Change Your Brain Every Day - Why Do Good People Do Bad Things?

Episode Date: December 19, 2017

“Think Different” was a popular Apple ad campaign in the late 90’s that was intended to recognize the revolutionary power in thinking outside the box. The same approach can and should also be taken into consideration when addressing the poor decision-making habits of others. In episode 6 of the Success Starts Here series, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss how we can change our paradigm in these situations to first ask why, and then get these people help.

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. Success starts here. One of my favorite lessons is think different. When people do bad things, ask why, then get them help. And, uh, you know, it's one of the reasons I became a psychiatrist is I really wanted to understand why people, um, did whatever they did. Well, I did whatever I did. And, um, then when we started imaging, everything changed. I mean, everything in my life changed.

And then I got brutally criticized by my colleagues, and that was extremely painful. And then I think it was 2002, Apple's iconic Think Different commercial came out, and it's my favorite commercial of all time, and it was called Think Different. It was in response to IBM's commercial about their computer Think. Oh, interesting.

So Apple came out because, of course, they're different. And so Think Different. And it said, here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs and square holes, the ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. They have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them about the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things they push the human race forward while some may see them as the crazy ones we see genius because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do that's that's actually great it's actually really great

so when i was growing up i grew up roman catholic uh not kidding catholic as i like to say my mom was really serious and i went to catholic school and i was an altar boy and the lore in my family maybe in your family too was that if you worked hard and did the right thing you would be successful and if you were lazy and didn't work hard you wouldn't be successful and it sort of worked for my mom and dad i mean my dad grew up very poor my mom too ended up owning a chain of grocery stores and becoming the chairman of the board of a $4 billion company, Unified Grocers. And so I had that sort of mindset, work hard, it's going to be okay. And it worked for me. But then when I started looking at people's brains, I'm like, oh, there's, it's more complicated than that.

And as our imaging work became more well-known, defense attorneys started sending us people who did really bad things. And, and then I got asked to testify in death penalty cases. And initially, you know, the lore in my family is my dad would say things like, kill the bastard. You know, he deserves to die. And it just started making me uncomfortable because I went, behavior is way more complicated than just free will than just a choice that not everybody has the same level of free will and um that's that is really a hard one to um get into and wrap your brain around it is and it's different but but yet the science is clear

that homeless people there's a study from toronto 58 percent of the homeless men had a significant brain injury before they were homeless it's amazing 42% of the homeless women had a significant brain injury before they were homeless. Is that their fault? Lead exposure, like what's going on in Flint, Michigan with lead in the water, lead exposure clearly is a neurotoxin. Right. And it leads to learning problems, behavior problems, mood problems. Is that their fault? Probably not. And so in thinking different, when people do bad things, you have to assess them in the four circles that you and i often talk about and you

help them in those four circles and uh somebody i don't know who cut a six minute segment of a talk i did at saddleback church where I talk about my nephew, Andrew, who attacked a little girl on the baseball field for no particular reason. You can see the story on Illumably. It got like 21 million views. Something insane.

Right. And by the time, you know, the people here watch it may have 30 million views. But, you know, my nine-year-old nephew attacks a little girl on

the baseball field for no reason out of the blue and his mom calls me up crying and i'm like what else is going on and she said danny he's different he's mean he doesn't smile anymore i went into his room and found two pictures he had drawn one of them he was hanging from a tree the other one he was shooting other children andrew was columbine aurora sandy hook waiting to happen and when we scanned him he had a cyst in his left temporal lobe and when we took it out his behavior immediately went back to normal. Yeah. And so when people do bad things, you have to ask why and get them help. And why do you do that? Because it's the most thoughtful thing to do.

It's the most loving thing to do. The easy thing to do is judge them as bad. That's the easy thing. And throw them away. put them in a cage, kill them. And we have to put some of them in cages. I'm sorry. I'm going to push back. Well, some of them, we need to protect people from society, but what we don't do is ask why and then try to get them help. And by putting them in a cage, we are making them worse. So we just have to be clear. I understand, but you're phrasing it, hold on, because there are people who have had bad things done to people they love. I'm going to push back for a minute. So no one said we didn't get controversial on this show. You call it a cage. I call it keeping

society safe. You absolutely have to do that. But in the process of keeping society safe, the human thing to do is to understand their behavior. So when they get out, and almost everybody does, they don't have to go back. And we don't do that. I agree with you. The prison system in the U do a better job i agree in the u.s is about vengeance it's not about rehabilitation and vengeance we incarcerate more people in the united states per capita than anywhere our crime rates insane in the world than anywhere in the world clearly our justice system is broken.

So there's a study out of Washington State. There was a judge, David Admirer, out of Redmond, Washington. Have you heard me tell this story? He had two adopted kids who had learning disabilities and ADD. And he's like, everybody who's coming in front of me reminds me of my kids. And so if you got convicted of a crime in his courtroom, he had you screened for ADD and learning disabilities. That's amazing. And then if you were guilty, part of your sentence was he court ordered you to a 14-week course to learn about what you had.

But that's amazing. And for every dollar they spent on these kids, the state of Washington saved seven. Wow. There's another way. So you have to be thinking about when people do bad things, ask why and get them help. Now, not everybody wants help. And not everybody should get out of jail. And not everybody should get out of jail because our first responsibility is to protect society. But our next responsibility is to ask why

and see if it's not because they had Lyme disease or if it's not because they had a brain injury or because they have mercury toxicity. You got to ask yourself why. And so you and I, we always talk about a biopsychosocial spiritual way to assess people in those four circles. And then we treat them in those four circles and that's where our brain imaging work has just helped us so much but if you miss the biology you miss yeah being able to help them so with andrew it really wasn't a psychological or a social or even a spiritual problem it was a biological problem and when the cyst was drained his behavior went back and it's so interesting because i wasn't with you at that time that that

happened um but when i met andrew i mean i know andrew now and he's just the sweetest kid i mean now he's married you just got married but i mean i can't really imagine him being that way so it's very interesting right so he was one of the lucky ones to have somebody who loved him paying attention to his brain. Well, and going to the right person who knew what to do for it. There are a lot of people who have people who love them, but they get the wrong treatment. They get the wrong treatment. It's not fair. And we just need to do a better job with judgment um when people do bad things so there's three

areas of the brain to assess so their prefrontal cortex the executive part of the brain focus forethought judgment impulse control empathy learning from the mistakes you make um i treated one guy who could never let anything go. It was fighting with his neighbors over trees on an easement. And, uh, he lost the case in court. And one day he wakes up to the sound of a chainsaw and he calls nine one one. And he said,

I'm going to go kill the bastards. And then he puts the phone down, takes the gun and goes and shoots them and then he comes back and calls 9-1-1 again and he said i told you i was going to shoot them and so it's part of a death penalty case and i'm on the stand and the judge said uh not the judge the prosecutor says well he called 9-1-1 ahead of time doesn't that indicate good planning and in my head i'm thinking you're an idiot but i didn't say it right because i have good frontal lobe function and i stopped took a breath and i said no it indicates bad planning it's who would

call 9-1-1 before they went to kill people right you get a bad thought i'm gonna go shoot these people good frontal lobes because you because even with good frontal right? You get a bad thought, I'm going to go shoot these people, good frontal lobes. Because even with good frontal lobes, you get the bad thought. Good frontal lobes will go, play that thing out. You're going to be in a cage. They're going to feed you bad food. You're not going to have sex with your wife. It's not going to be good. You're not going to look good in orange, right?

I mean, play this thing out. You know, I think he called 9-1-1 to protect himself to protect himself from the impulses because he knew he had no control interesting now does that mean he gets to go home absolutely not but does that mean we should kill him absolutely not at least in my opinion or well what if your cingulate's overactive? You can't let anything go. I had a police officer who I loved. His name was Seth, and he had six back surgeries,

and he was so tired of the pain. He could never get away from the pain. He tried to kill himself. And so I met him in the psychiatric hospital after he was awake after the overdose. And as I scanned him, he had the hottest cingulate I'd seen at that time. And he's like, I hurt and I can never stop thinking about it. And I put him on an SSRI, a medicine to calm down his cingulate.

And when he left the hospital, he said, I'm not suicidal anymore. I still hurt. But I don't think about it all the time. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So it wasn't obsessing about it. It wasn't obsess think about it all the time. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So it wasn't obsessing about it. It wasn't obsessing about it. Oh, that's fascinating.

And then we have to assess the temporal lobes because they're often involved in violent, aggressive behavior like with Andrew or a number of other stories. The point of this lesson is when people do bad things, ask why and then get them help. Stay with us. And people do bad things. Ask why. And then get them help. 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 The Brain Warrior's Way cookbook we give away every month.