Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Shift Your Way of Thinking to Change Your Mood

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

This week’s series of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast features more content from the popular End of Mental Illness Live Class, in which Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen help you to begin your brain health journey. In this episode, the Amens discuss how you can change the way you feel by becoming conscious of where you bring your attention, and what you can do if you feel stuck in a rut of negative thinking. To take The End of Mental Illness 6 Week Class and Challenge, visit https://endofmentalillness.com/brainhealthchallenge/

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. Week five. Wow. Hey, everybody. I am here with my gorgeous wife, Tana, who just told me.

I told you so. My favorite words. Detroit and Green Bay, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Atlanta, Chicago, California, Idaho. My goodness. Welcome. We are so happy you're with us. We're going to talk tonight about killing the ants and mental fitness. We are hoping everyone has pre-ordered the end of mental illness it's coming out now in less than no two weeks from today super exciting two weeks from today and part of ending mental illness is learning how to not believe every stupid thing you think. So true. So we've talked about how we need to get rid of the term mental illness and call these things what they really are, brain health issues that steal your mind we talked about bright minds how to prevent or treat the

11 major risk factors that steal your mind and last time you were gone and we all missed you i know i missed you guys but i was working with chloe that was really fun i have to admit it's always fun for me when i get to be on set with chloe so so yeah we have a daughter who's a young star and um but once you optimize the physical functioning of the brain once you optimize the hardware of your soul you then have to program it properly. And so we talk about ants or automatic negative thoughts that steal your happiness. Yeah, it's really. So this last week, I posted something on Instagram, and you never know what's going to hit with people like it's so weird. But it was just a saying, you know, don't let your mind bully your body, which is essentially killing the ants.

And it sort of resonated with people. And it's just so true. We so often allow our minds to bully our bodies, which is a really bad thing to happen. But what really struck me because these last few weeks I've been fairly tired, like running around like crazy. And we we have sort of an adjustment in our house. And so it struck me, one of the things that causes people to allow their minds to bully their bodies, or the rest of their lives is when something happens that changes your routine, your sleep pattern is interrupted, or you don't eat on

time, or it's not always just your thinking all by itself. Sometimes there are certain things that cause your thinking to shift, right? Maybe you're tired tired or your blood sugar is low or and so you want to really be paying attention to some of those things and as we go maybe we can talk about that well the ants are more likely to attack right when you're at that time of your menstrual cycle right because hormones and when but by the way if you're a man never say that you don But by the way, if you're a man, never say that. You don't get to say it if you're a man at all. Oh, no. If you have five sisters, you totally can say it. No.

Or if you're a psychiatrist. Not out loud. Not out loud. Not to your wife. No. At least. But if you're a psychiatrist, you totally can say it. Because, you know, you want to know the truth.

That makes people more vulnerable. It's true. It's totally true. Yeah. When you're not at that part of your cycle, it's like, oh, I know that's true. But when you're at that part of your cycle, you don't want to hear that from your husband. Or if your progesterone is low. Oh, yeah.

No, I'll end up on the six o'clock news. I know. So, yeah. Your progesterone, your ants go high when your progesterone level is low. So if you haven't slept, if you haven't eaten. For me, sleep and not exercising, I just am not the same person. Somebody from Canada, Arizona, Mexico. We have all of North America.

Love that. Does lack of sleep affect most people that same way, as extreme as it affects me? Many people. Where I, as extreme as it affects me? Many people. Where I just can't shake it. More people die from sleep-related accidents, from being tired from sleep-related accidents, than from alcohol. Yeah, it's weird. So the words you use matter for how you feel, how you act, and how you get along with other people. So today we're really going to talk about the words you use and getting the language in your head correct.

So these are some simple principles to train your mind. Whenever you have a negative thought, the brain releases chemicals that immediately make you feel bad. Your hands get colder. They start sweating. Your breathing becomes erratic. Your muscles get tense. And you just don't think right.

We actually did a study on negative thoughts versus positive thoughts. And negative thoughts cause your cerebellum, temporal lo lobe and frontal lobes to all drop in activity yep so it's interesting um today because i've been so tired lately and and sort of stressed so i went outside and i i know all this stuff but when you're tired and you're busy you don't do it you forget and so i'm like i know i need to step back and do the things i know even though i don't feel like doing them because i'm in a bad mood and I'm tired. Right. But I went outside because it was such a beautiful day.

Sat in the sun and did my gratitude. Just five minutes. Five minutes of focusing on things you're grateful for. Just let the sun sort of hit me and focused on gratitude. And then I went in the oxygen chamber and I came out like a whole different person. Like an hour later, I was just a different person. So it just really works. The opposite is also true

whenever you have positive thoughts happy thoughts hopeful thoughts your brain releases a completely different set of chemicals that make you feel good immediately your hands get warmer, drier, your breathing slows down, your muscles become relaxed, and you feel happier. Where you bring your attention determines how you feel. It's worth repeating. Where you bring your attention determines how you feel thoughts are automatic they just happen they're based on complex chemical reactions memories sense sounds so they just happen and they lie this is the one thing i didn't know before i went to psychiatry school is that thoughts lie they lie a lot right we grow up thinking that well i have a thought it must be

the truth no one teaches you right that the thoughts that run around in your head are nonsense just be ridiculous ridiculous sabotaging you i look back to my adolescence and i'm like if i could just like erase all of that but i didn't have the tools do you have an example oh my gosh i'm fat i'm ugly things that all adolescents think but you know it's like you, you let it ruin your whole day. Like, I'm not as good as other people. I, why is it so much harder for me? Like all of the things that most adolescents think, you know. And you just let it like ruin you.

I understand. More than you know. But you don't have to believe every thought you have. You can learn to kill the ants. And so I wrote this cool little book that I'm very proud of called Captain Snout and the Superpower Questions. Don't let the ants steal your Happiness. And we talk about different kinds of ants. We'll go through each one of them. But here's the exercise. Whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking

and then ask yourself, is it true? So, for example, these are all or nothing ants where things are either all good or all bad. I'm the best mother that ever lived or I'm the worst mother. I hear that one all the time all the time and um the the fact is the world is gray in fact in college if there was a question on a test things are all this way it's almost always wrong because so few things are either black or white and so my patients are getting better and this month everybody's been

getting better i've been pretty happy about that and i'm like i'm the best doctor that ever lived but then when i come up with someone who's not getting better, because not everybody gets better, I'm like, oh, I'm the worst doctor that ever lived. Now, thankfully, I practice this so I don't beat myself up. All or nothing. Eliminate those. Just the bad ants. Where you focus on what's wrong rather than what's right in a situation.

So if you spoke in front of 2,000 people, so you did that, and did a masterful job, I was so proud of you. Thank you. But if one person fell asleep in the front row, you just go, oh, well, I was so bored. bored yeah or in my case the woman that kept giving me dirty looks and she was throwing me off and i'm like why is that woman giving me dirty looks it was everyone else is giving me positive feedback this woman was just staring at me and i'm like oh this is like really creepy i'd never had that happen before i'm getting so

upset so i stopped looking at her and i just looked at other people. But every once in a while, I'd catch her. And then afterwards, I'm like, why was that woman so bothered? Like, what was her problem? She comes up to me with that same look on her face so intense and so like aggravated. And she goes, I need to hire you for my next event. Okay, it was just her expression of intensity when she had something on her mind. She was unaware that that's how she looked, but it was making me feel like she didn't like me. And that wasn't what she was thinking at all. It's just she was just super focused. It's crazy.

Can you imagine if she was your mother? Oh, God. She had that look. It was so scary. It scared me. I was like, what is happening right now? And what she was so scary i was it scared me i was like what is happening right now and what she was doing was just really focusing so you don't know what they're thinking negative look from someone else may mean nothing more than they're constipated you don't know or they just

are focused. I'm glad you didn't do that. Do you remember I came off stage and I'm like, what did I do wrong? Did I offend that woman? Guilt beating ants. Where you think in words like should, must, ought,

or have to. This is my app. I also call them should and shaming dragons, where we'll talk about that coming up over the next year. But I'm good at this one. You're really good at this one. I'm good at shooting all over. And when you grow up Catholic, like I did, or you know what I've realized, it could be Jewish,

it could be Russian, it could be Asian, that the should and shaming ants are just so prevalent in our society. Now, let me be clear. Of course, there are things you should and should not do. But trying to motivate behavior with guilt just doesn't work. If I think I should go see my dad to, then I'll go do it. It changes how you feel. So if, you know, when I think about my relationship with my dad, well, I want to go see him. You know, I love him. He's one of my best friends. Or it's my goal to have a relationship with my dad.

And so then I do it because I don't feel bad about it. And I don't want you doing things because you should do them. I want you doing things because they fit your goals, because it makes your life better. Like I should kiss you at night. You should do that. I should. Yeah. It fits my goals.

But you still should. But as soon as you go should, then you don't want to. Really? For me, that's it. Why? Labeling ants. This is where you label someone else. This is when you get on the freeway in los angeles term yeah it's full of ants and here the problem with labeling and psychiatrists do it all the time we'll oh you're bipolar you're borderline you're antisocial. You're narcissistic. The politicians do it.

Oh, you're a Republican. I can't turn on the TV. You're a liberal. You're left wing. You're right wing. You have no wings. Whatever. The problem, when you label someone with a negative term or yourself,

you can't deal with them anymore. You lump them with all of the jerks or brats or idiots or clowns that you've ever known. And you end up not dealing with them. You deal with all of them, which makes it impossible. And so labeling doesn't help. Labeling is- Yeah, it's almost like you dehumanize people when you do that. It's when I'm on the freeway and I get frustrated and you say something to yourself, hopefully,

but you get so frustrated, but you don't see that person as a person. It's just this anonymous sort of faceless person. It's easier to be mad. Then all of a sudden you pull up and you see this little old lady driving. And it's like, aww. They become human again, right? So it's much easier to dehumanize people, I think. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast,

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