Change Your Brain Every Day - Before You Try Anti-Anxiety Medication, Try This

Episode Date: June 5, 2019

9 times out of 10, a psychiatrist will prescribe anti-anxiety medications to a patient struggling with anxiety without first trying more natural methods of treatment. If you or someone you love is having anxiety issues, you should look at the least harmful options first. In this episode, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen give their advice on the surprisingly effective treatment methods for anxiety that don’t involve resorting to medication.

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. Welcome back to skills or pills question mark week. Today, we're going to talk about anxiety. What's the one thing you do that decreases

your anxiety and who is the one person in your life that increases your anxiety? And who is the one person in your life that increases your anxiety? We all have that person. I'm sitting next to the one that increases my anxiety, but only in a good way. I increase the function of your frontal lobes. That's what I do. Well, they say when you have speaking anxiety, that people's hearts go fast and they have trouble breathing. And often that's a sign of excitement. So if you can just switch your mind and when I see you, my heart goes fast, I have trouble breathing.

So I've just switched it. No, I'm not anxious. I'm in fact excited, which I am all the time. You have a testimonial? I do. I'm in fact excited, which I am all the time. You have a testimonial? I do. So this one is Life-Changing Knowledge, Superior Intelligence by S.L. Britsky. Daniel and Tana Amen are world-changing medical minds who have created a free podcast to share information to help heal the world.

Their lives have changed the mood of my family, oh, my life and the future of my generations to come. Keep up the great work and the future of my generations to come. Keep up the great work and thanks for sharing the love with others. I love that because that's our goal. Our goal is to help heal future generations. Absolutely. Yeah, thank you.

So when do you feel anxious? Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders in the world. At any point in time it affects 7% of the population but over lifetime it affects almost a quarter of the population so if you struggle with panic attacks or just feeling anxious, tense, nervous, welcome to the world. I used to be very anxious. I used to pick my skin and bite my fingernails

and feel super anxious before I'd get up and give a talk. I remember when I would hold notes to speak, they would shake. And so I learned, oh, I'm going to have to memorize this so they don't shake. Yeah. And there's a difference between it happening acutely like that and when it's chronic, when it's like ongoing. And one exercise that I learned that I found really helpful was usually like when someone is happy, it's because their life circumstances matches their expectations, right? The circumstances you live in match how you think the world should be, your blueprint of the world. So when those line up, it creates happiness, right?

That's when you feel happy. But when those are not lined up, then usually it creates either depression, anxiety, or just unhappiness in general. So one exercise I learned is to figure out what is it that you think should be happening in that area of your life and what is actually happening? And it helps you to identify whether or not it's realistic, whether that thing is...

So you either have to change what your expectations are or you have to change the circumstance, right? So that really helped me to figure out, is this something I can change or do I need to change the way I think about it? So that was helpful for me. So when I think of anxiety, I often think of what happened to you when you were nine and your mom wasn't coming home and you began to have panic attacks and separation anxiety. And the one thing that would have been the most helpful is your mom. My mom being home. Your mom would have been home, right?

And you wouldn't have that abandonment fear. Right. But think about, talk to us about what would have made the anxiety worse? And now that you can look back on it from a 50-year-old woman who's a great mom, what would have made it better? Okay. So if you saw nine-year-old Tana in the clinic, what would make it worse and what would make it better? Well, I think one thing that would make it better is someone having helped my mother to understand what was actually really happening. Because as a nine-year-old, I really do think that parents, they have a responsibility for their kids. So having her understand what was actually happening would have been really

important. So her staying out late at night. And not calling. And not communicating with you was devastating. Right. It was devastating because I thought something, she was dead somewhere. So that, that would have been really important. As far as things I could do, I don't know if what I did was correct or not, but it just happened naturally. That after that happened a couple of times or a few times, what ended up happening is it was so painful to me because I was so attached to my mom was that I ended up beginning this, this little exercise that I did of what is the very worst thing that could happen, which was my mom dying. So I ended up doing this crazy exercise of, if I found out right now that my mom was dead, what am I going to do? And so, and then I would like literally replay this in my head so much that I sort of became

desensitized and it sounds kind of morbid, but that's what I would do. I picture the very worst thing I could think of because I couldn't handle what was happening. And so I would desensitize myself to the worst thing that could happen. It's not like I wouldn't have been freaked out and upset, but I had to prepare myself for it. And so, and I, and honestly, that's what I do with my whole life. I mean, I prepare for the worst., that's what I do with my whole life. I mean, I prepare for the worst and expect the best. So that's why you were so hard to catch. Probably.

For me. Maybe. Because you began to detach. Maybe. From connecting to people who could abandon you. Well, and even when I was attached, there was no way I was going to let it destroy me if something happened. Does that make sense? So now a lot of times when people are anxious.

Now, just FYI, I'm attached. And if you intentionally do something to mess it up. Oh, I think even if I do something unintentionally, I'm screwed. Yeah, no, I will hurt you. Yes. Yeah, I know you're going to hurt me. I'm attached. I get it.

All right, let's help them. So if that nine-year-old girl went to most child psychiatrist offices, they would have put her on medication. Right. Which changes the chemistry of her brain to, in fact, need that medication in order to function. In my mind, before you put that little girl on medication, you want to see why she's anxious,

what's going on in the social circle of her life, and clearly you were being abandoned on a regular basis. And she didn't see it that way. Of course she didn't. But looking at it from a child psychiatrist perspective, looking at it from a nine-year-old's perspective, you were being abandoned. It was not a good thing.

Then teaching you not to believe every stupid thing you think, like she's going to die, that would be really important. Teaching you. Well, it's not that I thought she's going to. It that would be really important, teaching you. Well, it's not that I thought she's going to. It's like, if I found out right now that she had died, what am I going to do? Right. But letting your mind go to the worst possible outcome is a prescription for panic. And yes, it's good maybe once to go, if this happens, this is what I'll do. But by playing that over and over and over again, what you're doing, because your mind often doesn't know the difference between what is real and what we imagine.

But then why did it actually help me not to panic because i would because it caused you to become um dissociated from the connections in your life which then played out later on in your life as you tortured many men including me um so so i would argue that's probably not helpful. So whenever you play out the worst possible thing that could happen, and then your brain makes it worse, that is the prescription for people who have panic disorders. They're masterful at making things worse. And I tell my patients, the only people who should be playing it out to the worst possible consequences are contract lawyers.

They should be playing out what's the worst possible thing that can happen and protecting you against that. But even those contract lawyers, they'll often blow up a relationship because they end up asking for things that are unreasonable. So let me just tell you something. You know one of the things that caused me to get therapy?

Wasn't that. The thing that caused me to initially get therapy was because when I became a mother, I couldn't do that. I would panic. I went into full-blown panic mode every time I would think of something happening to my child. And you lived with that chronic anxiety that something would happen

to Chloe and then your life would be over. And so I had to get therapy because that little technique that I used to use, I couldn't even bring myself to think that. So there's just no way. Yeah. I would say not helpful. If I was seeing you as a nine-year-old girl, I mean, we'd talk about the stress. I would talk to your mother. I would teach you diaphragmatic breathing. We'd use some relaxation, some hypnosis. I would teach you some eye movement techniques as a way to sort of calm and soothe the anxiety. And then you have to deal with, well, what's the reality of the situation, which was driving the anxiety.

But 90 child psychiatrists out of 100 would have put you on medicine. Just medicated you into compliance. And that's skills first. And if they don't work, then pills. But unfortunately, 85% of psychiatric drugs are prescribed by non-psychiatric physicians. So your mom may have brought you to the family doctor or your pediatrician who now has you on Lexapro, which is changing your brain. And you end up with no skill. You're just numbing your brain.

Well, and I'm grateful for the oxytocin that forced me to fix that because I have you now, and I'm attached. So the oxytocin from childbirth, like, yeah, that couldn't, I just couldn't. So what are the things, so what's the one thing you learned from this podcast? We dearly love you to write that, write to us, send a review, you know, leave a review. That's our payment for doing these podcasts. We love that. But also share the one thing you've learned from this podcast. And if you tag us. Any of your social media channels, you know, hashtag Brain Warriors Way or doc underscore

Eamon. You can tag our Instagram and our Facebook. Yours is Tana Eamon. Yeah. And we love to read testimonials and read your comments. So, yeah. We'll do more. Stay with us.

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