Change Your Brain Every Day - Lessons I Learned from Criminals - PT. 3 with James Ackerman

Episode Date: March 28, 2018

In the final episode of a series with Prison Fellowship CEO, James Ackerman shares some of the life lessons he’s learned from rehabilitating inmates and changing lives, such as understanding the context of criminals’ lives.

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. And stay tuned for a special code for a discount to Amen Clinics for a full evaluation, as well as any of our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Welcome back. We continue our series with james ackerman ceo and president of prison

fellowship we've talked about forgiveness we've talked about the amazing work you guys are doing what i wanted to do with this podcast was talk about the major lessons you've learned since you've been involved in prison fellowship I mean you were in the entertainment industry and had done a lot of high-level stuff but this grabbed your heart and has kept it yeah what really grabbed my heart was the first time I went to prison with a prison fellowship staffer and realized that these are people and they are worthy of our love and our support and our mentorship. And that was really the first lesson for me. And I came out of that prison that day realizing that I can't wait to go back. I can't wait to commit myself to this work. And some of us have a passion for the homeless.

Some of us have a passion for vets. Some of us have a passion for women who have been abused. I mean, different people end up having different passions. But the one that the Lord put on my heart was to serve the needs of incarcerated men and women and their families. There's so many things I think I've learned along the way about how people in prison are perceived and also how people in prison think and understanding how to speak into that and how it really helps as a as a practicing Christian to apply the Bible and a biblical worldview to the thinking of men and women in prison. Because a lot of people out on the street think that life is about getting what's due to me and backing up my tribe, if you will. And that tribe

could often be a gang. And it's for men in particular, that gang is where I find identity, right? But if you apply a biblical perspective on it, which is that you're here because God has a plan for your life and a purpose. And are you prepared to step into that plan and purpose? And those who are end up doing great and tremendous things. I guess one of the other things I've learned is I've learned or I've had the opportunity to see real transformation. Remember I was talking about the academy in the first podcast that we did. And I said our oldest academy is in Texas. Yeah.

It's outside of Houston. That academy has been there for 21 years. The person who leads that academy, literally the program director of that academy, is a graduate of it. Oh, wow. Right? So he went down for 15 years, eventually had a radical transformation in Christ in prison, applied to go to this academy, was approved by the parole board to go to the academy. They shipped him to that unit.

He went through it. He graduated it, got out, got a degree in biblical counseling. And four years later, after he got out of prison, came back as a mentor and counselor. Amazing. And eventually landed a job and rose the ranks of that academy to becoming the program director. How crazy is that? So many people, when they do something that they're ashamed of kill themselves because they don't see another way and you know suicide

often occurs when you feel like you have no option and that's true for a lot of people who find themselves in prison particularly if as it relates to taking a life and particularly if the, the,

the, the, the taking of the life was not intentional. So we, we have another person on staff who, um, was involved in a car accident when he was raging drunk and killed a 17 year old girl.

And, um, you know, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He was so drunk. He walked away from the car accident, not realizing he'd been in a car accident. Okay. Um, and he, uh, you know, he was thrown into jail and the first thing going through his mind is how do I just end my life? How do I just bring this to an end? How can I possibly ever come back from this? Yeah. And how did he come back? He became a model citizen in prison, started working in the rehab center, poured himself into his faith, poured himself into addiction recovery, got a mentor, and became the man he was always supposed to be. And his mentor was so great that his mentor,

when he got released seven and a half years into his sentence, was standing outside the prison gate with a brand new suit. Oh, wow. And took him to a church where they put up a banner and said, Welcome Home, Joe. That's amazing. His name's Joe Abloh. Yeah, that kind of pain will keep you from hopefully ever making that mistake.

I mean, anything like that. And reaching out to other people to prevent them from making that mistake. And his wife, who I met the other night, stayed with him through the whole process. And they've been together for a long time now. They've got adult children. They have grandchildren now. I mean, he's a wonderful guy, but he has this incredible narrative. Oh, yeah, his story is powerful.

Twenty-five percent of our field staff at Prison Fellowship spent time in prison. That's amazing. And they're highly effective people, right? Of course, because they've been there. Because they walk with incredible authority. Right, they've been there. Yeah. Wow. So if you just think of the Pharisees that wanted to judge this one woman

who wasn't doing the right thing, and Jesus said, you who are without sin could cross this line. Yeah. Draw a line in the sand. Right? Or throw the first stone. Throw the first stone. That's right. Yeah. Draw a line in the sand, right? Or throw the first stone. Throw the first stone. That's right, yeah.

And it's like all of us have failed. Of course. And what I liked what you said in the last podcast, I've been thinking about it, is how many people listening to this podcast have driven drunk. Oh, yeah. And got away with it oh sure right or you were so tired that you almost fell asleep on the road and but but you

haven't killed anybody right and it's by chance in a way, right? That it just helps you have more empathy when things go wrong. And you also said, one of the things I've learned is you have to understand the context of a person's life. We were talking before the podcast that when we evaluate people here at Amen Clinics, we always think of four circles. What's the biology? So head trauma is huge in prison. I know it is. The studies are almost 50% of people in prison had a significant brain injury at some point in their life. Among the homeless, and they did a study in Toronto, 58% of the homeless men in Toronto had a significant brain injury before they were homeless.

Wow. 42% of the homeless women. So it's massive, but nobody thinks about it. But there are also psychological factors. Growing up without a dad, growing up in poverty, witnessing trouble. There's social factors, who you hang out with. I just had a conversation with a mother, a patient of mine, and she's going to, against the girl's will,

put her into a really good school. And I said, look, I said, when kids become teenagers, their friends are more important than their parents, right? So your job is to manage who they hang out with right? So social is critical. Yeah, but then also spiritual it's why are you on the planet your deepest sense of meaning and purpose? We love the teacher Her name is Byron Katie. She wrote a wonderful book called loving what is yeah, so powerful Yeah, and she has the brain of a murderer right? I scanned What Is. It's so powerful.

And she has the brain of a murderer. I scanned her. But she's not. I mean, she's like the most peaceful person on the planet because she realized and she believed her thoughts. She suffered. And when she didn't believe her thoughts, she didn't suffer and really had what I think was a spiritual awakening for her. So understanding all four of those circles and then working, which is what the academy program

really does, is powerful. Right. And who among us, if a close relative or one of our children came to us and said, I've really been down a bad path, but I want to get onto the right path, wouldn't walk with that person to do that, right? Well, we're surrounded by people who want to make the right choice, want to head down the right path. And whether they're in a program with the Salvation Army, or they're in a program with Prison Fellowship, it's important that we walk shoulder to shoulder with them. And, you know, the Apostle Paul says in the Book of Romans,

all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So we're all in the same place. Chuck Colson used to say the ground is level at the foot of the cross. You know, irrespective of how wealthy you are or how poor you are or what your background is or whether you're educated or not educated, in Jesus' eyes, we're all the same thing. And so God looks to us to be heaven on earth, to invest in each other's lives and to do his good thing, his good work. Yeah, it's interesting. When you grow up with

a background like mine, it's easy to become a little bit jaded and judgmental. Like I said, you have these breakthroughs like with Salvation Army. And starting to see the scans really messed with my head. Literally. Really messed with my head. Because you feel sort of justified in being judgmental and angry about like, no, that person should pay a price. It's just like that's how you feel.

And you've decided what you're going to believe. Oh, one of our biggest fights. Oh, yeah. I was on Larry King. Oh, I was so angry. When I realized he used me. To go from here to LA. He used me for the carpool lane. You need somebody to go with you.

And I love spending time with my wife. But when I realized he was going to go give this guy who had done a really bad thing an excuse, I lost my mind. So I'm in the car all the way there. Expending his hair. I was so angry. It was so painful. And I'm like, because I was on Larry King. Don't you have one of those medical dummies that you can put in the car and just drive?

That day I wanted one. It was a 15-year-old girl that had been brutally hurt. But anyways. And it's never to give them an excuse, right? Because there's still responsibility. It's to help understand why people do it. I am so sad by what happened with the school shooter in Florida recently. And we failed him.

He cried out. Repeatedly. The FBI knew. Repeatedly. Social services knew. He tried repeatedly. The local police department knew. Right.

And people go, oh, well, more mental health services. He had a lot of mental health services. It's not more of the same. If you do more of the same, we'll get more of what we have, which is an ineffective system. That if we would have scanned him, he would have fallen in love with his brain. And then he would have been more compliant with treatment because not that he was defective, but he could have a better brain. Right. So when I told my dad in 1980 I was going to be a psychiatrist,

I was a third-year medical student, he asked me why I didn't want to be a real doctor, why I wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long. Well, I will schedule my first date with you when I find you a psychiatrist. Right? Nobody wants to see a psychiatrist. No one wants to be labeled as defective or abnormal or crazy, but everybody wants a better brain. So what if mental health is really brain health?

And that I think is just such an important shift. So what I was getting at about seeing the scans, when you have somebody who's very set in how they believe, what they think they believe about something, but you begin to see, well, I think you described it perfectly, because when I would see the scans of someone who had done something, who I, in my mind, it's like, throw away the key. But all of a sudden you realize, wait a second, that person was abused.

They had a toxic looking brain. They had a brain injury. And you start stacking it all and you see the scan and you're like, ew, there's this icky feeling. And then they do something really awful. And yeah, they did something awful. That is a fact. And there is responsibility there.

Oh, sure. But you do start to have this feeling like, well, how fair is it that no one looked? Right. Right. That there was no treatment. Right. I have so many stories. And it started to mess with my head.

Yeah, sure. Do you remember the story of Jose's 16-year-old boy who who confronts Dylan who's wearing a red sweater it's in Healdsburg in northern California and this is a nice town he had been hot boxing which is you get into um a car roll all the windows and everybody smokes pot. So you really elevate the level of toxicity in your system. And so he's completely stoned and gets out of the car. Thankfully I don't know what this is.

Confronts the kid in the red sweater and says, what color do you claim? And he says, I don't claim any color. It was actually the color Jose claimed. So it's not like he's the M. And he goes, wrong answer and beats him nearly to color. It was actually the color Jose claimed, so it's not like he's the eminem. And he goes, wrong answer, and beats him nearly to death. He was in a coma for three weeks, was awful, made the news all around the Bay Area.

And the defense attorney called me because they said, we have tested Jose, and he's got cognitive problems. And when I scanned him, his brain had three very clear problems. He had very low frontal lobe function, so judgment was off. So imagine that on pod. His cingulate gyrus, that's the brain's gear shifter, was dramatically overactive. So when he started beating him, he couldn't stop. And his temporal lobes were damaged damaged and that often goes with aggression Okay, and so he's got he's got this really bad troubled brain But then I learned the story of his life that he actually wasn't named for a month because his dad was in jail his

first memory he's three his dad throws a brick through a plate glass window. And so he's around violent people. When he's eight, his mother is murdered. And he can't stop crying. And when, so I went to live with his dad. And his dad said, if you stop crying, your mother will be here in the morning. Oh, God. Well, obviously she wasn't. So he can can't trust he's got loss after loss he had three significant brain injuries and when i brought

all of this in court i got um death threats on my answering machine for you know helping a bad person right right and they wanted to send him away for 25 years. They ended up sending him away for 11 to a place where he could get. Get treatment. Treatment. Because he also had a brain that was mendable. And if you don't look, you don't know. But, I mean, almost immediately from looking, I started having empathy.

Now, Dylan's brain is damaged. And he did it. Right. But, I mean, almost immediately from looking, I started having empathy. Now, Dylan's brain is damaged. And he did it, right? And there are people that have bad brains that never do anything bad. Right. So there's got to be responsibility. Of course. But don't we want to rehabilitate Jose's brain so after 11 years he doesn't redo that? And here's something coming from the person who used to say, you know, give him the harshest, whatever.

If they give this guy 25 years, what happens when he gets out in 10 or 12, right? But he's been in really bad conditions. He's not going away forever. So we need to be thinking about that. So this is coming from someone who... 90% of people who go away to prison will return to society. Right, so coming from the person who believes in... Nearly 700,000 people are returning to our neighborhoods.

Right. So coming from the person who is, you know, who has always believed in, you know... Justice. Justice. That is an issue we have to take into, even if you're going to give them whatever punishment or whatever it is that they deserve, we have to be thinking rehabilitation. Yeah. So your program makes more sense than ever. Yeah.

Because they're coming out. Yeah. So we don't want them coming out with more damage. Yeah. No, I mean, we at Prison Fellowship, we believe in a restorative approach to criminal justice. Look, they've been punished. The judge did his or her job and sentenced this person to a certain punishment. But the moment they enter the criminal justice system, let's put

them on a path of rehabilitation so we're returning to society healthier and more productive citizens. This I very much agree with. Yeah. Because these guys aren't, like you said, coming back to our neighborhoods. But yet, when we punish them, we feed them terrible food. They're chronically stressed. Beat up. They're afraid.

Right. And they're not sleeping well. I mean, it's not an environment that is rehabilitating the brain. In fact, it's not an environment that is rehabilitating the brain. In fact, it's hurting the brain, which is, even though I'm not a fan of pot, I'm a complete fan of legalizing it. Because please don't put them in jail where you sleep deprive them, chronically stress them, let them hang out with people who do bad things and expect something good is going to come from that. Portugal's got a great system where they actually legalize it, but then they teach kids why this is a bad thing. Right.

Yeah, but we don't do a good job of that. So you can't use the we in that we believe it should be legal. We have a poster. I should give you our poster. Because we don't believe. It hangs in about 100,000 schools, prisons, drug treatment programs, churches around the world. It's called Which Brain Do You Want?

Healthy scans surrounded by drug-affected scans. Wow. Which brain do you want? Yeah. by drug affected scans which brain do you want how can people learn more um go to prisonfellowship.org you can learn about how you can become a volunteer in all manner of areas of our work and also uh if you're so led donate to our work we're supported by individuals foundations and corporations we don't take a dollar from government and so we're dependent upon you to support our work. Prisonfellowship.org. Check it out. Thanks so much. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. It's been great. Use the code podcast 10 to get a 10% discount

on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors 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 Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month.