Change Your Brain Every Day - How Can You Tell If You’re A Victim of Abuse?

Episode Date: September 4, 2018

With an ever-increasing exposure on harassment issues in society, it’s important to get an understanding of what abuse actually is. In the first episode of a series centered on abuse, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen describe the different types of abuse, and how to recognize when it’s happening to you. Tana also shares her surprising take on the #metoo movement.

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. This week, we're going to talk about abuse in many different forms. As a psychiatrist, I have dealt with that over and over for decades. When I was at Fort Irwin, I was the chief psychiatrist at Fort Irwin, which is a military base, an army base in the Mojave Desert. I was the chief of domestic violence, and it was heart-wrenching.

So this week we're going to talk about abuse, but we want to get to some of the podcast reviews. One of the first ones we just got in, Dr. Amen and Tan are so incredibly intelligent. I love that one. They bring in highly qualified and decorated scientists and researchers and base everything they talk about off experiments and clinical trials. That's true. Science matters. I appreciate their honesty, humor, and the simple way they explain some complicated concepts. After experiencing my grandmother going through Alzheimer's, heartbreaking, I become very interested in my health and brain function. That's the sign of intelligent life. I'm 23. That's even more the sign of intelligent life. And now realize that

my brain health is dependent on what I provide my body with every day as of right now. Dr. Amen has helped me change my life. And I'm so thankful to have found this podcast. Thank you for putting this information out to the world. So before we get started on abuse week, we were supposed to do audio only. You guys convinced me. So I came in from karate. You can't see this, but I'm dripping wet. My t-shirt is soaked. My hair is in a ponytail.

I look terrible. Totally sweaty. And I wasn't going to record. And then you guys convinced me to record. And I said, no. And the only reason I'm allowing you to record me looking like I do, like I've been beat up or just beat up somebody, is because it's abuse week. And I have a story. And I have a story. And I have a story. So I practice karate. And you at your worst is still incredibly beautiful. Thank you.

You're sweet. But I practice karate for a reason. I love it. I find it to be an incredibly empowering sport for women. And I have a story about this. So everyone knows I'm a huge advocate for women's self-defense. I mean, everyone knows, listens to us that I was attacked when I was 15, walking down the street by just a stranger who tried to drag me down an

alley and almost raped me. And I got away. And then there's been other things. I was molested by my stepfather when I was 12 and just some things. So I'm a huge advocate for women's empowerment and self-defense. But what I really love is that through our podcasts and Facebook and some of the coaching that we do, there's one woman that I was coaching who knows about my karate and I posted my black belt test and stuff like that, which was brutal. And she was inspired to leave an abusive relationship and start taking martial arts in her 40s. And she just got her black belt. And I love that. So, and then today I went to my lesson and there's a woman who just recently started

taking lessons. And I don't know how old she is, but I know she's a little bit older than I am. And she listens to us all the time. So it was really fun for me that she started taking lessons where I take lessons. It's really cute. And so I love that. And I- So I'm like your walking billboard for Bob White's karate studio. Well, I think they're amazing people and I love it. So I'm wearing my karate t-shirt and, but I do find it, you know, I, that's my hope is to anyone who has felt disempowered to be empowered.

So here I am looking like a mess. Well, actually, you know, in thinking about Abuse Week, the title of our podcast is The Brain Warrior's Way. Right. Why? Because we believe you're in a war for the health of your brain that our society is abusing us from the food they serve that is just flat out toxic to your body to the non-stop negative news cycle that's just bombarding our brain with negativity with the gadgets that are stealing your attention that often people don't know when they are being abused. And we wanna tackle that.

So not just in your relationships, although we'll talk about that, but also what's happening in our society. So we desperately want you to be arm prepared and aware so that you win which is basically the fight of your life for the health of your brain and body yes so um yeah and you know the brain wears way um part of so my thesis for my black belt thesis was the brain warriors way before we wrote the books the brain wears way that's what i titled my black belt thesis because I think that it goes so deep.

You're in a war for your brain, your body, your mind, and empowerment is just such an important thing in all of those things. And abuse can happen in relationships. It can happen in society. It can happen with chemicals. We're going to talk about all of that. It can happen with chemicals, for sure. We're going to talk about all of that. It can happen at work. It can happen at the country club. I mean, literally, it can happen anywhere where another person or organizations try to have power over you.

Well, and I want to take one moment to do the flip side of that. So we've got all these Me Too movements, and I'm going to be really unpopular when I say this. I'm going to be really unpopular when I say this. Oh, no. Yep. Because since I'm a huge advocate for- You remember Tony Robbins, he got in hot water. I don't care. I'm not worried about being popular, okay? But I'm going to be unpopular when I say this and I know it. I'm not a big fan of the movement and I will tell you why. I'm a very big fan of women coming forward. I'm a very big fan of women being empowered. I'm a very big fan. I'm a little worried when, when we have movements like that, that become so big and they don't encourage women to take a stand on their

own. Um, that encourage women to come up two years, two years, three years later. Now, I think women should, and they should feel safe to do that whenever they have been abused. But I know so many women who join movements like that for things that, how do I say this? It starts to grow and it takes on a mind of its own and it's got a groupthink component. And I think it can be dangerous for men who aren't necessarily, who become victims, if you will. So Sheryl Sandberg, who's the CEO of Facebook, came out and said it was worrying her as well because women will not meet alone with men at work and therefore decrease the trajectory of their career. Okay.

So women want to be treated as equals, but I'm worried that it's going to have the opposite effect. So whenever you've been abused, it's important to talk about it, right? One of the strategies of abusers is you can't talk about it. If you talk about it, I will kill your family. So those are some of the things I've seen as a psychiatrist. So an abuser will figure out ways to shut people up so that their behavior will not become public. And so it's critical to be able to talk about it. But, and this goes back to the first thing I learned as a psychotherapist. I remember it was 1986 and I wrote my second book. It was actually a program I wrote called The Sabotage Factor.

All the ways people mess themselves up from getting what they want in life. And the number one hallmark of self-defeating behavior is you blame other people for how your life is turning out. Because I realized early on, if you're a victim, you are powerless. Right. And you can't change anything. And therefore, the success of your life is not yours. The failure is because of somebody else. So I have a perfect example of what I mean by this. I would love to see women feel empowered enough to take care of it at the time in a proper

way. Does that make sense? Feel empowered to handle something as opposed to disempowering themselves long term, especially in the workplace. So my daughter, Chloe, she's doing acting right now. And so this big Me Too movement comes out. And she comes up to me one day and I was so shocked by the way she presented this.

I couldn't get her to do martial arts for the longest time. I forced her when she was little and then she hated it and wouldn't do it forever. And she comes up, she's like, yeah, I wanna start taking martial arts with you again. And I was so happy. And I'm like, why? Like, why all of a sudden do you now wanna do it

after all these years of like fighting me tooth and nail? She said, you know, this Me Too movement worries me. And I was like, I was so surprised. I'm like, really? I said, tell me about it. She goes, well, because I'm going into this field and I know that it's trouble. And I said, okay, so why? It still doesn't make sense. I'm not making the connection. She said, I don't want to become part of a movement like that where I lose my own voice. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like she actually said what I was thinking, but in such a simple way. She said, I don't want to lose my own voice.

I want to be able to handle it in the moment. And she goes, and what's even more, I want to feel, I want to carry myself in a way that people just know not to mess with me. And I was like, interesting. Well, and she's actually at a very interesting age. So 14, almost 15, there's actually a new study out that you are never more mean than when you're 14. Isn't that interesting? They actually found out younger gang members actually were more violent than older gang members. Younger snakes, baby snakes, are more poisonous. Why? Because they can't control The venom that they release. And young teenagers, their brain is in this chemical soup of development. So they might have these rageful or mean urges that they can't fully control because they don't see the empathy of what their behavior does to other people. So let's do this for Abuse Week.

Let's talk about the different kinds of abuse in the rest of this podcast. And then in the next one, we're going to talk about the symptoms. So how do you know if you're in an abusive relationship. So when we think of Hollywood, for example, that sexual abuse in the workplace is actually very common. And it's where someone uses their power to manipulate you to do something that you don't want to do. They threaten you physically or they threaten your career. They threaten your well-being or your future in any way. And it doesn't just happen from males to females. No.

It certainly can go the other way around. Well, and that's the thing I want to point out because sadly, I've actually known some women like this and it's very sad. Um, but men have to be very careful and men don't often think about this in advance and men need to be very careful. So I really want to point this out. I've actually known women who make advances on men and get them to sleep with them. And then they claim rape or they claim sexual harassment because women don't have the power over factor. They don't have that ability to do the power over thing. So they're much more devious. They're much more, um, they're just like

snakes that way. There are some women who are just not healthy. And so please, if you're a man, who's a nice guy, don've got to really be careful. So there are some devious women out there. Okay. So there's workplace sexual abuse, but there's also workplace emotional abuse where you put people down in front of others. You use your power to make people anxious, to bend them to your will. And so there's sexual abuse, there's emotional abuse, there's also physical abuse. And physical abuse can actually be making someone work longer than is healthy for them. Or lifting things you know they can't lift.

There are some, especially some Silicon Valley startups, that people are working 20 hours a day. Or if they're unsafe environments or where they know that you can't do something physically and they're not creating a way for you to do your job safely. Right. Or if they actually know there's mold on the premises and they're not creating a way for you to do your job safely. Right. Or if they actually, if they know there's mold on the premises and they're not taking care of that. Or if there is toxins.

I saw a firefighter's brain yesterday. It was so toxic. So when the NFL was in denial that it had a problem with traumatic brain injury, which they were for decades. It's really abusive to be in denial that you have a problem that you're not addressing. And I always say, if you don't admit you have a problem, you can't do anything to solve the problem. So I have a question though, because it's really easy for so many of us to sit back and go, why is she so stupid or why is he so stupid? Why are they staying in that abusive relationship?

Right, so let's talk about this cycle of abuse for a second. How it starts, sometimes they start when someone's really young, right? Someone gets involved with someone when they're really young or when they're very desperate and broken. And how does that cycle start? Like right, you know the- Well, let's finish talking about types of abuse.

And then I think that's a great concept. In fact, we were talking about a little girl who we're just absolutely certain if the family dynamics don't change, she's going to grow up and be abused. So let's talk about that. So we've talked about work. There's also in intimate relationships, power over. There's parent-child abuse, which I've seen so much over the years as a child psychiatrist. And that's more emotional or physical.

There's also societal abuse. So when you abuse. Wait, back up for a second. When you talk about the power over, there are several kinds of ways that can happen. The power over can be emotional abuse or it can be physical abuse. So stepfather molesting someone is both, right? Being attacked on the street is physical power over, right? So those are examples of power over. And then emotional abuse might be how a mother tries to control her children. Or forces them to lie.

Even decades later. Or forces them to lie for her cover up. Or forces them, which is abusive. Right. So stay with us. When we come back, we're going to talk about the signs of emotional abuse in relationships, but you can also apply this to work and we'll also work on applying it to our society. Stay with us.

Use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. free signed copy of The Brain Warrior's Way and The Brain Warrior's Way cookbook we give away every month.