Change Your Brain Every Day - Fight or Flight

Episode Date: December 7, 2016

How to deal with the trauma of being attacked. How to release the pain of trauma and begin to heal your brain and your body.  

Hi, I'm Donnie Osmond, and welcome to The Brain Warrior's Way, hosted by my friends Daniel and Tana Amen. Now, in this podcast, you're going to learn that the war for your health is one between your ears. That's right. If you're ready to be sharper and have better memory, mood, energy, and focus, well then stay with us. Here are Daniel and Tana Amen.

Hello, everyone. I'm Tana Amen. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. We're so excited to be here with you today. And we are going to talk about the flight or fight syndrome and what happens when you get stuck in it. Why do we have it? What happens and why do you get stuck? So it's actually a normal physiological response that we are as humans hardwired. Actually, most species are hardwired. So when we become frightened or happens immediately, our hands get cold because blood is shunted from our hands and feet to the muscles in our shoulders and our hips so that we can fight or we can run away. Right. So I've actually studied a lot about this as well after being assaulted and I practiced martial arts. And one thing that you learn is there's a huge rush of we can run away. Right. So I've actually studied a lot about this as well after being assaulted,

and I practiced martial arts. And one thing that you learn is there's a huge rush of adrenaline, this huge rush of adrenaline that happens, and several things can happen. People react different ways. They either freeze, they run, or they fight. And part of it depends on your nature, your experience, how you're sort of hardwired. But along with that adrenaline rush, a few things happen. In addition to what you just said, your speech can become monosyllabic. That doesn't seem to happen to me. We'll explain in a minute. But your speech can actually, you know, become monosyllabic. You have a hard time talking. So you use like... Or you repeat the same awful thing over and over again.

Stop giving me a hard time. So you often will use one syllable words. You will have a loss of fine motor skills sometimes. So you start using very gross motor movements and you get tunnel vision and your breathing becomes super shallow. And very fast. Very fast and very shallow. Like you're having a panic attack. Right. And so what happens is some people, because of all of these things that happen, they literally will curl up in a ball and freeze. Some people will actually wet all of these things that happen, they literally will curl up in a ball and freeze. They just some people will actually wet themselves or lose bowel function because they just don't know what to do. And like the fear can be that overwhelming. So, you know, this is designed to protect you in a sense, but it's not designed to stay there for very long.

So and there are ways to train it. Well, and if you have too many bad things or stressful things happen in a row, it can reset your nervous system to a much higher level. So there's an interesting concept in neuroscience called kindling, which is where you take a nerve cell and you put some electricity through the nerve cell and nothing happens. But as you increase the voltage, pretty soon the nerve cell will fire off. And if you keep that voltage up high enough for long enough, the nerve cell is said to become kindled. What that means is you can actually lower the intensity and it still fires off. So if you grew up in an alcoholic home, it's one of the things I studied when I was a young resident, psychiatric resident. If you grow up in a stressful, traumatic environment,

it actually resets your nervous system to a much higher level. And so 30 years later, you're married, everything's fine, but your husband looks at you, what you think is the wrong way. And all of a sudden you go into a rage because it's triggering a memory system in the brain that has been sensitized or kindled. Well, and sometimes I know when I met you, you thought that this was my problem. And I'm like, yeah, you're crazy. I'm fine. But so I have no judgment. No, he thought that he's like, oh, you've been living with this stress for a long time. You can see PTSD in the brain, unfortunately. So I wasn't able to.

We published studies on that. Right. So he could see it in my brain. But a lot of it, I think, has to do, and maybe you can speak to this, has to do with how you grew up, how you process things and how you grew up, whether or not you're a fighter, you run or you freeze. Like I grew up in a house with a mom who was a serious fighter. We had nothing. She's a 16 year old runaway. But fighting became a way of life. It was survival. I mean, I think one of my early memories was we had a burglar in our house when we got home from the movies. I lived alone with my mom and my mom grabbed a shotgun, chased the guy down the hall and shot the shotgun out the back window. And you know, I'm like, now looking back, I'm like, Mom, you do realize you can't shoot someone in the back, right? She didn't shoot anybody, thank God. She actually wasn't trying to, she shot it into the flowerbed to scare him. But the point being, my mom was very intense. Now I have a half sister who grew up with a mom who

tended to try to get away from problems. So she was more passive and running away from problems. And so she tends to freeze up and run away. So one of those two responses. And so we are extremely different in how we respond when things go wrong, when things go sideways. So. So Tana reacts. Immediately. And I tend to freeze and I don't like it. I'm that person who will run into a burning building when we were walking oh yeah in our neighborhood you're not going to and we were actually at the beach we weren't in our neighborhood no no the first time we'll talk about the beach in a second but we're in our neighborhood and we had tinkerbell who um our our little black poodle that there was a pit bull two pit bulls off lead off lead two of them and they came toward us they

charged us and what i did is i picked up tinkerbell and tana scared the dogs it was hysterical okay you you ran actually toward them yeah i jumped in front of them but i but i also know i mean see in my head it's a fear-driven thing i know that things that run become prey so it's just a fact i wasn't running but i was was protecting. But you were... I jumped in her face and screamed at her. And they did not want to mess with you. Then you started laughing. You started laughing at me and you go, as we're walking home, you go, that was the highlight of my day. I'm like, what? Why would the highlight of your day

be two pitbulls charging at us? And you go, no, not that. The highlight of my day was seeing my redheaded wife face off with a pitbull. I'm like, oh my gosh, you're so twisted. Well, it didn't turn out so well. A couple of years later, where we were down, it was early evening on Corona Del Mar in Newport Beach. So in a beautiful place. That was one of the scariest days of my life. A beautiful, safe, we thought, place near where we live. But it was getting dark. It was getting dark. And my intuition was, let's not walk down to the end where it's dark and I can't see and I know there's people down there. Right. And I'm like, because, you know, I live in Disneyland in my head. Yes. We had our big white German shepherd, Aslan, with us. And I like steps, you know, I live in Disneyland in my head. Yes. And we had our big white German shepherd, Aslan, with us.

And I like steps. I have my Fitbit. And let's clarify, Aslan, I have to protect my dog. He is not a protection dog. Well, he did a good job that day. He did. He did. He's just the most beautiful dog.

Sweetest dog. Sweetest can be. Not looking for a fight. Ever. sweetest sweetest can be not looking for a fight ever and as we walk down um the path on the jetty all of a sudden two now two more pitbulls off lead but these were fighting dogs these were not come running toward us and i slept they didn't yeah they they were on top of aslan before i could even before we could even do anything because it was kind of dark they were on top of aslan before i could even before we could even do anything because it was kind of dark they were on him one had him by the underside one had him by the top

of the neck and um actually we both went after one you kicked one of them i kicked the other one face didn't matter like and the other one i kicked didn't even react at all and like an idiot i grabbed him around the neck i mean looking back i'm thinking how stupid i was grabbing him around the neck and screaming well and aslan actually fell off the well the wall into the water onto the rocks and i was scared to death i thought he was going to break his back we thought he was going to die and i could see blood all over i didn't know whose blood it was because one of the pit bulls had bit you so um i was freaked out as soon as i saw the blood i mean not that i wasn't freaked out before that but when i saw blood i, literally. So this little red switch flips in my head when I get scared. You can make me as mad as you want. Don't scare you.

If you scare me, you better find someplace to hide because it's a weird reaction I have and it just, it triggers psychosis in me. And that would be true that day. That would be true. So Tana then jumped off the wall to be near Aslan. To go get him out of the water. And then just starts screaming at the gangbanger that owned those pit bulls. And I had to tell her to shut up because, you know, I'm thinking this guy's got a gun. He's got these two crazy dogs. And the dogs, they weren't after us. They were after Aslan.

But let me tell what was going on in my head. I could hear, it was almost like an out-of-body experience where I could hear my husband say, you need to shut up. Guys like that that have dogs like that have guns. And I start, when I heard him, I could almost see myself and I was thinking to myself, I know he's right, but the words that came out of my mouth following the thought, I know he's right, were, I can't actually repeat what I said. But I was screaming at the top of my lungs that he better have a gun because I'm going to kill his blankety blank dogs. So I was screaming at him and his dogs and I wouldn't stop. And you wouldn't stop. No, I'm attacked. My dog's attacked. I think my dog is going to die.

And my wife is now, I need to put her in the hospital. She's sort of fire crazy. I thought, yeah, you were going to 5150 me or something, but I couldn't stop it because it was this switch that goes off when it's true fear. Only when it's true fear. Like when I really am in survival mode and some people freeze, some people run. For me, I'm like, how do we get out of this situation? No, you started being the psychiatrist. He's trying to like talk to the guy.

No, I'm trying to get safe. The only thing I wanted at that moment was safety. And you're trying to talk to the guy and rationalize with him. I'm not beating him up. That's obvious. Oh, no, I wanted to like do horrible things to him. Right. And I'm grateful you didn't have a weapon because we needed to get safe.

I actually am too. So the first thing to do when something bad happens is you look and go, how can I be safe? But honey, you're, okay, hold on. I understand that's how your brain works, but not all of us think like that. It is a primal response. No, I understand. And that's why we have frontal lobes. No. It is a primal response. No, I understand. And that's why we have frontal lobes. No, it's a primal response.

But hold on. Frontal lobes are the brain's brake that helps us assess the situation. So, no, no, I have a question though. And one of my questions, because we are so different in how we respond to those types of reactions, could it be a male-female response? Could it be the

difference? And in the fact that as a female, after having been assaulted in the past, that it's almost like, you know, do women tend to react differently to try and get bigger? No, I don't think it's women. I think it depends on your past. So if a guy had been raised in the environment that you were in and saw a mother like yours who's a fighter i think he would have reacted the same way okay and since i didn't grow up really with trauma i mean i had enough of my own trauma we'll go into that another time. But it's like safety became the most important thing for you, for Aslan, for myself. And that's when you really want your frontal lobes to kink in. Oh, I'm grateful for your reaction. So when you're panicked, what can people do?

So one of the first things that I've learned in martial arts, now, the interesting thing is you actually have to get your wits about you long enough to remember this, because when that adrenaline kicks in, it's really hard. You breathe. You got to belly breathe. You take a few deep breaths from your belly, and that will help. One of the other things that- So you assess the situation.

And in order for that to happen, you need oxygen in your brain. So in that moment where I slipped, he bit me, I'm breathing too fast, I don't have good oxygen to my brain. And so three deep breaths just to get oxygen so you can kick in your frontal lobes and then assess the situation. Then another thing that happens is tunnel vision. So like you said, your hands get cold, you get tunnel vision. So breaking that tunnel vision can often really settle you down by just breaking the symptoms that are happening, the biological things that are happening. It can actually change your reaction. So if you can start to move your eyes back and forth, sideways, you know, back and forth,

you break that tunnel vision can be very helpful. So the next thing is to put your hands on your shoulders on the opposite shoulders and just rub down two or three times that stimulates both sides of your brain. And that can begin to sort of settle things down so that you can make a good decision. Because that's the most important thing in a situation like that is because the decisions you make can save or put your life in jeopardy. Well, and I'm grateful for your reaction, actually, and your attempt, at least, to settle me down.

It didn't really work. But I've actually trained and actually gone and tried to learn how to change that. But when it's a primal response, it's a little more difficult to. But these are ways you can actually sort of break through. Right. For people who've been traumatized and, you know, it's over seven and a half percent of the population have PTSD. That means 20 million people or more have significant lasting emotional trauma. And what you see, it actually gets stuck in the brain, that there's a pattern we call the diamond pattern where it works too hard. And EMDR, eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing can be really helpful. For people with PTSD,

you can go to emdria.org and learn more about it. There's a new technique I like called havening that can be very effective for some people to take away the emotional charge of negative situations. Tapping has been shown to be helpful as well. And hypnosis, one of my favorite. Absolutely. And on BrainFit Life, our online program, mybrainfitlife.com, we actually have six different hypnosis downloads, one of them for anxiety. It's perfect for a situation like this. And one of your favorite things is NLP. Right. So after the dog situation, I was emotionally charged for a long time. I couldn't talk about it without getting the same

biological reactions I had in the moment. I was shaking. I couldn't, like I was having bad dreams. And I heard those words. Over and over and over again. So I actually went and I did havening and NLP and it took it away. It took the charge away. Now, if I talk about it, I don't have the same reaction. I'm very cautious now, but I don't have that same emotional charge to it. So we hope this is helpful for you. So many of us have had emotional trauma in the past. If you have, that's normal. But we want you to be able to soothe and settle your brain so that you can live the most amazing brain healthy brain warrior life. Stay with us.

Thanks for listening to today's show, The Brain Warrior's Way. Why don't you head over to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. That's brainwarriorswaypodcast.com, where Daniel and Tana have a gift for you just for subscribing to the show. And when you post your review on iTunes, you'll be entered into a drawing where you can win a VIP visit to one of the Amen clinics. I'm Donnie Osmond, and I invite you to step up your brain game by joining us in the next episode.