Change Your Brain Every Day - What Happens When You Rewire Your Brain and Thinking, with Dr. Caroline Leaf

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

In this final episode of a four-part series with ‘Cleaning Up Your Mental Mind’ author Dr. Caroline Leaf, she tells the story of a man who suffered years of sexual trauma, and how he used the 5-step process outlined in Dr. Leaf’s book to change his thought patterns to pave the way forward in his life. When you’re able to understand where your negative thoughts are coming from, and when you can reframe them in a positive way as this man did, you can drastically change your life.  For more info on Dr. Caroline Leaf's new book 'Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess', visit https://www.cleaningupyourmentalmess.com/  

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 back. We are still here with our friend, Dr. Carolyn Leaf, just so smart, so amazing. And her new book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, such a great message. And we're talking about the five steps, five simple scientifically proven steps to reduce anxiety, stress, and toxic thinking. You can buy Cleaning Up Your Mental Mass wherever great books are sold. And we sort of went through the steps in the last three segments. And now we want to hear from Dr. Leaf about some of her favorite stories and how these steps have actually worked practically. And I love in the last segments, we about, this is not one of those overnight,

like three minutes to everlasting change, because that's just nonsense. She's going to teach you how to make this a lifelong practice for you to be in control of your mind. So what are some of the stories of people doing this? What are your favorite success stories? Wow. You say that, I'm thinking, how can I pick one? There's like thousands that have been coming through. So I put two stories in the book. But there's one that just happened recently of someone who actually got hold of the book and who's actually known of my work for a few years. child went through multiple, from the age of five through 18, they experienced sexual abuse, but like really bad and in the church. And they had a lot of religious trauma. And when they went to the, this particular person went to their pastors, there was this whole thing of, well, it's your fault. You don't have enough faith. And it was terrible. So this person was so traumatized for so many years and always, I mean i mean to therapy but it was always like talking

in circles and then one day a friend actually gave him one of my books and um he started following me and then got this most recent book and we've made contact and that's why i actually ended up being an interview but he just said that he suddenly realized when he realized that he had agency had the autonomy to make the past he can't change change the past, but he could go back. And as he explains it, he could go back as an adult and look at those symptoms, all the warning signals, the way I described, and he could go back and see, okay, well, that's me at five. That's that trauma at five.

And say that I'm now the adult of whatever, 30, 35, or whatever in the 30s. And I can go to the five-year-old version of me and I can actually say, okay, this is terrible what happened, but now you're safe. And doing that, he said, yeah, he used the five steps to get to that process and then reconceptualize it. So now here's the healed five-year-old. And so there's the dark green leaves being the healed five-year-old, and then that's the five-year-old, the story. So the past doesn't go away, but he's's changed how the past played out into the present and he said he didn't know he could do that he didn't know he had um autonomy and i talk about the pathway to empowerment in my research where when we realize that we have agency over our mind that our mind is how we think feel and choose and that

we have this messy mind and wise mind and that so with our mind, with our wise mind, we can actually manage the messy mind because the messy mind is part of life. It's part of who we are. It's never going away. So if we deny that or suppress that, then that's not going to help you. But if you accept, okay, I made a mistake.

I snapped. I got guilty. I got irritated. I own it. But now I'm going to, why did I do that? And you do that thought detective work. That's where you're getting that mind management. And this is what this particular person was saying, that they realized that, hey, I can

actually stand back and I can see that the pain of how I'm showing up now has got all these roots. And I can, here's a system for going through that. And they were still going to therapy, but he was using that in therapy. And so that was just a great story of how this person now has a platform reaching out to those people that have been very traumatized from sexual abuse and basically sort of combined, uses the five steps to help his subject, his patient.

So that was really great. I do too. In the sense that when you wrote the Relentless Poet, you're scared. Yes, my brain is like. Charlie, is you go, I mean, you really, I've never seen yourself as a victim, but you really go from a victim to not only a survivor,

but a thriver. Yeah, I call myself a sur-thriver. That's what I call myself. Yeah, it's beautiful. Sur-thriver. Yeah. I love that. I love that because

you know, schizophrenics make up new words. I love that. I love the other day I was in a surthriver.

Yeah. You're a surthriver. I love that. That's so, that's wonderful. But I like this. You know, because that's how I felt

when I wrote my story. I saw the past. Well, even what actually when I went through therapy because I that's how I felt when I wrote my story. I saw the past. Well, even what actually when I went through therapy, because I did that a while back when I went through the healing process, I saw the past one way when I was done. Well, it was an ongoing process. But when I went through that process of healing, intentionally healing the past, just like you're saying, by the time I was done, I couldn't change the past incident that happened. No.

But I did change the way I saw, thought, and felt about that. Exactly, your perspective. Yeah. And that's important. It's so important. Which changes the way you see myself now. Exactly. How you feel about your future.

Yeah, I feel like a badass now. You are a badass. Right. I'm afraid of you. I love that. It is because you basically. We only have a few minutes left. Let's talk about how people, so they can get the book.

But you have other resources for them as well. Yes. What I have, I have the app. It's called the NeuroCycle app. It used to be called the Switch app, and it swaps over. It actually swapped over this week. So into the NeuroCycle app, it's all updated neurocycle app it used to be called the switch app and it swaps over it's right it actually swapped over this week so into the neurocycle app it's all updated it matches the book it's literally like me giving you therapy and all the um the basic 21 day 63 day cycles in there and then i have a whole lot of guides in the second part of this book we

have to explain how to do the neurocycle there's lots of as you would have seen lots of examples of how to apply it in the five steps for toxic trauma, the different types, big T's, multi-acute traumas and toxic habits. And so there's lots of examples and I've also put little hacks. So for example, let's say that you have to, you're just about to go into a meeting

and someone says something to you and it throws you completely and you've got to kind of get yourself back together so that you can be focused in the meeting. You can also use the five steps for that so that in in the app there's also that guide in in this in chapter 14 of this book i actually show you how to use um how to use the whole process of of mind management as a lifestyle so talk about how you can just build it into a lifestyle and how i do it all the time you can prepare for sleep in the morning using using a NeuroCycle so that you can sleep well at night, all that kind of stuff.

So the app's great. Then I have, obviously, all of our social media pages, Dr. Caroline Leaf. I have lots of other books as well. And we have a NeuroCycle lab starting and all kinds of stuff. So there's lots of stuff. I have a podcast, Cleaning Up Your Mental Maze, which you guys have both been on. Phenomenal programs that do your interviews. And yeah, there's a lot of help out there. So I think all of it is worth that one thing. You can't change a past event that happened to you. No.

But you can have a tool that helps you change the way you think, see, and feel about what happened to you in the past. Yeah. It will change your life going forward. I agree with you. You can change how the past plays out into your future. And that's the power. Your past does not define you, but you have to get control of it.

Absolutely. Totally. And you can because your mind's malleable and you can train your mind. You are your mind. Your mind is your aliveness. If you're dead, there is no mind. The difference between a dead person and alive because your mind's malleable and you can train your mind you you are your mind your mind is your aliveness if you did there is no mind the difference between a dead person and alive is your mind yeah yeah but you have to take responsibility for your mind so mind management's managing your aliveness so it manages everything else you can do it thank you my friend so thank

you thank you both love talking to you both. Thank you and health and electricity. Thank you so much. So lovely seeing you both and hope we see you in person soon. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode.

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