Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Overcome Negative Thoughts and Fear

Episode Date: August 29, 2017

One of our most persistent enemies in life is the recurrence of automatic negative thoughts that infiltrate our minds, causing insecurity, anxiety, and doubt. In anticipation of Dr. Daniel Amen’s newest children’s book, Captain Snout and the Superpower Questions, he and Tana discuss the cognitive behavior therapy involved in getting those toxic thoughts out of your head.

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. So I want to talk about something really cute today. Really cute? Really cute. So I saw a new copy of Captain Snout, your new children's book that's out, and it's Darling.

And it kind of reminded me of a story. So this is about how kids can kill the ants. It reminded me of a story about when Chloe was little. So Captain Snout and the Superpower Questions comes out September 12th by Zonder Kids. It will be available everywhere. The illustrations by Brendan Kearney are fabulous. It's darling. And the story's awesome.

And it's about teaching children not to believe every stupid thought they have. It's really powerful. It's based on a form of psychotherapy we do with kids and adults called cognitive behavior therapy but it's done in a way that kids will love and uh and understand it's about the penny pepper children who wanted a puppy and the parents said well you have to go earn the money and then you can get a puppy and their car wash didn't go so well and they got a lot of negative thoughts about it and they started fighting with each other and then the superhero Captain Snout comes in and teaches them how to correct the negative thought patterns the ants the

automatic negative thoughts that was stealing their joy, stealing their happiness, and ultimately stealing their puppy. That's an interesting connection. Getting their thoughts right ultimately helped them get the car wash going, make the money they needed to do do and get the puppy they wanted. It's a skill all of us should have been taught in second grade. It's never too early to start teaching your kids. This is a very powerful tool.

So tell them the story about when Chloe was four. So, you know, and this is part of the reason I wrote this book is that when Chloe was four, she was in the bathroom with you and she announced to you. Okay, you have to know Chloe. We've seen her brain. She's got a very busy brain and she was the most strong-willed child I've ever met in my life. So where would that come from? I have no idea.

You keep saying that and and so i'm actually outside the bedroom in my office but i begin to hear a ruckus going on in the bathroom and chloe announces to her mother that she's going to get her ears pierced that day and i'm like which was typical chloe i'm thinking of myself that's not the way you approach a redheaded mother i'm like that's not all the redheaded mothers out there like what are you talking about well redheaded mothers tend to go with strong wills as well and when she announced she you said, you remember what you said? Not until you're five. Not until you're five.

Right. We'll talk about it when you're five. And she said, I can't wait until I'm five. She freaked out and said, I can't wait until I'm five. And then through this big, huge fit and through a temper tantrum and threw herself on the floor and was crying. And yes, the whole thing. And then she ran out of the bedroom into my office and jumped into my lap and crocodile tears coming down her face and the lower lip moving back and forth. I mean, you could just tell she was so upset and i'm like honey

what's the matter and she said mommy said i can't get my ears pierced till i'm five years old and i said so what's the matter and she said i can't wait until I'm five years old. And I said, is that true? You can't wait. And she said, I can't wait. And my ears aren't cute. Right. My ears aren't cute.

Yes. And then I said, well, can you absolutely know, using the four questions we got from our friend Byron Katie, I said, can you absolutely know you can't wait? And she said, what do you mean? And I said, are you going to die if you don't get your ears pierced? And no lie, she's four years old. I thought this wouldn't happen until she was 12. She literally rolled her eyes at me and said, of course, I'm not going to die.

And I said, but how do you feel when you believe the thought you can't wait until you're five years old. I'm mad and I'm sad and I want my way. And my ears aren't cute. Hysterical. So the first question is, is it true? The second question is, can you absolutely know that it's true? The third question is, how do you that it's true the third question is how do you feel when you believe the thought and that's really where you begin to understand it's not the thing that's happening to you it's your interpretation right it's your belief of the

thing right and and then the fourth question i asked her, I said, well, how would you be, how would you feel if you didn't have that thought? And she completely blew my mind when she looked at me and she said, peaceful. Wow. Four years old. And I have had 80-year-olds use that same word. Yeah. Unbelievable. And I said, all right, so let's take the original thought.

I can't wait until I'm five years old. And let's turn it to the opposite. What's the opposite of that thought and she said i don't understand i said well we just read a book on opposites you know tall and small fat and skinny what's the opposite of i can't wait until i'm five years old. I can wait. And then she got off my lap and went and played with Frasier, our bulldog at the time. And that was it. But that really became the core of why I wrote Captain Snout and the superpower questions, because you can read it to children as young as two and a half. And it works.

Well, and we still use this. Yeah, we still use the same format. So this is really important to teach them now when they're little. But we still use it with Chloe. I just used it this morning. You know, I said one sentence completely not about her. Somehow she heard that she doesn't work hard enough. And I'm like, what? Like, what? What are you talking about? Like, we have our own baggage and we hear things that are not even true that people don't even say.

So you've got to have some kind of a tool, especially children and adolescents that they can use. And so I stopped her. She was walking and she was getting ready to go into a camp and I stopped her and we literally did this process. And then she got out of the car and she was happy and went away. And I'm like, be very careful that you are not twisting what someone says or that you are hearing the truth. So it's not a book you want to just read once with your children no it's a process it's a book that you read over and over because all of us need to be reminded right on a regular basis not to believe every stupid thing right we think this is so important so powerful negative thoughts are really the seeds for anxiety for depression for overeating for violence

and temper problems for marital problems I think one of the best things that we did early on as a couple, we actually went to visit my friend, Byron Katie. You read her book. She's a little mind twisting. And we talked about killing the ants. So if I get a bad thought in my head, like you never listened to me,

rather than say it, in my head like you never listened to me um rather than say it in my mind i'll just go through the questions quickly right and the opposite of that thought and that's the process it'll just completely blow your mind that often it's the opposite of your thought that's true. And the opposite of you never listen to me is you do listen to me. The opposite is not an exaggeration, like you always listen to me, because that's not true. But I do listen to you.

But you do listen to me, like all 12 public television specials. You've heard me, you know, I do the script for you over and over again. Repeatedly, yes. And you do. But you see, if I believed the negative thought, then I would act as if it was true.

Right. And then I would give myself permission to either withdraw from you or be irritated or irritable with you because you never listened to me that's obviously an awful thing you're a bad person i mean you can just see how that negative thought would snowball and then damage our relationships. And, you know, in the 12 years we've been together, we just hardly ever fight. And I think in part that it's not because we're not too strong-willed people because we are too strong-willed people. It's because we we clean our thoughts we clean our thoughts and we give each other some grace and mercy no question um and i want to just talk about how this actually

transformed from a parent's standpoint this process has transformed my relationship with my daughter because when she was little we used to butt heads a lot so that's why i tried to in the beginning if you were watching or listening from the very beginning, you heard me say, change my language, because you got to be very careful with the language you use. But we used to butt heads a lot because we both have these very strong ideas. And so when she was little and we would butt heads a lot. There was a day where I was dropping her off to preschool and I got so frustrated and she was just stuck on something

and throwing temper tantrum. She reminded me of someone in the family and it was someone that I was not getting along with. And I had this very toxic thought that she's just like this person. And she's so stubborn and she's just like this person. And I got this thought stuck in my head and I it was a bad thought because like you said then you start to behave that way and it was someone I

wasn't getting along with well what's gonna happen when I pick her up from school if I have this thought in my head you're gonna look for however it is important that like that and then overreact to the evidence so I went home and I literally in the beginning I used to the evidence. So I went home and I literally, in the beginning, I used to spend a lot of time on the process. I spent a couple hours like making sure I cleaned this thought out. Well, guess what the turnaround is? She's just like me. So the turnaround was, she's just like me. And that was beautiful because then I was able to pray about it. And I'm like, look, and the answer that came back to me is it's not her job to figure this out.

She's the child. It's my job to figure it out. And it transformed our relationship because I was then more open to the idea of finding solutions and finding evidence that yeah, she is like me. And it's very important to understand this is not positive thinking.

It's about accurate thinking. We don't believe in pie in the sky, happy, positive thinking. In fact, there's a new article just out this week. I sent it to my friend Tony Robbins. He really liked it. It's people who really think positively about the future. They actually don't engage in the work it takes to make it happen. And so we want to think accurately, know the truth, the truth will set you free.

That's what Captain Snout and the superpower questions helps children to do. So we're going to do another podcast on this, talk a little bit more about the theory behind Captain Snout and the superpower questions. If you're listening to this before September 12th, you can preorder it on Amazon or barnesandnoble.com after September 12th. You can order it anywhere where great books are sold. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warrior's Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warrior's Way and the Brain Warrior's Way cookbook we give away every month.