Change Your Brain Every Day - How Redefining Responsibility Can Change Your Life With Jay Shetty

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

Dr Daniel and Tana Amen chat with Author and New York Times bestselling author Jay Shetty. They discuss personal struggles and how redefining "responsibility" can change the way you see helping others.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your 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 nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Hi, Jay. Hi, Jay. I'm so happy to see you both. Thank you so much for tuning in. How are you? Oh, thanks for having us. We are awesome and happy to hang out with you. Yeah, I love having you here. And I'm so glad that my audience is going to get to tap into both of your geniuses and your mind today and all your great insight and advice. So this is day three of our online mental health festival. And I want to hear from both of you about your incredible insights. And I want to start with you, Dr. Raymond, based on something we talked about in my podcast.

And I remember you redefining our challenge as not being mental health, but brain health. And when you shared this with me, this was truly unique, something I'd never heard before. And I'd love for you to share that with everyone who's listening and watching today. Well, thank you so much, Avenue Block, The End of Mental Illness, where I argue, you know,

I've been a psychiatrist almost 40 years, and I've always hated the term mental illness because it shames people. When you call someone mental, that's not a good thing. It's stigmatizing. And then about 30 years ago, I started looking at the brain and I realized most psychiatric problems are not mental health issues at all. Rather, they are brain health issues. And this one idea just changes everything. Get your brain right and your mind will follow. And very few psychiatrists, psychologists ever talk about brain health. You need to eat right. You need to exercise. You need to take your supplements

because if the hardware of your soul, your brain is not right. It won't run the software program. That's incredible. Truly, every time I hear you say that, I'm like, oh gosh, I need to start focusing on my brain more. So it's a great reminder for all of us. And I would encourage everyone to go and get a copy of The End of Mental Illness to get

that beginning journey of where to start and any of Dr. Amen's work. But Tana, you obviously have just recently or about to release this incredible book called The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child. And I haven't had an opportunity to sit with the book yet. And I'm excited. I know we're going to figure out how to get you on the podcast and have a conversation in deeper. I'd love to do that. But tell me about this. I love the title and I love the cover. I have it here. And every time I look at the cover, it's captivating. It's captivating because it kind of just brings me into that feeling of being a scared child. And I think all of us are carrying around a scared child inside of us. So tell me what that title means to you and how that connects

with mental health. So I grew up in a very chaotic environment, as did so many of us. Very chaotic, very lots of trauma, lots of addiction, lots of mental illness or what we call mental challenges. And as a result, out of my own survival, I learned to build walls, isolate, pull away from people, disconnect. And, you know, if you don't want to reconnect with people and you don't want to have, or if you want to stay disconnected, here's just a little tip FYI, don't marry a psychiatrist who wants to fix everybody. So Daniel's always nudged me to reconnect and be curious instead of furious. It's like, why did they behave that way? Maybe it's not all just about willpower.

Did they have a head injury? We look at mental health through four circles. Biological, how is your body functioning? Psychological, your mind. Spiritual, what is your meaning and purpose? And social, who are you connected to? Because people are contagious. And when I started thinking about my family through that lens, it was uncomfortable because I really wanted to stay disconnected and distant from all that chaos. But then all of a sudden I felt this level of responsibility. And I love the word

responsibility because it means the ability to respond. It doesn't mean taking blame. It means the ability to respond. So writing my story was one of the most powerful things I could do. It really was uncomfortable, but gave me the opportunity to see some of the chaos and some of the trauma through an adult lens and just heal and see that many of these people were doing the best they could with what they had because it was pretty crazy. It's not only beautifully written, it's fun. It's funny. It's disturbing, you know, to just talk about. One of my favorite stories in the book is how she disconnected from her dad, who was a pastor who embezzled from the church and cheated on.

I mean, it was just not good. And she had pushed him away. But when we first dated, he had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And I'm like, well, I have to see him. And I'm like, no, this is like Jerry Springer material. We're not bringing him into my life. And I found through imaging that he didn't have Alzheimer's disease. He had something called pseudo dementia, which is severe depression that masquerades as Alzheimer's disease. And over this next six months, he went from being a recluse to someone who was giving all day seminars at the church. And even though he died five years later, it had nothing to do with his mind. He died with a very clear mind in Tana's arms.

With me praying for him. And I realized in that moment, one of the big lessons in my book, one of the big overarching themes is sometimes you're called to do something that you don't wanna do. And you don't realize that the help might be for someone else, but the healing is for you.

So don't rob yourself of those opportunities to heal by helping someone else, even when it's uncomfortable. That's a really interesting perspective. And I love that redefinition of the word responsibility. I've never, ever heard that. I've never thought of it like that. The ability to respond, not taking blame, not feeling guilty, not, not saying now I have to sort this out, but just actually saying, well, let me find the ability to respond. I think that's incredible. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast,

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