Change Your Brain Every Day - What Can You Do When Abusive Behavior Is Present?

Episode Date: December 1, 2017

It seems like every day you turn on the news and see someone new being accused of sexual harassment. In this episode, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss the power dynamic, and how when coupled with brain dysfunction can lead to the type of poor decision making that ruins careers.

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. Welcome back. Today we are going to talk about men behaving badly. You've had some experience with this, I understand. I think most women have had some experience with this, I understand. I think most women have had some experience with this. All right, men behaving badly.

It's everywhere in the news. You can't turn on your phone, open a newspaper without the latest Charlie Rose was fired because he acted badly. Harvey Weinstein on and on Kevin Spacey. Okay. So newsflash, this isn't new. Really? No. It's just that enough women are finally speaking up because, I mean, it's really

interesting. I mean, I guess, you know, I was always taught, be a brat and apologize later, like, don't put up with it. But it's interesting how many women think they have to put up with it or for whatever reason they feel that pressure. And it's really hard. And some of those industries are hard to succeed. They're hard to live in if you're, you know, and to be able to speak up. Well, it's not just in Hollywood. It is in Hollywood because men are often in the position of power, but it's virtually in any employment situation.

Where there's a power over type of atmosphere. I even had a very, very short run in Hollywood trying to go on calls, and I had the same issue happen when I was 17. I'm not that nice. So it was very short-lived. And I decided really quickly that that was not the environment for me because I knew I would never make it because I would never keep my mouth shut.

So I got into a little tiff. Yeah, that's not a strong suit for you. It's not. Putting up with that would never be something that would work for me. Well, and nor should it be. Nor should it be. I think that's the right model. But let's talk about why it's more men than women, because clearly it's more men than women. And it doesn't mean women don't, powerful women don't sexually harass men. They do. But the numbers are staggering that it's more men. In fact, men get arrested 14 times more than females. And this isn't an excuse, but, you know,

I often say when people act badly, ask why. I mean, you have to try to understand it so you know what the difference is. And we have scanned hundreds of sexual harassers here at Amen Clinics. I mean, they're seeing us, either they've been court ordered to see us or their board of directors made them see us. So you're going to have to like walk me through this because you're going to have a hard time getting a lot of empathy from me here. I'm not after empathy. I'm after why does this happen? So we published the world's largest gender study earlier this year on 46,000 scans. And what we showed was females had significantly more activity in their frontal lobes, which means better focus, forethought, judgment, impulse control, organization, planning, empathy, learning from the mistakes they make. So they are wired to have more empathy and more impulse control. Put on top of that, men play contact sports where they are more likely to damage or hurt their frontal lobes. So now they're going to have, they already have lower frontal lobes to

start. We know that boys get diagnosed with ADD five times more than girls damage their frontal lobes. And now together with that, we're going to light the testosterone match. And so they're going to have a higher libido and lower frontal lobes. Not an excuse, but you have to understand, she's sitting there waving her arms, looking at me like I'm the most evil person on the planet. No, I just think there's an, definitely you're not. So one of the reasons I love you is because you are not that person. You are not like that.

But I do want to add to that, everything you you is because you are not that person. You are not like that. But I do want to add to that. Everything you said is, I think, spot on. But there's another component, and I really believe this. You know, you have centuries of, it's not going to go away that quickly. We've got many, you know, hundreds of years of basically the idea being that men are the bigger, stronger sex, and women being sort of suppressed and being told to be polite. Let's be truthful here. So that doesn't just go away quickly, right? So there's an ingrained genetic... And social.

In fact, a new word. I'm going to make this up. A cultural genetic phenomenon. And social. Cultural, a cultural genetic phenomenon. And social. Cultural, social, genetic phenomenon that men have no control over their impulses. Now, that's not true. You can actually train control. So one of the things I have told my daughter, because I was attacked when I was 15 and I

grew up in a really chaotic environment. I was walking to high school when I was 15 and attacked by some guy in a big white guy in a suit. It was bizarre. And so from that day forward, I always had this really weird feeling. That feeling of being overpowered really did not sit well with me. So learning how to train, be aware of my environment, you know, those types of things. And so I decided early on, I read a really great book called the gift of fear and it was really great. But one of the things that I, that I learned and I passed on to my daughter was this idea that we train our daughters to always be polite, no matter what, like what ends up happening is when

they find themselves in bad situations, they don't speak up. So I never did that with Chloe. I'm like, listen to that voice in your tummy no matter what. And if you're wrong, apologize later. So I never ever like shut that down in her. I never told her she had to be polite if she thought something was wrong or uncomfortable. And I think that we have to be very careful doing that. I was fortunately not raised in that type of environment. I was raised with a single working mother who was pretty tough. So for me, that was not the environment I was raised to, you know, I was a fighter. And so, but one of the things I love about martial arts, one of the things I love about, you know, doing what I do with the training and I even like about, you know, some of the other

types of training that I do is that it's empowering. It teaches you to speak up. It teaches you to be aware, prepared, avoid situations, but also to speak up when you need to speak up, to have a voice. How would you help us understand why men act badly and then what to do about it? Well, I think it's really complicated. And I think one of the, I think it's an oversimplified answer, but one answer and one and one only, because I think all the things you said are also accurate, testosterone, head injuries, whatever, but also, also because they can. there are times they do it because they can they're in a power of position a position of power and they do it because they can and that's not okay so being able to speak up yes being in a position where you don't have to have that job

if it's your boss that's harassing being willing Right, being willing to stand up and walk away. Being able to go away. Now, some women can't, and that's why there are courts that can help. But look what's happening. When enough women do it, look what's happening. It's turning the tide. Oh, I don't know if you heard today,

John Lasseter, who's the Pixar president. I did. Yeah. Had to step down. It just, it's happening so much. It's all of these women coming together and speaking up. Now, we also have to be careful of the backlash. The flip side of that is we don't want people to start lying.

And like, there's always that phenomenon that happens as well. I want attention. I want to be a part of this. I want to lie about somebody or whatever. That's, that's another fear that I know some men have, right. Is that men in power also have the fear that a woman can claim sexual harassment no matter what. And that is the flip side of that. And I've known women like that. So, and you know, shame on you if you're one of those, because that gives the rest of us women a bad name. So yeah, I'm a little opinionated, but. So when I deal with a harasser, the first thing I do is I look at their brain. And you and I, we always talk about whenever we assess someone, we look at the four circles of someone's life. And so the first circle is a biological circle, which is, well, what does your brain look like? Do you have ADD? Have you had a

head injury? What's your diet like? Because if you've gone too long without eating or you ate something that spiked your blood sugar, and then a couple of hours later your blood sugar is lower, you're much more likely to act badly than someone who has healthy frontal lobe functions. They got good sleep. They ate properly. All of those factors play into the decisions we make. But it's not just biology, right? I have people who have terrible looking brains who've never once harassed anybody because there's a psychology. It's how do you think? Your level of empathy,

your level of how you view yourself in the world. There's also a social circle. You're in Hollywood and it's common to abuse the young women growing up. And so it becomes part of the culture. And there's a spiritual circle, which is what's your sense of meaning and purpose? What is your ethics, your morals? How do you fit into the world? What's happening to you after you die all of these factors biological psychological social and spiritual one of the things i want to throw into the social well actually probably be yeah probably more social um i really like our friend john townsend um he wrote a book called the entitlement cure and that is i think has something

to do with it in some of these positions and the way some people are raised, you know, with, I mean, when, as a parent, I've always thought about that myself because I didn't really understand that when my daughter was really little, but I really came to understand it and began to realize that I was struggling with her. And when it was explained to me that an entitled person can never be happy, that they're like, they, they end up sabotaging themselves all through life, I realized, oh, wow. And I completely changed my parenting style when she was about five years old. And it makes all the difference in the world. But I think a lot of people grow up barely entitled in this country. And so- So that's both psychological and social.

Right. And we give people sometimes the license to do bad things because of their level of power. And some of these people are going to end up, the sad thing is that some of these people will end up running into the wrong parents or the wrong spouse. Because there are other people who are not psychologically savvy, who are not going to look at it and analyze it the way we are. And they're going to hurt someone's child but if you look at why men act badly and you ignore the brain you really won't understand it so recently um president um george hw bush was uh accused by six different women of inappropriate touching where he would make a funny... And this just happened in his older age, right?

Well, actually, a new case came out where he was 73, which is different than 93. But he has been diagnosed with something called vascular Parkinsonism, which means the blood vessels to his basal ganglia are becoming inefficient. My stepfather had that, and he was acting very inappropriately. To develop a tremor. But if you have blood vessel problems to anywhere in your brain, it likely means they're everywhere in your brain. And so he also has frontal lobe issues. And it's not uncommon for people who've never done

anything bad in their life to, as they get older and their brain deteriorates, all of a sudden, the thoughts that they might have had begin to become manifested, which is another reason to keep your brain really healthy as you age, because you've already told me if I start acting badly as I age, you're going to... There is no excuse. You might as well forget it. It's not going to work. I'm just telling you, I am your frontal lobes. The fear of you is my frontal lobes and it's another interesting thing um my friend adrian rain who's a psychology professor at the university of pennsylvania actually did a study on people with antisocial personality disorder rules don't apply to them they can break them no problem they

tend to be angry irritable manipulative people um so I wanted to study them outside of prison. He studied them in prison. He's like, well, what do they look like in the general population? And whenever I lecture, I'll often go, so where do you think he went to find these people? And this was during the crisis. And people go, in business. And other people will go, attorneys. And other people will go, pastors. And I'm like, no, no, no. You're all so cynical people. What he did was brilliant. He went to temporary job agencies.

Oh, that's hilarious. Because these are people that other people don't like to work with. Oh, that's so funny. Because they have this thing called the dark triad, which we'll talk about in a minute. Well, he hired 23 of them for a week. And he did MRI scans. He did heart rate and sweat gland activity.

And what he found, compared to healthy group, people with antisocial personality disorder had low sweat gland activity. Well, what goes with sweat gland activity? It's anxiety. When you get anxious, your hands sweat. They have low level of anxiety. They also had slower heart rates. So they're a little on the reptilian side. And they had 10% less volume in their frontal lobes. So the frontal lobes, the prefrontal cortex, is the most evolved part of the brain. Forethought, judgment, impulse control, 30% of the human brain, 11% of the chimpanzee brain. So these people, in a sense, are not as human because the more human you are,

the more empathy you have because it works, right? We get along as a group. We survive better as a group. And I just thought that was really fascinating, their brains and bodies are different. Well, and we all know someone with that dark triad, and I've known a couple women with it. Well, the dark triad, people don't know what that is.

It's a combination of three things. It's narcissism. It's all about me. It's psychopathy. Rules don't apply. And it's Machiavellianism. I'm going to get my way no matter's basically washington what the cost well certainly seems to be but they did a study of hedge fund managers of who made more money people with the dark triad

or people without the dark triad does it pay to have the dark triad to be one of these dark people and the answer was no oh it doesn't because you don't get anybody who wants to work with you. They don't like you, right. They end up in temporary job agencies. Well, and we all know some people like that, and I certainly know, not just men, I've known a couple of women,

and those women are scary. I mean, they're actually scary people. Well, and women can have head trauma, they can have ADD, they can have toxic exposure. They can have an infection that affects their brain when men act badly rather than just say you know when do you know if a man is lying when his lips are moving stop that no yeah i actually don't like it when people say that. It bothers me. Think about those four circles.

And that's how you get things better. You improve the biology. You improve how they think. You surround them with healthier people. And you get them a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. Stay with us. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month. Thank you.