Change Your Brain Every Day - How Trauma is Passed On Through Your Genes

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

We know that sometimes traumas from your past can linger and affect your present, but did you know that traumas from someone else’s past can do the same thing? Surprisingly, this is actually possible through a phenomenon called epigenetics. In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen discuss epigenetics, in particular the story of Tana’s grandmother, whose trauma has manifested for generations.  For more information on Tana's new book, "The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child", visit relentlesscourage.com

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 into week two of the Relentless Courage of a Scared Child, part of the six-week series. We're doing not only talking about the book, but talking about the lessons and how you can overcome anxiety, depression,

trauma, and grief. And there's more in this book that any child should have to endure. And I am often amazed that you, when I first met you, downplayed the level of chaos. Do you know, I actually learned, one thing I learned is that's the sign of resilience. It's one of the, not one of the signs, it's a trait of resilient people is that they minimize their trauma and that's how they survive. And you did and you thrived and I adored you. I want to read a testimonial from Carrie Flynn. I just want to thank Dr. Amen for helping me. You're welcome. I listened to him on YouTube

and started cutting out dairy, gluten, and corn. My happiness factor has much, much improved. I'm going to start reintroducing one food at a time to determine the culprit. At least I know the cause of my B minus mood level was related to food sensitivity. If I want to cheat now, and then I'll know what to expect. You are a very good doctor and you have helped me a lot. Thank you very much. That's awesome. I'm so happy. Yeah. So I'm working on a new book for year after next called happy the neuroscience of feeling good. And that testimonial just made me happy. Yep. That's awesome. So food actually was very important for you because I think it's part of what kept you sick. Oh, no question.

I know it did now because I, like I said, I went on that journey to heal myself and I was, I was both just, well, I was all of the above disturbed, angry, thrilled to finally have, you know, an answer and just confused why why still when you go to certain doctors in western medicine they're like

food doesn't matter nutrition i'm a nurse and i mean where i went to school it did matter more but but i'm just mind blown at how that's still the conversation that happens. It matters. So if you want to overcome anxiety, depression, trauma, and grief, get your food right. Tana's got a great cookbook, Brain Warrior's Way cookbook. And, you know, it just reminds me, you know, what I know about you when you were young. And that's what we're going to talk about today um often left alone um often with processed food and it's one of the ways you soothe the anxiety that you felt so I love what we teach about healing people in four circles, the biological, what's going on physically, the psychological, what's happening in your mind,

how you think the social and the spiritual. And I never really thought of myself as a depressed kid until I started to, you asked me, like you told me when we were dating, tell me some good childhood memories. And I couldn't come up with one. And now funny, now that I've healed and now that I've like done so much, you know, work on this. And even as I was writing my book, I love the idea of writing your story because so much comes to light. Now I actually have a lot of good memories, but I couldn't think of one. And as I was telling you about my childhood, you're like, well, you were you were depressed and i was like how the kid depressed no i wasn't and i was i was depressed so and i was terrified um so but but all of those circles were suffering the biology was clearly suffering you know physically i was not healthy um psychology we my family was not evolved they They weren't psychologically savvy.

They believed every stupid thing they thought. And just the drama and the chaos just on a daily basis. There was the social, which I was totally alone. I was a latchkey kid and scared that my mom wasn't coming home. And then there was the spiritual, which really didn't exist in my life at that time. So that the purpose of your life, your family's life was survival. It really wasn't anything beyond that. And, uh, how old were you when your grandmother came to live with you? She came to live with us permanently. She would be in and out, in and out. Um, you know, she came from Lebanon and she didn't speak English very well. And she was always sick. She had diabetes. So she would come and go when I was really young, but then she came to live with us permanently when I was 11, because she had gone legally blind.

Her diabetes was out of control. She was morbidly obese. She'd become a hoarder and she became a hoarder because she never dealt with her trauma. So besides her son being murdered, um, when she was in, she never got over that, but when she was a young child and back then it was greater Syria, she was, um, in the middle of, she went through world war one. It was just before world war one. It was the great famine. So she went through that and she remembers having to run, you know,

when the Turks would come riding through and she took off and she ran into the mountains and she got separated from her family and she was lost for three days up in the mountains. And so her hair was frozen and matted to her head when they found her, she was hypothermic. She was terrified of all the animals. And so that she never really recovered. And as a result of all of the things she had dealt with, she became this hoarder. She was morbidly obese. She would cry every time she turned the news on. And now looking back, I understand it's PTSD.

I didn't know that back then. She was just kind of scary. I loved her, but she was kind of scary. And she wouldn't come out of her room really. And so she came to live with us when I was 11 so I could give her insulin shots so I could watch her well and a very important point with your grandmother's story is this thing called epigenetics that what happens to us turns on or off certain genes that make illness more or less likely in our children and our grandchildren.

So trauma, especially trauma that's not processed and dealt with, gets written in your genetic code. And you're convinced. And then passed down to other people. So when the pandemic happened, Tana has actually been getting ready for a famine for three generations. Not just a famine. I'm getting ready for any type of disaster. I mean, I'm obsessed. From the Turks coming into Newport Coast. So I am obsessed with disaster planning, with survival training. I do all this stuff. And

he's like, do I not take good care of you? So when the pandemic hit, I went, I told you so like you can either say thank you or I can say I told you so. So I've been obsessed with like disaster planning for decades. And it, it may have nothing to do with her, but with the,

but if you saw my setup, you would be those of you who like to plan for disasters. If you saw my setup, you would have disaster planning envy. That's all I'm going to say. murdered in a drug deal gone wrong upper and lower gis i was sick all the time surgery latchkey kid when you're nine and i think this is really important before i was nine i mean we our house was broken into so i've often talked about how the pandemic didn't bother me as much as the social unrest because it triggered me when our house is broken into frequently when i was young i mean it's weird how often it was broken into we We think it was because of my uncle's friends. They would come to steal stuff for drugs and whatever. And, you know, a couple of times they got caught, but

it happened so often that it was a little odd. And either someone knew that it was just my mom and I, or, you know, it was someone who just knew they could come in because they always knew when to come in. But my mom shot a gun off in the house. And when I was really young, and then when I was nine, she took off running down the hall, chasing an intruder with a shotgun. And I remember the sound of the shotgun racking. And I'm like, she's going to shoot him in the back. Like I was convinced my mom is,

she's a little like this cross between Lucille Ball and the Tasmanian devil. She's larger than life. She's a survivor. She's amazing, a little crazy, but it wasn't perfect. So actually, before we get to nine and the separation anxiety, I want to do that in the next podcast. What I want to encourage you to do is begin to write the story of your life. And I want you to write, so get a piece of paper. I have, I have a journal. I'd created a digital journal for you to be able to do this because it's so important. And it was so impactful for me. It's one of the pre-order gifts that I helped with. I really wanted people to dig into this. And of course the book is an example of sort of how you can do that. So you can write it in a balanced way. And there are other tools that are part of the pre-order gift to help you do this so that you can start to look at the people in your life

who have been challenging for you through those four circles and begin to understand them better and then write this down. And if you write it like every year, do you know? I mean, often that years early, you won't know, but what good happened and what stressful happened, you begin to get a timeline and it's just so helpful to understand some of your automatic stressful reactions, which may have nothing to do with the present, but you don't want your life to be driven by the pain of your past. And there's a therapy I like called timeline therapy. I love timeline therapy. And when I think of the timeline of my life, I see it from back to front. So that's in front of me. My past is generally behind me and less infecting me.

But yours, because you see it. You always say, why are you living in the past? I'm like, I'm not living in the past. What are you talking about? Because it's in front of me. I see it from left to right. You see it from left to right, which means it's always there. And in March, I can access it anytime. And in March of next year, I have a new book called your brain is always listening and talking about the dragons from the past. We've been talking about some of the dragons, right? The ancestral dragons, your grandmother's.

I love that book. Your book goes so well with my book and it was such a weird thing. We didn't plan that. Now. And we, our new public television special, which is coming out at the end of February. We actually blend both of our books together, but we're going to do a whole six-week series on my book coming up in January. So you can get those tools at relentlesscourage.com,

and it will help you begin to write the story of your life. So you can look at it from an adult's perspective, because sometimes we carry strategies from when we were a kid and we've never learned new strategies. And those strategies worked when you were four to help you survive. In a traumatic situation. But they don't work when you're 40, right? So it's going to help you begin to see that. Great. All right. Stay with us.

You can pre-order the book and get free gifts at RelentlessCourage.com. Our event, December 12th, free on overcoming anxiety, depression, trauma, and grief. TanaAmon.com forward slash event. Sign up. We already have hundreds of people signed up. We would just love you and your friends. And we are giving away a scam. And we're giving away a scam.

An evaluation. An evaluation. 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. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full

evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.