Change Your Brain Every Day - Brittany Bell on Family Drama & Healing Past Wounds

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

In this heartfelt episode of Change Your Brain Every Day, Dr. Amen sits down with model, beauty pageant titleholder, and psychology doctoral student Brittany Bell for an intimate conversation about the realities of co-parenting three children with Nick Cannon. The former Miss Guam and Miss Arizona shares the joys and challenges of their unique family dynamic while navigating her own mental health journey. With expert insights from Dr. Amen, Brittany opens up about the profound impact of her biological father’s suicide following a historic incident of police brutality. After reviewing her brain scan—which Dr. Amen calls “stunning”—the discussion shifts to how her past influences her present, offering valuable lessons on resilience and growth. This candid episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking inspiration on navigating family, healing, and mental wellness. 00:00 Intro 01:39 Sponsor 02:48 Brittany and Nick Cannon 05:15 Brittany’s Goals 07:27 Anxiety 10:38 Processing Trauma 12:23 Black Fathering/Multiple Siblings 14:40 Brittany’s SPECT Scan (Surface) 15:48 Brittany’s SPECT Scan (Active Interior) 22:20 4 Circles 25:25 Challenging Negative Thoughts 34:48 Father’s Police Brutality Incident & Suicide 41:10 Supplement Recommendations 42:20 Sponsor 43:46 Wrap Up

When I looked back, I didn't know. It was anxiety. I didn't know the troubles that I had gone through were what they are, but I'm so proud of myself for all that I've been through and all that I do. And I feel really resilient. But as a mother, some of the things that I've been through, I definitely don't think were healthy for a young girl

to go through. So for me, it was a lot of stress in the household. I believe my stepfather has a mood disorder. And so with that mood disorder, ranging from high levels of anger and upsetness to then like just going away into the room and then it's calm again. I believe it's about like this hypervigilance to read people very well. So it was unpredictable.

Very unpredictable, at least for me as a young girl. 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. I'm very excited in this episode of the podcast to talk to Brittany Bell, who I originally met when we scanned Nick Cannon. Brittany is a model, she's a psychologist, she is the mother of one of Nick's children and wanted to experience the process herself. She struggled with anxiety issues, father underwent a brutal police brutality incident and subsequent suicide. Here we'll talk about her brain, how to make it better, and also how to

get her mind as healthy as it can be. Are you struggling with anxiety, depression, obsessive thinking, past emotional trauma, ADHD, or brain fog and don't know where to turn? Are your relationships a mess and you don't know why? Have you had a brain injury, concussion, or just don't feel the same after COVID? Is your memory worse than it was 10 years ago or do you have a parent or grandparent with dementia and want to work on prevention?

Yes, prevention is possible, but the sooner you start, the better. For 35 years, we've been changing people's brains and their lives using brain spec imaging and a personalized natural approach to brain and mental health care. And we have some of the best published outcomes anywhere. Go to amenclinics.com to learn more. And when you call us, mention Podcast 10 for a 10% discount. Thank you so much.

No, thank you. I'm so happy. So we met before. And yes, we did. When Nick came and you accompanied him. I did. And so you saw this process. Yes. And you're like, I want to get my brain scanned.

Yes, this has opened my eyes so much. I think this has been one of the most informative aspects of even my understanding of how we function as humans. I work in psychology, so this was like next level understanding. And so when I got to just watch in with Nick, this was so intriguing and it informed me a lot and it actually helped me as somebody in Nick's life and I'm very grateful. Yeah.

And you know, one of my questions was, what has Nick done different? And I did his podcast and I know he saw Dr. Cornish, our functional medicine doctor, but she did his podcast. So he's getting brain health as part of his consciousness. Oh, it has definitely brought some of the things that he never thought was just important to the surface, to the point where he's paying more attention. Because I feel like once you open the store for him, he was able to see how much agency he has over that transformation. And now the way he eats is different. He's more conscious. He's Willy Wonka, the black Willy Wonka. No, he's not anymore. He's more

like, I don't eat that candy. Right. When I went to his studio, I mean, I'm like, bad for your brain. Right. But now that's not only impacted him, but his modeling for our children. Because my son was like, you know, gas station candy fanatic. And now dad is modeling, oh, let's go for other things where I used to have to be like, not that, not this. And I was a bad guy. But now he's joined forces because he's taking care of himself.

And it's amazing. Yeah, it's it's helpful. And my son is very, it's helpful. And my son is very, very aware now. And I'm just grateful. It also has helped me with understanding Nick's processing. It has transformed my empathy for him because of the things that you found in his frontal lobe

and also ADHD behaviors. I am a little bit more slower to assume, judge, or expect typical function in certain ways and just more patient. And that's been tremendous for me as I understand my world. So thank you. I love that so much. Yeah.

So I read your history. I've looked at your scans. I've looked at your testing. So I have a good idea. Okay. But I want to hear from you. Your goals. Okay.

What will make this a life-changing experience for you? Yeah, I think for me, it's kind of in the same realm of what it did when I saw even the scan that you did on one of the prominent family members of ours. Like when I saw Nick's scan, I thought this is transformative for him. I said, awareness is huge. So my goals is to bring that awareness into action. What can I do when I find out if there's something that I can do to increase coping, you know, better skills I can really hone in on.

And while I make it aware, maybe I have better tools that I can get access to that actually serve me directly because that awareness is pinpointed. So that's my goal is to function better overall. And then also how can that impact my children and the coupling of, well, if you got a parent with this and you got a parent with that, how does that affect our children?

So how do we operate as co-parents? And yeah, that really informs. Well, and you have a very interesting part of your brain. So spoiler alert, you have a stunningly beautiful brain. Thank you. Nick's going to be jealous. You have a beautiful brain. But parts that work too hard, which is if you get your feelings hurt, that can stick around. Yeah, I'm a survivor. Your brain will loop a bit. But more to come on that.

Can I just say this is the only time I've ever allowed anybody on record to be this close to me in the nature of the privacy of my life and just how I am overall, just functioning really under the radar with good reason for so many things, but this has so much purpose and insight that it feels very safe and awesome to be here. So thank you.

I'm honored. Thank you for and awesome to be here. So thank you. I'm honored. Thank you for allowing me to do that. When you were younger, you had anxiety. Oh, yes. Tell me about that. Oh, it's gonna make me emotional right now. Here goes my emotions going off in my brain. Man, with my mom being in town this week too,

it's been quite interesting to look back. Self-exploration has been huge for me, especially in the field of psychology. When I look back, I didn't know it was anxiety. I didn't know the troubles that I had gone through were what they are, but I'm so proud of myself for all that I've been through and all that I do. And I feel really resilient. But as a mother, some of the things that I've been through, I definitely don't think were healthy for a young girl to go through.

So for me, it was a lot of like stress in the household. I believe that, I believe my stepfather has a mood disorder. And so with that mood disorder ranging from like high levels of anger and upsetness to then like just going away into the room and then it's calm again. I believe I developed like this hyper vigilance to read people very well because I was always on edge and I didn't know when something could be, you know, disrupted in the

home piece, in the piece of the home. And so... So it was unpredictable. Very unpredictable, at least for me as a young girl. And so destructive behavior was really hurtful or getting in trouble for things that the kids don't typically need to get in trouble for, like not doing chores well enough or things like that. Could be very hard for me. So interpreting what was safe and okay kind of led me, I think, into a loop of maybe even just resilience of just like, keep it moving, keep it moving. Don't worry about the bad, keep it moving.

And so when my feelings would get hurt, it's danger, danger, you know, guard up. And so that would happen for me as a young girl. And mom was married to my stepdad and she was more of the passive one. And she would just kind of ground me down and say, let's, you know, let's just keep it moving, keep it moving forward. And they did the best they could. But my father, I learned about when I was 18

and that was a pretty big shift for me. And I learned that my father was a victim of a police brutality incident that changed his life forever. And his depression was so severe that he ended up taking his own life, but I was not in contact with him. And that was the change.

Were you in contact with him at all when you were young? Not much. It was a back and forth between my parents with my mom experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms from my dad and fits of rage and like nitrimers from my biological father. Which then transferred to other things in her marriage.

But that was really pivotal, I think for me as I got older. But in my youngest years, I still remember the moment I met my dad or at least saw him last before I ever never saw him again. And I was around each five. And that was also a very high end incident where I was told to get away and it was a big, big deal. But yeah, so that's what happened. I didn't, I haven't gotten deep into it.

So my current therapist is super sweet, but we've been doing a lot of exploring, given all my history. We're maybe like seven sessions in and we did one EMDR session, which I found super helpful. And I saw that you were a supporter of it at one point. Huge.

And so I thought, well, let's go. I've heard so many good things about it. And that one session still did call me and was really helpful, but I haven't done it consistently because we keep exploring like current day things that come up. So I haven't, yeah. So one of the things I do with my patients is,

and I do this in five year chunks and I do it actually very specifically. I wanna know zero to five, 6 to 10, 11 to 15. What you remember of anything that was awesome and what you remember that was awful or stressful. Because that way when you take a history, you're not just taking a trauma history, retraumatizing you, but you're doing it in a balanced way. So you see your life in a much more realistic way. These were the things that were amazing. And these were the things that were stressful. And that really sets up the EMDR. It's okay, what are the triggers that we have to go after? But knowing that you

also have many strengths. Okay. Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah, it doesn't just focus on the negative so much that you're ignoring the strengths, but the strengths also are there to be acknowledged too. Yeah. Right. You're a PhD student now? Yeah, PsyD, but yes. Yeah, I actually just passed my dissertation proposal

not last week, but the week before, which was huge for me. It's emotional, because it has been a fight. I was in my master's program, I was pregnant, birthed my child on the break. In my, now, my PsyD program and my doctoral program, I was pregnant, entering and birth my child in the middle of the first year. And I was often questioned whether I should continue or maybe not do the program and I

pushed forward and here we are finally at dissertation phase. I'm ready to publicly propose and then do my research. So it has been incredible but stressful. Tell me your dissertation topic. Oh really? Here we go. So I'm doing qualitative research because I wanted to specifically do it

on the black community where stats are wonderful in some regards, but qualitative is going to be so much more healthy for us to get more information on, just to background some of our stats. So right now my dissertation topic is a phenomenological study on black fathering, how coincidental. So it's black fathering and the adult child who has siblings with multiple siblings with different women, with different mothers with the same father. So-

That's a little autobiographical. Yeah, isn't it? The funny thing is, is that doing this study was not something I came in going, I wanna do this study. I came in with my chair, like, I wanna do a study on the black community because it's important to me due to my father, right?

And she said, I said, black motherhood, you know, single motherhood. And she's like, how about black fathering? I'm authoring something on. I said, okay, you're on point. She didn't know anything about my personal life. And she goes, how about fatherhoods and multiples? I said, yeah, let's go.

And we ended up with the adult child because it's better to study the adults and get past your IRB. But yeah, the adult child and who grew up with multiple siblings with different mothers. That is so fascinating. That is so fascinating. So we do a study called SPECT and SPECT looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works. And it basically shows us three things.

Good activity, too little, or too much. And then my job is to balance it. And here's a healthy set of scans. You have a stunningly beautiful work. It's so good to hear. So have a stunningly beautiful work. I get to hear. So if we go back to healthy. It's like. Oh yeah.

It's just one of the healthiest parts. Wow, thank you. At some point you had a concussion. We'll talk about that. You actually had two car accidents. I've had a car accident where I might have had some whiplash. I don't know when these things could have occurred. So you see this little tiny dent here. And you see this one.

And so we want to plump it up. On a scale of zero to 10, let's see, so say zero is the best brain I ever saw and 10 is the worst brain I ever saw. Yours is like a two. It would be a stunningly beautiful brain. Oh, amazing. So I want you to like go and go. I feel so happy. I can do anything with this. Oh, amazing. So I want you to like go and I feel so happy

to do anything with this. You are that like you're an expert. So to hear you say this, I'm like, wow, thank you, God. Well, and the team that has all seen lots of brains. They saw it too. Whoa. OK, awesome. But you want to keep it that way. I do. Right. Well, tell me what more I can do. Well, I'm going to give you, well, we'll get to the next part in a second. I'm not using it well enough.

But I'm going to give you a group of supplements to make it even bigger and fatter. Oh, great. But I want you to, when you leave here, go. I have a great brain. How can I keep it though? Thank you. Okay. There's no bad news on that scan.

Awesome. Now this one is busy. Yeah. So here, blue is average. Red and white are the most active parts of the brain. And if you remember in the healthy one. Oh, back there. The cerebellum is really busy.

And yours is sleep. And so this is gonna be our goal. Your emotional brain, really busy. That's probably past trauma. It's stuck there a little bit. You have what I call the diamond pattern. If you look at this, all this red and this very interesting part of the brain is called the insular cortex and it's really busy. Now, your hope score was really high, which is interesting because usually people who have

ACE scores above four, their hope score is low. ACE adverse childhood experiences, it's like always having to watch when you're young because bad stuff is happening, right, which is common for you. for you. Your hope score is high. And hope, insula, means island of hope. Oh, I didn't know that. So it's pretty cool. And usually with low hope, we get low activity there. You have high hope, which is awesome. Want to keep that. But you also have past trauma and that want to calm down. But we want to activate this.

But this is from what I told you is like you get your feelings hurt. You can hold on to it right here. It's very true. This is called the anterior just means toward the front. Singulate gyrus, which I think of as the brain's gear shifter. It lets you go from thought to thought, move from idea to idea, be flexible, go with the flow. And when this is busy, sometimes your brain

can start to spin. And whenever you get a thought more than three times, I want you to get up and go do something different. And I'm gonna give you something to comment. Just to balance it. And then the EMDR will help so much. And if you go, can I do 20 EMDR sessions? Like catalog the traumas,

cause you're organized, right? Catalog the traumas, and I to do sessions on each one of them. And I would go into it and not be afraid of it because it's often childhood thoughts that still run the programming. And you want to take your good mother self and reparent the hurt child that thinks she did something wrong to cause that trouble. She didn't do anything wrong. She was in the wrong place.

And if you learn how to play ping pong and get good and do like 20 sessions of VMDR, I'll scan you again. We'll see if we get better balance. Deal. Deal. I'm getting a ping pong table today. Thank you. So what do you think?

I am not surprised about where you see the trauma in the past. That totally makes sense to me. I am amazed at the hope, this little island of hope. I think a resilience factor for that. I don't know how that works when we think about childhood until today, because my relationship with God has really increased that since the, I think I was always a wishful child and a hopeful child. But then in my twenties, my early twenties, like 20 to 21, that's when I used, that was a really protective factor for me. There was a lot of like increase in just a lot of things that were happening. It was trouble times too in my twenties.

But it was a guiding force and a really good support for me, maybe even through my motherhood, even up to today, definitely. So that I would guess makes a lot of sense. And then the cerebellum, I'm so curious about where that comes from, like what could have done that? When I don't, I'm not a heavy drinker, you know, like, I don't, I can't even tell you

how the last time I had it was like- It may not be that you did anything to hurt it. I think is your emotional brain is so busy that it just sort of took some of the energy from there. That makes sense. Okay. It's by the trauma getting stuck, it's sort of hijacked. Yes. And as that calms down, likely this will pop up. Okay.

But I want you to actively work on it by doing those physical exercises. Absolutely. Which will help you much. My son is gonna be happy with 20 minutes of ping pong a day. So great. With me, if he chooses. Good for him, good for you.

Yes. But I'm very happy to see this. So when I think of my patients, I never think of them as whatever diagnosis they got. I always think of them in four big circles. It's like, so what's the biology? What's your brain doing? What's your mind doing?

What's this social situation you're in? And what's the spiritual foundation? And so we just talked a little bit about your brain. We'll do it some more. Tell me about your moment. I think what you said about it, just spiraling can happen even in good ways where I'll just like I'll get something will happen and I'll just like go for it. That could happen in the sense of like if I'm fixated on something related to

Trying to get my house together because I know it'll serve me to be better student I'll just go for it and I'll plan it out and I'll get it done and I'll go for it I've been better lately at trying to control my mind when it comes to stress or Issues that kind of those triggers that can come up. It's been more recent, like within the past probably like four months where I've been really pressing myself to really get on it and to re-regulate that when I get anxious and I feel like there's a danger or abandonment or something happening, that I do an opposite action pretty much.

And I stop and I give myself a moment and I say, don't react. And it's been serving me so much and I use it as information for myself. So when I feel it, I go, what is this telling me right now? And I try to just calm it and I actually feel better after I do the opposite action. However, the aspect of my relationship life and the relations that I've had, it's been difficult.

And I think that's what's given me kind of this cyclical rut that I found myself in. But I think what perpetuated that was the very thing that got me into it from childhood, these seeking safety or seeking comforts and trying to then stick to it. If your primary male role models are unpredictable, you sort of pick unpredictable people.

Yeah. Not because you want to. No. But because that's what your brain's used to. That's exactly. And the brain is lazy. The brain does what you allow it to do. And so picking someone that's actually good for you

is work. And you have to shift your mindset from who do I have chemistry with? Because that's explosive when you have childhood trauma to who can I make alchemy with? And alchemy is creating something precious out of something average. It's like, how can so?

That's my hope. And I, it's a goal. Because it's like somebody how can so? That's my hope. And I, it's a goal. Cause it's like somebody's really nice to you and they like call you back and they're like, it's like, oh no, he's boring. So. We don't want to be boring for good things like that.

You aren't boring. But. Well, you want to be just so careful about chemistry. Yeah. Because it's explosive. So I have a term I coined called ants, automatic negative thoughts, the thoughts that come into your mind automatically.

But there are five questions. Okay. So what's your worst thought that you can share? Oh gosh, anything happening to my children, that would be the worst thought that could ever come up. Like, yeah, that's the worst thought I think if getting a phone call or anything like I think that's happened where I'll see somebody calling in the middle of work and I'm like, is my kids okay? And I'll freak out

if something bad or the concern about that, which also relates to a thought I had while driving on the freeway and my tire was blowing out and I was like, if anything happens to me, my children need me. So it's the thoughts usually are related to being there for my kids.

So what's the heart of the bad thought? The heart of it? They can't survive without me. My children can't survive without me or the pain of anything happening to my children that I can't do anything about. So that's scary for me. Yeah, my wife used to think she wouldn't be able to live

if something happened to our daughter. Yeah. I'm like, that's a scary part. That's kind of the feelings, like those kinds of, I think I would live because I have my other kids, but I would definitely feel deeply hurt and I don't want to experience that pain. And I pray over it.

I'm like, I go hard for my kids because I'm like, let me live till I'm 106 and outlive my children's natural life. Not anything. But you can't always predict what happens. No, you can't. Right? You can't. And you have three of them.

I do. Right? So you have to be okay. I know. I know. But that's probably my scariest thought. I used to have fears, which I've tackled about like, I don't think, I think I discovered them about being like abandoned or something, or people leaving, but I don't,

I don't feel worried about that anymore. Yeah, I guess like death with my young kids, like if something were to happen to me by accident and my kids had to live on how well they would be and how okay would they be? How would my son take it emotionally and that they would cope poorly or anything would happen to me

if anything were to happen to me. That's probably my scariest thought. Okay, so let's see if I have this right. If I died, my children would fall apart. Yes. Is that true? Yeah, that's not true. But it's not just, there are five questions.

That's the feeling I have. Okay. But thoughts create feelings. Right. Feelings create behavior. Behavior creates the outcome. So the first thing to get right is your thoughts. Yeah. I mean, the first thing to get right is your thoughts. I mean, the first thing to get right is your brain. Get the health of your brain right.

But then you have to program that to help you rather than hurt you. And so if the thought is, for example, if something happened to me, my children would fall apart. Five questions, is it true? No, they'll be okay. Or I don't know.

I don't know, that's true, I don't know. The second question is absolutely true. With 100% certainty, they are so dependent on you that they can never survive without you. No, that's true. Because now you've seen four murders. Right, oh God, please no. In your head.

No wonder you're anxious. Yeah. The third question is how does that thought make you feel? Very badly. It makes me feel horribly. Yeah, it makes me feel worried. And then how does that thought make you act? Protective.

Overprotective. Yeah, there you go. You transfer your anxiety. Thank you for labeling. I'm overprotecting. You transfer your anxiety to them. And then the fifth question is you take the original thought, my children won't survive without me, and you just flip it to the opposite. It's my kids will serve me without me. And that's where you meditate. It's my kids will certainly without me.

And that's where you meditate. You actually meditate on the opposite of the thought that bothers you. Now I love, is it true? Because I'm not a pie in the sky happy thinker just cause. I'm an honest, accurate, positive thinker. And I think I have a really cool book. I think you like called Your Brain is Always Listening. And there's a whole chapter and the exercise is write down

a hundred of your worst thoughts and go after them with the questions. It's like, don't ignore them. Shine a light on them. Yeah. Because when you shine a light, the cockroaches go to the corners. Yeah, get out of here. Yeah, go away. I have one that I've been having to combat even though I've been doing well with it that

I thought I should share, but it was kind of interesting because what I noticed is, is that the brain will try to validate off of the realities of maybe the past. So is it true? Well, it once was true, but is it true right now is the question. And I think, oh, it's father, when it comes over and spends time with the kids, but he leaves, then he's going to go do something really hurtful that impacts our family poorly. Like if I'm going, if he says, I'm going to go to work, we don't live together, but if he's visiting and he says, I gotta go run real

quick and he leaves, there's this thought of, no, he's not. He's gonna go sleep with a girl and someone's gonna, you know, that kind of a thought or gonna go do something else. And that has been something I've had to train myself out of because it has happened in the past, right? That because it has happened in the past. Right. That's been a pattern in the past. So what's the thought that's causing you pain? Betrayal. He's going to betray.

Or he's not going to do what he says he's going to do. And then that creates this kind of like worry. But I just I try to manage it because at this point, at this point, I've dealt with it enough, but it used to be very frustrating. It used to be a very hurtful experience, but that thought has come up and I've been trying to manage that even,

and I just say, okay. And if you do the questions enough, they become automatic. Yeah, so that's how it is. If your unconscious starts to work on them and so he's going to betray. Is that true? In this moment, I don't know. I don't know. Is it absolutely true with 100% certainty? No. How does that thought make you feel? Horrible. Horrible. How would you feel if you didn't have the thought? Much better. Much better. I would feel free.

Yeah. And so we only deal in truth, right? John 832, know the truth. The truth will set you free. And he's not going to betray me. Maybe. His history shows. But what does that mean if he does?

It just means I have to make a different choice. Because what's the best predictor of behavior? As a PsyD student, what is the best predictor of behavior? Use your thoughts and what you think is going to turn into a behavior. And how you feel. No, it's past behavior. Past behavior. Yeah. And if he has cheated on you,

two or three times. That we know of. Maybe more. Maybe more. I don't know, but. It's like, I think it's okay to expect that. Right. But not be wounded by it.

Because if you're wounded by it, you're giving him the power to wound you. And when you're with somebody like Nick, who has ABD, who has trouble being committed, who has trouble being faithful, who's then it's like own it, right? Stop arguing with the reality that's there. Right? One of my favorite authors is Byron Katie. And she says, argue with reality. Welcome to hell. And you're arguing with reality. Right. You know where I think that this is where it

becomes, I think that if there were no, if I had no children, it wouldn't be such an argument for me. And I think that the children component comes in because of my history with my father. So that experience with my father choosing to leave by suicide is where this perpetuated experience of like. And you're probably furious about that. I was, but in my education, I've become more understanding of what that is. I used to be angry and I used to be sad through that anger, but I am no longer sad or angry.

I'm more compassionate to how hurtful that must have been for him to feel like that was the only option. And we didn't see his brain. No, we didn't. And the police brutality may have given him a brain injury at the same time. Oh yeah. Oh, we don't even.

Do you know what happened? Yes. There's been so many, I know the whole thing, but it's pretty much my dad was unrightfully apprehended for a traffic, He was told to be doing a U-turn he didn't do. There was a particular cop that was pinned on doing some sort of like unsolicited gang detail and was like, I'm going to go get these guys driving down the way. And he went after my father who was driving and my father pulled over.

But my father was an expert taekwondo artist. Like funny thing is Nick knew my father, but expert. When I tell you expert hand-eye coordination, all that incredible. And when he was, you know, there's when the one cop tried to start, he was blocking and blocking and blocking and to the point that backup came and then my dad ended up on the floor and the gun was found. How old was he when this happened?

24. He was, and this is before your born? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, this was before I was born. Actually, I think my dad, this was in the 80s. Yeah, so this was, yeah, he was in his early 20s. Sorry, he might've been 22.

And my father was blocking, blocking, but then a gun was pulled out from the officer that was on top of him. And after that officer pulled his gun out, the other officer kicked my dad and him more scuffling. Cause at that point my dad was like, oh my gosh, I'm about to die. And in my dad's training,

it's you don't stop until everyone's down. And my dad freaked out in the incident because the gun went off. And it shot that officer that was right there in the other, the line of fire in the movement. And that officer died. A order was struck and he died. No one knew in the moment, but my dad got up, started shooting. Like he grabbed the gun from the guy and was like, get everybody down and took off

and then went to the police station. And he was like, this happened. And they were like, he immediately went in. He was tried not once. He was acquitted, tried a second time because they were like, we're coming back. He was acquitted again. And his life was not truly free.

His life was turmoil. He had terrors and he hated that someone died in an altercate because my dad wanted to be a police officer. Where was this? This was in San Diego in the 80s before Rodney King incident. And it's a big criminology study for criminology. for criminology students. They look at my dad's case in San Diego and it's huge, but my father had a lot of PTSD symptoms. He had an unethical therapist.

Dave, can you help? He tried to have a therapist, but my dad was a good looking man. And my mother told me that his therapist was being unethical and he stopped therapy and then had lack of support. I was taken away because of his outburst. My mom was afraid.

And then my... So this happened before you were born? Oh, I was born in the trial. I was born during the second... You were born during the trial. Yeah, I was born in between the first and second trial. Do you know about epigenetics? Yes. About how what happens to us before we have children

changes our genes and we begin to transmit our anxiety. So possibly my mom had anxiety while my dad was in trial and she would see him. Well, and you had your dad's sperm that helped make you. Yes. And that sperm had helped make you. Yes. And that sperm had been traumatized. Yes. Right.

I mean, it changed the epigenetics in his genes. And then if we take that and then mix it with your own trauma, it's like, okay, that's a lot. And it's a miracle, you're awesome. As awesome as you are, right? But I think understanding as you have worked, right? You found psychology and it's like, oh, this will help me understand why I suffered.

Then I can help other people. And I think that's what you said earlier about that then, that thought that then goes to be overprotective, I think has some influence of even just the idea of what my father's been through, what I've been through without that being my real father, discovering this, and then coming into now I have my own children and how I wanna protect my family

and how I hang on to my family and now I'm finally in this surrender mode. And it took some time. And there was a space where my faith was a little bit less strong and now it's getting stronger and it's really helped me. And that's been a big protective factor, at least like progressive factor for me. But that would probably tell me a little bit more about why it hurts so bad in that thought that I shared with you, because then when I watch my children

and I see the reactions that they have or the experiences that they have in absence of somebody and I have this experience behind closed doors, that's where a lot can come up. So there's a lot of managing I'm doing. And so when you see my skin, I'm like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense because it's all like relational trauma

along with childhood trauma and here we are. I'm like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense because it's all like relational trauma along with you know, childhood trauma and here we are. But I'm excited. And testing, you have a beautiful brain, how it works, right? That's how I test it is awesome. You have so much to look forward to. Thank you. Right?

I mean, all things work together for those who have the right. Yes. Fascinating. And then for me, I want you to take something called Happy Saffron. It's got 25 randomized controlled trials showing it helps you move, helps to boost serotonin which will begin to calm down your emotional brain and then two packets a day brain and body power, multiple vitamin fish oil brain boost, it'll plump up your brain and help reverse some of those tr troubles. Okay. So what do you think? So I think this is transformative. This is affirming. This is life changing for me. It boosts me. It empowers me. And I feel really inspired to care more about this particular area I can work on to get more blood flow to my cerebellum and where that energy is being unfairly right, but really

distributed into an area I can control and redistribute somewhere else. And I feel more agency over that. Yeah. And that I have some work to do to do that. And I'm not daunted by it, but excited about it. And I'm less fearful right now. Are you excited to optimize your brain and help the brains of those you love? Do you want to prevent or treat memory problems, anxiety or depression? Do you want to be happier? That's why I created Amon University, to take what I've learned over the last 45 years and help you have a better brain, a better mind, and a better body. You can take courses like our 30-day happiness challenge, which was shown in research to increase happiness by 32% in just 30 days or memory rescue or overcoming anxiety, depression, trauma, and

grief, or healing ADD at home in 30 days and much more. We also have professional courses and courses for kids, including Brain Thrive by 25, which was found in independent research to decrease depression and improve self-esteem. And as a special offer just for our listeners, you can save 20% on your next course. Visit aminuniversity.com and use the code podcast 20. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Tana and I work really hard to provide free information that will make a meaningful difference in your life every day.

Change your brain every day. If you liked it, please subscribe, leave us a review. And if you have a story of transformation you want to share with us, you can do that by DMing us at doc underscore Eamon on Instagram. Thank you so much.