Change Your Brain Every Day - Addiction and Families: Finding Strength Within Chaos

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

In this week’s series of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen continue their discussion on the many lessons and anecdotes taken from Tana’s highly anticipated memoir ��The Reluctant Courage of a Scared Child”. Tana’s life had seemed to finally find some stable ground when a fateful late-night phone call brought along yet another helping of chaos. A family member had lost custody of her children and turned to Tana and Daniel for help. While it seemed to be another one of life’s setbacks, this sequence of events turned out to be one of the most healing of all.  For more information on Tana's new book, "The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child", visit relentlesscourage.com For info on Tana Amen's upcoming free live virtual event, visit tanaamen.com/event

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Well, in this week of the Brain Warriors Way podcast, we're going to continue on our journey. We're week five of six. And life gets good.

Life is good for a long time. Yeah. It's the best it's ever been. It was the most, I remember having moments that I don't know if any of you have ever felt this way or where you're, you almost are afraid to trust how good it is. It's like,

this is almost too good to be true. Like I'm having, it's like, it's such a long stretch. I mean, I've had periods of time where I felt like life was pretty good in a lot of ways but maybe everything didn't sort of fit and all of a sudden they feel like everything is really good and i'm like it just is like do i trust this and you write the only diet which becomes a new york times best-selling book my relationship with

my daughter is great my relationship with you is amazing like you know i'm walking in my spiritual beliefs like everything was just sort of like all those circles, the biological, the psychological, the social, the spiritual, they're all in alignment. Yeah. And then I guess it's about four years ago last month that we get a call from your sister. Who I had disconnected from. Theme. Have you noticed a theme here? Disconnecting from people in my life. And she was clearly in crisis. Yeah. And I disconnected from her because our values are just wildly different. So my way of handling trauma in my life is control. My way of handling trauma in my life. I mean, that's a

classic sign of someone who develops an eating disorder. Substances weren't an option for me because of the chaos I saw in my family from all the substance abuse. So control, it's like control, control, control, control, um, manage things with rigidity, do well in school, have money in the bank, don't have bills. Like that is my way of handling chaos. My sister's way of handling chaos is bury it under substances. Don't feel it. Um, so she became homeless, you know, at a point in her life when she was very young. Um, and in her mind, that was fine. It wasn't even a big deal. It wasn't, it was just like, Oh, I don't want responsibilities. And so she just buried it, everything under these, she just, she could not stand to feel it. And she had a lot of trauma in her life as well. I couldn't handle her lifestyle. I just could not handle the way

she lived her life. And so I disconnected from her. It was just too much chaos, too much screaming. We didn't even grow up together. And it was like, it was worse than what I grew up with. And I just could not deal with it. So we had disconnected the lying and all that stuff. And I just, well, and you actually had a period of time where you were very connected. Right. And then it just went right back. She had lost 60 pounds. But that's the point is there were always periods.

And then there was relapse. But that's the point. There were always periods and you start to trust it. And then there's that violation of trust and the pain that goes along with that. And eventually I was like, no more, I'm done.

I can't do this anymore with you. But the problem was she had children. Right. And I didn't really know her children. So because we had disconnected, I didn't know her children. I didn't know the little one at all. I'd only seen the older one like once or twice, twice maybe. And so when she was a baby, and so all of a sudden I get this call and she's just hysterical

and screaming and she sounds pretty crazy. And so crazier than in the past. And she's telling me a pretty wild story. And she tells me they'd been taken. And there's a pretty wacky story that goes along with it. I don't want to get too into detail on that. I do write a little more about it in the book, but just for her benefit, I don't want to like go into too much detail about it. But, but there's a pretty crazy story with it. And I'm like, okay. And I want to hang up the phone so badly. I just want to go back to my regularly scheduled programming of like life is amazing and I don't want to deal with this so yeah except the 11 year old and the six year old right are taken into foster care right and part of us actually felt relieved because we didn't think they were being raised in a safe environment and we weren't sure we didn't know because I didn't seen them for so long. Yeah. But, uh, we were worried about them and part of it was good. Um,

but, uh, part of it is, should we get involved? How do we get involved? And it was one of the worst weeks of our marriage. It was, it was really bad. And I, you know, you guys already know I have this tendency to try. And I'm like, you are not doing this again. I'm not doing that. I'm not bringing a drug addict into my house. Like I'm not, I now have a child that that is my primary responsibility. And you kept saying this thing. Why are you so worried about this? I'm a trained professional. I'm like, you're trained to handle crazy at work. This is my life. I am the expert when it comes to my family. So I've lived with crazy. So I was not buying it. Yeah. And I'm feeling bad for these girls. Well, so was I, but I still didn't want crazy in my house. And so we compromised. Right. And I didn't want them all in my house either.

But I want to figure out a way to solve it. And we went to Oregon. We visited the kids. And the way we decided to initially handle it was, well, let's see. You can help Tamara deal with Child Protective Service, which incredibly. And because it was, well, let's see, you can help Tamara deal with child protective service, which was incredibly- And because it was out of state. Because if you didn't help her, there's no way she would have ever gotten her children. No, she'd never gotten the kids back. But they were out of state. So of course,

it's much more complicated to try to get kids out of foster care when they're out of state, and you have to travel back and forth. And it was- Which you did a lot. And so we set her up in an apartment and wrapped her in services. And I was the scariest person in her life. Let's make no mistake about it. She was a person in a lot of people's lives. She was terrified of me. And I was just like, I'm not, I'm like, I'm going to help you with this. I will literally drown you in my pool. If you screw this up. Like I was, I was done. So I get a call from, from child protective services, the, from the supervisor at

DHS in Oregon one day. And she's like, we need to have a talk. And I'm like, bring it. Like I was just, I was in that fighting mood. And I'm like, bring it. Like I was just, I was in that fighting mood. And I'm like, I'm thinking I'm going to fight with her about something. She goes, can you soften up a little bit on Tamara? I'm like, what? Like said no DHS supervisor ever. And she's like, no, I'm serious. She's like, we've been having these really long talks.

Cause before that she wouldn't talk to DHS. She was like so paranoid. And she's like, she's opening up to us. She's having long talks with us. She's being very cooperative, but she's terrified of you. And she's like, she's opening up to us. She's having long talks with us. She's being very cooperative, but she's terrified of you. And I'm like, she's more terrified of me than she is of you. Are you kidding me right now? Like you're calling me to tell me to soften up. So it was an interesting journey, but we finally got the kids out. It was. Well, I mean, we should talk a little bit more about just the process of dealing with the legal system.

They're just not set up often to be very therapeutic. No. And they don't think about the brain at all. No. It's very cut and dried. The whole mental health system. They were happy. They knew who we were health system they were happy they knew who we were and they were happy to have us on board they're like oh this is going to be easy except my sister didn't make it easy and one of the really pivotal parts was tamra's mother yeah came to live with her. Because Tamara became suicidal. And really helped to stabilize the situation.

But we had to have them both take our brain health assessment. Yeah. And Tamara's a two. Wildly differing brains. And Kathy's a three. And that combination. They want to kill each other. One's persistent.

One, you know, rules don't matter. The other one rules are the only thing that matters. And so balancing their brain was helpful. It's really important too, for me to bring this up because it's, my tendency is to disconnect from people. And because I was forced into the situation because of the circumstances, I'm like, I'm going to control the hell out of this thing. Right. That's how this is going to go.

I'm going to like, I'm going to scare her half to death into doing what she needs to do because the stakes were high. Cause we had to get these kids out of foster care. So the stakes were high. So I knew that there was no, she doesn't care about rules. So the only way for me to get her to care is to scare her in my mind. So I had to terrify her in order to get her to care is to scare her in my mind. So I had to terrify her in order to get her to follow through and pay attention. And it was a fact, I'm not going to lie,

it was effective. But all of a sudden she said something to me one day that just, she was crying and she looked at me and she goes, you know, I'm so much more than my addiction. And I was like, it was like, someone just stabbed me. And I was like, cause I, I was really seeing her as an addict and as just someone who just irritated the hell out of me. And when she said that, like I, all of a sudden I was sort of flooded with these memories of her as a baby and, you know, how she used to follow me around and cling to me. And, um, you know, I just, I saw her as more than her addiction and it was a really pivotal moment for me. So, well, when we come back, we're going to talk more about the journey, um, that has been

bumpy, that helping people usually does not go in a straight line, that they're usually ups and downs and ups and downs. And how do you sort of ride the dragon to tame it in a way to get what you need? And in this case, what we needed was stability for these children. Stay with us. as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation

at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.