i think this would be worth an event all by itself but you'll notice step number three is you have to heal the brain and step number five is you have to know well what type of addict am i am i an impulsive addict a compulsive addict a sad addict an anxious addict um looking at the brain and i realized i didn't introduce myself so i'm hoping you read my bio but daniel ayman and i'm a psychiatrist i'm the ceo and founder of ayman clinics i am also the ceo and founder of brain md which is a ridiculously fast-growing nutritional supplement company and amen clinics holds the world's largest database of brain scans related to behavior we've done 170 000 scans on patients from 150 countries we have nine clinics around the united states we have a brand new one in dallas but bellevue washington san francisco bay area los angeles orange county chicago new york washington dc atlanta what i'm telling you is not something i just thought up it's something based on what is now 40 years of helping people get their brains and their minds healthy so for each of the dragons of the past tonight we're going to talk about their origin story or how they came about what triggers them how they cause you to react and how to tame them tan and i also have a brand new public television special that's going to start airing nationwide called overcoming anxiety depression trauma and grief and it's based on her new book the relentless courage of a scared child which if you haven't seen it i encourage you to look at it and then my new book your brain is always listening the book also for each of the dragons gives their upside so i told you this is my primary dragon and the upside is it leads me to be purposeful and make a difference in others to feel significant and for this live event we had 16 000 people sign up and i love that i love being able to take what i've learned and share it with you each of the dragons also has meditations uh and for this dragon i'm loved i am unique i am significant i am seen i'm making a difference in the lives of others and if i meditate on that it just tames the dragon so it doesn't have to cause trouble in my life so i want to start with a story and i open the book with this story jimmy 39 when he first came to see me he's the son of a major mexican mob figure uh in a major city in america and he had been suicidal in a psychiatric hospital and the day he got out of the hospital he came to see me [Music] it's a high-level business executive i'd been doing work in their company severe anxiety panic attacks and dread especially after he was asked to speak in public and this is a quote if i had to describe the fear it's like you're on death row and the clocks run out the guard opens the door and you must take the first step that kind of fear runs through my bones he had something called glossophobia which is the fear of speaking in public since at the age 12 his grandmother made him give an impact statement when his father was on trial for a double murder what if i cannot speak and end up killing my dad and that thought had still gotten stuck in his brain and his brain was filled with ants automatic negative thoughts i can't speak in public so i'm going to lose my job and this is the ants often link i'm going to be afraid of interviewing so i won't be able to get a new job i'm a loser my wife will divorce me i'll end up on the streets i should kill myself and you know through our work we taught him how to eliminate the ants and if you eliminate the first one they don't link to this awful conclusion he had intense persistent trauma he watched his father deal drugs and assault others when he was eight swat officers stormed into his restaurant into his apartment broke down the door with their guns drawn when visiting his dad in prison his dad made him go up to other notorious gang leaders to test his medal he witnessed drive-by shootings was in car chases before the age of nine he was kidnapped twice by feuding family members his mother kept his siblings but sent him to live with his grandparents he felt abandoned he witnessed his grandmother being raped and while they were raping her they asked him if he wanted to participate imagine the horror of the traumas his ancestral dragons he was loaded on both sides with anxiety depression and drug abuse he had bad habit dragons loved watching violent movies boxing ufc fights execution and animal fights so he was initially turned on thrilled excited uh by watching violence that he hated you can see how that got stuck in his brain and at aemon clinics we also think you have a brain you know we actually think in four big circles i'll show you them in a second but he had head injuries playing football he was a all-conference linebacker he boxed during high school bad for your brain at 15 he fell eight feet onto his head and was knocked unconscious he lost his hearing and had to relearn to walk again he used drugs and alcohol as a teen and young adult to cope so here are the four circles whenever we assess or evaluate someone in aim in clinics we're always thinking of what's going on with their brain which is why we do brain spect imaging why we look at the brain how do i know what's going on in your head unless i look at your brain but we also want to know what's going on in their mind and think of the dragons that are really messing with your mind there's a social circle how you get along with others so they're dragons mixed with your dragons and there's this spiritual circle that is just so important on why you care what is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose so at amen clinics we do a study called spect spec looks at blood flow and activity it looks at how the brain works and it basically shows us three things good activity too little or too much the image on the left we're looking at the outside surface this is a healthy scan and it should just show full even symmetrical activity the image on the right we're looking at the most active parts of the brain blue is average activity red and white are the most active parts of the brain and in jimmy's scan he had clear damage to his left temporal lobe mood instability irritability dark thoughts even suicidal thoughts and his emotional brain is just on fire in a pattern we call the diamond patterns what we see in people who have post traumatic stress disorder and you can see from jimmy's history he had a long history of trauma so with treatment he thrived over six months now we're actually at about 16 months now and i'm just so proud of him he is doing so well he got well in large part because he worked really hard right i'm just not a fan take a pill see me in a month we'll tame the dragons that way we'll drug them into submission no he really worked hard he journaled he did the exercises i asked i mean he's that's why i got better [Music] i gave him medicine for his left temporal lobe some people think at aemon clinics were opposed to medicine we're absolutely not opposed to medicine we're just opposed to that's the first and only thing you do i gave him supplements to balance his brain including one i just love called happy saffron and brain and body power max that was my nfl formula that's the formula i used to really help rehabilitate brains that were troubled his mood stabilized his anxiety lessened became a better husband and team member at work he lost 37 pounds that's often one of the side effects of working with us he's stronger more energy and he started to help his family get well i was so proud of him now before i get into the dragons i want to tell you um about a very special offer we have so the book is coming out march 2nd i want to get this book in the hands of as many people as possible and so my team developed this great offer that if you pre-order the book we'll give you four free gifts immediately so you'll get a playbook where we summarize the book you know so many people are like oh i can't read i mean you get through this summary very quickly the 12 principles of amen clinics the science of change and tiny habits i'm a huge fan of the smallest things you can do today that will make the biggest difference six feel better fast techniques how to know about your dragons and a guide to supplementing your brain that's just one of the things the second thing on march 17th i'm going to answer questions from only people who pre-ordered the book so from this group i'm going to spend two hours that afternoon and early evening answering your questions one of my favorite gifts is before i did imaging i used a lot of hypnosis in my practice i still do and i made this program magnificent mind with medical hypnosis so this is a 50 value there are sessions just like if you were in my office for anxiety sleep chronic pain weight loss smoking and peak performance and my favorite bonus gift is a free bottle of happy saffron this is something i take every day it's got 30 milligrams of saffron most people don't know there are 21 randomized controlled trials showing that this dosage of saffron is equally effective as prozac paxil effects or zoloft imipramine to boost your mood yet there are no side effects they're only positive effects happy saffron also has zinc and curcumin both of those have been found to help mood so we'll give you a free coupon for this just by pre-ordering the book we've already given away a thousand bottles so time is limited you want to do it quickly you get all four of those free gifts just pre-order the book anywhere great books are sold and then go to your brain as always listening dot com enter your order number and you get instant access to the bonuses um so i'm really excited about it okay let's talk about the dragons from the past and i talked about the abandoned dragon the dragon that's driving the epidemic of teenage suicide is this dragon it's the inferior flawed dragon where you feel less than other people where you feel like you're not enough and its origin is when you felt inadequate or you felt damaged or you felt less than others and ability and looks and money in relationships and i used to have this dragon i think sometimes this dragon still bites me i'm a middle child i have an older brother and in a lebanese family if you're number two you are not special and i mean there's a huge upside to that which meant i could do anything i wanted in my life and my family owns grocery stores and it really wasn't for me um and so i got to do something that fit what i wanted to do but i was also the smallest kid in the class which is sort of irritating and this dragon is triggered by comparing yourself to others and you will always find someone taller than you someone stronger than you someone better looking than you someone who has more money than you and you'll always find people that are not as tall as you that are not as good looking as you that are not as but when you bring your attention to what you don't have it triggers this dragon and social media has just caused an epidemic rise in this dragon um for our young people and it's horrifying because teenage suicide is skyrocketing so how does this dragon cause you to react you feel inferior you can get depressed you can be jealous overly sensitive sometimes perfectionistic often you can develop something called body dysmorphic disorder where you get obsessed on your flaws and it really can cause emotional pain for people now the upside of this dragon is if you accept your flaws you can help others you can be more accepting of others it also helps you be humble and compassionate so how do you tame this dragon i love this rule i've been talking about this rule for many years called the 1840-60 rule i want you to remember it when you're 18 you worry about what everybody's thinking of you and when you're 40 you don't care what anybody thinks about you and when you're 60 you realize nobody has been thinking about you at all people spend their days worrying and thinking about themselves not you you want to be aware of when you're comparing yourself and work diligently to stop it so know your triggers know what happens know what triggers you to compare and then change your focus focus on your accomplishments i treated one patient once who had sold 400 million records 400 million and yet he was still stuck on some of the negative things that one of the music magazines said about him when he was 16. and he's like 50. and i had him go home and write down his accomplishments and when he came back he felt so much better because he's shifting his focus rather than from what is wrong to what is right also don't criticize others because the more you criticize others the more likely you are to criticize yourself and please avoid mindlessly scrolling social media for all of the dragons i have what movies they like and the inferior flawed dragons they love x-men mutant character movies because they're flawed characters that have special powers when you compare yourself negatively to others you will suffer and so write this down post it where i bring my attention today will always determine how i feel the meditations for the inferior flawed dragon i am unique i restrain comparing myself to others i am a strong independent person i will be my best not someone else's best i work hard so now let's talk about the most common of all dragons the anxious dragon before the pandemic this dragon affected 30 percent of the population it's most common one of the first 7 500 people who took the know your dragons questionnaire its origins i mean you're born with anxiety in your genes it came from thousands and thousands of years ago when our ancestors were afraid and worked hard every day to survive and the ones who had a bit of anxiety they're actually more likely to survive people have low levels of anxiety that don't worry be happy people they die the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses so some of this is genetic but it could happen if you were overwhelmed when you were a child if you felt the world was unpredictable or dangerous and for the first time in this book i mean i talk a lot of personal stuff in this book and when i was young i used to wet my bed i think until i was about nine which meant every morning i woke up in a panic because i just didn't know and it was embarrassing and my mom was great um my dad was always gone because he worked like crazy hours but my mom was great but i really hated myself for it and it it sort of embedded into my nervous system this low level of anxiety so when i learned hypnosis when i was a young medical student i just loved it because it helped calm the anxiety the triggers or any reminders of past fears or anxieties and how it um i have this slide here for a very specific reason so any reminders i love cat stevens it's not a cat stevens commercial i bet you know i was a teenager when his music was popular and i loved it if i play it my wife screams at me she hates it she gets triggered because her uncle who is a drug addict like cat stevens and it reminds her of a frightening scary time so those are the kind of things that can trigger the dragons to bite you and then in my wife's case to breathe fire on me so how does the anxious dragon cause you to react panic attacks fears phobias predicting the worst conflict avoidant you become sensitive to rejection we actually see anxiety if you see the basal ganglia the anxious dragon is hanging out in some of the fear centers of the brain the amygdala and basal ganglia often work too hard and our task then becomes calming and down so i talk about resetting limbic hyperactivity and you can do that with relaxing sense i'm a huge fan of lavender jasmine chamomile natural supplements uh and brain md actually makes a number of them gaba calming with the pandemic the sales just skyrocketed it's got gaba and magnesium it's a way to just settle down the nervous system happy saffron serotonin mood support for our worriers and magnesium chewables if you just chew two of those a day i was reading a study that showed it actually had significant mood-enhancing qualities and i've used magnesium a lot as a natural way to calm the brain and it's like 60 of the population is low in magnesium now let's talk about the wounded dragon very common during this very stressful time [Music] the wounded dragon's origin is whenever you experience trauma and it could be physical emotional or sexual abu abuse intense stress such as being in a fire a flood an earthquake or being assaulted i've been in two major earthquakes the one in 1971 in the san fernando valley i remember like it was yesterday at six o'clock in the morning the house is shaking like crazy my five sisters are screaming and my dad who was home um his booming voice said don't worry it's just an earthquake and they started screaming louder so it's pretty intense and then i remember the second one it was 1989 i'm in a family therapy session up in the bay area our first clinic was in the bay area and this couple is in my office screaming at each other and then the building starts to shake just like the one in 1971 and i'm like you people need to calm down and they calmed down and the building continued to shake for another 45 seconds that was the one that broke the bay bridge the wounded dragon gets triggered with any past trauma reminders smells sights sounds and anniversaries and i have a wounded dragon and i had let's just say a complicated relationship with my dad who later when we talk about him a bit became one of my best friends but it's accurate to say we had a complicated relationship and when i was young uh i was five that's me and sugar sugar uh was my goat and i loved sugar now this story is disturbing uh so if you get upset easily you might want to just mute this for a second so sugar was just one of my best friends she loved me you can see her kissing me we played a lot this is us running i don't know how well you see this but sugar also liked my dad's roses and one day my dad had had enough and sent sugar away and i was devastated now i had no idea i was just goat they sent her away to be slaughtered and a couple of days later at dinner my dad joked they were feeding us sugar stew and i remember throwing up running to my r i've dealt with this i promise but i was really upset and just felt disconnected uh from my dad after that and then didn't think about it until years later i gave a lecture in the arena monterey in monterey mexico a theater that seats like 16 000 people actually the same number of people signed up for the seminar tonight and on the streets of monterey mexico they have goat meat for sale and after my lecture i was walking to the hotel and i saw it and i had a flashback to that dinner and had a panic attack i'm like trauma can get stuck in your brain so it can cause you to react with by reliving the trauma having nightmares feeling numb avoiding any situation that reminds you of the event startling easily feeling your future is shortened or always watching for bad things to happen what we often see and i showed you this in jimmy's brain so there's a healthy scan on the left um a ptsd scan on the right where you see that diamond of overactivity and actually see if i can this is pointing to the right temporal lobe we often call it diamond plus where the right temporal lobe which is the part of the brain that is watching the intentions of other people becomes too hyperactive so sometimes with trauma the brain can get stuck in overdrive sometimes especially if there's also head trauma or toxic exposure the brain can completely shut down and so what do we do if the brain is working too hard we're going to calm it down meditation prayer hypnosis calming sense like lavender or calming supplements like gaba calming support or or magnesium chewables if the brain is shut down and i would argue well how would you really know unless you look i mean that's why we do the brain imaging work we do at amen clinics exercise can stimulate it upbeat music sense but different ones like peppermint and eucalyptus and supplements that are more stimulating to the brain like sami which has good science to boost your mood focus and energy which we use a lot to help support attention and focus and one of my favorite supplements brain boost on the go which it comes with 10 packets you put it in a bottle of water drink it it's got b6 b12 folate and theanine so it's a stimulant without any caffeine and it's very popular so taming the wounded dragon so we do something called emdr it's a specific psychological treatment for trauma stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing you bring up the trauma they have your eyes going back and forth and what that helps is bring it up and then calm it down i actually published a study on police officers who had been involved in shootings and were off work and they all went back to work after just an average of eight sessions journaling the trauma so i did emdr with the goat story um i also journaled it from my side but also from my dad's side bilateral hemisphere stimulation something called havening which i write about in the book and then one of the meditations is i am safe i am here this is now so the dragons from the past especially the wounded dragons are not controlling my mind and then the grief and lost dragon um which is so common during this pandemic and and it's not just losing someone although i know many of you have lost people um you know we've lost more people to covet 19 than died in world war ii more americans um it's sad it's horrifying um grief and loss comes from losing someone important like my dad through death divorce maybe a partner with dementia empty nest uh our daughter chloe uh so i have four and this is you know my youngest who you know her mother is very concerned about her mother's mental state when chloe leaves because they're so connected it can also come from losing something important like your health or like your business or a job or finances which is common during the pandemic it can be from the an attachment to ideas to an identity to you didn't live up to your level of success you had in mind for yourself you have a handicapped child and you mourn the loss of youth what you thought who you thought that child might be i already said i lost my dad in may and he was just one of my best friends and i always say with grief don't wait to start healing and i remember um the first month he died i'd sit in my chair and just cry while i listen to his voicemails i have tangerines avocados lemons oranges if you're interested and grief gets triggered when there's any reminder of the loss aside a song a routine making coffee lifting weights anniversary anything including a day of the week so i live close to my dad and every sunday so let's see how i'm doing with time so my relationship with my dad was strained until seven years ago until he was 85 and he he just wasn't nice and belittled me and it was weird because he'd tell everybody else how proud he was of me except me but when he was 85 he had mold in his house and developed a chronic cough then um heart failure and then a heart arrhythmia and he stopped going to work and he looked depressed and this is not this is someone who would just blatantly tell you i don't get heart attacks i give them um but he looked at me one sunday and he said i'm sick of being sick what do you want me to do and then he just did everything i asked him to do because he's so stubborn and over six months he lost 40 pounds uh he started working again became vibrant and on every sunday i went over his house to work out and so now every sunday i get triggered and i just remember what it was like show the slides and excellent but i want you guys to see this and so just a day of the week can trigger grief and the reactions can be shock and sadness denial anger guilt trouble breathing chest pain any of you been through grief you know what's going on can't sleep memory problems you have to get chest pain you have to get it checked out that's very important now i often say fix sleep first um and we make put me to sleep also restful sleep it's got melatonin magnesium 5-htp gaba and theanine all things that promote healthy sleep brain healthy routine is so important don't give yourself the excuse to hurt yourself healing should start as soon as possible and i often talk about turning around the five stages of grief so elizabeth kubler-ross talked about the stages of grief from denial anger bargaining depression and acceptance and i'm like there's no rule you have to do these so rather than denial admit you're lost my father's gone rather than anger work to find peace rather than bargaining for something that will not change stop bargaining i often say got this from my friend byron katie argue with reality welcome to hell re-engage with others to avoid depression and refuse to accept prolonged pain as a given this is the hopeless and helpless dragon this is the dragon that drives depression it can be a genetic component to this um often happens when stress is stacked too high when you try to get better and it doesn't work something called learned helplessness a pessimistic mindset or you feel like you have no control you want to be resilient in the pandemic remember these three letters tlc see it as temporary it is temporary now we don't know how long it's going to last but it's going to be over see it is local yes it's a global pandemic but what can you do in your house in your city and say the serenity prayer over and over again i've said it a thousand times during the pandemic uh it's about focusing on what you can control god grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change the courage to change the things i can and the wisdom to know the difference there's a reason that prayer has been around for a long time what triggers this dragon any reminders of feeling overwhelmed powerless or isolated i have this great exercise i do uh it's a bridging technique tell me what you're thinking and feeling i often you know when a patient comes in and they're having a hard time tell me what you're thinking and feeling and talked to a grandmother recently who just felt panicked when her daughter was letting the baby cry and i had her just go what are you thinking and feeling out of control when's the first time you felt like that and she went back in her mind till she was three and her parents had left her with her grandmother for a couple of months and she felt completely out of control lost isolated alone abandoned and using those techniques which i talk about in your brain as always listening can just be so helpful to you how do people react with this dragon it's depression sadness negativity hopelessness helplessness worthlessness they feel terrible they even wonder if life is worth living they have a very high negativity bias so what helps this dragon your diet unbelievable the research on if you get your food right your mood is right eliminate processed foods increase colorful fruits and vegetables there is a linear correlation between the number of fruits and vegetables you eat a day and your level of happiness up to the number eight and so at brain md we make something called neuro greens it actually should have been called neuro rainbow because it's made it's just a wonderful powder i put in my shake every morning with green things and blue things and purple things and yellow things and orange things all powders from organic vegetables and fruits it's amazing so many ways to tame this dragon from food to exercise certain supplements like happy saffron omega-3 fatty acids bright light therapy at brain md we have a bright light that i created that's just wonderful 30 minutes in the morning it's been shown to support your mood your focus your energy and your sleep i'm a huge fan of saunas one study in jama found just taking one sauna had antidepressant effects scents like lavender learning how to kill the ants and the treatment that we developed here at daemon clinics based on positive psychology called positivity bias training where you start every day with today is going to be a great day and you finish every day with what went well today now i told you the worst day of last year for me was may 5th when my dad died i had this conflicted relationship until goodness i was like 60 years old and then all of a sudden he becomes one of my best friends i mean it's like my dad my mom and my wife and the day my dad died it was a terrible day i was actually on my way over to take him to the doctor when i got a panic call from my mom and when i went to bed that night because it is my habit i went i said a prayer and i went what went well today and then i almost took a panicked breath because i'm like no you can't do that today but i always have an attitude problem with myself like what do you mean i can't do that today it's what i do and i just let my mind think about what went well that day and there was just this amazing interaction between my mom and police officer darlene of the newport beach police department and i for the last year i've been working with the newport beach police department on creating a brain healthy police department needed now more than ever before because of the societal unrest and officer darling was just so good with my mom and he's like we have to do an investigation when anybody dies at home and she looked at him and she said do you think i was cheating on him do you think i murdered him it was so funny um and my mom did it in a deadpan way i knew she wasn't serious and then i remember the hundreds of texts i got from my friends because when you're one of seven you know people find out these things immediately the text i got from my friends from my dad's friends and then i sat with him before the coroner took him away and just held his hand and i just remember how soft it was and i went to sleep you know on a night that i usually wouldn't have slept because these practices to be well are not just for when you're well my wife often says you don't get in the shower to you don't how does she say this i'm going to mess this up you don't get in the shower clean these practices are for a pandemic these practices are for good times and they're for bad times and we need them now more than ever and then focusing on gratitude and appreciation where you bring your attention always determines how you feel i would say i'm sorry for the tears but i'm not sorry because it's just part of the process and it's normal and the last dragon we'll talk about tonight is the grief is the ancestral dragon i love this dragon this is my favorite dragon and this dragon tells us we are suffering and it actually has nothing to do with us that we are holding someone else's pain that trauma actually got written into our genetic code this is my grandfather and [Music] he came to the united states as a teenager and when he was 19 his brother borrowed his sister's car and apparently wasn't a good driver and ended up colliding with an on coming train and was killed and my grandfather never drove and held a grudge against his sister his whole life and this happened this was written in his genetic code before he had my dad who then you know was involved in creating me and i think some of the anxiety i hold is not just mine that some of it's his and tana my wife her grandmother grew up in what is now lebanon during world war one when there was a great famine and she was lost in the mountains for three days and i often wondered why tana tana was preparing for the pandemic ever since we got married 13 years ago i'm like don't i take good care of you we live in newport beach we have plenty and oh no something bad is going to happen and her grandmother wrote the famine into her genetic code there's a whole research on this that i talk about in the book how sometimes your issues are from another generation and knowing that is so important so it's based on a concept called epigenetics where we actually inherit the fears worries even prejudices of our ancestors the triggers are often unknown and any reminders of stressful times stored in our genes so i write about one person whose mother was raped when she was in her early 20s and just never slept well after that and when she got to her early 20s she just never slept well and you know we came to believe it had ancestral origins and how it causes you to react is you have anxiety for little to no reason it's just not yours you engage in behaviors you just can't explain and taming this dragon is really about knowing your family history so i didn't know that story about my grandfather until i was writing this book and i spent hours talking to my dad about when he was little and about his dad and his mom and that's just really important information for me to have now you want to be a good listener don't judge it they're different generation it's a different time being a good listener is so important so talk to your parents grandparents family or the family historian about the past to see if any of their issues relate to yours and then consciously purposefully work to separate your issues from your ancestors so i have lots of questions that people have submitted what am i doing i'm doing great for time that means my frontal lobes are working before i do let me just tell you one more time if you pre-order the book we will give you these four really cool free gifts [Music] the your brain is always listening playbook that we developed on you know the work we do at eamon clinics the science of change and tiny habits six really simple feel better fast techniques what sense work a great meditation that can help you a section on knowing your dragons probably many of you have already taken the know your dragons questionnaire know yourdragons.com a guide to supplementing your brain the special event with me on march 17th only for people who pre-ordered the book the hypnosis audios which i think you'll really love if you've never been hypnotized hypnosis it's not magic it's just getting your brain into an open receptive state it doesn't open your mind to bad things it helps to direct your mind in a healthy way and then the coupon for a free bottle of happy saffron you have to pay for the shipping but it's a 49.95 value so it's like over a hundred dollar value just by pre-ordering the book and if you pre-order it and hopefully you'll like it leave us a wonderful review on amazon i'd be so grateful so order it anywhere great books are sold and then when you do go to your brain as alwayslistening.com enter your order number and instantly get access to your free bonuses okay when should someone consider getting a spec scan when what you're doing isn't working um or if you've really struggled and no one's ever looked at your brain remember those four circles i'm going to put them back up take me just a minute to find them [Music] i always think about this no matter what i'm doing no matter where i'm at it's i'm always thinking about my patients in these circles so jeff put up the circles um if you want to understand someone their biology so in my case your brain your psychology your mind the social circle how you get along with others and the spiritual circle why do you care how would i ever know what's going on in your brain unless i looked and uh so i think you should get a scan if you have a family history of dementia you should probably get a scan by the time you're 40. um if your memory is worse than it was 10 years ago probably a good idea to get a scan if you've struggled with depression and you've tried a couple of medications and they're not working you should get a scan i mean how do we know if it's head trauma or toxic exposure your brain works too hard or not hard enough all other medical specialists look psychiatrists guess and i work really hard i've been working really hard for decades to change that as a profession if you are concerned about your mood about your behavior about your thinking somebody should be looking at your brain question number two are all supplements the same no and that's one of the reasons the supplement industry has a bad rap because they're not quality really matters and i've been criticized because i own a supplement company so i own a clinic and i own clinics and i own a supplement company why when i first started looking at scans in 1991 some of the medications i was taught to prescribe were toxic caused the brain to look toxic which horrified me i mean it really upset me because i remember first do no harm use the least toxic most effective treatments and i'd always had a bent for skills not just pills and and i think of your brain is always listening as a book that really helps you get skills to manage your mind but i never wanted to hurt my patients and i started thinking about reading researching taking courses on nutritional supplements for mental health and at the time st john's wort already had good research evidence to support your mood sami good research evidence omega-3 fatty acids b6 b12 folate and so initially i would just send people to the health food store but then there was that issue of quality and as i learned more i wanted my own formulas like gaba calming or happy saffron or serotonin mood support or brain and memory power boost based on the research i knew and i knew i could compare i could control the quality these are supplements i take like i make a shake in the morning if you go to my instagram document you can actually watch me make this shake um brain md makes uh vanilla and chocolate protein powder so you start with the protein powder from costco i get organic blueberries i should have made a slide of this um put in neura greens or bright minds powder which is a combination of two products so it actually saves me eight capsules great multiple vitamin brain and memory power boost at a full dose and happy not happy mushrooms smart mushrooms i wanted to call it happy mushrooms my team would not let me but smart mushrooms which actually has six mushrooms including lion's mane turkey tail rishi cordyceps in therapeutic doses and i blend it it tastes amazing our protein powder has no added sugar has like two grams of sugar in it the whole thing and it's spectacular and there's no suffering so anyways that's why i own a supplement company is it easier to tame the dragons on a brain healthy program absolutely think of the dragons really coming from your limbic or your emotional brain if your frontal lobes are sleepy the dragons take over and they control you strengthen your frontal lobe exercise nutritional supplements sometimes hyperbaric oxygen therapy if we have to repair the brain sometimes medication is absolutely essential get your brain right your mind will follow the last chapter of the book is on the dragon tamer which is basically how to strengthen the front part of your brain to control all the dragons question five how to best deal with the feelings of stagnation that the pandemic has caused you have a historic opportunity to get well like never before if you can put the right processes in place if you can start every day with today is going to be a great day if you can go through your day and ask yourself this one question it's my favorite tiny habit is this good for my brain or bad for it you can put in an exercise routine you can learn something new you can grow this pandemic is awful for so many i get it um we've had a fair amount of stress at eamon clinics with people we love who've died or who've been sickened with the virus um but we've also seen people lose like 50 pounds because rather than moan and treat their anxiety with alcohol and bad food their exercising more than they ever have they're eating better they're taking the time to get their brain right so see it as temporary local and do what you can what do you have control that's where you always want to stay how can teenagers cope with a friend or a peer who is suicidal oh this was this question got to my heart how to help but not take on the burden you have to tell the teenager not to be quiet if somebody shares that in confidence no matter what you have to tell an adult it's absolutely essential and if they hate you it's way better for them to hate you and they are alive then never promise someone that you won't share the confidence i tell my patients this all the time it's like whatever we do is confidential except if i think you're going to hurt yourself or you're going to hurt someone else so it's very important and you cannot control i cannot control someone decides to make that decision um but you want to be a good listener give them resources uh it's just so important [Music] to help intervene in those situations what is your best relationship advice to a long happy lasting relationship tame your dragons buy this book for your partner do it together i love tana has 10 dragons so i try not to like poke them be clear with what you want actually if you go to laura cleary's facebook page today uh laura cleary is a comedian and an actress she's got a gazillion facebook followers she and i have done four videos together um and today they just posted me doing marital therapy with her and her husband stephen and it's hysterical because she's a comedian um and i'm sort of a wannabe comedian um but you know one of the first things we did is an exercise called the one page miracle on one piece of paper write down what you want and then ask yourself every day is your behavior getting you what you want so for me and my wife who's my best friend i want a kind caring loving supportive passionate relationship always want that don't always feel like that little rude thoughts pop up in my head and if my frontal lobes work right if the dragon tamer works right they don't get out because i filter you do not have to say every stupid thing you think please don't say everything you think jerry seinfeld said the brain is a sneaky organ we all have weird crazy stupid sexual violent thoughts that nobody should ever hear um and so filter your actions filter your words by what you want thoughts on how best to get started on a brain healthy program [Music] read change your brain change your life i think you'll love that or the book i wrote with tana the brain warriors way we also have a podcast we have almost a thousand vodkas we've done they have 11 and a half million downloads i'm really thrilled it's a great way to start becoming a brain warrior at eamon university you can actually take one of our courses eamonnuniversity.com we have a great course called the brain warriors way decreases depression decreases anxiety helps with memory energy people lost i think on average seven pounds who took the course and that wasn't the point of the course um why is it when facing memories of the past it's more difficult to kill the ants because you haven't tamed the dragons um but you want to be a master ant killer and there is an exercise in your brain is always listening um where i ask you if you write down a hundred of your worst thoughts and jimmy did that for me and he was serious and there's these five questions i learned from my friend byron katie on how to kill them he did that exercise with a hundred of his worst thoughts yeah it took him a couple of weeks but he has his skill now for the rest of his life where he doesn't have to entertain the nonsense that goes on in his head so you want to tame the dragons but also be really good at killing the ants what is the best way to calm an anxious mind have it as a be purposeful start either hypnosis or meditation i'm going to teach you something i teach in the book it's a very specific breathing pattern it's so stinking simple you're going to think it's not going to work but i told you about my anxious dragon this thing works so well try to breathe with your diaphragm which means let the energy of breathing go lower in your body three seconds in hold it for a second take six seconds to breathe out take twice as long to breathe out as you breathe in it triggers a parasympathetic response and calms your body hold it out for a second do that 10 times do it four five six seven times a day and they take like less than 20 minutes it'll help you so much hypnosis meditation gaba calming magnesium chewables all of those things can help any advice on how to get over lingering anger sadness after someone significantly hurts you in the book uh under grief and loss i talk about reach for forgiveness there's actually a specific program to do that um recall what happened empathize with the other person that's the hard thing like i had to do with my dad and the goat well you know the goat was eating his roses which were so important to him altruistically give the gift of forgiveness commit to it and hold on to it so important there are many forgiveness exercises that's just one i love how to think positively in any situation i actually don't want you to think positively in any situation like someone's just offered you the third drink it's like why are you trying to hurt me that's not a time to think positive i always want you thinking accurately that's what's important accurate thinking um is there a way to train your mind to not think of the worst case scenario every time something goes wrong and you wrote it just right you have to train your mind to look for what's right rather than just for what's wrong and it's a muscle so with these psychological exercises people go oh well it didn't work because you did it once i mean can you imagine going i want strong biceps and well i did it once and it didn't work so i'm not going to do it again well that's sort of insane it's practices that you have to do over and over again and we have the tiny habits in here so i try to make it as easy and as simple as possible now over the next couple of weeks i am going to continue uh what has basically been daily chats on instagram and facebook going through each of the dragons and i'm going to talk more about the ancestral dragon tomorrow but then i'm going to start on the they them and other dragons and the bad habit dragons so you can catch me uh on social media if you need help and you go oh i need this kind of help and i want to scan uh go to amenclinics.com uh call the clinic uh we would just dearly love to help you we have 40. uh physicians they're all wonderful i've been involved in training them all we would be honored to help you you know how i feel about brain md i'm just a huge fan of the supplements the quality i'm proud of it and it's the ones i take every day and then to get more information you can get that at eamonnuniversity.com pre-order the book get your special gifts i'm grateful you spent your time with me thanks so much are you feeling anxious stressed depressed or overwhelmed who isn't with the current pandemic and other recent stressful events i've spent my life healing people's brains and i am here to tell you that it is possible to regain a sense of calm and control over your mind i'm dr daniel amen a double board certified psychiatrist founder of eamonn clinics host of 15 popular shows about the brain on public television and a 12-time new york times best-selling author my books have been successful because i empower people to take ownership over their minds by making neuroscience easy to understand and offer you practical solutions i use with my own patients to help them have a better brain a better mind and a better life all of my best strategies are now available to you and my new book your brain is always listening tame the hidden dragons that control your happiness habits and hang-ups it comes out march 2nd and when you order now you'll get some very special bonuses including my best training and support resources to help you immediately feel happier calmer and more in control of your own emotions your brain is literally always listening and responding to the hidden dragons that breathe fire on your emotional brain and unless you recognize and deal with them they can steal your happiness spoil your relationships and sabotage your health your brain is always listening will teach you how to tame the dragons from the past that ignite your most painful emotions such as the abandoned invisible or insignificant dragons this is one of my primary dragons the inferior flawed dragons the anxious and wounded dragons the shouldn't shaming dragons the grief and loss and hopeless and helpless dragons and my favorite the ancestral dragons where the issues you have are in fact not your issues but belong to past generations for each of these dragons i give you their origin story what triggers them how they cause you to react and most importantly how to tame each one of them the book also explores how your dragons are always battling other people's dragons this can really mess up your relationships i'm going to teach you how to recognize and control them in relationships a big challenge that came about with the pandemic relates to the addicted dragons so this book will give you a brand new 12-step program to tame them based on the latest neuroscience by ordering the book now you'll receive four free gifts including a special playbook of five worksheets that can help you be happier now access to a two-hour event with me personally where i answer questions from only people who pre-ordered the book you'll also get access to magnificent mind with medical hypnosis which contains six hypnosis sessions i do for you just like i do for my patients including ones for anxiety sleep chronic pain weight loss smoking and peak performance and my favorite gift to you is a free coupon for a bottle of happy saffron at brain md you just pay the shipping but this is a 49.95 value and is my favorite nutritional supplement which i take every day the research on saffron is spectacular and i want you to have it when you pre-order or order the book your brain is always listening i am thrilled to be your guide and show you how to tame your dragons so that you can have the happiness peace and the relationships you deserve

Channel: AmenClinics

Views: 458,317

Keywords: Brain, Brain Health, ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, Dementia, Alzheimers, Diet, Nutrition, Amen, Daniel Amen, Amen Clinics, Psychiatrist, ADD

Id: unHhPdefYIU

Length: 95min 14sec (5714 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021