Change Your Brain Every Day - Breaking Through Emotional Physical Pain Emdr Therapy

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Pain, whether physical or emotional, is a part of life. As humans we are wired to act quickly on these warning signals to get out of pain as quickly as possible. However, some of the actions we take to reduce or eliminate pain in the short term can actually make the pain worse in the long term. In this episode, Daniel and Tana discuss how some quick fixes, such as certain painkillers, act on the brain and body, and how other interventions, such as EMDR therapy, address the root cause to keep pain away for good.  Dr. Amen's new book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain: https://www.changeyourbrainchangeyourpainbook.com/

The dirty secret about opiates that I talk about in the book is it shuts off your brain's natural opiate production. And it angers your white blood cells. So they actually did a study where they're looking at the impact of oxycodone on white blood cells and it agitates them. So what it's doing is its short-term benefit that then's actually creating more pain. In this episode, Dr. A. Man and Tanna, discuss a helpful model to help you get control of your addictions and improve your brain health. Aspartame was unleashed into the American market around 1980. It is now in 5,000 products. And people often think of sugar-free jello as a health food. It's clearly not.

It can create generational issues. Is it possible this mental health epidemic in kids and young people is an epigenetic result of things. like aspartame that are creating problems not only in you, but in generations of you. Hi, I'm Dr. Daniel Eamon. I've experienced firsthand the powerful impact that proper supplementation can have on your brain, your body, and your mind. That's why I founded Brain MD. Our formulas are scientifically created from decades of clinical research designed to help you think clear, feel better, and improve every aspect of your health. Whether it's brain and body power max, the same formula I used in the world's largest study of NFL players to optimize brain performance to happy saffron to boost mood and memory

and pro-brain-biotics max to improve the gut brain connection. Brain MD delivers the highest quality science-backed solution. to help you think and feel better. Tana and I take many of our products every day. And as a special offer, just for our listeners, you can save 20% on your next order. Visit BrainMD.com and use the code podcast 20. With a better brain always comes a better life.

Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. Hey. Hey. We're talking about pain. We are. You have soothed my pain. I love that.

I mean, being attached to someone you love. I often say you are the yin to my yang. You ground me. You are very soothing. Yeah. Do you often throw you? my life. I do. It's my way of telling you. I love you, though. Yes. And I know there would be way too much pain. I threaten your life if you leave. That there would be way too much pain if I left.

And not because of what you would do to me, but because of how attached I am to you. And grief is often attached to pain. It's awful. It's awful. And then with grief, often negativity begins to rear its head because when you lose someone you care about, your emotional brain heightens because it's looking for that person who lives in your head that it cannot. Yeah, it's really tough. Fine. Anyways, welcome to change your brain every day. We are talking about my new book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain. I think it might be one of my favorite books you've done. And we talked about the Doom Loop.

And in this one, I want to talk about the relief loop. It's like, well, what's the opposite of the Doom Loop? It's the Healing Loop. But we had a question. Yeah. Which is. Yeah. So I was talking about rage journaling in the last.

episode and how helpful it's been for me. But then we also talked about how if you get stuck on negativity, it increases pain. So the question was, is rage journaling getting stuck on negativity? And the answer is not if you do it right. If you do it right, it's the opposite. Because when you have repressed rage, that is what's stirring up that negativity, even if it's subconscious, it's always there. And it's just your, it's in the background brewing. It's just constantly there. And your brain sort of stays on fire. It's that those emotional centers stay fired up. But when you learn how to rage journal and get out the things that you can't say out loud that you would never normally say to other people because you're too good of a person, you're too polite or you're too whatever. And these are

just things you just aren't supposed to say. But you get them out. What I do is I get them out, make sure I either burn it, shred it, do something with it. They're not the things you want people to know. And they're the things that you, it's like I'm a good person. I don't say those things, but I'm going to say them. And then you get them out. And then what I do after that is then I focus on my prayer, my meditation, my gratitude.

But it's like I get all of that negativity out and then I sort of am open to receive all of the good, if that makes sense. It actually helps me not to be negative. So otherwise, I just feel like irritated. So I remember when we were listening to Sarno's book in the car and we're pressed,

rage. And you often call me Pauliana. Oh, my gosh. Pauliana is like my favorite movie. My favorite movie. Dear Lord. Like, I get a new grandchild. It's like, oh, great, a new reason to rewatch the Disney movie, Pollyanna. And the reason I love Pollyanna, because it's a positivity bias exercise. And she teaches people to play the glad game. And I like the Punisher and Law-Biting Citizen. And whatever situation you're in, what is there to be glad about in this situation? And I live my life pretty much in a really positive way. You really do to the point that it feels like sometimes a little dangerous. So we didn't talk about my pain story in the last one.

We did not. When I was young, when I was 35, I had chronic arthritis. and my hands and my knees. I get on the floor to play with the kids, and I couldn't get off the floor. And I was really upset about it. And then one day, while I was seeing a patient, she said she stopped aspirame,

and her arthritis went away. And I think one of the reasons that I'm a good psychiatrist because I learned from my patients, I'm a really good listener. And I'm like, I drink 32 ounces of diet soda every lunch, right? I thought, aspartame, it's free. Well, it's not free.

It's not free. And so this was before I loved my brain and my body, I would go across the street of my office in Fairfield, California, to jack in the box. So you know how unhealthy I was. and get a diet Pepsi. And as I'm listening and hurting, I'm like, oh, maybe I should cut out the aspartame.

So I did. And the pain went away. Wait. And the pain went away. And then I'm like, oh, my God. And, you know, because I'm not that smart, I had to go, let's try it again. Maybe it's not the aspartame.

Immediately, it came back. So I broke up with aspirin. But then as I got older, I don't have a right ACL because in an intramar football game, I tore it. And then at some point it snapped. And so I always sort of had knee pain. And but then as I got older, no aspirateen. My knees hurt. And then it's my back.

And then it's my hip. And then it's my neck and it's my shoulder and it's my elbow. like, oh my God, I'm breaking down or I'm getting older. And then I'm like, no, something I'm doing is wrong. And I need to put my brain and my body in a healing environment. And since I started writing this book, I've had no pain for two years. And when I get pain now, I don't immediately go get an MRI because I know it's going to be abnormal. But as soon as I would get the MRI, I would like go uptoe. So I had to do this clear liquid diet for a medical procedure.

And I, we got some jello because I didn't know what else to have. And I was having jello. And so the jello, I couldn't find anything that didn't have aspartame and food diet. And I was like, I've got to figure out how to make some. But in the meantime, while I was waiting for the stuff to come in to make some, I was eating this jello for this clear liquid diet. And I got the sugar-free. I'm like, okay, what's worse? The sugar or the aspartame? I'm like trying to weigh out the, you know, which one's the worst, you know? And so I'm telling you it was the weirdest

thing within, so I picked the sugar-free, but within 24 hours, I have this weird thing that happens sometimes where it almost feels like, I don't know if it's like a fibromyalgia reaction, but I get this pain in my ribcage sort of around my spine where I've had injuries. And it's like, wicked pain in my rib cage. And I'm like, is that from like the jello? Like I'm not eating anything. else. So I don't know what it could be. Stopped it, went and made the regular jello, and it went away. And then I ran out of it, so I ate the other jello, and it came right back. And it's the aspiratame. So a brand new study on aspirin, that's going to blow your mind. They gave mice aspartame. It made them super anxious. Yeah. And then they gave them Valium and it calmed them down.

Express. But that is not a good long-term treatment so you can have Diet Coke. But the thing that blew my mind with the Aspartame study is the mice's babies were anxious, even though they never had aspirate. It created epigenetic changes so that their offspring was anxious and their grandbabies were anxious. Aspartame was unleashed into the American market around 1980. It is now in 5,000 products, and people often think of sugar-free jello as a health food. It's clearly not. But it can create generational issues. So is it possible this mental health epidemic in kids and young people is an epigenetic result of things like aspartame, there's probably a hundred of those things that are creating problems

not only in you, but in generations of you. Isn't that interesting? So I promise that we would talk about the relief loop, the healing loop. So if chronic pain, don't hate us, actually lives, yes, in your back, but also in your brain, if you really want to tackle it with more than opiates and Advil and Tylenol, And, you know, we had this recent stuff about Tylenol might not be great for you or your offspring because it depletes glutothion, a major antioxidant and can hurt your liver. And Advil, yes, very helpful because it decreases inflammation, but it also tears up your gut.

And not everyone can take it. And not everybody can take it. And the secret about opiates, the dirty secret about opiates that I talk about in the book is it shuts off your brain's natural opiate production and it angers your white blood cells. So they actually did a study where they're looking at the impact of oxycodone on white blood cells and it agitates them. So what it's doing is it's short-term benefit that then's actually creating more pain. So wait, so what you're saying is if you take painkillers, you end up needing painkillers because you feel more pain. Right. And that's why they're addictive. And short-term benefit.

So it's not just because you crave them. It's because you also feel more pain. You feel more pain. That's crazy. And it's turning off your brain's natural pain-killing ability. So less is better. I mean, some people, they just absolutely need. them. I know when your mom lived with us and, you know, she was dying. Lung cancer. Right. I'm like, please give her more. Yeah. That's different. So we're not saying never use them, but use them cautiously. So how to get out of the doom loop? Well, it's called the relief healing loop. And the R is recognize the triggers. So every day, my patients win, no pain, or they learn. They're always curious and not furious. So I had more pain.

What am I angry about? What did I do different biologically? Did I not sleep? Did I have sugar-free jello? What? Or sugar? I always want you learning and studying. your pain. Was there a social hurt? Did you feel like somebody put you down? Or did you have a lack of meaning and purpose? Or did you do something against your own moral code, which can then increase pain?

So always think of biological, psychological, social, spiritual. So curious, not furious. So that's the R. Over 50 million Americans live with chronic pain, and too many are told there's no hope beyond pills or surgery. My new book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain, Gives You Proven Practical Steps from the latest neuroscience to calm your brain, heal your mind, and finally feel better physically and emotionally. pre-order now to receive bonus gifts at change your brain change your pain book.com.

Don't you have like a great journal that people can use to specifically help them journal in this way that we're going to talk about? Curious, not furious. But help them journal like what the biological, psychological, social, spiritual factors are? Yes, we have that when people pre-order the book. an emotional freedom journal that I wrote for them. The E in relief is ease the suffering pathway. So remember the three pain pathways, the feeling pathway, the suffering pathway,

and the calming pathway. So we have to calm that down. And you can do it with medicine. Actually, one of the reasons I wrote the book is I got very, curious about why does Symbolta, why is Symbolta good antidepressant work for chronic pain? It's actually FDA approved for chronic pain. It's like, well, why is that? Because they run on the same circuits in the brain. That's wild. Why does Sammy, sedenocil methyanine, right? And betane or TMG work on chronic pain and depression. That I thought was just,

Those are my two favorite. That's rock star combo. Or amyptylene, another antidepressant that neurologists have been using for 50 years for headaches because they run on the same circuits. And so we ease the suffering pathway. And for me, I generally start with supplements before medication. So something like Sammy or saffron. So that's my combo.

So my combo is saffron, Sammy, and TMG. Those are my three. Wait, you had a friend who had chronic pain. Oh, yeah. So that's really funny. So someone very close to me actually was scheduled for surgery and was having all kinds of pain. I mean, she's in her 70s and she was having all kinds of pain.

And she was terrified of having surgery. So she's like, I'm not saying I won't have it, but I'm really scared to have the surgery. I'm like, okay, well, why don't you just try doing something for, you can always have the surgery, but just try doing this first. And I sent her some, I sent her curcumans, but then I sent her the saffron, same thing I take, saffron, Sammy, and TMG. And she calls me a week later and she said, her doctor said to her, what are you doing? I don't really understand. Why are you so much better? This doesn't make sense. She said she just feels so much better. It's crazy. So it's a lot of its

inflammation, a lot of it is these pain pathways, probably settled down her emotional brain. I don't know, you tell me, but I'm just saying it was crazy. It is the suffering pathway. Yeah. In her brain. Yeah, she's not having surgery right now. And so if we think of the most powerful supplements, curcumins from turmeric, omega-3 fatty acids, saffron, yeah, Sammy, and also vitamin D. In addition, things like havening, when you get upset and you feel triggered, Havening, which we've talked about, developed by Ron Rudin, it's bilateral hemisphere. Stimulation is when you feel triggered and upset. Just do bilateral stimulation.

It'd be as simple as rubbing your hands together, or my favorite is grabbing your shoulders and stroking down and go into the thing you're upset about rather than away from the thing you're upset about too many people go, oh, I feel so bad, I'm going to drink. Or I feel, I need to relax. So I'm going to drink. I need to relax. I can't think about that. So I'm going to smoke pot.

Oh, no. And they eat a quart of ice cream. As opposed to what I want you to do is do things to help you feel good now and later. And havening is one of those fascinating, interesting things. So recognize the triggers, calm the suffering pathway. The L is let go of the negativity. And there I teach people to kill the ants, to engage in positivity, bias training. You want to calm the suffering pathway.

You have to calm the negativity down. Because when the negativity drops frontal lobe function, then you can't turn the off. Interesting. I know one of my favorite things is cold plunge. You think I'm a little crazy, but... Well, but cold plunge decreases inflammation. I know. I started doing it more for my mental. Like, I wanted to like challenge myself mentally. And I got out and I was like, wait, like, I actually have less pain. And that's how I sort of figured out. And a lot of athletes use cold plunge to decrease inflammation after games. I love it. The I is initiate relaxation.

And this is so important. And I like hypnosis and progressive muscle relaxation as a way to just like start calm and down. The muscle tension you hold and initiate relaxation, you've got to get the rage out. So this is where rage journaling is. But when I read Sarno's book, I'm like, so how do you get rid of the rage? And then I remembered learning about ISTP, intensive short-term, dynamic psychotherapy, was developed by Habib Davidlou from Canada. And it's basically a rage therapy.

It's like, okay, feel your body. and if the anxiety or the depression or the tension or the pain could come out, well, where would it go? Do you think that's why karate was so helpful? Like, I actually think martial arts is really helpful. And I've had many patients tell me that when they beat something up, they feel so good. No, there's like no therapy.

It was a big hurt for me when I stopped to practice. Because it feels good. It was. And so batacabats and rage rooms. I really like ISTBP. And I actually send a lot of patients. And I mix it. So is that sort of the mental version of that?

I haven't done it. Yes. And I mixed it with EMDR. So EMDR, eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing. It's a very very, very, powerful psychological treatment for trauma. So if your A score is more than two that some EMDR could be helpful.

But what I would do in many of my sessions, I know I would come out of a therapy session. I'd say, people died today. And you'd like, roll your eyes at me. But we would go through a trauma and I would go, so what are you thinking and feeling? And if the feelings could come out, whether it's your mom or your dad or the person who abused you, well, where would they go? And don't hold back. And obviously in real life, you're going to be appropriate.

But for now, I don't want you to be appropriate. And I would do the eye movement therapy. And the relief people got by just being able to express. the rage was monumental. And it was so special to know that people didn't have to hold the hypervigilance that hijacked their nervous system. So for this part, we have our emotional freedom journal, which I'll talk about in a minute, But working with an EMDR therapist or someone who does intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy

can be incredibly helpful. In the book, I talk about emotional freedom journaling. And I use this exercise with all of my patients. So what is it? Well, it's how you find the rage. And for every five-year period of your life, have one page and draw a line down the middle of the page. And on the left side, write what awesome things happened.

And on the right side, write what awful things happened. And that's why, because I always want my patients to remember things in a balanced way. If you just talk about the crap, you feel like crap. And so, you know, being 71, I have like 14 pages. But here are the really cool things. I was four standing at the stove, making fudge with my grandfather. It's awesome. Loved him.

But on the other side of the page, so I'm getting beaten up by my brother nearly every day. And so early on, you can see the seeds of rage and where they happen. And if you do that, for me, I find, we're going to go find the top 10. rage events and we're going to go after them. So when you did EMDR, how is that helpful to you?

Oh, it was so helpful. I didn't really understand why it was helpful. It was, it seemed very odd to me. It's like, why are you making me move my eyes back and forth and why is this working? I was like, it feels like a shortcut through therapy because I was very, I was very, I'm not that way now, but I was very like anti, not going to walk in, bang my head against a wall for two years and talk about my problems. I was just not, was not really a fan of the idea of it. So when I went in, I wasn't sure what to expect. And it was just, for me, it was sort of like

suck it up, live your life, like take responsibility, whatever. It just didn't sound like something I wanted to do. But when I did EMDR, it was very specific to trauma. And you bring up a thought, you do this eye movement thing while you're thinking about the thought. And it leads to, it's like a sweater unraveling. It leads to certain other thoughts. And I'm like, why? I don't really understand what's happening right now. But eventually what happens is it's not that you forget the thought. It's that there's no emotion attached to it. There's no trigger attached to it. It's a very interesting thing. One of the most powerful times that I ever used it, well, there were many, but was when my mom died. And when that was, you know, grief is just such a tricky, sneaky, crazy thing. And it affects people

in so many different ways. And the one time, I think you don't want to have conflicting emotions and feelings is when someone you love dies. And I was feeling more physical pain and I was very frustrated and I was very, because I love this woman. But then I had these conflicting feelings, these odd thoughts coming up from when I was a kid. And I'm like, why? Why is this happening now?

No, stop it. Like, I'm like, stop it, stop it, stop it. And it wouldn't stop. But when I did EMDR, it resolved. And so I was able to then. let that go. I had less pain. I slept better. I had more of these beautiful, loving thoughts of my mom and those thoughts that I had when I was a childhood, I was able to see them very differently. My perspective changed. It's not that the thoughts went away. My perspective really changed. And it was just very

powerful. So why it works, I can't tell you. You're the one else to tell me why that works. Because it calms your emotional brain. Yeah. I don't know why it does that. you activate both the left and the right hemisphere. So EMDR eye movement, get your eyes to go back and forth while you bring up the memory that's triggering you. It's helping the right side, which is often the anxious side of your brain integrate with the language side of your brain. And I published a study on this. I did a study on. police officers who are involved in shooting calms their emotional brain. And so you still remember it, but you don't remember it with pain. Right. Yeah. Or in this case, was the first time ever that I

remembered it even with a new perspective of gratitude and love, which was really weird because it was odd. I love that. Yeah. How many MDR sessions do you think you've had? Oh, dear Lord. I started with 10 and I thought that would be the end of it. And I ended up going for two and a half years when I first started. And then I would go back and just do little cleanup sessions. I did it when I had emptiness syndrome. I did it when you know what I mean? Like I would go for certain things like when my mom died when I just would feel myself feeling very anxious and triggered about something or like upset about something and going, why can't I get control of this? Why does this feel out of control to me? So sort of if you're like a professional basketball player. Yeah.

You get a coach. And you get into a little bit of a slum. You get a coach. Right. And you videotape it and you go, what am I doing? How can I do this? And honestly, it gets easier. It gets faster and faster and easier and easier because you have a goal now going in.

You sort of know how it works. You have a goal. So I didn't need to do 50 sessions. I only had to do like three, you know. But if you have an A score of eight, you probably need to do 50 sessions to start. No, no, initially. Because they're so. much in your nervous system. I mean, one of the reasons I like EMDR is it's effective and it's

fast, but if you grew up in crazy, then there's a lot of stuff in there to work out. And pretty soon, it's like if you get triggered in a relationship and you have more pain. But it made, I feel like it made me a better mom, a better wife, a better, you don't even a better daughter. it just, it makes you better as a human because you can process things and begin to have more insight. And we like hardly ever fight. And if we do, if we fuss over something, it's like over. It's just. Because we've worked on our own triggers.

Right. And neither one of us want to hold on to it. No, and it doesn't fit our goal. So initiate relaxation. And then it's embrace. brain healthy habits. So if harmful habits is the H and pain HQ, the E is embrace brain healthy habits. So it's the right food, it's exercise, it's going to bed, it's prayer and meditation and journaling. Taking care of your brain. And then the F is foster hope. And what is hope?

Hope is tomorrow can be better and I have a role in it. So hope ultimately is about agency. And I think change your brain, change your pain is a book of hope because it's a roadmap out of pain or at least to significantly decrease pain based on the things you can do to keep you out of pain over time. You are not stuck with the brain you have. And, you know, over the years, I've signed thousands of books,

and I always sign them with hope because that's, I think, what my work gives people, that tomorrow can be better, and you have a role in it. I open each chapter with a story, like Sam, the police officer from the first chapter. The second one is a story of Christy that she was in chronic pain and had lupus and inflammatory bowel disease and was suicidal and had been let go from her job and she was a mess.

and she was eating at Taco Bell a lot. It's like, but doing all the things we're talking about in the relief loop, just within a few months, was dramatically better. It's amazing how many people will say within days to weeks, they notice a difference. You did a program on a 10-day brain boost. And when we did our Brain Warrior's Way class, It's actually one of the reasons I wrote this book on pain.

And you can actually take that at Aeman University. It's 26 sessions. Chronic pain was down 30%. Absolutely. And that was the thing, even way back when I was teaching classes, even from Omni Diet, the number one thing, it wasn't about weight loss. People, you know, people always came to me for weight loss because that's what would happen. It was the side effect.

But I always said I don't do weight. weight loss. Weight loss is not what I do. It's about health. It's about vibrant health. It's about decreasing inflammation. You get the inflammation down. You do all the right things. Everything else falls into place. The number one thing was pain. It was pain. It was, you know, IBS. It was, um, ps. It was, um, psoriasis. It was, I mean, all of the things that, that go along with inflammation. And everyone, that was the thing they had. What happened next was the weight loss. well if your body's inflamed you hold on to weight and being overweight all by itself increases pain

because the fat cells produce something called inflammatory cytokines that make you hurt yeah they're little chemical plants i've seen it over and over again when people change their brain they change their life as a psychiatrist and neuroscientists. I've studied more than 260,000 brain scans. And what I've learned is this. Most people are struggling with a brain that's not working as well as it could, and they don't even know it. That's why I created our app, Brain Fit Life 5.0, to give you the same tools I use with my patients every day. tools that can help you feel calm or more focused and more in control of your habits. One person told us, this is the first time I felt like myself in years. You can try it for free and see what a better brain can do for you.

So we're going to talk more about change your brain, change your pain, and some of the strategies in the book to help you. coming up next. Leave us a comment, a question, a review. We're so excited to share this with you. Also, if you pre-order the book right away, because this will go away after the book is released, that we're going to give you four free gifts, including the Emotional Freedom Journal that we talked about, a bottle of brain curcumans, hypnosis audios, and the 30-day online course. Change your brain, change your pain.