Change Your Brain Every Day - Relationships: Why We Need to Stop Seeking the Approval of Others with Guy Finley

Episode Date: February 6, 2019

It’s unfortunate, but true, that many of us have a mindset that believes we’re only as valuable as others agree we are. And it’s these types of limiting thoughts that keep us from realizing our potential. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and author Guy Finley discuss how we can use patience to reject this type of thinking and cast off our self-imposed chains.

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. Welcome back. Here with Guy Finley, internationally bestselling author, teacher. We're having a really interesting discussion about your relationships and why you react the way you do. And it may, in fact, have nothing to do with the other person. And it may have nothing to do with the moment that you're so upset.

We're talking about developing the capacity to have a waking relationship with our own brain, our own heart, and our own body. A waking one. So that instead of being passive to unseen instructions like, they shouldn't treat me like that or why is the world this way? Instead, we're present when the reaction takes place. I so had that, though. So, you know, what we do here at Amen Clinics is we look at people's brains. And I'm a traditionally trained psychiatrist. I trained at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

And I loved it. But psychiatrists are the only medical doctors who never look at the organ. They treat. And before I went to medical school, I was an x-ray technician in the Army. And our professors used to say, how do you know unless you look? And I started looking. First in the Army and then after I'd started our first clinic. And I loved it.

It was so helpful. It really helped me get into that biological circle. And I saw things like traumatic brain injuries, a major cause of psychiatric illness, and nobody knew about it. I saw that marijuana is not a health food. That really is hurtful to the brain. And I was so excited. I was like a little kid, and I started sharing this with the world.

And my colleagues, en masse, started attacking me and calling me bad names. I'm a charlatan. High five. I'm quack. I'm like all these things. And it pissed me off. Made me anxious. And so even now, I can get triggered fairly quickly because it's been traumatic.

And so I'm thinking to myself, how can I use relationship magic? And the thing that helped me was understanding people who try to pioneer anything new, their profession tries to kill them almost immediately because they're protecting the status quo. That's exactly right. Max Planck, who's the famous Nobel Prize physicist, said progress in science happens through funerals. So it's not by having a great new idea. It's you have to sort of kill the old guard off so that the young people who see the new idea. But personally, it was so freaking hard.

Yeah, but see, Danny, fortunately, and I mean that in all levels of the word, there was a passion, a love that you had. Right. That there was nothing they could do to squelch. There is a necessary but unfortunate part that lives in all of us, and that is that we have this mindset. It's part of our culture, part of our social values, that I am only as worthwhile as you agree I am. And there's nothing more punishing or painful for that in a human being's life because it immediately puts a set of blinders, a limitation on what it is that I'm willing to do.

But back to the thing we've been talking about, what if I understand? Well, let's see, why is this need to be validated so important to me? Well, of course, I do have to move through traditional channels. I mean, no one's going to have to keep my license. I mean, all that's involved at a level where you work and live that I going to have to keep my license. I have to. I mean, all that's involved at a level where you work and live that I don't have to quite go through, although I'm kind of an outcast in my own world as I am. But the point is, what if I discover that there is no end to the need for wanting people to approve of me, which means that I live in a kind of constant compromise of trying to present what

it is that I know is true in a way that someone else is going to go, yeah, that's good, so I'm validated. What if I threw out the whole idea of needing to be validated by friends or family so that I could be an authentic, integrated human being who, as you've discovered, when we find our own way, then everybody else will find our way too. Because now they understand there was something behind that. And thank God that man upon whose shoulders now I will stand, I didn't know that he was standing on the shoulders of a similar understanding, which was what? I'm not going to let what the world thinks about me determine what I do. Because if I do, then it's

the world that's living my life, not my love for what I do. And Vernon Howard said something. It's like letting other people make your decisions. Here's the quote. Permitting your life to be taken over by another person is like letting the waiter eat your dinner. That's it. I love that quote. That's what we're talking about. Only we never realize we're all the time letting the waiter eat your dinner. That's it. I love that quote. That's what we're talking about. Only we never realize we're all the time letting the waiter eat our dinner, meaning letting this reactive brain, this mind, cast out what it does, catch us with some form of identity,

interconnected to the way it's working, and then telling us who we are and what we can do, including in our relationships. Because the magic part of this book has to do with the fact that we are alchemical beings. You know this very well, that there is a consistent way in which we can begin to use the very constituent elements,

not just of our biological health, but of our psychological and spiritual health, to bring a new understanding into the moment so that in the new understanding, a transformation takes place first in myself. And if it takes place in me, Danny, then by a kind of jujitsu of love, my partner has to respond to me differently because I'm no longer reacting in the same way I always did. They're going to go, what's with you? What's happening? Why aren't you fighting as an example? Why don't you want to fight?

So when I see couples, and often, I have a sense, but it's often the woman and the guy's not coming. And people will say, oh, well, it takes two to change a relationship and i'm like absolutely not it takes one it takes just what you were saying that's it right because if i can get her or sometimes him to respond in a different way it changes the quality of the relationship i think it's the heisenberg theory the the observer changes what's observed. And yeah, the observed is changed by the observer. In relationships, it's the same thing. If I'm in a situation where, let's say, I'm in a pattern of fighting, and we fight because we don't see it, you bring to me something you're unhappy about me, about me.

Now, Danny, you don't bring to me what you're unhappy about unless you're in pain. The only way I tell somebody I'm unhappy with them is they have stirred in me a pain. Now, when you stir a pain in me, you're not aware of the pain in you. You just want me to be what you need me to be so you can stop being in pain. And then what do I do when you bring that pain to me? I respond in pain. I can't do anything other than that. The reaction is you've pushed. The response is push back. So you have resistance to the condition. But I don't know, Danny, that you're in pain when you talk to me. All I know is the pain I'm in. I actually don't know my partner, that you're in pain when you talk to me. All I know is the pain I'm in.

I actually don't know my partner who is saying there's something wrong with you. I don't really know they're in pain. All I know is the pain I'm blaming on them. So what happens in that moment? And I know you'll like this because it'll go right with your little things. Do you know the original meaning of the word patience? The old, old meaning of the word? I don't.

To suffer myself. What's more beautiful than that? So here my partner pushes. Pain responds. But now I understand the pain is a reaction. It's part of the brain, part of the way in which this nature protects itself. But I don't want to be part of that protective fighting nature anymore. I really want to know what love is. So I patiently endure my own pain. I suffer myself. And if I do,

my partner is going to look at me like, what's wrong with you? Why aren't you causing me to feel what keeps this pattern going? And to what you you've said because I've decided that it's time to change. No one wins a fight. If we understood that, the world would be different. Our partnerships would be different. No one wins a fight. If I get it, then I get in that situation. I feel the fight coming up in me and rather than going with the fight, I choose freedom. I want to have my own understanding of this moment. Not what this moment is telling me is true about myself. I so wish Tana was here. That's magic, Danny. When we come back, we're going to, let's talk about some specific situations that people can

use this information. Perfect. Relationship Magic with Guy Finley. Stay with us. Use the code PODCAST10 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

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