Change Your Brain Every Day - We Are Living In An Unhappiness Epidemic and Here's Why

Episode Date: February 28, 2018

If you’ve been feeling down, you’re not alone. In fact, there seems to be a growing epidemic of unhappiness in our society, but fortunately there are things you can do about it. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss the role the 4 circles of influence play in depression.

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. And stay tuned for a special code for a discount to Amen Clinics for a full evaluation, as well as any of our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Welcome back to the Brain Warriors Way podcast, because you're in a war for the health of your brain. You have to be armed, prepared, and aware. Armed, prepared, and aware. Sometimes you have to fight. And sometimes you have to fight. Which is okay with me.

I'm reading a book I know I was so excited it's not like you by Tim Larkin called When Violence Is The Answer you know I mean most often it's not the answer

well he says it's rarely the answer it's very rarely the answer but when it is it's the only answer so it's on self protection but he said

the biggest weapon you have for self protection is the three pounds of fat between your ears. It's avoiding things. It's when things start to get heated, to apologize, to not have to be the macho. Right. I'm in charge. So he makes a big distinction between asocial violence and social significance. So like

bullying would be like trying to gain social status or social significance. Those are the situations where he really emphasizes backing down, where he really emphasizes using your brain because those are not things you need to get into a fight for. It's much better to walk away. Versus asocial violence, which is, quite honestly, there's no possible way to make sense of it. And those are situations where there is no way. Those are the differences. Where there is no way to diffuse it. Those are the situations where he's talking about your only option. So when I was attacked on the street when I was 15, that was an asocial situation. That was not something where I could have diffused it.

In fact, I tried to. So that's not a situation where I could have diffused it because this guy was not, this was an asocial behavior. That was a situation of- Same as antisocial. Right, antisocial. So let's use that term because people understand it better. In a situation like that, he's saying that, and I was literally drugged down and pushed to a point where I was going to be raped and Lord knows whatever else would have happened had I not fought back. That's his point. There are situations where you have no other option if you want to

survive. And when violence is the answer, it's the only answer. And then know how to do it. So it's actually, it's a really good book. At some point we should get them on the podcast. I think it would be wonderful. See, I've been telling you this for a long time and you've been thinking I've been crazy. So I love this. Well, I try to use a big brain God gave me to avoid those kinds of situations, but it's obviously not true. But you can't always. And on the podcast, we talked about how last year we were walking on Corona Del Mar Beach with our big, white, sweet German shepherd and got attacked by two pit bulls.

Who saw that coming? And the guy wouldn't get his dogs under control. So totally different situation where, I mean, you're just totally taken off guard. Well, today we are going to talk about the unhappiness epidemic, which is rampant. Before we do, I want to read a couple of reviews. Thank you for leaving the reviews. It's so much fun for us to read. My name is Yadira. I'm a nutritionist and personal trainer and massage therapist, uh, who is from Puerto Rico. I was so inspired for every episode to keep working on my practice.

The Brain Warriors Way has helped, uh, me with my patients. Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much. Um, and then this past week we were at Saddleback Church. You and I spoke together on the Daniel Plan, which is the program to get the world healthy through churches and other religious organizations. And we had a number of people come up and tell us that they love listening to the podcast. That they listen to it while they walk.

And, you know, it's just, it's really great. So we're grateful for you for sharing this time with us. Unhappiness just seems to be everywhere, even though there's a dozen books, at least, on how to be happy. And they correlated it in this one study with the amount of times kids were on the internet, playing computer games, on social media, texting, or watching TV. So the person who engaged the most with gadgets were actually the least happy. Yeah, it's an interesting, there's probably categories I would assume. You got to ask yourself though, what's going on with our kids in this society? You know, recently I've just, I've heard of a couple of suicides with kids in high schools.

One with a friend of ours, there was a suicide in their school. And then there was one here in Newport Beach at the school that my daughter went to. And you think to yourself, these are kids who are socially isolated, they're bullied, they're, no. This kid was one of the most popular kids in school. He was an honor student, he took all AP classes, he was being sought out by scouts,

he was on the football team, he was varsity football and varsity baseball This was a popular kid and he left three suicide notes. So obviously he put a lot of thought into this You know, he put a lot of thought into it and he put one of his notes was to his parents Tragic just so sad about how he felt like He was nothing more than this trophy for his parents to show off. Then one of them, now this is his perception, obviously. This does not mean that that's how his parents felt. That's his perception of the world. One of them was to his teachers about how

all they care about is test scores and they're not there to actually support kids. And one of them was to students about how they bully kids and they don't support each other. And so he obviously was feeling really intensely isolated in his own way. And as you often say, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. To a temporary feeling. Right. And this child needed help. I mean, anybody who considers when you have that much going on in your life and that much

going for you, ending your life as opposed to figuring out what you can do. So let's take a biopsychosocial spiritual approach to unhappiness. I think that will really help our listeners. So we often talk about the four circles of why you do what you do and why you feel the way you feel because it's complicated, right? To have someone that's so successful on the outside who feels so awful and hopeless on the inside. And you see these people all the time. Yes, I do. High-level executives, I mean, all the time.

Right. There's actually one study from Seattle that said 55% of the U.S. population at some point in their life has thought about killing themselves. And so just having the thought is not abnormal. Acting on it obviously is. So, you know, if we think of any teenager who takes their own life or is chronically unhappy, it could be their thyroid.

Oh my God, talk about that. I, thank God I'm not a suicidal person and I was so attached to my mother. That actually kept me probably from wanting to take my own life. My attachment to my mother and knowing that it would devastate and ruin her. But I wanted to die. I would wish something would happen.

And that's when you had thyroid cancer and as part of the treatment... And I was off of thyroid. They took you off thyroid and they took your thyroid gland. And no one told me and nobody explained to me. Just being low on thyroid can cause that. I had no thyroid. Okay. So having hormone deficiencies, having a head trauma.

I just saw someone in the hall from South Dakota. And you know, when you have a head injury, it just literally turns your world upside down. Right. And so the high number of... If you have one concussion, I just read this last week, you have triple the risk of suicide. One concussion triples your risk of suicide. And I would strongly suggest if you missed the podcast we did with Denny Salisbury, who was the veteran who had 12 concussions and was blown up,

literally blown up and watched his friends die in front of him in Iraq. Iraq, right? Afghanistan. Uh-huh, Iraq. Iraq. It was just gut-wrenching. And then he tried to kill himself. So thyroid, head trauma, infections like Lyme disease can do it, or people have chronic fatigue syndrome, which I'm convinced

is a viral infection. If you have food allergies, remember the one story that we had in our PBS show of the guy that was sensitive to corn, that when he had tried to kill himself three times, he'd had ECT, electric shock therapy. He'd been on numerous antidepressants. And one of the things we do when people come to Amon Clinics is we often will put them on an elimination diet and eliminate gluten, corn, soy, dairy, sugar, artificial colors, and preservatives. We figure out which one is causing the most problems. And he got so much better when we started to add one thing back at a time.

Gluten didn't matter, dairy didn't matter, but as soon as he added back corn within like 20 minutes, he had the image of a gun in his mouth. Right. And we've had those same stories with things like MSG and red food dye. So extreme stories like that. So what you put in your body matters. There's also environmental toxins like mold and so on. Now, obviously there are also psychological reasons why people are unhappy. And in listening to some of the things you said this boy wrote,

he's probably filled with a lot of ants, a lot of automatic negative thoughts, which high achiever, perfectionist, like Chloe. Chloe, if our daughter didn't have us as parents that help us, that help you kill the ants, so the automatic negative thoughts that steal your mind, that totally. No, we've had to give her a lot of tools.

We had this great thing, as we've been talking about on the podcast. We've been sort of emotionally and other ways adopting your sister and our nieces. And Tamara works at night. is adopting your sister and our nieces. And Tamara works at night. And when Amelie, who's eight, wanted to go, she couldn't go to bed during the week. If mom wasn't there, she'd cry and get hysterical. I had that same situation when I was a kid. All of that.

And so I actually took Captain Snout in the Superpower Questions, and she and I had read this before. And we read it again, but with this anxiety moment in her head. And she had fortune-telling ants where she was predicting her mom wouldn't come home. And they had been in foster care, so she had some reason to believe that. And something bad would happen and so she's filled with this undisciplined mind with these ants attacking her and learning how to kill the ants in fact she was at our daniel plan lecture and when i was talking

about the ants she's going that's my aunt that's my ant. That's my ant. And I asked her recently, I said, so how are the ants? And she said, they're gone. No more ants. I love that. And then there is social reasons why people feel unhappy. So I love yesterday too, when we're talking about all of this. Yesterday we were at church and the message was so appropriate to what we're talking about today. I loved it. It was about Moses and how he was basically adopted into this life of privilege and royalty. And so that he had everything that most people aspire to. He had money, he had title, he had sex, he had food, he had, you know, everything, everything you could want in life. And he gave it up. And what I loved about the message was he walked away from it. He made a decision, a conscious decision because he chose something bigger than himself. But, but when they really analyze what it took to do that, how he had to

choose to not care about what society thought. And the whole message was really based on this. Don't choose, you know, don't let your life be dictated by what people think about you. And it was just such a powerful message about how he had- And that is so hard, you know, having been attacked- But it's so important. Professionally for the last 25 years. If you keep your eye on the end game.

If you have a bigger mission, then their opinion, whoever they are, doesn't matter. And that's what that kid was struggling with. So this kid that killed himself, everybody else's opinions mattered. His teachers with his grades, his parents with status. As opposed to his opinion. As opposed to how he felt. Right. So it's really important to keep your eye on something, have something bigger than yourself

that is important. Like our mission is bigger than us. And that makes it possible for you to not care as much about what society... Because what I love you're saying, the masses are the asses. It's really true. I mean, it really is true. I didn't come up with that. It was my philosophy teacher.

But it's really great, because with social media and everything that's on the news, that's not what's important. Well, and always remember this rule, the 18, 40, 60 rule that says when you're 18, you worry about what everybody's thinking of you. So true. When you're 40, you don't give a damn what everybody thinks about you.

And when you're 60, or in my case, 63, you realize no one has been thinking about you at all. It's part of the reason. People spend their days worrying and thinking about themselves, not you. And literally, just about the time I turned 40, I literally, because I used to be just riddled with worry about what people thought. And right around the time I turned 40, I went, who cares? I mean, literally, it was just this weird switch. I'm like, what a waste of energy. Well, and when you've seen as many brains as I've seen, you know, there's not a lot

of them that are super healthy. Well, and why do I care what all these people out there who are making bad decisions think? All right. And then one more, when you think about the unhappiness epidemic, is the spiritual circle, which is not just do you believe in God, but it's why do you care? Why are you on the planet? What is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose? And there's less of that now than ever before. It's all about in the moment. It's the Kardashians. It's, you know... God is being taken out of everything. Right. But it's not just, are you Christian for sure, it's what is your sense of purpose?

Why do you believe you're on the planet? And why is the planet- Did you happen by random chance? I love a phrase that I heard you say a long time ago. Why is the world a better place because you breathe? And the reason I like that phrase is because why is the world a better place because you breathe. And the reason I like that phrase is because why is the world a better place because you breathe? It really means what are you doing? It's an action phrase. What are you doing to make the world a better place? Don't sit around waiting for the world to make you better. Well, let's give them four tips to counteract the unhappiness epidemic. Help someone else.

So what's the one biological tip? Well, I was gonna tell them help someone else. So biological tip, get your numbers checked. Get your important numbers checked. I think that's great. If your thyroid's off, if your testosterone is off, if your blood, whatever it is, you need to know your numbers.

Yeah, and start walking. Because vitamin D. Because head to head against serotonin, against Zoloft, exercise is equally effective. So start walking. Okay. Psychological tip. Go help someone else.

That's a social tip. That's spiritual. It's a social tip. Okay. It could also be spiritual. But anyways, psychological. EMDR. So people have had trauma.

Yeah. In their past. EMDR. Oh, you're not going to like this one, but you need to go do karate. You need to go hit something. It's better than therapy. That's a biological thing. I'm sorry.

No, it's doing something. Well, it kind of is because it's exercise, but it's also psychological. I always say it's better than therapy. It's awesome. It's just awesome. All right. Psychological tip. Whenever you feel mad, sad, nervous, or out of control, write down what you're thinking

and ask yourself if it's true. And then go hit something. If it's true. But not a person. Hit a pad. A social tip. Go help somebody. Go help somebody else.

A spiritual tip. Ask why you're on the planet and do something today. Do a random act of kindness. And socially, you need to surround yourself with people who have meaning and purpose in their lives. Yeah, but what if nobody does? Then find new friends. Stay with us.

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