Change Your Brain Every Day - Dr. Amen’s Tips for Building Stronger Relationships in Life

Episode Date: August 22, 2018

In the last episode of “Attachment week”, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss the RELATING method, which gives practical tips for improving relationships. These tips are effective whether they are used for relationships with your partner, your children, or even your work associates.

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. Welcome back. We're finishing attachment week and we thought what we would do is give you some of our biggest tips on how to improve your relationships and we have a mnemonic that I really like called relating because it encompasses some of the big things to improve your relationships I mean they're just so

important because when your relationships are right, people tend to be happier. They live longer. They're healthier. And in relating, the R is responsibility, which is it's so easy. And both Tana and I have been in relationships in the past that were not good. And it's just so easy to make the other person bad and to go, well, this relationship is bad because they are evil or they're bad. And when you blame someone else for the problems in your life, you become a victim and you

can't change anything. So in my relationship with Tana or Chloe or the people in my family, what is it I can do today to make the relationship? Well, and this is really important even in putting the past behind you. So I went through a really hard divorce. And, yeah, you get really angry at the other person and you're going through. I mean, forgiveness is not always just about the other person. It's really about peace for you.

It's about doing it for yourself to let go of the past. But taking responsibility is a big first step with that. So what I found is in order to put that behind me so I could even have an amazing marriage, so that I could have an amazing relationship going forward, was taking responsibility for my part. That doesn't mean taking blame. It means taking responsibility for my part. That doesn't mean taking blame. It means taking responsibility for my part,

learning what I can from the past so that I don't make the same mistakes going forward. That way, if I take responsibility for all of that, for what I did, for my part of it, for what I could do better, then my conscience is clean. I've sort of dealt with it. I'm moving on. I've learned something from it.

And I don't need to keep repeating the past or take the anger with me into the next thing well and you can clearly make things better or you can make things worse and you actually the one that taught me responsibility doesn't mean blame it's your ability to respond in the situation the e empathy. It's put yourself in the shoes of the other person. And empathy is a frontal lobe function. So you need your brain to work right in order to do that. But it's just so important to understand where's the other person coming from? What's the template they grew up in? What's going on in their life? And if you can put yourself in the shoes of the other person. You don't have to agree with them.

It's so much easier. If you just think about the political hatred right now, it's blame, blame, blame, blame, so there's no responsibility, and there is no empathy. But, yeah, it's not even about necessarily agreeing. It's about trying to understand. That's right. It's building bridges, not walls.

And then the L in relating is listening. It's rather than just, and you see this on political talk shows, people are screaming at each other, talking over each other. Nobody's listening to each other. And we teach our patients what we were taught as therapists, which is active listening. That before you give your two cents, repeat back what you hear, really try to understand what you're hearing. And that alone can defuse arguments if you really understand what the other person is saying. The A is assertiveness. It's so important. We teach people how to treat us.

So if someone runs us over and we just sort of give in to them, we've just taught them that I don't, I'm just going to give in whenever you get angry. That's a hard one for me. No, it's not a hard one for you. You're assertive, which means I have to be assertive or you could just run over me. See, this is a big misconception. are assertive, which means I have to be assertive or you could just run over me. See, this is a big misconception. People think that because I'm assertive, like you must be a pushover.

It's a lie. It's not true. Because if I did that way, we would end up in a relationship. But the truth is, is I wouldn't be with you because I wouldn't be able to respect you. That's not awesome, right? So you have to ask for what you need. Be firm and kind. He's very assertive. And then time.

So relating. So responsibility, empathy, listening, assertiveness. When you say something, mean it. Stick up with it. But do it in a kind way. It has to be time without the mistress. So for people listening, it has to be time without gadgets.

Without gadgets. One of the most important things, if you want. So people listening don't know what I'm talking about. Without the phone, without email, without texting, it's got to be time. Quality time. Actual physical time. I call the phone the mistress. And one of the best things I think you've done with Chloe

and why you have such a good relationship with her is you and Chloe must have read to each other thousands. Yes, when she was little, I read, read, read, read, read to her. And as she got older, I had her read to me. Right, but it's that physical time that is involved with bonding. And if I had a nickel for every minute that I've had to listen to all the Justin Bieber stories,

but all that investment of listening, now when I talk, she listens. And what I tell parents, the most powerful exercise I've ever given parents is so stinking simple. 20 minutes a day. Spend 20 minutes a day doing something with them they want to do. We call it special time. And during that time, no commands, no questions, no directions. It's just time to be together because that is

required for bonding. The I stands for inquire into the thoughts that make you suffer in a relationship. So we often call them ants. Automatic negative thoughts. You want to inquire whether or not they're true. Can you absolutely know they're true? So if I get the thought, Tana never listens to me. Well, that's sort of why. I want to give a good example of this. So I was talking to a teenager yesterday, and she was very hurt and disappointed about something that one of her parents had done. And she's like, I can never trust this person. They've done this repeatedly to me. I can never trust this person. And I said, so is that true? And she said, yes. And I said, okay,

so let's take that thought. And is it, is it absolutely true? Can you, you can never trust this person and you've never been able to trust this person. And she goes, well, not never. I mean, so it cracks the thought, right? And then I said, so how do you feel when you have that thought? She was angry, hurt, disappointed. Like I can never trust this person. Like I feel helpless. And I said, so who would you be without the thought? And she said, I'd be happy. I happy I'd be peaceful and I said so what happens if we turn the thought around to its opposite she goes you mean like I can trust this person I go yeah let's start there you can trust this person she goes but what if that's not true I go well let's just start there. And she goes, well, I go, let's not start with big stuff.

Let's start with tiny things. Give me three tiny examples of when you have been able to trust this person. And all of a sudden, she didn't come up. She was coming up with stuff that was like big stuff. And I'm like, wait. So I let her go. And after she came up with about the fourth or fifth really big thing, actually, it was pretty, they were intense things. They were, because they came

from a place of when she had been hurt. But all of a sudden I stopped her. I go, oh, by the way, those aren't little things. So, but the point being, it cracked the thought of, I can't trust her. And so then we were able to work on it and go, so you can't always trust her in these situations. And she was able to pinpoint it too. I can't always trust her in this situation. Huge. Huge. Huge. Because if you believe every stupid thought you have, it can devastate your life. But the other thing that came out of that was. And your relationship. The other thing that came out of that was she loves me fiercely. That was pretty big. That her mother loves her fiercely, which is true.

Yeah. The N in relating is notice what you like more than what you don't like. I heard this terrible statistic. The teenagers hear on average seven negative things about themselves compared to one positive thing about themselves. I don't understand that. I don't. And what goes into your brain often is what comes out of your brain. And I don't understand that. I don't understand why parents do that.

Because that's what happened to them. Parents do typically what's been done for them. And so those of you that have been listening long enough know I collect penguins and I collect penguins to remind myself to notice what I like about people a lot more than what I don't like because, and I wrote a book about this, the most important thing in life I learned from a penguin, which is when my son was seven and he was hard for me. We went to see life park in Hawaii and I watched this penguin do amazing

things. And I went up to the trainer afterwards and I said, how did you get the fat Freddie, the name of the penguin, to do all these really cool things? And she said, unlike parents, whenever he does anything like what I want him to do, I notice him. I give him a hug and a fish. And the light went on in my head that even though my son didn't like fish, I wasn't really noticing him when he was doing things right. I was just noticing when he did things wrong. Okay. And I love you all. That's why we do this. And I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't care what you

have to do to fix it. Your broken past, whatever it is, don't do this to your kids. Like figure out what it is that you need to fix within yourself, but this is just destructive and it's harmful and it's mean. So fix it. So notice what you like more than what you don't. And the G stands for grace and forgiveness. Holding on to hurts only poisons you. Our friend Byron Katie said forgiveness is just another word for freedom. I love that line. And in my new book, Feel Better Fast, where I talk about all this stuff, I talk about the REACH model of forgiveness developed by Dr. Everett Worthington, who after he developed this model of forgiveness and is teaching it all over the world, his mother is actually brutally murdered. And he used this to actually help him deal with his own grief. And so what is the REACH model of forgiveness?

I mean, think of a time when you're holding on to something you don't need to. So I want you to think about that now as I go through the model. So think about something that happened recently. And so recall the event, what happened. That's the R in reach. Recall the event. E is empathize with the other person. Really begin to see what's happening from their brain, from their

point of view. Altruistically, that's the A, give the gift of forgiveness. C is commit to it, tell someone about it. And H is hold on to it so the important things are recall it see it from their point of view that's the empathy what's going on in their head commit to or altruistically give them the gift of forgiveness I mean something you you can clearly hold on to it or you can give forgiveness, commit to it, and then hold on to it. Or there's this other thing you could do. You could marry a psychiatrist who keeps bringing this stuff. I'm convinced. I know that I cannot hold on to all this stuff from the past that I used to hold on to because God just keeps putting it back in my life, putting it back. It's like, he's not going to let me like off the hook ever, ever. And the way that he does it is

because he made me marry you who keeps bringing it back into my life. So I'm never getting off the hook, like never. So I know better than to hold onto this stuff or to like hold onto hatred because I just like smack dab slapped in the face every time I do it. So there you go. Relating. Responsibility, empathy, listening, assertiveness, time, inquiring, notice what you like more than what you don't like, and grace. Thanks for listening to the Brain Warrior's Way

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