Change Your Brain Every Day - What Causes Conflict Seeking Behavior?

Episode Date: April 17, 2018

Why is it that certain people cause you to feel like you need to walk on eggshells around them? In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen reveal a surprising cause for this type of behavior that has more to do with the physical function of the brain than pure psychology.

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. So we are back and I have a question. So have you ever, and I kind of know the answer to this, but I'm going to ask it anyways for audience. Have you ever known someone that you have to walk on eggshells all the time? Because I have, and it's really uncomfortable, but you

are never sure what you're going to get when you walk in the door. You all the way home. You're actually describing 20 years of my life. So all the way home, you're worried because you don't, you're already setting up in your head how you're going to respond to something, what it might be. You're not exactly sure. You're thinking about how you're going to handle it. What are you going to say? It's very stressful. So like, I know that you've experienced that. So I want to talk about what is going on in the brain, not only with the person that it that's happening with, but like, how do you handle that? Like, it's really, it's really tough. I have often in my ADD writings talked about raising ADD children and being in an ADD marriage.

Right. And one of the first things I learned, not only with my family, but with my patients, is people who have low activity in their prefrontal cortex are often excitement seeking. So that's sort of known in the ADD world. These are people who are more likely to jump out of an airplane, to race a car, to go to scary movies. But what a lot of people don't know is these are also people who not only are excitement-seeking, they're conflict-seeking. They play this game called let's have a problem. And it's painful. Oh, my gosh. Because if you're not conflict seeking, in fact, if you're a little bit like me and you tend to be conflict avoidant, that you don't really like confrontation, then finding yourself in that kind of family really unbalances you. Right.

That you just, you don't like it and you're irritated anxious a lot right and one of my favorite stories about this is I saw this woman Betty one of my first patients when I opened our first amen clinics in Northern California and she was suicidal and the reason I saw her was I was seeing her kids. And then I began to see her when she got really depressed. And for like a year, every week, she comes into my office, sits on my couch, and tells me how she's going to kill herself. Oh, wow. In the most gruesome ways.

And I'm like, I'm always anxious. I'm always worried. I'm always signing suicide contracts with her. And then when I scanned her and I saw the frontal lobe activity, I began to understand why she was doing that. She was doing it as a way to turn on her brain. And one day I looked at her and I said, you need to stop that. Oh, interesting. Right. So I don't recommend most psychiatrists do this to their suicidal patients. But I looked at her and I said, you know, you're no more than going to kill yourself than I am. You love your children. And, you know, by the way, if you kill yourself, you've just increased the chance they will kill themselves 500 percent. Growing up Roman Catholic, I had to pass guilt 101 and advance guilt. And I'm not above using it with my patients.

And she's like, what do you mean? I said, you are telling me these things and you have these bad thoughts. This is stimulant. This is your way of stimulating yourself so that you're treating your ADD. And when I treated her ADD, she stopped talking about suicide. And I mean, you have to be highly skilled to do this. I don't recommend it. Yeah, don't do what I did. I had somebody threaten to commit suicide and I thought they were being manipulative. And I'm like, well, then I'm going to call 911 and I'm never talking

to you again because you are either manipulating me or you're serious. And either way, I'm not qualified to deal with you. So don't do that do that but anyways you just reminded me of my childhood and i just got ptsd my mother who's terribly add oh my god and you're the one that told me you didn't believe in add our first day totally did not believe in add totally i met him and i'm like it's an excuse to fail or not try so i thought he was just like, like total nonsense. And so, and then he like goes about it. Like, you're very sneaky. You go through the back door.

You like start asking these questions instead. So instead of saying, oh, it's real. And like trying to prove it to me, you just like start sneakily like asking questions. So like picking away. So, oh, so tell me about how you get up at four o'clock in the morning and work out every day. Oh, so tell me about, so how much coffee do you drink before you work? And you work on a trauma unit. And I'm like, all of a sudden it occurred to me,

I'm like, you think I'm ADD. Right. And your voice went up. You think I have ADD. I was like really mad about it. But I have a very different. Was I right? Well, I have a very different, that's really important for us to distinguish here. I have a very different. Was I right? Well, I have a very different. That's really important for us to distinguish here. I have a very different kind of ADD from my mother, right? My mother is very classic of what you're talking about. She kind of needs a little bit of, like, drama going on and conflict in order to sort of, like, get herself going, I think. So she would always take me to horror flicks when I was little. There was always some sort of family conflict.

Now, if you know my mom, she's amazing. She's an amazing human being. So this seems weird that she would do this, like she sort of needs this, because she's this great person, but there's just always some kind of conflict or drama. Not so much now, but when I was growing up. But if you know me, I'm very anxious.

So I don't like that. I have my own ways of stimulating myself through working out. But if you know me, I'm very anxious. So I don't like that. I have my own ways of stimulating myself through working out, through, you know, I meditate, I do all these things. Yes, I drink coffee, like I used to drink a lot of coffee. So now it's like less now that I know how it affects you. But I had a very different way of handling my life. So people like my mom, who I was used to,

but didn't necessarily know how to deal with very effectively. And so like... So what makes you think she has ADD? So she dropped out of school when she was 16. Well, she came from a very abusive background. She had multiple, I mean, not... Because ADD usually comes from ADD, and there's a lot of impulse control issues, drug abuse. Well, she comes from a very poor, very, very poor, lots of family dynamic issues. My mom didn't have minor head injuries. She had some multiple major head injuries. I was actually going to say that. New study out today, secondary attention deficit disorder in children and adolescents,

five to 10 years after they've had a traumatic brain injury. So people who have a traumatic brain injury often have a significantly higher incidence of actually being diagnosed with ADHD. So to anybody out there listening who's going, well, this sounds hopeless. No, I want to explain to you, my mom, she's a rock star. My mom is a rock star.

When you think about where she came from, what she's been through, 16-year-old runaway, had no money, no education really. She is like very successful. Now, had she had this information sooner, it just would have been less drama. And in the next podcast, we're going to talk about, do you have ADD and how would you know?

So, but I want, before we do that, I want to actually talk a little bit about what we started off with. So this conflict, when you walk in the house and there's eggshells, because maybe we need to continue it in the next podcast, but some people can leave. You could get divorced, I could get divorced,

we can leave situations. Some people can't, okay? There are people, there are children who are very anxious who don't have ADD or maybe they've got a different kind of ADD or maybe they're overly anxious and they've got parents who are constantly causing conflict. What do you do? Well, if you can, you get them help.

That's the first thing. But if you're a kid and you can't. Then you don't pick up the rope. So having three children who have ADD, the little one was hyperactive. And I remember when she was like 18 months old, she'd run up and kick her brother. If you know her, this is funny. And if he didn't chase her, she would go run and kick him again. So she was totally stirring stuff up.

I'm like, why do you want me to yell at you? And as children, they're often excitement-seeking, conflict-seeking. And I tell parents, don't be their stimulant. Every time you yell at them, you beat them, you belittle them, even though emotionally the children hate it, there's a part of their brain, the little dopamine part, that loves it. So I bet I can get you to yell at me. And when parents actually listen to me and they stop yelling at the child, the child initially gets worse because they go, I know I can get you to yell at me, right? And it's completely unconscious. They never wake up in the morning, or at least mostly never wake up in the morning and go, I'm going to make mommy cry. In fact, you know, I'll often, when I listen to this dynamic in my office with the mom and the child there, I'm like,

do you wake up in the morning and want to make her cry? And they're like, no. I said, but you do it. I said, why do you do it? And they go, I don't know. And the reason, they really don't know because it's not will driven. It's brain driven.

And so the first thing is you have to take away the drug, right? Conflict and being angry is the drug. You have to take that away. And initially they get worse and then they get better. But as soon as they get you, as soon as they get you to snap, to yell, to hit them, whatever, they're going to do it again. Interesting. Yeah, it's this fascinating dynamic. If you grow up with it, it's very... And so don't feed the beast. That's the first thing. Get them help if you can.

One of the ways to calm down the excitement, conflict-seeking behavior is exercise. Exercise can make a big difference. Magnesium can also help because it tends to settle things down in the brain. It actually tends to balance the brain better. And if they have untreated ADD, please get it treated. Yeah, so after my mom got scanned and she saw her brain and she got treated, she was so funny. It was like the first time in my life I would call her, and I love my mom, but I did move out of the house pretty early because I'm very anxious, very anxious so I don't like that kind of drama and I grew up with it and

there's a point where you just are done there was sort of drama in her relationships anyways um so I was just kind of done and I love my mom and I was always close to her but I didn't really want to be that close to it anymore. So we talked every day, whatever, but always, I always knew that when I talked to her, I'd have to put her on speakerphone, set it down, be doing stuff, give her 10 minutes to just sort of vent about whatever drama was going on, and then I would interrupt and go,

hey mom, you know, I only have a little while and I wanna be able to talk to you, but I had to give her that little bit of time to sort of vent that drama. Well, she gets treated for the ADD, and all of a sudden I'd call her, and I'm like, hey, how are you?'s like you know I'm fine I'm like excuse me well don't you remember your mother and my uncle work together I will and so they both had ADD

ADD runs in families and I treated both of them and they stopped complaining about each other but but I would all of a sudden'm like, you're like, what? Everything's like, you're good. She's like, yeah. And she almost sounded like she didn't know what to say, like a little bit bored. And so, and it was really funny. And at one time she even said, she goes, you know, I just find myself being a little bit tired.

Like she goes, I just, I don't have like the same level of energy I had. She goes, but I'm getting so much done. And I just died. And that was when I actually started to believe in ADD for real. So if you stay with us, we're going to walk through ADD and how to know if you or a loved one has. Stay with us. Use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. 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.