Change Your Brain Every Day - This is Reason Why People Act Hysterical, with Dr. Jennifer Love

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

As you get older in life, your stresses begin to stack up, and though we may think we’re leaving the past behind, the truth is that it tends to resurface in surprising ways, sometimes when we least expect it. In this series of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen are joined by “When Crisis Strikes” author Dr. Jennifer Love for a discussion on the origins of hysterical thinking and behavior, and why it’s so important to get a grip and come to terms with past traumas.   For more info on Dr. Love's new book "When Crisis Strikes: 5 Steps to Heal Your Brain, Body, and Life from Chronic Stress", visit https://www.amazon.com/When-Crisis-Strikes-Chronic-Stress/dp/0806540818  

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, everyone. Happy holidays. We think about you a lot during this incredibly stressful time. And because of the stress, we are going to bring you

one of our favorite people who will become one of your favorite people. Dr. Jennifer Love is one of the physicians at Amen Clinics. She is a psychiatrist. She's got a specialty in addiction medicine. So I send her a lot of our really tough patients. Timing is so good because right now. Brand new book. Yeah. When crisis strikes now, when crisis strikes, she has been on the Dr. Phil show and the doctors. She was part of Mark Hyman's broken brain series.

She's beautiful. She's smart. She's beautiful. She's smart. She's thoughtful. And she just does a great job taking care of our patients at Amen Clinics. Yeah, this couldn't be a better time. I mean, you did, obviously, Dr. Love did not know that we were going to be in a pandemic when you wrote this book. That's so interesting. And addiction is just through the roof right now because of the stress of the pandemic. So, you know, kudos to you for just the timing of this, even though it was not planned. It's been surreal. So welcome to Brain Warriors Way audience. These are brain warriors. What that means is they're armed, prepared, and aware

to win the fight of their lives, which is for the health of their brain. So tell us why you wrote this book. I mean, you know, as psychiatrists, we deal with people in crisis all the time, but what triggered it for you? So thinking about life, and I'm not going to say that I'm approaching middle age because obviously I'm 29, but the older you get, when you go through life,

things start piling up. You have parents who are ill, you start losing loved ones. And you may have children with special needs or someone in the family with an addiction, or you're involved in one of these horrible mass shootings, all these things. And I started thinking about this and I was talking to a colleague of mine who ends up being the coauthor of this book. He's a clinical neuropsychologist in Norway. So we were talking about just life and all these things and how we deal with it. And we come from very different perspectives and training. And so we thought, well, how could we take what we do with our patients and kind of rearrange our tools and the toolbox, so to speak, to make what we do accessible to people,

but not overwhelming, but not too shallow. So how do you create a meaningful in-depth approach to these serious life issues, but in a way where people can still tap into their humor. We can talk about our humanity and it's not depressing. So that was the big challenge, but that's really how When Crisis Strikes was born. Well, and that's fantastic because I mean, when people are suffering, if they're in crisis, you know, we're always recommending get professional help, but not everybody's going to do that. So to have this in their tool belt is, is really important to have these tools. If you're just not in a position to see someone professionally is really important. Yeah. We spent months, we have these huge right on wipe off boards

and we just went through like how many steps does there need to be? You know, cause in my mind, it's so complicated because my mind, when I'm doing therapy with someone, I have a hundred things going on there and I'm thinking, you know, all these different things and where it can go. So we just did right, right on board after right on board, really figuring out how many steps, how are we going to make this? We ended up doing five and the steps are all a finger of the hand. So for instance, the first step is get a grip. And so we, it was really challenging, even just organizing the tools in the toolbox,

let alone writing the book. Pandemic. So we're in a historically stressful time. One of the most, and you know, I just remember when I was a child, we'd have air raid drills because we always worried the Soviet Union was going to nuke us. So we had to go. And I live in Southern California where there are earthquakes. Earthquake drills.

Right? So, and then there was, you know, the civil rights riots in the sixties and Vietnam and, but, but I don't remember a time that is just globally this stressful, probably not since world war two. And, um, so when you say get a grip in the middle of a pandemic, tell us what you mean. Yeah. So we all know 2020 has been a parade of horribles, one right after the other. And we're just watching one crazy thing walk by us, you know, in our lives after another. And so the first step is really to understand what you're dealing with. So getting

a grip is kind of like starting a little bit of excavation. So one, the problem itself is obvious. My kid is using drugs, or I think my marriage is ending, or my partner has cancer, or, you know, fill in the blanks, financial ruin, lost my job, lost my company, whatever it is. That's the obvious. Then we look at the context. So I wrote this book without even knowing what would happen in 2020, obviously. So you have these horrible life chronic stressors in the middle of this parade of horribles. And we are all affected by what's going on. People are either worried or fearful or they're sick or they're angry. You know, there's very little room for neutrality in 2020, no matter who you are and what you believe, very little room for neutrality. But really the context, getting a grip is about excavating a

little bit deeper because we all have these internalized fossils that are packaged away that we know are part of our pasts, but have never felt part of our present before. And these things get triggered. And so if I'm going through a crisis today of, let's say, a big financial loss. So 2020, my identity got stolen and someone filed taxes and stole my return. So, and then the IRS is closed and I'm, you know, working overtime taking care of my patients. And it was just, you know, one of those things. Now I can be affected in a certain way, whereas someone watching your podcast may have a totally different response.

So if when someone's young, their family loses their home, or they have a big financial loss, or they lose their security somehow, their house is broken into or something, that's going to affect how that individual responds to the taxes getting stolen or, you know, the current crisis that's in hand. And so we can have these responses that seem exaggerated to the people around us because they can't see our fossils. They can't see what's going on. My favorite saying I say all the time is if it's hysterical, it's historical. So we are allowed in big life crises to have big responses. But when my internal response is way up here and my crisis is big, it's here, but my response is

off the charts, then I'm responding to more than just this crisis, right? I'm responding to everything that's going on in COVID and everything that's happened in my past. That is now my subconscious is, is being pulled up somehow and I don't realize it. So that's really, we walk people through that process of getting a grip on what's actually going on. So when you're hysterical. I'm hysterical. Yes. So fabulous. But I love what you're saying because we have, you know, so we have a situation just before quarantine. We became the legal guardians for our two nieces because of just addiction drama in my family addiction. Yeah. And and mental health challenges and stuff like that. So we have these two nieces who have been through just significant trauma for a long time. And then we have my daughter who we, I raised intentionally very differently than I was raised. And so she's had a very different upbringing than my nieces. So the pandemic hits and I'm hearing, this isn't just about me and us and our family. I read all of my comments on social media and I

respond to them. And so I'm, I'm really responding for people who are listening to, cause it's, I'm not alone. Like we're, we're pretty average. We're pretty normal. Um, I don't know about normal, but we're average. So, um, but the teenagers in our house responded and reacted extremely differently. So just like what you're saying, my daughter for my daughter, who's never really had something this significant, it was off the charts. And at first we were like, okay, she's acting a little spoiled. Like she's acting, what is going on right now? Like this is, she's making this very much about her, but we have enough training that we didn't say that out loud. We just sort of stepped back and watched and tried to talk to her. My nieces who had been

through so much trauma were like, eh, I mean, it could be worse. We've got a really, you know, a house with our own space and food and a TV and we're good. And so I'm like, okay, this is really fascinating to watch. It is. And for the young people, I think this has been a particularly difficult year simply because of where they are in their development stage. So until we're in our mid twenties, you know, from kind of junior high on, we are peer driven and our ideas and our beliefs and our personalities and everything, we are constantly sending out radar beams to our peers in that age group. And so when you take them out of school and take them away from that, they feel more lost. You know, I'm an introvert and I'm, you know,

like I said, 29, so I'm past that, right. I'm happy being here and I'm not bothered. I mean, I get lonely sometimes, but I'm not as bothered, but the younger people are a lot more because developmentally, that peer group is more significant to them in their development than it is to me and my current life development. And don't you think part of it has to do, I'm curious what your thoughts are on this, how much they've experienced in life? I mean, the older we are, we've experienced, we've had to work through things. So it's, it's, we have maybe a little more skilled in someone like a kid who feels like they've just lost everything. I mean, the grief process for these teenagers who are, you know, school and social stuff and college is just such, such a good word. Um, when we come back, we're going to talk about two, three, four, and five on how to deal with crisis.

But did you learn something? The thing I'm going to write down and post is if you're hysterical, it must mean it's historical. I love that. I'm going to steal that, Jennifer. But write it down. Post it on any of your social media sites and hashtag brain warriors way podcast. And also you can get Jennifer's new book when crisis strikes out December

29. That to or me tag when crisis strikes. You can get the book. It's going to be available at Target. How exciting is that? But also barnesandnoble.com or Barnes and Noble stores if they're open. Amazon, anywhere great books are sold.

Jennifer works in our Costa Mesa Amen clinics, and we're just so proud of her. Stay with us. five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.