Change Your Brain Every Day - Is it Time for a Mental Do-Over?

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

An important lesson 2020 has taught us is that when things don’t go the way you planned, how you react can drastically shape your mental well-being. One of the best ways to react to the adversities in your life is to simply perform a mental do-over and start fresh. In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen discuss when and how to wipe the brain’s slate clean and start over, giving you a better chance for a better tomorrow. 

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 everyone. This week, we're going to talk about reset. It's just such an important word. And when things didn't go the way you planned think 2020 resetting it's just great it's sort of like at the bowling alley yeah and it's like oh that was really a bad bowl let's do this again yeah and so that's going to be the theme of our week. But you have someone who posted your book. I did. They tagged 10 people. So if there's anyone else who tagged 10 people and I didn't see it for some reason, make sure you direct message me, private message me, because we only saw one.

And it's possible that you're sending it to some other site that I didn't see. Um, but Jessica McCurdy, um, we thank you so much. You tagged 10 people. We are sending you a signed copy. And so that was really cool. The problem is we've got a whole bunch of different sites that people send stuff to. So I just want to make sure I'm not missing anybody. Yeah. Awesome. And we have a brain warrior winner who sent us just a wonderful testimonial that I'm going to read. And it's from Rebecca underscore Lynn three. Thank you, Dr. Raymond and Tana. 10 years ago, I was prescribed an SSRI and doctors that it was making me first to then have the dose increased. Repeat that process five times. Obviously, a defeating process. I knew it wasn't right and look for books to be an advocate for myself. Dr. Amon's book saved my life by destigmatizing

depression and focusing on brain health. I couldn't afford his end, but bought every book, which helped me get a college degree after dropping out. Tana, your stories give people who have had trauma permission to turn pain into passion. Your strength of character is inspiring and provides hope to heal childhood trauma. My sister and I are so excited for your book to be released and learn so much from both of you on the podcast. Thank you for the work that you do, but more importantly, daring to be different. That almost made me cry. Well, I love that. That sounded like my life.

They kept increasing the dose and almost ruined my life. Isn't that crazy? Crazy. It's like, well, this isn't working, so let's just give you more. Well, if you only have one hammer. Right. You just keep hammering it. That's what you continue to use.

But it's so demoralizing because it makes you feel like you're defective. It makes you feel like you're the one that is the problem. And that's just a, it's such an awful feeling. Well, and the theme for the week is reset. We're trying to reset how psychiatric medicine is practiced by giving you a different way. That is something that I wish I had had. I wish I had someone coaching me and giving me that information that you could just reset and start over when I wish I had had. I wish I had someone coaching me and giving me that information that you could just reset and start over when I was a kid, when I was an adolescent, when I was in my twenties, you know, we have that as a rule in our house with the kids. It's like, if we're having a bad day, if we get into an argument, um, you know, if one of the

kids like sort of loses it, we have a tip. It's like, we have this saying, it's like, let's do a do over. Let's have a do-over it's like we just do a do-over we don't sit there and we don't need to keep going on and on and on and hammering the other person with it it's like let's have a do-over do we want to have a good day or we don't want to have a good day and i'll actually ask that question you want to have a good day or you don't want to have a good day like and wait for an answer and if they say well i want to have a good day then it's like let's have a do-over. And it's like just having the knowledge that you can do that.

Like that's a possibility. When I was growing up, that wasn't a possibility. You were just going to get screaming in chaos and just constant problems all day long. That wasn't a possibility. It wasn't known to be an option. So you like do-overs. I like do-overs a lot. There's hope.

There's grace. And if I would have seen you right after you had thyroid cancer. I'd had a totally different outcome. I'm like, first thing is. First of all, we probably would have been married for a whole lot longer by now. It would have saved me a whole lot of pain. Well, no. If I had seen you as a patient, we wouldn't be married.

Yeah, that's true. We wouldn't be able to be married. So maybe it's good that it happened. I mean, it would have been so hard with you, but no. Yeah, that's wrong. I just need to rewind that. Don't take patience. But yeah, I've been heartbroken probably.

But when someone comes to you after they've had thyroid cancer and your childhood, the first thing is not Prozac. But if that's the only hammer you have, that's what you use. The first thing is, oh, we have to get your thyroid right. It's calling the endocrinologist and go low thyroid is associated with depression all the time.

And to be fair, I went in there demanding Prozac because I read about it. I went in there demanding it. I was going to walk out with Prozac, But I still would have went. I wasn't given options. I don't let my patients demand anything from me. Now, it's always- Because I don't know. I'm not the doctor. A collaboration. I never think of myself as someone's boss. But if you came in and you're demanding Prozac, I'm going to be like, well, let's look at your brain because you didn't know about Wellbutrin or you didn't know about. I know, I know you, what you would have done is you would have said, cause this is what you do. What I'm hearing you say is you're not feeling well, you're depressed. Let's figure out why you're depressed. That's what didn't happen

because there's lots of things that cause depression. So the easy thing is to give you a medicine and don't hear that either one of us are opposed to medicine because we're not, but to do it without looking, did he even get like a whole lab panel on you? No, God, no. Oh God, no. Right. Because there's like, no, I left that day with a thousand causes of depression. And if you don't look, you don't know. If you don't, nobody said to me, Oh, by the way, you're going through this problem with your thyroid cancer. You're going through this massive change in your biology. It's going to be better in a few months. Let's do something temporarily to bridge this, to get you through it. No one said that. Right. Like get to know you.

No one said that. And get to know the traumas you experienced, but also the successes that you've had to evaluate the quality of your thinking, right? I mean, we always talk about these four circles. So reset, you know, let's go back and talk about resetting your life. So all of us would agree 2020 was stressful. And it was what it was. And 2021, the pandemic is still with us and may be with us for half the year, longer. I mean, we just don't know.

And that's what I like about past, present, future. The past was what it was. Right now, it is what it is. And I love that. It's like when you accept what's happening, you know, it's like argue with reality, welcome to hell. But tomorrow is a blank canvas. Right. We can we can plan something different for tomorrow. Now, that doesn't mean it's always going to go according to our plans, but we get to have hope for tomorrow. Well, we just watched. So during the pandemic, we've watched a lot of movies. And we just watched Castaway again with our niece, Amelie and Castaway with Tom Hanks. He was nominated for an Oscar. He was great in that movie. But at the end of the movie he said because he actually went

through a suicidal period in the movie at the end of the movie he said the sun is going to bring in and i like that a lot and reset because you don't know what tomorrow will bring and since you don't know what it's going to bring why not hope for the best why not plan for something good now you know we all know we get you know things happen. People get sick. Stuff happens. But to plan for that just creates anxiety. So be in the present, but just know that tomorrow is a blank canvas. Have hope for tomorrow. Because tomorrow can be whatever we want it to be. And wait for tomorrow to happen before you start to be anxious about it.

We are going to talk about the one page miracle when we come back. We've done it before. But as you think about resetting, it's just job one is know what you want. And know why. And then ask yourself, is your behavior getting you what you want and know why, and then ask yourself, is your behavior getting you what you want? This is one of the most important brain exercises. I mean, yes, you can work crossword puzzles, but don't even get near the crossword puzzle until you've done the one page miracle. So when we come back, we're going to dive into that.

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