Change Your Brain Every Day - Do You Struggle In Relationships? This Could Be Why

Episode Date: January 30, 2018

Being connected is one of the most important functions of being human. Unfortunately, it can also be one of the most problematic. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen share their tips for successful relationships through their powerful mnemonic “RELATING.”

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. Here we are, Brain Warriors Way podcast. You have some testimonials you want to read. I do. First, I want to say welcome back. I had to do a bunch of these by myself because you were hibernating finishing your book. Feel better fast.

Make it last. No one saw you. We'll be talking about. No, I did. I missed you. Well, it's nice to hear that. I mean, it was nice having you home, but, you know, I miss doing recording with you and doing stuff with you. So I am happy to have my husband back.

I love this. So let's see. Aloha, aloha from Canada. How does that make sense? Anyways. Because they know what we're going to talk about today. Oh, maybe so. Anyways, Dr. Amon and Mrs. Amon are amazing coaches.

This is tomorrow's medicine today. Everyone can benefit from their research and experience. They simplify how to do it. Love them. I love that because that's exactly what we're trying to do. And notice I did really well since I didn't put my contacts in. Well, I actually like that. I'm gonna write that down. Tomorrow's medicine today. And we simplify how to do it. That's the whole point. Well, and did you hear that Pfizer actually laid off a whole bunch of people and they're getting out of the Alzheimer's business because they're like, we're not finding

a drug that will cure brain diseases. And the reason is because there is not one drug that is going to cure your memory. What you have to do, which I talk about in Memory Rescue and we talk about in the Brain Warriors way, is it's prevention. If you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it if you think it's headed for trouble, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And we've talked about them and the mnemonic is bright minds so B is for blood flow our retirement and aging I and inflammation and so on and ultimately it comes down to the one tiny brain warriors way habit is whatever you're doing today is it good for your

brain or is it bad for it you just have to keep that question top of mind. So when I think of saying something rude to my wife, I ask myself ahead of time, is that good for my brain or really bad for it? Well, it's definitely not good for your stress level, for sure. And stress shrinks the hippocampus, the major memory structure in your brain involved with learning memory, mood, and being able to find where you're going to go. We go to church all the time. I sort of still don't get the whole submit part. I just, it's really hard for me.

You don't get it. I don't. I try. I don't get it. You completely missed that part. I'm working on it. But that's not what our relationship is about. It's not about bossing each other around. I'm working on it. But that's not what our relationship is about.

It's not about bossing each other around. It's about elevating. And so if you are struggling in your relationship, you want to ask yourself, what is it I can do today to make it better, to make it worse? So one of the things I do with my patients all the time when they're struggling in their relationships with their parents or with their spouse or with their boss. I always start with responsibility. Yeah, I love that word. Is your ability to respond to the situation you're in. But then what I do is I sort of flip it and I go, what are the things you do that make your parents, your wife,

your boss crazy? How can you get them to scream at you in under a minute? And initially they fold their hands over their chest and they're like, I don't do that. I that i'm like well you don't know how to do that no really i said i can make my wife scream at me in under 30 seconds you could thank god you don't need to sit down shut up and do what i say i think you've done that once in 12 years where you actually said something that would just like and that was the last time he did it and you said it was so painful that you were never going to do it again well i didn't say that no never never say that no that actually would have been more painful but then you know i have children tell me exactly how they push their parents but they know how to do it and they know they're doing it so if you can torment them, torture them, then what are the things you do that make your relationships

better? And if you can stay in your power place, what is it I can do today to make the relationship better? Then odds are your relationship's going to be better. And people say, well, come on, it's a 50-50 proposition. And both Tana and I go, no, it's 100-100. No, it's 100-100. You need to do all the things you can do. And what I discovered is that often is enough to completely change the direction of a relationship. So I want to say something about what you said

about it being 100-100, because it's true. And this is, I don't know if this is appropriate for the podcast, but we say a lot of things that are probably not all that appropriate on the podcast. So, yeah, when I was, before, let's see, before I got married, my mom said to me something that, you know, I thought probably not a lot of moms say. And when I told you, you laughed so hard.

I love your mom. I know you do because she's so inappropriate sometimes. But she said, you know, if you don't take care of your husband and your relationship, someone else will. And I thought that it was so rude and so inappropriate. But it's funny because I thought about that and I thought, you know, that's really important. And so there are times I get so many people who write to me on Facebook and they talk about problems in their relationships. I mean, people write to me some

pretty heavy stuff sometime on Facebook, you know, about affairs and things like this. And, and, and I thought to myself, there's always three sides to every story. There's his side, her side, the truth. I know that's really deep. You guys need to go get help if that's happening. But it's really interesting because a lot of times some of these people are writing in and they're like, look, I'm just too tired. I'm too tired to spend time with my spouse. I'm too tired to have sex. I'm too tired to, you know, do what I know I need to do or my hormones are changing.

I'm going through menopause. I feel disgusting. But here's the problem. If that saying pops in my head, cause there's times I'm tired too. We are really busy. But rather than thinking of it like, oh, this is like, I have to do this. It's a chore or whatever. I flipped that. And I think of it as, no, this is nurturing, right? This is, this is investing in my family. This is nurturing my relationship, my love for you, which in turn empowers the whole family. And it not only gives me more energy, but now I have a partner who helps me. And so it really all depends on how you frame things. Because when you're tired,

you can like nurture being tired, or you can nurture your relationship and sort of change how you think about it. But you really do need to be careful and protect it. So in this podcast, we're going to actually not talk about what her mother said, but we're going to give you a framework for using your brain to improve your relationships. And we came up with a mnemonic that I really like called relating. And the R is responsibility. It's what are you doing that makes the relationship better? And what are you doing that makes the relationship worse? And get rid of the excuses, the grudges,

the things from the past because they don't help you. I was with Marty Seligman at the Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference recently. And he said something about memory that I thought was so interesting. He said, we all metabolize memories. Oh.

And they become part of who we are but some people their memories give them indigestion interesting because they're not they don't come into us in a healthy state so we can actually take things that were relatively innocuous and make them worse than they really oh there are certain things that like i know you've actually mentioned things, like, from my past or whatever, and I'm like, I was having a really good night. Like, why? Why are we talking about this? And so that's probably really true.

So you metabolize memory. But the whole point of R is take responsibility to make the relationship better. The E in relating is empathy. It's being able to see the situation, not just from your side, but also see it from their side. And your frontal lobes do that. When the frontal lobes work right,

we have the ability to see the world from another person's point of view. And it becomes really important. There's actually this whole system in the brain called mirror neurons where your brain can actually play out what is going on, you think, in someone else's head. And people with autism, for example, they don't have as strong as a mirror neuron system as other people. The L is so important. It's listening. It's being able to be quiet long enough to actually hear what another person is saying.

And it's the biggest impediment to relationships. Because people, they want to say what's on their mind. And so they want to talk over each other. And they don't want to just take a breath and really hear what the other person is saying. And then before you give your input, repeat it back. And you do that really well with Chloe. Well, you've helped me learn to do that because I think that's a problem for a lot of parents, at least the ones I talk to. They want to parent.

And so they think that parenting is more about telling kids what they need to do and how they need to do it. They want to pour their wisdom into the child's brain. But if you don't know what's going on in your kid's head, they'll just hide things from you. But they'll tell you if you listen. And you grew up in an ADD family. And so there was not a lot of listening. It's really interesting. My mom's an amazing person. But she just, you know, she was just scattered, just a scattered

person. So, yeah, really interesting. And you know, one of the things I found and I learned this because I don't think we were really good listeners in my family with five sisters, a brother, and you know, powerful king father, you know, he was the king, right? And the mother who ran everything. Your mom's a matriarch for sure, but she's amazing. There was not a lot of listening,

but bonding, being truly connected really requires two skills. And the first one is listening, so that you can understand what's going on in somebody else's head it also helps with empathy and time which we will talk about uh so just a simple what they teach therapists to do is something called active listening and i teach parents to do that we teach parents when we talk about parent training and it's when somebody says something, don't immediately respond. Or if you do respond,

respond with the last three or four words that they said and then give space because then they'll continue. And often with kids or sometimes you do so that so much that I'm like on the phone, I'm like, hello, hello. You're like, hello. Cause you give a lot of space. Well, it's also Verizon, right? I mean, let's be honest. You never know if Verizon has just dropped you like a hot potato. Um, i was reading never split the difference i love that book it's a really good book from an fbi negotiator and never split the difference is about how to negotiate in relationships or business and it's a great book and a quarter of the books active listening yeah right repeat back what you hear.

Listen for the feelings behind what you hear. What is it they really want? What do they really want? Because you and I have the same goal, right? In our relationship, we have the same goal. We want a kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship. Right. And underneath all that, we want to feel supported and fulfilled and loved, right?

So in order to feel those things, you need to give those things, really. Right, and we both love Gary Chapman's book, The Five Love Languages. Yeah, we all realized really quickly, everyone in our family realized, we don't really care about gifts. But it was a really good book to read with your kids. Right, and if you just come through the holiday season when you know gifts are like stressful big things stressful it's it's not important to us that words of affirmation are important physical touch well and acts of service and spending time and for our whole family it's like in different orders but those are the things so if you've not read the five love Languages, it's an awesome book.

We just gave them two great books, Never Split the Difference and The Five Love Languages. Well, there you go. And of course, Memory Rescue, out now. So in relating, the A is for assertiveness. And one of the big lessons, you don't have a problem with that, trust me, but one of the big lessons I've learned is a lot of people who are having relationship problems,

early in the relationship, they were anxious. And they just said yes all the time, even when the other person may have been rude to them or overbearing or demanding. And then what they did is they started to hold resentments. Right. And they never really said what they wanted and drew appropriate boundaries around behavior that was acceptable. So there's a flip side to that. It's really interesting and we work on this in martial arts a lot.

So I like what you said that sometimes people don't say what they want or don't say it in a way that they're heard appropriately. There's a flip side to that. In martial arts, we work a lot on the difference between aggression and assertiveness. Because sometimes when you say things, it doesn't come across as being assertive. It comes across as being aggressive or mean. So what is the difference between being assertive and being aggressive? It's intention. And so that's really important to understand too

because sometimes people don't mean to sound aggressive, but they do. And it's really the intention behind it or the emotion behind it. It's the emotions attached to it. So it's really important that you don't go too far. It's like a continuum, right? Right. I always say to my patients, there are ways to say things, and there are ways to say things. Right. Right. I always say to my patients, there are ways to say things and there are ways to say things.

Right. And so you want to say it in a kind but clear way. Right. That is without blame and hostility. Right. Firm and kind. You never go wrong with firm and kind in relationships. The T is actual physical time. And I know you and I, we always do better when we have time alone together. Same with our kids, right. Yeah, so there is, if you're having a struggle with one of your children or your spouse,

do special time every day, 20 minutes. Just do something with them they wanna do. And during that time, practice active listening. Listen, don't boss them around don't tell them their room's not clean or you're unhappy with their schoolwork um just listen yeah it it helps bonding so much i is for inquiry which is killing the ants the automatic negative thoughts that you know it's interesting in relationships. We talked a lot about ants on the show,

but if you have ants in your head and you're married to someone who have ants in her head. They have ant babies. They have ant babies. So the ants mate with each other and then they create this race of super ants and the negativity just perpetuates and a lot of divorce actually is because no one has cleaned up the thinking right in each of the partner's heads so please don't believe every stupid thing you think. And I remember I had this one thought once,

Tana never listens to me. Once, once, he's had that once. No, I've had that. And it's so not true. Oh my gosh. So I've had the thought, and if you don't question a thought, you believe it. Right.

Like a hundred percent. Right. And then you act out of the belief. So if I really believe that to be true, if I didn't question the thought, I didn't have the skill I have now. Well that's a terrible thought that my wife, who I love, who I've given my life to, never listens to me. It makes me feel sad and mad and lonely and isolated. And it'll cause me to be rude.

It'll cause me to be withdrawn. It may cause bad things you know I'll go find somebody who wants to listen to me and painful right for me right we're beyond all that I get it for me but it's actually not a true thought so when you write it down, Tana never listens to me. The first thing you do is you go, well, is that true?

And I'm like, no, you know, I've written 12 public television specials. You've listened to the scripts for all of the multiple times. You listen to me a lot, so it's a lie but if i don't question it if i don't inquire about it then i will begin to act out of the lies i tell myself which damage our relationship right no i No, I really like that. And there's two questions I ask myself when things are, you know, your relationships aren't

always just your marriage. I mean, sometimes it's family, like we've got some issues in our family that happen now and then. We had some drama happen in sort of a family relationship. And you model for your kids. It's really important that you're modeling all the time for your kids. Your kids don't do what you say, they do what you do. And so some drama was happening in the family and something happened and there was, you know, anyways, Chloe was hearing this. And so when I got off the phone with this person, I ended it sort of in a,

in a kinder way than one would think that I would have under the circumstances and I got off the phone and Chloe goes, are you going to like let that go? And the question, which is not always easy for me, okay? With my personality it's not always easy. Really? No. And so, but here's the questions I ask myself. You know, time and age can really help a lot and a lot of reading and a lot of therapy. But anyways, I digress.

The two questions I ask myself, what's my goal and does it have eternal value, right? So what's your goal in the relationship and does it have eternal value? And so I've learned to like stop myself and the one you said, like what I really like is, is it true? That's a really big one.

But if it is true, if something's going on, you know, it's like an issue. What's my goal? Does it have eternal value? And I said to Chloe, it's like, it's not really about being right always. Okay. Sometimes it's about being happy. Sometimes it's about the family. You know, it's being right isn't the end all be all.

You know, sometimes you got to let things go if you want the relationship. But there's some people, especially people who tend to be rule bound. I am rule bound. I know you are. But being right in the moment is more important than the overall goal for the relationship. This takes work. This is not. But you.

We were with a friend at dinner last night and she corrected her husband about something and her husband complained about you know if we went on a seven day vacation no six days right right and and you know i correct people in my head but i don't say it much because if it doesn't matter if it doesn't matter to the situation, you don't have to be correcting them. Right. Being right is not so important. She's a detailed person. About being connected.

Connected. Is so important. So don't believe every stupid thought you have. So we'll be back with the second half of our podcast on relationships. Stay with us. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way The Brain Warrior's Way cookbook we give away every month.