Change Your Brain Every Day - Top Ways to Ruin Relationships Part 2 (Alcohol, Habits & More)

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

In Part 2 of their series on how to ruin your relationships, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana reveal five additional relationship killers and how they’re often linked to bad habits or unhealthy brain activity. Discover these common relationship issues, as well as simple brain health strategies to overcome them and strengthen your connection with loved ones.   00:00 Intro 00:43 How to Ruin Your Relationships Pt. 2 01:14 Alcohol & Substance Abuse 05:53 Not Dealing With Childhood Trauma 07:55 Untreated Brain Health Problems 12:30 Sponsor 13:56 Hormones 20:59 Say Everything You Think 23:48 Focus/One Page Miracle 29:49 Devices 31:57 Wrap Up

There are 30 million children of alcoholics in the United States. That means 10% of the population is living with the trauma of having grown up in chronic stress directly related to alcohol. don't deal with your own childhood issues, particularly around substance abuse, that totally can ruin a relationship. Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. Welcome back, everyone. We are talking about part two of how to ruin your relationships today. We just, you know, we dug into part one.

And as we were going, we're like, we need to do more on this. There are just so many ways that you can ruin a relationship. Well, and one thing that was huge that we missed and probably the most important thing that I've seen as a psychiatrist over the last 40 years is alcohol and substance abuse. This ruins relationships. And I often say the brain is a sneaky organ. We all have weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, violent thoughts that nobody should ever hear. And the problem is when you drink, those thoughts get out. And you've often shown me scans of people who drink a lot and it drops the frontal lobes.

So when that happens, I mean, lots of things happen, right? Your behavior becomes erratic and, um, you do things you wouldn't do otherwise. You say things you wouldn't say otherwise. And the brain has memory. In fact, the female brain has a larger emotional brain, but also a larger hippocampus where she's going to remember things like from 15 years ago. And so you just want to have a good supervisor in your head. And when you drink, all of a sudden, whatever impulsive thought you had that your brain just conjured up, boom, it comes out. So that's interesting. So you're talking about reserve. Because in the hospital, we used to say that the people who survived, because I was a trauma nurse, people who survived like traumatic accidents and had to be in an ICU unit the longest, the ones who survived that were the ones who had the most reserve going in. The ones who had the most muscle mass on their body,

the ones who were the healthiest going in. And essentially what you're saying is the same thing, right? So it's who has the most reserve. So when you say it depends on what your frontal lobes look like to start with, if you started with low frontal lobes, you have less reserve, essentially. Right. And with less reserve, even a little bit of alcohol or a little bit of marijuana can throw you off because it drops it. And then your behavior is more erratic and it erodes trust. So I know even multiple people in a family react differently. I know there's someone in my family who even a small amount of alcohol, like she can't have a little bit without having a whole bunch.

And even a little bit makes her react very differently than most people who have, say, a half a glass of wine. She just suddenly is very different. And there's a movie that that reminds me of Blind Date with Kim Basinger and Bruce Willis. And she kept telling him, I have an allergy to alcohol. I can't have it. If I have a little, I can't stop. And I act really crazy. And he didn't believe her. Next thing you know, he's in jail because and he thought he was being cool right by getting her to drink a little bit right um and some people actually feel sort of more relaxed to less inhibited but it can cause serious problems one of the things I find is many people don't really understand the definition of addiction. Right. Because they go, oh, no, I'm not an addict. And I actually had

a conversation with someone this week. And I'm like, well, let me tell you the definition, at least my definition, is if you drink or use drugs and you get into trouble, like she acted out and embarrassed herself. If you drink and get into trouble in your relationships, with your money, with the law, with your health, with your work, if you drink and get into trouble, and then you do it again. It's like you don't learn this is a problem for you. So I just want people to think, am I my best self when I'm using it? Now, the people in denial will go, yes, right? I had too much experience with this. No, it's fine. I'm better. And I just look at their brains and they're clearly not better. This leads to the second way to ruin a relationship, which is not deal with your own childhood trauma. Now, we're going to do a whole podcast on childhood trauma.

But when I was in medical school, someone I love tried to kill herself. I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist. That's why I'm a psychiatrist, because I came to realize if he helped her, which he did, it wouldn't just help her. It would help her children. It would help her grandchildren. And as she got help, it became very clear she grew up in an abusive alcoholic home. And so I study children and grandchildren of alcoholics. There are 30 million children of alcoholics in the United States. That means 10% of the population is living with the trauma of having grown up in chronic stress directly related to alcohol. And when you grow up with that, there's this triad that adult children of alcoholics, the literature talks about, is they don't talk, they don't trust, and they don't feel. And, you know, it's public knowledge. We adopted our nieces because their parents struggled with alcohol and other substance abuse.

And it was really important to get them help so that they didn't have to continue this generational curse, right? And so if you don't deal with your own childhood issues, particularly around substance abuse, that totally can ruin a relationship. For sure. And then if we look at the next way to ruin a relationship we didn't talk about, is if you have an undiagnosed or untreated brain health problem, mental health problem, that's hard on a relationship.

Well, and that's interesting because it almost feels like, well, that's unfair. Because if I have a head injury or I have, say, I'm depressed or bipolar, it almost feels unfair. But I think what you're saying is it's not, it's not a matter of blame. It's really a matter of just understanding and trying to get help so that you, you go into your relationship as your best self. Because so many people struggle. Yeah. I don't think we should think about it as a fairness issue, but just as a reality. Right.

You're the one that always says- Fair is a place in Pomona. Fair is a place in Pomona. It has nothing to do with life. It's got bad food and farm animals. So you need to explain it because many people listening to the podcast don't live in Southern California. That's where the California state fair is.

Right. But anybody who's got kids knows, you know, that's not fair. That's not fair. And I would look at my daughter and go, yeah, fair is a place in Pomona. It's a place in Los Angeles that has bad food and farm animals. It has nothing to do with life. If you grew up like I grew up, you know, kind of in a crazy place. It's really has nothing to do with life. either with childhood trauma or head injuries or depression from whatever reason and taking that into a relationship, it's like you're not blaming them for the problems in the relationship. You're just saying going in with your best self is definitely going to make the relationship better. So understanding why those things are happening and what you can do about it. Wow. And we'll do whole podcast episodes on

all of these. But for example, if you're married to someone or you yourself have ADD or ADHD, if you just think of the hallmark symptoms, short attention span, and we already talked about bonding requires two things, time, actual physical time, and a willingness to listen. Well, if short attention span, they're distracted, often disorganized, procrastinate, and can be impulsive and restless. Those are not things that brings the other person closer to you. They're the things that can cause chronic stress.

And it's just really important if you know, well, that could be the missing link, why my relationship is in trouble. It's like, well, get that treated. It is highly treatable as are anxiety disorders. With anxiety disorders often comes a high negativity bias. And if you're negative, negative, negative, that's more stressful for your partner. Or depressed, you can have cognitive problems. Your libido tends to go away. You don't want to eat. You don't want to go do things that are fun. I mean, that's one of the definitions of depression, the things that are typically pleasurable for you, whether it's sex or having fun. You don't want to do it anymore. Imagine the impact on your partner. And it's hard. Now, does that mean it's your fault? No, it's a medical

issue. It's like sort of saying cancer is your fault. But it's critical, important to get it treated. And I remember when I was a young psychiatrist, one of my new patients, she came into my office. She said, my husband's going to divorce me. I'm like, why? She said, in a manic episode, I spent, I put us $30,000 in debt. You can imagine if you're the husband and all of a sudden you're working hard and you want to save money. And now you're hit with $30,000 debt. That is chronically stressful. And thank goodness he was able to understand what was happening. She agreed to treatment. I mean, imagine if she didn't agree.

And that is not uncommon in people who have bipolar disorder because they love the manic hives. It is clearly stressful. Are you excited to optimize your brain and help the brains of those you love? Do you want to prevent or treat memory problems, anxiety or depression? Do you want to be happier? That's why I created Amen University, to take what I've learned over the last 45 years and help you have a better brain, a better mind, and a better body. You can take courses like our 30-Day Happiness Challenge, which was shown in research to increase happiness by 32% in just 30 days, or Memory Rescue, or Overcoming Anxiety, Depression,

Trauma, and Grief, or Healing ADD at Home in 30 Days and much more. We also have professional courses and courses for kids, including Brain Thrive by 25, which was found in independent research to decrease depression and improve self-esteem. And as a special offer just for our listeners, you can save 20% on your next course. Visit amenuniversity.com and use the code podcast20. Maybe you can talk about the next one. Yeah. So what about hormones? Wow. What a wild ride for women. It's so different because men

and women are so different. I mean, let's face it. Women's bodies are so complicated. Um, and I mean, men go through a change. Their minds are complicated too. Yeah, we are. We're complicated, but, um, I like to say we're not simple, but, um, men go through hormone shift. They go through menopause, but menopause is a whole thing. I mean, there's a reason they call it men on pause, right? So it can be pretty wicked. You know, it's like hot moms and men on pause and your hormones go through this massive shift. And, um, we just got out of this, you know, this phase of having PMS every month. And now we go through this like phase of, it's just, it's not fun. I mean,

menopause is a nasty witch. It just, it changes your hormones dramatically. You go, your, your energy changes, your moods change. You're having hot flashes all the time. Um, your libido changes because of your hormones. It's a lot of things change. And what some people don't realize it actually changes the wiring in your brain. So the wiring in your brain changes several times throughout your life, right? It changes when you're a kid, when you, when you become a teenager, it changes again, when you get pregnant and become a mom, it changes dramatically because you now are suddenly like protecting your nest. It's really important. Everything

becomes about protecting your family. You'll put up with a lot of things you wouldn't normally put up with in order to protect that nest. And then it changes again. During menopause, it begins to rewire itself and go back to being a bit more selfish. And you stop wanting to put up with all of the things you used to put up with. And a lot of it has to do with your hormones. So I think you mentioned in one of our podcasts already that women file for divorce more often than men. 75% of the time. And it's in part, they have greater access to the right side of their brain.

So the right side of your brain is the more anxious side that notices trouble, that notices problems. The left side is sort of the happy side of the brain. And males, me in particular, tend to be more left brain. Women, because they have a larger corpus callosum in some studies, that's the big highways between the left and right side, tends to be a bit larger in women. And so they have twice the amount of depression as men. They have more anxiety disorders than males and they file for divorce three quarters of the time, which I think is stunning. And I think your point about hormones changing, which changes a relationship.

So we fall in love often early when our sex hormones are high and libidos are more matched. And then trouble happens, I've seen as a psychiatrist, when libidos become mismatched. And it can be either way. she has a high libido and he has a low libido it can be either way but when they're mismatched then there's problems right but one of the studies i read was actually that um during this phase when women's brains are rewiring they're just kind of done and, they stopped tolerating things that seemed normal to them for a long time and they become more selfish again. And so if you take

that, like you said, and combine that with men going through their own issues during menopause, it's, it's a problem. Well, and then in, um, I mean, there's so many things to talk about with hormones and we'll do podcasts on hormones. But 10 years before women go into menopause, progesterone tends to go low and progesterone is like the brain's natural valium. It sort of calms things down. And when it goes low, all of a sudden you're not sleeping. You're more anxious. You're more irritable. And what I've often seen is women come to see me. No one's tested their hormones. And they're on Lexapro for depression, Xanax for anxiety, and Ambien for sleep. And I'm like, no, no, no. Take a little progesterone. In fact, you take progesterone.

I'm a fan. Not everyone can do it. So it's fair to say that if you've had cancer, certain types of cancer in your family, not every woman can take bioidentical hormones. I don't have that. And I'm grateful because I do take bioidenticals. I'm not a fan of the suffering that I started to feel with the menopause, and I didn't want to end up on the six o'clock news or divorced. So I do take bioidentical hormones. And for me, they were pretty magical. I know I was even losing hair. So a lot of women begin to lose hair.

Their skin gets dry. As their libido is going down, they're having dryness in other places. It's rough. And so when you straighten your hormones out, you know, a lot of that stuff corrects itself. But if you can't take bioidentical hormones, there are actually supplements you can take that will help with some of the symptoms. It may not be as extreme, but eating the right things, getting your sleep right, making sure you're hydrating and taking some of those supplements can make a radical difference. BrainMD actually has a PMS product. And a menopause.

And a new menopause product. And we have BrainT Max, which I take every day to help support testosterone. But we have to talk a little bit about testosterone because it can help relationships or it can ruin relationships. testosterone is so important for many things. People think of muscles, but it's also helpful for mood and focus and motivation and memory. Even for women, muscle mass. For women, it's very important. When it's too low, you can get sad and have a low libido. When it's too high, your libido can go up, but your empathy goes down. So when I see some of the girls or guys and they're on too high a doses, you called them vanity doses, that all of a sudden when libido goes up and

empathy goes down, that's a prescription for divorce. Well, they also go to jail more often. So they get divorced more often. They cheat more often and they go to jail more often. So they get arrested. So you, because you're, yeah, it makes you behave in ways you wouldn't normally behave. So there's a big difference between therapeutic doses and vanity doses. So getting your hormones checked, you and I always talk about know your important health numbers and hormones are part of that. Another way to ruin your relationship is say everything you think. Seinfeld said the brain is a sneaky organ. We all have weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, violent thoughts that nobody should ever hear.

And we do an exercise, and we'll spend a whole podcast on this at some point, called The One-Page Miracle. On one piece of paper, write down what you want. Relationships, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual health. What do you want? And I think one of the reasons you and I get along really well is we're both very focused people. And early in our relationship, we did this together. And I must say this 10 times a week with my patients, that with my wife, I want a kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship. I always want that, but I don't always feel like that. Rude thoughts just show up. And it's like, where did you come from? Don't say that. Now,

going back to our first point with substance abuse, if I was a drinker, I don't drink. If I was a drinker, some of those rude thoughts that I don't even believe, right? I mean, everybody, they get these crazy thoughts. It's like, no, don't say that. What about head injuries or ADD? This is where that becomes important. So you see how it stacks. Right.

Head injury because you played football in high school or you had a biking accident or you're in a car accident, right? Stuff that you didn't know about or wasn't your fault damaged. And now you know what you want, but then you don't sleep. Drops frontal lobe function. Or for a woman, you're in the last three or four days before your menstrual cycle starts, lower frontal lobe function. Or you and I will do a whole session on this as well. We're both wearing continuous glucose monitors. Yeah, I'm obsessed. Right. What's your blood sugar? Because we want to see, right? You want to be

healthy. You want to have a healthy libido. You want to have healthy sexual function. You got to keep your blood sugar at a healthy level, right? When you have a sugar burst, your blood sugar goes up and then it drops. That's dropping function in your prefrontal cortex. So just talk a little bit more about focus and how important that is. I think women, especially, we tend to be multitaskers. I know I think I'm the queen of multitasking and I think that's an amazing thing, but it can also be a problem, right? So, because it, it, it can interfere with focus and you have to, I think at least for me, I know I have to be careful and I want to be able to prioritize and put my focus in important places when it needs to be. I try to dedicate time to you, my relationship with you, also my relationship with my daughter, with the kids, at different times.

So trying to be present is really important. I think that's a really good word, is being present at times with the people that are important to you and not thinking about too many things at once. And in order to do that for me, meditation and prayer are really important in my life. Journaling is really important in my life. Journaling is

really important in my life. I get up early in the morning and you always see me writing. That just really helps me get my focus in place. And I like this idea of what I call leveraging the most important things. So we can have, as women, we'll make a list of a hundred things. You know, probably 80 of those hundred things or 90 of those hundred things are not going to get us very far. They're really not that important. Take the 10 that are going to get you the furthest, right? Leverage those things and learn how to delegate, but really focus and be present with the people that are important to you. And you've talked about, um, you've talked about special time, but you got to do that with, with not just your kids. You got to do that with your husband too, right? It's just important.

It'll come back to you in spades. I like special time so much. Right. And it's important for both of you to be thinking of that. I know in our last podcast, some people thought that I was saying that all of the onus is on the woman. Absolutely not. I wouldn't be doing all of this stuff if I didn't feel like our relationship was

a two-way street. We invest in each other. We both think of this. It's not a 50-50 thing. It's not a 100-0 thing. It's a 100-100 thing. That's how you make a great relationship. Well, and that's why the one-page miracle is so important. You need a mission statement for your relationship. And I'm so blown away because I've been doing this for 45 years. It was 45 years ago I decided to be a psychiatrist. And most people never tell themselves what they really want. They're like, oh, well, I want business success, or I want babies, or I want a bigger house. And I'm like, no, what do you want in your relationships? Work, yes. Money, yes. Physical, emotional, spiritual, hell. And then you have to look at it. And the one thing that makes people the craziest is if their relationships are not good, right? You read about murder, suicides, and I've actually

treated children from murder, suicides, families. And people just are never crazier when their primary relationship is blowing apart, but they've never actually sat like all businesses have business plans. Families, love, should have a plan where you're like, okay, what's the goal? What do I want? Is my behavior getting me what I want? And whenever we struggle, which is not often, thank you so much, the easy thing is to blame the other person. That's so easy, but it's so ineffective. Well, when I go, what can I do to make this better? You respond. And that's where I want to be. And so you said it, 100-100.

And the question is, what is it I can do to make this better? And I often, and I'm sorry if I'm talking too much, but this is so important. I often ask my patients, what do you do to ruin the relationship? So I often ask kids, like, what do you do to get your mother to yell at me? I'm like, nothing. I'm like, come on, you know, what do you do? And in relationships, what do you do that makes your partner really crazy? What do you do that hurts their feelings? Like I know how to hurt your feelings, but I choose not to do it because it's not the goal. So I like what you said a minute ago.

You know, this is your relationship with your partner is one of the most important things in your life. This is something that we've actually talked to all the kids about. That this is probably the single most important decision you're going to make. Because it will determine, yes, where you go to school is important. Yes, you know, what you choose as a career is important. Yes, all of those things are important. We're not saying they're not, but who you choose to marry ends up determining whether you split your money 50, 50, it ends up determining whether you split custody, you know, and you see your kids half of the time on holidays, it determines whether you're fighting in court. It determines so many things and it determines, you know,

whether you, it just, it's so making sure that you take that time and you make sure it's a fit is so important, but that's why these things are so important. Making sure that you check on brain issues, that you're like looking into all of these things that you're taking care of yourself, making sure like, are, what is their background? Are they a child of an alcoholic that you're addressing all of these things ahead of time because it matters. So there's one more thing I want to talk about. Devices. So you have called my phone.

The mistress. The other woman. It's the mistress. For a long time. And I work to put it down. Yes. time and i you've been better to put it down yes um and while we eat not to be on your phones you know i mean i'm the ceo of two companies or at red lights and um but but i think since 2007 when the iPhone was released, it has negatively impacted relationships.

So one of the things that I think helped was me getting up and leaving. You just get on your phone. I'm like, bye. So I'm out. Because if I'm going to sit there by myself, why do I need to be there? I don't need to be there. I can go do something else. So I think, you know, when, when, when you begin to realize you feel like you were pretty

much isolated and alone when the other person is just on their device, it's not a good feeling. And I just decided I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to leave. So that was effective because I didn't want you to know you want me there but i'm not sharing time with the mistress i don't share well but these things are insidious right and most people don't know they were created to be addictive yes and so you have to be thoughtful and take breaks from them otherwise they steal all the dopamine in your brain and they can separate you. And so having rules around devices, I think, are particularly important.

Well, and that's easier to do with children. With adults, you can't tell them what to do. You tell me what to do all the time. But part of how I do that, part of how I shape your behavior is by controlling what I do, right? I control what I do, which shapes behaviors. You just don't like what I do. Yes, and I don't want you leaving. Right. All right.

Well, we did a whole bunch today and ways to ruin a relationship from substance abuse to not taking care of your own childhood issues to having an untreated brain health, mental health issue to not having your hormones balanced to not being focused and spending too much time on your gadgets. We hope this has been super helpful for you. We would just dearly love if you would subscribe to the podcast. If you'd leave us a review, we would love that. If you have a story you want us to know, you can actually DM me on Instagram at doc underscore amen.

And we are grateful that you are a part of the Change Your Brain Every Day audience.