Change Your Brain Every Day - Parenting: Can Vulnerability Be a Good Thing? with Chloe Amen

Episode Date: January 16, 2018

In the first episode of a special two-part series, Tana Amen is joined by her daughter Chloe to discuss the role vulnerability plays in a young person’s development. Letting other people control how you feel will only hold you back, but when you tell yourself that being vulnerable is being bold, you’ll open yourself up to the opportunities that are only available when you let go of that fear.

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. So welcome back to the Brain Warriors Way podcast and live chat. We are, I'm here, I actually have the pleasure of having my daughter Chloe here today. Hi. So Daniel is not with us again. He is still finishing his book. I had something really special I wanted to talk to Chloe about. I walked in a couple weeks ago and saw her reading a book that sort of blew my mind

because I read it in my 40s and you read it when you're 14. It was Brene Brown's book Daring Greatly. And if you have not read that book, you should read it. And I shouldn't say should, you might want to check it out. And if you have read it, you know why I thought it was so amazing that my 14-year-old was reading it. Because being vulnerable, it's about vulnerability, the power of vulnerability. And that is not something I was ever good at. It's really powerful. So before we start, I want to actually read what the dictionary says about vulnerability.

The dictionary defines vulnerability as this, capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt as by a weapon, open to moral attack, criticism, temptation. Open to assault, difficult to defend. Well, no wonder we don't want to be vulnerable, right? So physically, when I think about being vulnerable, I have this thing about safety and security, right? Like the NSA has got nothing on me. I've got cameras and security system. I've got two different types of camera systems in case one goes down. And I'm like not joking.

Just throwing that out there. Yeah. So I don't like the idea of feeling unsafe. Right. And so we've attached this idea of being unsafe to being vulnerable. Right. And then we wonder why we're so afraid to show ourselves or our underbelly. Right?

Yeah. So one of the reasons that I was kind of inspired to read Daring Greatly was because, especially with my age and the career that I want to go into, being vulnerable is a key part of it. It's just a big, it's a big part of it. We see stars on TV. We see them on social media now. And we're like, gosh, they're so perfect.

I wish I could be them. And what's not to love about their life? It's a lot harder than we think it is. Putting yourself out there, putting what you create out there is not easy, no matter who you are, whether you're a star or not. Doing anything is hard, and exposing yourself is really hard. So I was kind of inspired to read the book because that's part of myself that I wanted to benefit

and I wanted to grow. And I thought that was really important. So I enjoyed her book a lot. It's really a great book. And one thing I love is her definition. What she says about vulnerability is, let's see. Brene says that vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It's the source of hope,

empathy, accountability, and authenticity. And I know authenticity is one of your primary values. So authenticity is definitely one of my top values. And that's why I wanted to improve on being vulnerable because I think it's really important to be able to show who you are fully if you're going to be authentic. So what's the worst thing that can happen if someone knows you and they know some of the things about you that you're afraid to show and they laugh or they criticize you? What's the worst thing that can happen? They laugh and they criticize you. They don't like you. They disapprove of you. But that's one person. That's letting one person dictate what you do is one of the issues with vulnerability because we're

so scared of what people think and what they're going to think. But it's you, you ultimately decide what you do and where you go. And I think that letting people dictate what you do and disapprove of you is only holds you back. And that's something that I think is really important and that I want to learn how to do better, how to not let people dictate what I do because I'm afraid of them disapproving. We see this, like you pointed out, with stars all the time. So, and I think a perfect example are child stars. So we see, I mean, they're so afraid of being judged. And so they act like punks because they don't want people to see what's really going on with them. And they're not mature yet. I mean, that's part of it. They're not, brains aren't developed, but I think a great example was Justin Bieber. He, you know, for a while he was

acting like this one way and like never really showed people who he was, but as he changed and matured and he began to show people this like underbelly, the soft side of who he was. And he began to go, yep, I'm not perfect. This is who I am. I'm just not perfect, but I'm really trying to be better. All of a sudden, people started to go, wait, what? Wait, hold on. I can't be mad at him if he's really working on being a better person. It's a scary thing to do. I think an interesting pattern with people like that is when you show who you are and you're open to being vulnerable, no matter how terrifying

it is, once you do it, people can still go, I disapprove of you. I don't like what you stand for. I don't like what you're doing. But it's really hard to not respect somebody who's willing to put themselves out there. It's just a matter of respect. Whether you like what they do or not, it's like that's hard to do. And everybody knows it. Everybody knows it's a hard thing to do. Oh, yeah. No, you're right.

And you owe them respect. There are many people whose values I don't agree with. Right. But if they hold themselves with dignity and they stand for what they believe in, if they're doing it in a dignified way, it's like, all right, I don't agree with you, but I can understand you and I can respect your right to say it and your right to believe that.

And so, but versus someone who sort of does it in an underhanded way or is hiding, right, or is not really authentic about it, that's very different. Then it's much easier to go, mm, that's not, yeah, I'm not buying it, right, or is not really authentic about it. That's very different. Then it's much easier to go, mm, that's not, yeah, I'm not buying it, right? So it's much easier to do that and to criticize it if you know they're not being authentic. So if they say one thing and do another thing,

it's much, much easier. So I actually like that. So how is it that you, at 14, because 14, I think, is an age where teenagers are terrified of peer pressure and being criticized. How is it that you are not so afraid of that? How did you become more able, like, what are some things you do? Right. To ground yourself. Okay. So I'm still actually working on it now in this moment. It's still not an easy thing to do. It takes a while. And like

anything, like sports, anything, it takes practice practice it takes continuing to do it and put yourself out there to to grow and then eventually it just becomes easy so a couple of things that I do um one thing that I kind of taught myself that caught on for me I think it's different for everyone because some things work for other people and other things don't but one thing that I kind of figured out for myself is instead of telling myself to be vulnerable, because automatically I've noticed that when I tell myself to be vulnerable, I'm like, no, that's a bad idea. Don't do that. Like that's, that's scary. Don't do that. So instead of doing that, if I'm in a situation where it's like I need to show who I am right now,

I need to be who I am and I need to stand for what I believe in, instead of telling myself be vulnerable, I tell myself to be bold. Because automatically in my brain, I associate bold with being brave, with being strong, with being somebody who's tall, metaphorically, right? And I'm not, she's not tall physically. So all I have is being tall metaphorically. That's really cute. So I tell myself to be bold instead of being vulnerable because it's all about what you associate with. I associate being vulnerable with that's scary. I don't want to do it. But being bold is, wow, she's cool, she's strong, right? She knows what she wants.

So I tell myself be bold when I'm in situations where I need to be vulnerable. I actually like that. So my word is be a warrior. Because I grew up feeling terrified. Like there's a white tiger around every corner. I grew up in chaos. And warriors are people who get stuff done, right? Warriors are people who, and like, even like thinking about it now almost makes me want to cry because I felt so the opposite of that growing up. I was always scared.

Well, warriors, maybe they're scared, but they have answers. They have solutions. They have skills. They have like, they're just, they get it done. So I so I'm like I'm gonna identify with a warrior and so that's why I practice martial arts and I remember one time being on stage actually when I read her book was because I was on stage speaking and I have like I have a tendency to have a pretty strong presence and I like that I've worked really hard on building walls I'm having a strong presence right but it crumbled and I wasn't expecting it. I was on stage one time and I'm in front of like a couple thousand doctors and I was invited to speak to a couple thousand doctors, which doesn't usually happen anyways. Like it was a rare, like sort of gift that it

happened and I'm speaking and something happened and I started to cry on stage. I was telling my story and I started to shake and cry. And all of a sudden, I felt really small. I felt like the little girl that was scared and terrified. And I'm like, what is happening to me? I'm not like this. I'm a warrior. Like what's happening to me? I don't know what's happening right now. And I wanted to run off stage and I didn't know what to do. And I just stood there shaking like a little girl. I felt like a little girl and I was, but I just fought through it. And I told the story shaking and, um, it's actually still on YouTube. But, um, anyways, at the end of it, they started applauding. And at the, and then when it was over, I had these, a heart surgeon run up to me. He goes, no one makes me cry. You made me cry. And I was like,

uh, I wasn't quite sure how to take it, but I realized something. It was that, it was the power of being authentic, of letting me a wall down. Right. And then someone recommended that book to me. Right. I think we rely so much on these walls that we build up, but they're really, they're temporary. Cause what happens when you don't have those walls anymore? What do you do? You know what I mean? Do you let it like defeat you or do you do something about it and so yeah I have four things that I do to practice vulnerability that make it a little bit easier for me so the first thing is to tell myself to be bold the second thing is to talk about it so I have people in my life that I talk about things with that I wouldn't necessarily want to talk to other

people about because it's scary or it's like it feels too vulnerable so I talk to one of them is you um I'm so lucky so yeah because I think that talking about it the more one thing that I learned from the book actually is the less you talk about vulnerability, the more you have. So the more shame you have, the more shame you have, you know, the less you talk. It's like when you shine a light in the dark, it goes away. Right, the less you talk about it, the more you have. I love that. So that's the other thing. And then the third thing is gratitude.

I think that, well, at least for me, when I'm grateful and I have gratitude, it masks shame. It masks vulnerability. When I'm grateful for what I do have, what I am good at, what I know I'm capable of doing, it makes what I feel like I can't do in the moment or what I'm afraid to do a lot smaller. That's really good. Right. So what I know that I'm good at and what I know that I have so not only in myself but in other people so I know I have my family to

fall back on. If this doesn't go well I have my family still. If this doesn't go well I still have my friends. It's okay. If this doesn't go well I've still accomplished this this and this and it's okay. So you learn something. Right. So having gratitude kind of reminds me that, look, you have something to fall back on. You don't, you know what I'm saying? This isn't the end-all be-all. Yes, it's not the end-all.

Right. Right. So there is, I think that was the third one, right? Yeah. Right? That was the third one. So the fourth one is opportunity. I like to see vulnerability as an opportunity.

Oh, I love that. Rather than seeing it as like this big, scary failure or an opportunity to fail, I see it as an opportunity to accomplish something. So when you're vulnerable, you have the opportunity to achieve something, right? Because when you're vulnerable, it's like, you have the opportunity to play in a big sports game, or you have the opportunity to perform, you have the opportunity to write a book, you have the opportunity, and that's vulnerable. But it can be a big success still, it can still be a big accomplishment, right? So that's how I kind of, kind like to see it it's it's all about like mindset I guess but

you see why she amazes me you're pretty awesome so I read the book in my 40s and I'm like wow if someone like the fact that you are getting such a head start on some of this amazing information and some of these really important life skills and concepts is just it's fascinating to me and it's going to save you you know there's nothing that can save us from pain in life but there are things you can do to just guide you through the pain right yeah and help you grow instead of shrinking when you have pain in life right and so and help you pass it on and help other people i'm so proud of you you're so awesome. I love you.

So we'll be back with The Chloe Show. I thought that was pretty amazing. So thank you so much. 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.