Change Your Brain Every Day - Tana’s Tips for Dealing with an Addiction in the Family

Episode Date: December 3, 2020

Addiction played a major role in shaping Tana Amen into the woman she is today. Yet interestingly, none of these addictions were her own. Rather they were the addictions of those closest to her. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Tana and Dr. Daniel Amen give you some of their best, most practical tips for handling an addiction in the family.  For more information on Tana's new book, "The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child", visit relentless courage.com For info on Tana Amen's upcoming free live virtual event, visit tanaamen.com/event  

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 still talking about relentless courage of a scared child, and we are just loving having you on this journey with us. We've been talking

about addiction and mental illness and how it affects just everybody in your family. And so what are some practical tips that, you know, for you, if you are dealing with someone in your family, and you're, you know, you're that person who sort of is the glue, you hold things together, you're the fighter, how do you take care of yourself? What is self care? What does that look like? And how do you deal with what's going on in your family? So some practical suggestions like reading the end of mental illness, that will help getting them to the right care and maybe aiming clinics as part of that. We have nine clinics around the country. Our Dallas office is opening very soon. We already started scheduling people,

so we're pretty excited. But before we get into this, I want to read a review from Kim from Seattle. My therapist recommended that I look into Dr. Amen's work. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is the first thing I chose to listen to while running errands in the car. Dr. Amen and his wife, Tana, speak openly and informatively on issues such as anxiety and depression and give ideas based on research and how to manage thoughts and behaviors. They discuss a wide variety of topics as it relates to brain health, such as ADD in adults and children, marijuana and substance abuse, nutrition, supplements. Any person at any age in life can benefit from listening to their ideas, whether it is for themselves or someone in their lives.

It's nice to get reliable information based on research, and I find their style to be validating and encouraging rather than authoritative. It's like getting to hear the personal conversations of a doctor that a doctor has at home on various topics. Definitely give it a listen. Thanks, Dr. Amon and Tana. Well, thank you, Kim. We are grateful. So if you're dealing with someone who is struggling with an addiction or a mental health challenge, and it is stressing you out because it is stressful, you want to get the help that you can. And sometimes the person who's struggling won't come for help. And we see their family members to help give them ideas. Yes. Self-care is just as important. It's one of the reasons I wrote my book was because

it was a struggle and it was a process. And I think pain shared is pain divided. It gives people hope. They don't need to live in quiet and shame and all that stuff. But self-care is really important when you're dealing with this. So learning how to... Sometimes you have a choice. Sometimes you can walk away. Sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes there are children involved. Sometimes there are other reasons you can't walk away. And it's really important to learn how to draw those boundaries, which we're going to talk about, but it's also important to learn to take care of yourself and re-energize yourself. So yeah. All right. So self-care. Great. Number one, two is get information. Three, realize it's more complicated than it may seem rather than they just

choose to not be responsible it may have to do with frontal lobe function or it may have to do with toxic exposure at a patient this morning their Lyme test came back positive and that's why they're overwhelmingly tired another patient this morning their mold test came back positive. And that's why they're overwhelmingly tired. Another patient this morning, their mold test came back positive, which may be why they're anxious. So understand it may be other things than you think that they just don't care. And I think finally, we have to think about grace and forgiveness and that's not always easy. And so, because when you, um, and I think we were going to do an episode just on, I think we need to do that an episode on just forgiveness, but having grace, um, and forgiving people is part

of self-care. And so when you can just learn to, this art of letting go and forgiving people and having grace, it's going to help you a lot. Well, and you remember Christine's son that actually is the opening story in the end of mental illness. I began chapter one with Jared's story that initially you actually didn't want Chloe to play with him. Yeah. And I felt so bad. He's the cutest little boy. And now he's a very good looking older boy. He's a, he's a good looking kid. And, but I felt so bad because he was just sort of out of control. And so I had this, you know, baby and I'm like, he's just too out of control. And a I had this, you know, baby and I'm like, he's just too out of control. And a lot of other parents felt that way too. They didn't want their kids around him because it felt dangerous. Right. And so from the outside, it's like, oh, those parents should be

better. Well, I knew better than that. It's just, it feels, it still feels dangerous. Right. But that's what a lot of people would think, right? If they see a child that's out of control. And when we ended up scanning him, he has a pattern we call the ring of fire, where his brain just worked way too hard. And they thought it was ADD, ADD, ADD, five stimulant medications. And stimulating a brain that's on fire is like pouring gasoline. And guaranteed a kid like that, if you don't get it treated, she was smart. She got it. She figured it out and got it treated. That's how we reconnected. She got it treated when he was young, because those are the people that self-medicate. They can't stand the noise in their brain. Our ring of fire group often will go to alcohol,

marijuana, opiates as a way to try to settle things down. And it can lead them on this road of addiction that we've been talking about, which is just filled with car crashes and accidents and people damaged in their wake. Yeah. And, and, you know, when, when you've got people with addiction in your life, I mean, it's hard because, you know, we all want to, you know, help people. We were sort of hardwired to like help people, but it's, it's really hard when you know, that it just causes constant, not just drama and chaos, but it's the same stuff over and over. And you know, it's going to do it. It's like, I know the next story I'm going to hear the next phone call is just going

to be the same nonsense. Well, and it's very important to separate events because when you live with someone with an addiction or you love someone with an addiction, every crisis gets imprinted onto the brain and can traumatize you. And so whenever you deal with the latest crisis, you're actually not dealing with the latest crisis. You're dealing with all of them. And often you can make the current one much worse because you overreact because you're not dealing with the moment. You're dealing with all of the moments. So learning how to separate that is very important.

Yeah, that's a really important point because that was something you actually helped me with because I would see my sister as a tornado. In my mind, it's like the minute my phone rang, it's like, Oh, here comes the tornado because it was all of the events all tied together. Or here's one, a rattlesnake. So how are you going to effectively deal with a situation or a person when that's the vision you have of them, when that's your picture?

And so dealing with each moment separately is so important. And not labeling it something like that is like not coming up with an analogy like that, because it's actually, even though you think it's just an analogy, it's not. It's affecting how you are able to handle it. Because how do you handle a rattlesnake? You just, you know, you chop its head off if you're me. So it's, you know, you use- Or you don't go anywhere near it. Right. So either way, you're not effective. Yeah. Well, we hope this has been helpful for you. Write to us and tell us the stories in your life.

You can write to us at brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. Leave us a comment question or review um you can also pre-order the relentless courage of a scared child go to relentlesscourage.com if you pre-ordered it at amazon or burnsandnoble.com or anywhere great books are sold um you can enter your receipt number and get a whole bunch of really helpful, thoughtful gifts. Help us make The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child. I'm so appreciative of your support. An international bestseller because we know it can help so many. Stay with us.

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