Change Your Brain Every Day - Alive & Dead: Facing Your Mortality

Episode Date: March 20, 2018

Perhaps the most human issue every person deals with is the question of how to deal with your own mortality. We may all be dying (although at different rates), but it can be said for all of us that how you live affects how you die. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss how your belief system can help you when it becomes your time to go.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the 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 nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. And stay tuned for a special code for a discount to Amen Clinics for a full evaluation, as well as any of our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Welcome back. So we are going to pick up where we left off on our last podcast. You said something really interesting about men facing their mortality in their 40s, but I wanted to touch on that again because you actually, when you said it, it sort of struck a chord with me.

And in fact, it reminded me of something someone just wrote to me on Facebook. She was asking me how I dealt with my cancer treatments because she was just diagnosed with cancer and she wanted to know what I did to deal with it so well. And I haven't answered her yet because the truth is she wanted to know how I dealt with it and the truth is I didn't deal with it well. I didn't deal with it well at all. I was only 23 years old and I didn't even have a terminal cancer but because of I think all the chaos I had sort of grown up in and I didn't have a stable, I didn't have really that solid foundation, I didn't deal with it well.

So when I heard it had metastasized and everything I had planned in my life sort of came to a screeching halt and rather than one surgery and one radiation treatment, which is what it was supposed to be, you know, diseases don't read textbooks, apparently. It didn't turn out that way. And so I went into this very deep depression. And I mean, like, really bad depression. Couldn't get out of bed. And everything just started to sort of unravel.

And no one sort of prepared me for the onslaught of medical issues that would come along with that simple diagnosis that I thought was when they told me oh this is one of the better cancers to have if you're gonna have cancer whatever that means I took them out their word and so I'm like oh I'm gonna get this done I'm gonna be back on track when a couple months well that didn't happen and when that didn't happen it threw me just for a complete loop and I got really depressed. But after I went through that depression, I could not get out of bed. Well, part of the reason you got depressed is they didn't replace your thyroid.

But they didn't tell me that. Right. So, but there was a physical component. Poor medical care. So, but we always talk about the four circles. So for me, there was a physical, that was the biological component. There was clearly a psychological component. There was very much a social component. And there was very, very much a spiritual component. So all of that really sort of like just crashed and just came,

you know, broken, shattered. And I was down, just down for the count. So my mom drug me out of bed one day and we were walking through town and she was doing some shopping and there was some store, a little tiny bookstore was having a sidewalk sale and on books. And there was some crazy, I was so desperate to feel better. And it was one of the few days I had gotten out of bed and there was this book about depression. And I don't know why I picked it up, but it was when, I don't know how old Prozac was at the time. It was fairly like, like people were just starting to really talk about it.

Anyways, it mentioned Prozac. And so I ran to the doctor and I'm like, you've got to do something. People are like raving about this drug, I guess, to make them feel better. I can't take this anymore. If I were suicidal, I would have killed myself by now, but I can't do that. So I just keep praying that I will die. And so, never asked me any questions about my health. Never did anything. Just put me on Prozac. He's like, okay.

And wrote me a prescription for Prozac. And it was the worst thing they could have ever done. So I felt better within just a very short time. I felt better. But I didn't feel anything. I just felt numb. And so, it was a weird feeling. I felt better, but I didn't feel anything. I just felt numb. And so I just, it was a weird feeling. I can't sort of explain it. Yeah, I didn't want to die anymore, but I also didn't feel much of anything. I don't know if that makes sense.

When you became a little bit more impulsive. I was very impulsive. So, and I had never been impulsive. I was very anxious. I was a very anxious person. So like never like- I've seen it disinhibit people. Yeah. So for about six to eight months, I found myself like just sort of doing things that I wouldn't normally do, saying things I wouldn't normally say, like even just being mean to someone.

And I was like, that's not me. I wouldn't normally do that. Like I'm not, you know, just like sort of just, just icky. I just wasn't me. I could tell that I was doing it, but I didn't know what to do about it. And I remember going to the doctor and saying, this isn't right. Like, I need to probably go off of this. I need to do something to feel better, but I can't do this. And they're like, oh, it's because you're not taking enough. They doubled the dose. And so I did that for about another month. And then I'm like, okay,

I can't do this anymore. So I took myself off of it. All of this to say, back to our last podcast, when you were talking about men facing their mortality, what really happened was a big part of what happened during that whole process. When you're 23, I thought I had life by the tail. Everything was going my way. I was in college. I was getting straight A's. I wanted to go to medical school. And then I get this diagnosis of thyroid cancer, which isn't supposed to be that bad, right? So I was trying to go to the Air Force because I thought I could get medical school paid for. And they're like, yeah, no, we can't take you.

And that was devastating. And then it was just like one thing after another just sort of got shot down. And I realized, I'm like, this cancer keeps coming back like I that was sort of me facing my mortality it occurred to me that like it's cancer like it actually is cancer because at first when they told me I was like it's not really that big of a deal and you tell the story often when you tell your story that you had been attacked when you were 15. Right. And you learned to fight, and now the attacker was inside you. But this was so much worse.

It was so much worse. And you learned... A street fight lasts for a couple minutes, and yes, the effects last a long time, but you can learn to fight if you want to. This took me a lot to learn how to fight back. Well, it's one of the reasons you're a brain warrior. Right.

Now, how do we help people face their mortality? All of us die. And some cultures, they are grateful for that. Right. They want death in the right way and when you if people seem grumpy old men i know that dates me but walter mathau and jack lemon it was a fabulous movie and they talk about how all of their friends their older guys um are dying and how they want to die right it's it has to do with your belief system yes about well what happens after i die so why am i here on the planet am i here by random chance You know, that it all happened by an unintelligent creator, if you will. And when I'm dead, that's it.

I go on through my kids or my grandkids, which for many people is scary. Or is there something afterwards? thing afterwards. And when I was 21, yeah, I was 21, I read a book by Ray Moody. It's called Life After Life. My mom read that. It's a book about people who have near-death experiences. And well, what happens in that in-between state when you're medically dead, but then you're brought back. And there is incredible similarities between what happens to people. And for whatever reason, for me, it just, it gave me a sense of peace about death. I mean, I've always, you know, been a religious person, a spiritual person. And so it's just part of who I am that I don't think this is it. But that sort of matters, I think, for a lot of people. Yeah. And I think everybody handles it differently. And probably me saying this is going to upset some of our listeners, and that's okay because you're going to handle it your own way.

But I was very young and struggling a lot. But when this all happened to me, I took myself off the medication, and I just knew something had to change. I didn't know what had to change. I was really searching. Something had to change. So the first thing I did was, all right, I'm going to go to church because I didn't know what to do, right? I'm going to go to church. So I had this friend who went to church and she just had, she was so amazing. And I'm like, I don't know what's wrong with her, but I need whatever it is she has because she's just different. So she took me to church and

there was something that was said in church and it struck me. And it wasn't even a religious thing, but what was said was struck me. He said, look, everyone's dying. We're just dying at different paces. We're dying at different rates. And I don't know why that hit me, but I was like, I've been feeling sorry for myself because of this like big C label that I got, right? I've been feeling sorry for myself because my life sort of fell apart and I'm only 23. And then it struck me, I'm like, well, hell, we're all dying. My number just like got called a little earlier and it didn't really get called. It just was a wake up call. So my, I faced my mortality a little bit sooner than a lot of people do. And I'm like, but everybody goes through this at some point. So what I saw it as was almost a gift in that moment.

Because I'm like, by me being able to see this early, I can do something important earlier. That you can live more in the moment because you never know how many moments you're going to have. Well, I made a decision. And people go, oh, well, this isn't fair. But when, you know, when I was an intern at Walter Reed and I was on the oncology ward and a 16-year-old boy I was taking care of died. Okay, that's not fair. No, I used to sit as a nurse with this little 16-month-old in my lap every day charting

and I came in one day and he wasn't there. That's not fair. Okay? I can't explain it. Right. But as you often say, fair is... Fair is a place with bad food and farm animals. I don't know why stuff happens, but I do know we can make sense of it in our own way, and we can use it for good. But what happened was when that happened for me, I made a decision in that moment. I don't know why this is, but I'm going to use it somehow for good. I knew I would write a book. I told myself I was going to do something to use whatever tragedy had happened.

And speaking about things, you know, my own ickiness was hard, but I knew at some point I was gonna try to help people with it. And so facing your mortality is hard, but I think if you can turn the pain to purpose, it's a really important thing. So however you do it,

finding a way to turn pain into purpose, it's a really important thing. So however you do it, finding a way to turn pain into purpose. And then if you know you're going to die, this moment that you're in right now while you're listening to this, it becomes more special. It becomes more important. And you and I often say to each other when we're fussing about whatever, does this have eternal value?

Will this matter in the grand scheme of things? Right. And it helps you be more present. And that's what we would want for you. Now, clearly there are things that you can do to bring on your early death by not paying attention to your health. But if you love your life, if you love your wife or your husband and your mission, it's the whole reason we created the Brain warriors way because we know it's a war but you know like with all warriors we also know everybody's going to die and so what's my life going to be between now and them and i left living in a way that is purposeful yeah and you know i'll leave you with this story

what really sort of might bring this home is you've often told the story in a different context but when I was working on the ICU unit and the one surgeon who smoked came in and I was eating my healthy lunch I had packed and and he's like all that healthy eating is only gonna add you know an extra few years to your life and I he was overweight and he smoked and and and I'm like I'm sorry have you looked around the unit lately we We've got people on dialysis, we've got people on ventilators, we've got people, you know, we've got these horrible illnesses,

we've got people in comas that we are keeping alive with these artificial methods. I'm like, the number of years that I live is not the point. The quality of the time that I have left and what I do with it, that is the point. Right, so it's not lifespan. It's healthspan. Yes.

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