Change Your Brain Every Day - How Tana Healed Her Relationship with Her Father

Episode Date: September 30, 2020

It’s a simple but often overlooked fact that when people behave badly, it’s often due to physical problems with their brain. It’s easy to label someone as bad, but it’s much harder to ask “why?” In this episode, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen offer more content from the last week of their End of Mental Illness Live Class. This episode focuses on the physical (not moral) reasons people behave the way they do. 

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, this is Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. We're so excited you're with us for this week's series. What we're doing is we're playing the live class from the end

of mental illness. We wanted you to join us on this journey because we had such a good time in our class. And the people who joined us had just saw such incredible transformation that we wanted to share the challenge with our tribe. So we wanted to share this with you. And we hope that you will join us in the challenge. You know, actually, one of the first cases I had after I started imaging. He called himself the anger broker of the Sacramento Valley. And I saw him after he got out of a psychiatric hospital for a suicide attempt. And he was mean.

And he had the suicide attempt because his wife left him. And I completely got why she left him him because he was mean to my staff. He was mean to me. And, you know, and I don't fire patients. I just don't. I know a lot of doctors do if you're sort of a jerk to them. But after the third time, I went went i need you to go get scanned and in there the the cameras were not in the clinics at the time and so i sent him to the next city to get a spec

scan um and i said you need to go do this because if you don't do it, I won't see you because I don't tolerate people being mean to my staff and not to me. And so he did because he wanted me to see him. And he had a brain that was on fire. So he was worried, rigid and flexible. Things don't go his way. He gets upset and he had a head injury. You could see it on the left side. I'm like, do you ever have a head injury? And of course, he said no. And I went, well, are you sure? Did you ever fall off out of a tree or off a fence or dive into a shallow pool?

And he was riding down the Colorado Rockies. And his front tire hit a rock. He flipped over onto his head. He was knocked unconscious but he said no initially and i'm like really oh well you had that even then and and when i put him on medicine to balance his left temporal lobe and to calm down his frontal lobes no No lie. He's like the sweetest person. Within four months, my office staff loves him. And they're just thrilled every time they see him.

And was he a jerk? I mean, he acted like a jerk. But why? If you don't ask why, how would you ever know? So easy to call people bad, harder to say why. This is so enlightening and sad at the same time. How many times do people get misdiagnosed simply because insurance companies are not on board with the spec scan all the time

all the time all the time you can try and kill yourself it's easy to it's it's like one thing to think about that but when you think about that ripple effect of how many families are affected how many marriages how many kids how many jobs finances like the ripple effect is crazy it's crazy you have any experience i almost canceled my first date with you because you were a psychiatrist why because i didn't have good experiences with psychiatrists no with my grandmother being severely mistreated by a psychiatrist my dad being diagnosed with alzheimer's when he didn't have alzheimer's with me myself just terrible experiences when I was depressed, being put on the wrong medication. It's awful. It's awful. So I'm going to tell you a secret of how I got

her to fall in love with me, because when we first met, I liked her way more than she liked me. I just wasn't ready to commit. It's true. Anyways, here's the secret. Let me tell them the secret. And shortly after we met, your dad got diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Mm-hmm. Misdiagnosed.

Misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. That's a big misdiagnosis. Well, it's so common. But it's terrible. That's a big misdiagnosis. Well, it's so common. But it's terrible. It's so common. We just saw someone today who went to like the Mayo Clinic and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And when we scanned him, he didn't have Alzheimer's disease. Yeah, that's like traumatic for the family to hear.

But if you don't look, how do you know? If you don't look, how do you know? If you don't look, how do you know? So anyways, back to the story on how I got you to fall in love with me. I have because I've been a psychiatrist a long time. I'm like, if you want someone to fall in love with you. You're teaching them manipulation. Do something. He's teaching them mind manipulation right now.

This is not what this class is about. It's teaching them mind manipulation right now. This is not what this class is about. It's not about mind manipulation. It's not manipulation. It's how to get your way. Is there a difference? We're all manipulated. It's just the more sophisticated you are, the harder it is to tell. This is a bonus for those of you that are watching.

Can I finish this story? Yes. Please tell them how you manipulated me into falling in love with you. Encouraged. Do something nice for someone she loves.

It's true. Tell them if you're going to manipulate people, do something good with it. It's not manipulative. Do something good with it. It's true. So at least if you're going to manipulate people, do something good with it. It's not manipulative. Do something good with it. It's how to get a connection. And so when your dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease,

I'm like, well, we should scan him. Yeah. And when I scanned him, the pattern for Alzheimer's disease has been described in the psychiatric literature for 30 years, more than 30 years, maybe. And he didn't have it. In fact, his emotional brain was working too hard. And I'm like, oh, he has something called pseudo dementia, which is depression that is masquerading as Alzheimer's disease.

And he was actually on a toxic cocktail of medication. And when I changed his medication, put him on supplements, changed his lifestyle. He lost 20 pounds. He got healthier. And six months later, he's teaching like an all-day course at Mariner's Church. Yeah, seven-hour seminar at the church, which he couldn't even. He was a recluse and not showering before that. But the story is a little more complicated than that. Because I wasn't speaking to my dad.

I hadn't really had a relationship with my dad ever in my entire life. But definitely not since I was 18 when I told him, bye bye, don't talk to me again. And so now you're telling me we need to bring him to live with me now so you can scan. No, you wanted him to come stay with me. And then you're like, well, he can't get well unless he's living with you. And I'm like, I'm sorry. Do you want me to what? I'm like, this is a guy I don't know. Don't trust. And but the interesting thing is, is that there was no one else to take care of him. So I resisted, kicked, fought, screamed in my head, finally gave in because what are you going to do? Ultimately, what are you going to do? And as he got well, I was able to heal that relationship. And that that's I mean, to me, that was more the ultimate point of all of it was that a relationship that had been so awful,

so toxic my whole life. And now finally, at the end of his life, he ends up dying in my arms. When he died, he didn't die of anything brain related. It was leukemia. He we had completely healed our relationship, which would never have happened if he hadn't fixed his brain. And so that was a pretty interesting turn. Sort of a cool way to get a pretty girl to fall in love with you. Just saying. Doesn't sound that manipulative to me. Do we have questions?

When your brain is right, you become better at everything you do. So this is my grandfather, who I loved. I was named after him. He was my best friend growing up. And he had a heart attack that took him away way too early. And so why do you want to be healthy? You know, when I think of this picture, I think of my grandbabies. We took two of them to the Laker game on Sunday. That was really fun. It was really fun.

But I want to be around for as long as I can. What's your motivation to be healthy. So our mission is to end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. That's our goal. And you have to start today. I mean, when I say you're going to start Monday, it never works. You're going to start January 1st, because now we're a long ways from January 1st to start today. And, you know, we say this is just the beginning. Success starts with a healthy mind. Failure is often the result of a brain gone wrong. The good news, it's never too late to change your brain to heal your mind.

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