Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Feel Comfortable with Uncertainty, with Dr. Caroline Leaf

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

Even without a global pandemic, the world is filled with uncertainties. The inability to properly deal with these uncertainties is one of the primary causes of trauma. In this episode, the Amens are once again joined by Dr. Caroline Leaf for a discussion of how thoughts, memories, and emotions interconnect to prepare you for whatever life throws your way.

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. Welcome back. We're here with Dr. Carolyn Leith, author of Switch on Your Brain, and a number of other books. We're going to talk about trauma,

and this is such an important issue now when you're in a global pandemic. But, you know, your early life in South Africa, there were having societal trauma in many ways. And you helped many people who not only were starving, but also had gone through significant trauma. Talk to us about how your work helps that. Be specific with us so the people who are listening often have had significant trauma in their past. It's like emotional trauma, because I've heard you talk about the physical trauma? Yeah, like emotional trauma. Because, I mean, I've heard you talk about the physical trauma, but also the emotional trauma.

So, it's a great question. And I think that's very relevant. Pretty much my whole career has been involved with working with people in very traumatic situations and helping them to manage. And then also I've worked with many other different groups of people. And everyone has trauma. So, that's the big thing. We've got to level the playing field.

We all have trauma, but different. And I always look at sort of a scale and think, okay, you've got your bell curve and there's the average ups and downs of life in the middle. And then we've got our outlying situations that happen on the extreme. And it's pretty much all of us. So one of the first things that I've always tried to address when it comes to trauma is to look within the societal group that you're in. So if I was working in Africa, Rwanda, wherever, it was always you've got to look at the case study. You've got to look at the individual in their environment. And that's one thing that my clinical trials and things have shown me is that we can never really group people. So there's, and this may sound contradictory,

but there's the first point is that we are currently at the moment facing, as we all know, the global humanities facing the same issue. So as humanity, we're all globally facing the same enemy. So what's very interesting here is if I brought that down back to my work in South Africa or Rwanda, they were a community also facing an enemy. So what's very interesting here is if I brought that down back to my work in South Africa or Rwanda, they were a community also facing an enemy. So it's just now translated into a global situation. So it's kind of leveled the playing field because we all, there's no selection process in COVID. It gets you with whoever you are, wherever you are, you're vulnerable. And it's that vulnerability that makes people feel so uncertain. So I believe that the very first place to address anything in terms of

practicality, in terms of trauma is to be, is to be comfortable with the uncertainty. And I know that people are talking about this and how do you do that? It's really, I mean, you know, from your work in the brain, and that's where we see this. I use QEGs for the neuroscientific work that we're doing. And we've been really looking at just how the non-conscious mind, which is really what you feel in your truth value,

what you really are experiencing is very quickly reflected in a QEG, for example. And I know in the spec, you're going to see that too. You're going to see what's really going on. But our conscious mind, we can often convince ourselves that, you know, we could try and lie to ourself and we can push down the truth and then that creates tremendous conflict. So I think what a lot of us are doing at the moment is trying to,

are in that conflict stage where we are fearful of the uncertainty and what's coming up and how it's going to change life. But at the same time, we're not really facing it. We are avoiding dealing with it. We're kind of pushing those feelings down and getting immersed in a toxic bath of just all the problems as opposed to saying, okay, it's like there are these problems. I know that they are out there, but I've got to be comfortable with the uncertainty because no one has really offered a decent solution yet. So therefore, the only way we're going to really be comfortable with this is to be comfortable with the uncertainty and then come together collectivistically and resolve this.

But we need clear minds. So if we're in a conflict, our brains go into what I call a red brain. So basically, you get too much high beta. You'll see that on the spec stand too, that you're going to just get this kind of thinking where you can't be calm. And while people are not calm, you can't make good decisions. And if people are all in that state, we're all going to be running around with crazy people, chaotic, in trying to resolve this issue. So I think as individuals…

It's like week one of the pandemic at the grocery store. And I live in an area where you would not think that would happen. And I think it happened worse than other areas where it was so crazy. People were literally getting in fistfights and singing opera. And it was just the craziest thing I've ever seen, pushing people in the grocery store. And then grabbing the toilet paper. I mean, going insane over toilet paper. So people make crazy decisions and that almost hurt mentality.

So I believe as individuals, my appeal is that we have a collectivistic mindset instead of an individualistic mindset, that we are individuals, but we have got to go back to the fact that we're facing this together and we have to stay calm and it is uncertain. So it's a mindset shift

because when our mindset shifts to accepting uncertainty and accepting that we can do this together, we act adults and I mean even the kids so politicians I don't believe are acting most of them like adults the scientists are acting like the big people in the house and they a lot of them are fighting but the majority of scientists are collectivistically sharing and pooling knowledge and trying to keep calm. And we all know, we will face those situations where you crisis happens in your life. And I'm not talking about COVID now I'm talking about just the day to day stuff. And we know that we say to ourselves, okay, calm down.

You've got to calm down. You can't carry on. So we tell ourselves to do that, to know that we can't handle the next moment unless we accept the uncertainty of the now. And that's what I really believe is a very first step that we need to do. It is uncertain. Let's accept it. Let's not have the conflict. Accept the fear. Get it out. Tell people how you're feeling. Express how you're feeling. Don't lie about this. It is scary because if you don't get it out, as we know, it's going to be embodied

inside of you. And then that emotional, you mentioned, Tana, the emotional side. In the work that I've done, what I did was try and really understand thoughts. What is a thought? What is a memory? Because people use those words very vaguely and you guys don't, but I know you understand them. But in general, people use the word thoughts, trauma, emotional healing, all in one sentence, but they're different things that we're talking about. A thought is a concept like COVID is scary. It's changed my life. We've stepped out of normal. What does the new normal look like?

Concept, I'm scared I could die, my financial, et cetera. So the big thing is COVID is scary. That's the thought. Think of a tree or like if I use my hand as an example, the thought is the whole hand. It looks like a neuron in the brain, which is your little dendrites in your cell body and everyone knows what a neuron looks like, especially if they follow you. So if you think of a thought looks like a tree, then the thought is the whole concept.

The memories are the details of I haven't got a job. I might get sick. I have already lost a loved one, et cetera, et cetera. So those are the memories. The information are the memories in the big thought. And every memory has an emotion attached to it. So every bit of memory information has emotions. So as I think of, I don't have financial security, there's that reaction in your HPA

axis, you feel fear and anxiety and stress. And all those scary feelings come up because the information as it comes up into your conscious mind comes along with the emotion. So here we've got this COVID thought. It jumps up. I start thinking about the details of the COVID thought. There's the detail and there's the emotion attached to that. And then that links to that and that links to that.

And it's not just five fingers. It's thousands of different things that are interrelated. And we can go down a rabbit hole. What we have to do is then that links to that and that links to that and it's not just five fingers it's thousands of different things that are interrelated and we can go down a rabbit hole what we have to do is capture that that's a forest of anxiety yeah exactly and it's so interesting you said something so interesting you said the scientists are the acting like the big people in the house and i just wonder because we were talking about that. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, right? Yeah. And I'm very clear that I have a lot of weaknesses. But one thing that both of us are pretty good at, and I've noticed with some of the people I know,

is that we're good in crisis. And one of the reasons, and I was a trauma nurse, but I wonder if that's because that scientific training that you have, one thing I keep telling the kids, relax, calm down, step back and gather information. And I wonder if that's that scientific training that you have. It's like, wait, we need information. Like before you freak out, we don't even know what's happening yet. So it's like, we can't freak out till we know what's happening. So I can't make a decision yet, but we've got to gather information, make sure we're safe, and then let's figure out what's happening. But I wonder if that's that scientific training

and if we could somehow access that because everybody has that ability. We've all got that ability. I love what you just said. How do we access that? That's brilliant. So, that's what you said is absolutely spot on. We've got to get the data, and that goes to the people, all the myths that are out there, all the conspiracy theories. Objective rather than subjective. Exactly. Rather gather the data and all sides of the data, not just reading it from one perspective

but looking at multiple sources because people, I get emails all the time, I get family members sending me, oh, have you seen this conspiracy theory? And then some crazy person on YouTube. I stop watching the news. Same thing. Exactly. I'd rather go straight to, I know, a reputable medical science. Let me just interject a little bit.

Edward Snowden made it really hard for me as a psychiatrist because I'd have paranoid patients come in and go, the NSA is listening to my phone calls. And. And I would go, oh, no. And then it turned out, oh, yes, they are listening to your phone calls. Yeah, I know why they're listening. It's okay to be informed. It's okay to be informed. It's this balance. Yeah, it's a balance. I was an Army psychiatrist for 10 years.

And so the conspiracy theories around the pandemic have really elevated anxiety. Oh, my goodness. You can't always trust reputable sources. Because initially, you know, China came out and said it was the wet market. And everybody went, oh, it's the wet market, except they don't sell bats in the wet market. It's a bat virus. And then the Secretary of State goes, no, it came from the lab. If we can teach kids this, if kids understand it, then adults certainly can.

And this is what I mean by gather information. Yeah, I agree with you. We don't want to be in the dark. We don't want to be sheep and just following people around. Gather the information. I told the kids, I'm like, just gather information. We're rational enough that if we have all of the information and you research it and you actually fact check it, we can figure out what's what. That's learning. Exactly. That's learning.

Rather than just accepting what people are telling you and panicking. Exactly. I totally agree with you. So the first thing is to accept the uncertainty. And the second thing is to build your brain. And that's what I would literally would do with my patients. I would literally say, okay, let's get all these. Let's accept we don't know what we're doing. We don't know what's going on. I don't know why you had, why would someone rape you?

Who knows why someone kills someone? Who knows why that trauma? We cannot, we've got to be comfortable with the uncertainty. Now let's get the facts. And also sometimes we use facts as a, not a distraction, but as a way of building resilience because what my research is showing, and I really think this confirms what you guys are doing, is as a scientist, both of you being scientists, when you gather data, when you distract, not distract, that's the wrong word, when you go and study a whole lot of different

sources and you do it objectively where you keep's the wrong word. When you go and study a whole lot of different sources and you do it objectively where you keep your emotions under check so you're not getting mad, I hate this one. This one says this, this one says this, like you would do if you're preparing for an exam and you're getting different points of view that you have to present. If you're preparing for a medical exam, doing grand rounds, you have to get different perspectives in order to get the big picture.

When you do that, it calms people down. I always found my patients that came in that were like collapsing with anxiety, couldn't focus. I'd say, okay, what are you interested in? Let's learn some new information. Let's study something. Let's gather some facts. And immediately that changed the brain, changes how if you look at the QEEG, it changes, calms the brain down, gets it into more of a flow state, and then you can actually think straight.

And we have to go to the next episode in a second, but I want to just confirm what you said. That even works. Yes, that's true in a scientific setting, but I'm actually writing a memoir right now, and it's about overcoming trauma. And that is true even in that situation because I've had to do a bunch of research. Exactly. And I've had to do all of family members for situations that were really hard. It's hard to write. And in doing so,

I got a very balanced perspective and went, huh? Like, okay, it was hard, but you all of a sudden realize there were reasons, like there were reasons that people did what they did. I might not agree with them, but everyone was doing the best they could. And so with the resources they had, and all of a sudden it sort of balances everything out and makes it easier to move on. So gathering that information and being objective is really important. So when we come back, we're going to continue to talk about trauma, the pandemic, but specifically what you can do to manage the anxiety and trauma in your life. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode.

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