Change Your Brain Every Day - Setbacks: The Best Way to Respond, with Dr. John Townsend

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

Setbacks are a normal part of life. No one goes through life without having some setbacks to respond to from time to time. But it’s how we respond to these moments that make us who we are. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen are once again joined by Dr. John Townsend for a discussion on how you can utilize the help of others to get back up when you fall, and how to appropriately take responsibility for your contributions, in both good times and bad.

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 are here with our good friend, Dr. John Townsend. This is so important. Such a great podcast. I mean, we're going deep into the social circle

because you become like the people you hang out with. It's something I have just said for so long. People are contagious. They're sort of like the flu in a bad way, but in a good way, they can just make you feel amazing. So Dr. Townsend is a coach. He's a trainer. He's a psychologist. We're so happy. He's an overall amazing human being. And you had a question. I do. So we talked about how to build up your, which is so important, build up the positive people in your life. Now we really need to talk about how to minimize, probably never going to eliminate them, nor would you necessarily want to. We talked about a cleanse. A cleansing,

the negative people that are draining you. If you're not like me, who's just as like, bye, and is able to block people and not feel that bad about it. If you're one of those people who has a really hard time with it, what do you do? Well, number one, there are some people that if they had the right approach, they could change. You know, I don't, I don't want to leave a person if they bug me, if I haven't talked to them about it. There are some people that there's mild, moderate, severe, moderate, severe. You got to be like Tana. Right. But the toxic ones. Yeah. But a mild person might go, you know, sorry, I didn't know that. And here's the way you do it.

You tell them no. Because no will either, they'll say, well, that's hard. You know, you won't meet me as much as I said or whatever or how much I need. And you go, no, I can't. But they'll go, oh, I'll adapt to that. But really crazy people will leave you. They self-select because when you tell them no, they can't get what they want. They can't get your time.

They can't get your love. They can't get your money. They can't get your energy. What do they do? When you say no, I can't do that. That's not okay. They go find another target. Right.

So the hard part is it starts frustrating them and telling them no. You basically, here's the mantra, guys. You change a controlling person to a frustrated person yeah that's interesting so um so one example of a toxic situation where this is where i blocked someone's number um i did that said i can't help you with that here's what i can help you with it wasn't what that person wanted but would have actually helped them probably more in the long run and they blew up and tried to split and do all kinds of things and toxic things in the family. That's when I blocked them. That's a toxic person. So that's one strategy that I, that I've learned with boundaries is give them, give them another option besides the money that they're asking for,

or the, whatever it is they're asking for that you just can't give them, give them an option. That's actually going to help them long-term, a valuable, you know, your time or something that you can give them or advice or whatever it is. Or give them another person and say, you know, I don't have time for this, but, you know, this organization or whatever might help you. Right. If they go away and they're not interested, then that's one thing. If they become toxic, then that's a whole different story.

It's a whole different thing. Yeah. So let's talk about setbacks and resilience. And all of us have them. I have a phrase that I've grown to love, be curious, not furious. So really try to understand what happened and then learn from it because everybody has setbacks. But in PeopleFuel, you talk about that. Say more about setbacks, resilience.

Well, it's like you said, Daniel, you can expect those. We've got to get the idea out of our heads that this is going to be a smooth track. And most people kind of get that, that there's nobody that's been successful without hurts or failures or whatever. And so in our world, the world of psychology and psychiatry, we call it normalizing. You have to normalize the fact that life's going to be that way, which means adaptation. Really, really smart, successful people are always adapting and going, what did I learn from that? Let me get my team around.

Let me process it. The money thing went south, and I had a great idea, but we lost a lot of money. What did we learn from that? Let me get my team around. Let me process it. You know, the money thing went south, and I had a great idea, but we lost a lot of money. Okay, what did we learn from it? Or my relationship really, really went upside down. And the best thing you can do, the number one thing you can do is first ask yourself this question. What did I contribute? Before we go into this language, I'm around crazy people, and the economy's bad, global warming. Number one thing is, where did I contribute?

I was working with some high-level couples recently. I was doing a retreat with their relationships, and they want to be better, but very, very successful people. And I said, look, let's talk about you guys. And one thing my requirement was with them when they started talking about their marriages, before you tell me how bad, how crazy she makes you or how crazy he makes you, what's your contribution? And they kind of had to struggle with it. I'm much more in touch with how that person makes me crazy. I said, I know you are.

But start thinking, are you sometimes, do you stonewall sometimes? Do you shut down sometimes? Do you blame sometimes? Do you get controlling or rigid? Or do you act like a victim? And then it becomes a very good retreat. So number one, take the beam out of your eye. I love that. So let me add to that a little bit, because I do something very similar with my patients.

And it actually, I'm a child psychiatrist as well. It started with kids, because I get these terribly oppositional, defiant children and they'd be blaming everybody else. And I'm like, so how do you make your mother crazy? And they're like, I don't. And I'm like, no, you do. Think about it with me. And they become very creative and insightful. And so I then started using that with couples. I'm like, so what is it that you do that makes them upset? And they'll go nothing, but then they'll think about it. Because if you know what you do that makes them upset, well, odds are you also know what you do that makes them smile and what you do that makes them. So it's centering them in their power place. Because I know today I could get Tana to start screaming at me

if I told her to shut up, sit down, and you just need to stop and listen to me. And she'd just start screaming. I'd start laughing. But I choose not to do that. No universe I know about is that going to ever happen. I would just think he hit his head. But I choose not to do the things I know.

And that puts me in a powerful place. See, the thing I was, you just said it. What I love about what you do with that and what you're talking about, John, you both said my favorite word, responsibility. But you frame it in a way of power. So when they do that, when they take responsibility, they are more powerful and they're not a victim. And that's just so important. So I love you both have that in your work, that responsibility portion.

There's another cool idea. I've been studying this a lot. You guys are probably familiar with it too, that there's a step beyond resilience now and it's called anti-fragile. A very good book was written by a guy who wrote about culture and psychology called Anti-Fragile. And his thesis is like the bones, when you break a bone, when you mend it and do all the right things, it comes back stronger than it did. His point is if we treat everybody in our lives like broken bird shells and, you know, like I've got to walk on eggshells around you.

Now, there are fragile people, and we've all treated them. There are people that need to be, you know, going in residential treatment care or they need to be hospitalized because they're so fragile. You're very tender with them. But most people, if you can help them to not feel scared about negative things and not be scared of failure, they come back stronger than we were. Resilience means I come back at the same level. Anti-fragile means I come back at a higher level.

So the stressor is the stronger bone. And that's where we need to go when we have a setback. Yeah, there's another word for that I like called work hardening. So when someone goes off work because they have an injury, you don't just send them back to work when they're sort of okay is you need to strengthen them even beyond don't you also call it post-traumatic growth post-traumatic growth is another great term that was a great concept to give to give you guys audience hope that this isn't going to put my life back together. I may come back stronger.

Yeah. You might be better. I might be better. And so before we end this podcast, what are a couple of practical things you tell people when they have a setback? It happens to all of us, either in our finances, our health, our marriages, with our children, of course, if you have teenagers. There's a setback. I have four things I tell people. One is you cannot process this alone. I mean, you and I, the three of us are very relational people. You can't process the setback alone.

It's still in your head. You got to have some safe people that you can say, it really sucks now, and I, the three of us are very relational people. You can't process the setback alone as you do it in your head. You got to have some safe people that you can say, it really sucks now and I'm really discouraged. Because if nobody's there to contain it, it's too much for your brain. So find those safe people and process it. Number two, deal with the judge in your head. Because we all tend to blame ourselves and beat ourselves up. And it was all me and I'm a failure.

I let everybody down. And Tana is laughing her head off. You should just wear your black robes. I think that would just be, you should wear your black robes. Tana, are you saying you know somebody who has a judge? Not me. I don't know anybody like that. Okay. It's a theory. So we all have that main judge that says you're letting everybody down and you're a loser and you'll always be this way. You got to deal with that that it's a theory so we all have that main judge that says you let everybody down you're a loser and you always be this way you kind of deal with that judge so get the support you deal with the judge sometimes we need to grieve we're finding out that the neurology of grief is a very helpful thing don't just

get back on the horse and say okay I'm learning you might say I'm sad I lost a relationship I'm sad about that or I lost an opportunity business or something my kids had. But it's healthy to grieve. There's all kinds of great research about grief. And the fourth one is adapt to the new normal. What did I learn so that I can behave differently? If you do those four things, the setbacks are fine.

I love that. I want to share before we end today one of my favorite stories of post-traumatic growth. And the reason I think it's so powerful is because it was from a teenager. Our niece who we've been helping, who is 14, who went through a truly traumatic and tragic situation. We helped get them out of foster care. My two nieces. We were having dinner talking about that. Yeah, it was really hard. And so my 14 year old niece, who's now down here, she's an honor student going to an early college school. And she's amazing. She's this amazing kid. She's an honor student going to an early college school. And she's amazing. She's this amazing kid.

She's very resilient. And we've been trying to influence her. Now, this is an example of someone you want to influence, right? This is an example of someone you want to invest your energy into. So she's in the care category. She's just an amazing human being

who's trying really hard. She's absorbing it like a sponge. She's doing everything she can. That's worth the investment. Oh, absolutely. And she, the other day we picked her up from a dance. She got invited to a school dance and she, um, she's in the back of the car. And after we dropped her friends off, she said, we, we said, I don't even know how it came up, but she, she looked at me and she said, I'm actually happy about my past now. She used to be so shamed by it. And I said, why?

That's a switch. She said, because I know I can go through anything now. She goes, it doesn't matter. I can tell people about it and it doesn't matter anymore because now I know I can handle anything.

I was full. It gives me chills because I was floored that a 14 year old could own herself and be post-traumatic growth. And so she and I and you, we all talked about post-traumatic growth.

No, you just got choked up right then. And I got choked up too. Okay. We all three got a little choked up about your niece because all of us feel that all of us feel like there's gotta be a chance to redeem these bad years and to come back a better person. And I want 40-year-olds to be able to do what a 14-year-old can do. I want 40-year-olds to do it. If a 14-year-old can do it. You know, the only reason you were able to help her as much as you have is because you came to grips with the demons in your own past. Yeah, when I was in my 30s. But I mean, but whatever the age, whatever the age, in order to be the reluctant healer,

you have to deal with the demons in your past, which you've done head on. I'd be afraid of the demons if I was them. Anyways, we're going to come back with one more. Wait, wait, wait. It's because of special people in my life. Since we're closing it on this note, it's because I have an amazing husband. I have amazing friends like John Townsend, his book Boundaries. I have amazing mentors in my life that I sought out. So you take responsibility, you seek these people out, and it will change your life. And responsibility is never your fault. No, stop playing. It's your ability to respond.

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