Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Thrive as a Sensitive Person with Dr. Judith Orloff

Episode Date: October 22, 2019

When a person is described as “sensitive”, the label usually carries with it negative connotations. But as Dr. Judith Orloff suggests, there are plenty of advantages to a sensitive nature, and this disposition should be encouraged and nurtured rather than suppressed. In the second episode of a series with the ‘Thriving as an Empath’ author, she and the Amens discuss tips for people to use their sensitive nature as an advantage.

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 our friend, Dr. Judith Orloff. She has a new book,

Thriving as an Empath, 365 Days of Self-Care for Sensitive People. This podcast is for you. If you're sensitive or if you love someone who is, this could be one of the reasons you guys struggle. So interesting. And there is hope. So Judith, talk about how to thrive as a sensitive empath. How to thrive as a sensitive empath is to realize you're a beautiful, precious being who has beautiful, wonderful skills, but you also have to learn self-care in order to deal with the challenges of an empath.

The secret is not to get less sensitive, to get a thicker skin. As my physician mother told me over and over, dear, just get a thicker skin. You've got to toughen up. That's not the answer. The answer is to expand your sensitivities, but learn how to center yourself, learn how to set good boundaries, learn how to practice fierce self-care, learn how to have enough alone time, learn the signs of when you go on sensory overload

so you can nip it in the bud before it explodes and then you say something you regret because you're so overwhelmed. When empaths get overwhelmed, they just want to go and be alone and you don't want to get to that point. You see it builds and you can learn self-care to notice the signs in your own

body when you start to get overwhelmed so it doesn't just snowball and then all of a sudden and this is what I do when I get overwhelmed all of a sudden I feel like I can't be in a relationship that's where I go everybody go away everybody just. Yes. He's the only person that's like never done, like he gives me space. I know, but that's how it is. So that's why I bring it up so everyone knows that's just part of it. So, you know, my partner has been trained, if I ever get to that place, to say, oh, I think you need your alone time now. You know, you need a good cry or you need something. You know, just take care of yourself, care of yourself instead of taking it personally.

That's so great. But I like getting to that place because I do say things that I don't mean. Out of desperation of needing to be alone. It feels like you need to be alone forever, but you don't. This is fascinating to me. Describe for us how you discovered this in yourself. What was that process like? The process was going through a lot of shame about my abilities as a child

because I was alone and I felt lonely. And I had always spent a lot of time in solitude and connecting to nature and looking up at the moon and loving animals and loving the ocean very much. The ocean was always been my companion, but I never had the support of people. And then when as a teenager, I got very heavily involved with drugs to try and squash my sensitivities, my abilities. And, you know, it was a negative path. I'm not suggesting for anyone. And there's actually a chapter in one of my books on empaths and addiction because it's very common for empaths to become addicted because you want to just shut it all off, you know. But that wasn't a healthy choice.

However, it was the choice I, you know, I made. But then I, you know, with a lot of help, I had a psychiatrist who was like my angel in my life, I had people help me understand what an empath was, and how I had to incorporate my intuitions rather than squash them. I had a lot of good guidance. And thank God, I've been, you know, open to receiving it, you know, throughout my life. And so through that education, and then, you know, I had a dream that told me to go to medical school, you know, to get my MD to have the credentials to talk about this in medicine. I mean, it's very clear back in my early 20s, you know, what, you know, the message was what I was supposed to do not that i wanted

to do it you know but what i learned about intuition is that you if you just take one step in the direction of an intuition of guidance and even if you don't believe it you'll see if the universe is backing you you'll see if there's energy there if it's working if you're enjoying it and i did and i went through 14 years of medical training. And that was my non-empath stage, because they don't talk about empaths, they don't talk about intuition. You know, I had it begin to open before medical school, closed during medical school. And then it reopened again, you know, when I graduated. So it's been a process for me. And now, you know, my healing path has been

integrating being an empath with my psychiatric practice well I can't I can't wait to read this book I've got light bulbs going off like crazy I'm like over here this this reminds me of someone that we know that we've been helping someone in my family who is so sensitive that she she feels other people's pain all the time that she started using drugs to shut it down. She can't stand the sensitivity. She's just constantly so sensitive. Oh, and she has Erlen syndrome. Yeah, and she just made my lights go off. Say that again, Daniel? Do you know the Erlen syndrome? I-R-L-E-N.

No. Yeah. Look it up online and everybody- Sensitive to lights. We talk about it in our podcast a lot. Helen Erland's a psychologist in Long Beach and discovered that a whole bunch of people who have diagnosis, ADD, anxiety, and depression, what they have is light sensitivity, that their brains are sensitive to certain colors of light and wearing colored filtered lenses makes a huge difference not only um in reading but also in their emotional states and we just had one of

our nieces who's nine diagnosed with it and uh it's going to change the rest of her life. So that'll be one good thing you get from this podcast. Learn about it because I bet a lot of highly sensitive people have the Erlen syndrome. But one of the things I want to know is how did your medical colleagues at UCLA deal with what some people would label as a pretty soft science of empathy, although I would argue in general, psychiatry is a pretty soft science. Yeah. Well, at the time that I was going through medical school in my residency, I didn't tell anybody anything. I didn't tell any of my peers anything. I felt like I finally belonged somewhere. I really loved my medical training my peers anything. I felt like I finally belonged somewhere. I really loved my medical training and I was growing and changing. And I went more towards the scientific

side and learning all of that and also working with patients I've always loved. But I never used any words like intuition or empathy. And the place that it was most dominant to me was when I worked in hospice and I was with people as they were dying because then your empathy turns on yeah and then everything was like instinctual everything in me the healing instinct within me turned on you know very strongly you know helping somebody make that transition or being with death and dying and grieving. That is such an important, important transition that I kind of secretly expanded it at that point in my medical practice,

but I didn't tell anyone because I was afraid of what they would think of me. But later on, you came out. I mean, I don't know if that's the right term coming out. I came out in the late 90s when I wrote Second Sight, my first book. And it took me eight years to write that book because I had so much fear. And Stephen Mitchell, the sacred translator, was one of my readers of that book. And he would write notes on that book.

Too much anger at your parents. Too much this. Too many unresolved feelings. Go back and work on them before you come back to this book again, too much fear, work with your fear. So that book was my coming out book, but it took so long to come out. I had so many fears about coming out as an empath and psychiatrist. You've said, you've said so many things that are just like, like I said, the thing about, um, it's actually my sister that is, she struggled with addiction because she's so sensitive. She can't, she can't stand to feel, which is so interesting. Cause I grew

up very much like you. She's my half sister. I grew up alone, very much alone and only child and by myself a lot. And I found that, um, like we talked about, I feel overwhelmed sometimes by people around me. And so while she drugs, because of the drug situation in my family were not an option for me. So what I did is just start building walls. So I'm assuming that empaths, like I'm not saying I am one, but I'm assuming that they handle things in different ways. Cause I know when I feel overwhelmed by people, um, I don't know what to do. I just start building walls. Other people do drugs. And when my dad was dying and he was in

hospice, I'm a trauma nurse. I can handle anybody intubated and sedated. I'm good. Split your skull open and I'm good. But the minute that they start with the emotional stuff, I shut down. I just completely shut down. Yeah. My dad, when my dad was going through hospice, I literally, I've never in my life had a migraine until that day that he went into hospice and then i just could not deal with like it was the hospice nurse that helped me they're amazing human beings oh fantastic but i'm listening to this i can't wait to read this book because i'm listening to you and i'm thinking wait there's so many unanswered questions that i'm now like little light bulb moments are going off. Well, I wonder if there's a genetic component to it because Tana's mother clearly has gifts, if you will, where she can see- And feel.

And feel other people and was actually studied at UCLA in their parapsychology department. So does there tend to be a genetic component to this, Judith? I think so, because it was passed down on my mother's side of the family, my grandmother, my mother, my aunt, my cousin, but nobody ever told me. And my mother purposely withheld it from me because she didn't want people to think I was weird. She had a big thing to do. That was my mom. Growing up with people to think I was weird. She had a big thing. That was my mom. Growing up with my mom, it was interesting. So I can feel that. Your mom was weird.

Well, but the gift is what really made her stand out and have people look at her strange. But when you speak that language, people don't hear you. They don't understand. You have to behave yourself when you're around them because you never know if they're feeling. No, but also, one thing that I don't mind doing is being sensitive to the vocabulary of other people. Yeah. I would never use the word psychic. I made the mistake. My mom won't either. Yeah, yeah. It's just not.

It creates too much resistance. You want to use intuition. You want to use empathy. People can get that. And I don't care. As long as people develop their empathy, develop their intuition, that's the goal of my books and my teachings is to help people awaken this part of themselves. Whatever language you want to use is fine with me as long as it's compassionate. All right. When we come back, we're going to talk about the science behind empathy and also empaths. Stay with us.

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